I've never played an Alawar HOG before and "Dark Angels" not only had achievements, but 30 of 'em so this is the one I went with. Granted, I am well aware that achievements are absolutely meaningless, but I do so enjoy easy toast and there's really nothing you need to do to see all that delicious toast pop up other than just playing the game normally.
The first thing to notice when compared to its [i]Artifex Mundi[/i] competitors is that this game (and I assume all other Alawar HOGs) has no frills. No extra solitaire puzzle game on the side, no bonus chapter that usually stinks, no real notable extras menu, so on and so forth, and while the game [i]does[/i] have "minigames" so to speak, they're pretty much just standard adventure game puzzles where you throw your inventory at everything. If you're just looking to blast through the game and put it behind you, this is great; otherwise if you prefer the Mundi-style goofing around with the extra-mileage bits, then maybe you won't be so happy. For the most part, the game is standard fare, though they do have some interesting ideas like a reverse-HOG scene where you have to put things [i]into[/i] it, which I thought was a particularly nice change of pace. Otherwise you've seen it all before - a list of words, a series of objects, etc. If you've been around the HOG block, nothing in this game will surprise you.
Except, perhaps, its wild narrative. This thing sat in my library for so long that I had completely forgotten about it. I just started playing without knowing anything about it so when the story gets rolling, I was kind of blindsided by its lunacy and I'm pretty used to the crazy plots they put into these kinds of games. [i]Most[/i] of these games feature you playing a mother rescuing her children (I guess moms in the 2010s were big on these kindsa games?), but [i]this[/i] one casts you as a fashion something-or-other turned hereditary demon/vampire/darkness hunter armed with a chakram (sometimes spelled 'charkam' and it's not a typo; it's done repeatedly). You don't question it when suddenly you're being attacked by "dark ones" and you get a random message to get your weapon and high-tail it out of the office. This isn't something you were doing as a secret life. Up until this very moment, you didn't have anything to do with this underworld and yet when the call comes, you barely bat an eye at it and suddenly you're surrounded by other Keepers (women in tight-fitting leather and hoods) who mostly don't talk to you. And then there's a time machine and all the wacky hijinks that ensue because of it. HOG stories are pretty dumb in general - sometimes adoringly-so - but this one was just so bizarre and unexpected that I laughed through a lot of it.
My only hangups, really, were related to puzzle design. While nothing really breaks the game or has you get dead-stuck, a lot of the stuff you have to do is frustrating. Granted, I always play these on expert mode, but even then there is typically a real-world logic that you can apply to the non-HO puzzles. There's no real attempt to ground these things in this particular game, though to be fair, most if it is pretty intuitive. However, it does occasionally employ classic adventure game moon-logic or just stump you with order of operations even though the hint clearly states what you need to do. As an example, there is one point where you must start a fire and in your inventory is a flint for doing it. The hint says "hey, dumdum, start a fire." And you're like "Rokay, Raggy!" and you try to start the fire with your flint. But it doesn't start. And the MC is like "If only I had something to start this fire," and I'm sitting here like, "I'VE GOT THE FLIPPIN' FLINT! WHAT MORE DO YOU WANT?!?!" Spoiler alert: [spoiler]It wanted oil first[/spoiler]. When it doubt, throw your inventory at it. Outside of order-of-operations blues, it's just a general "what on EARTH is this?" kind of feel. Why is everything missing its gems, jewels, chains, keys, knobs, latches, paper, etc. Why is there a train here and why the heck do you steer it like a 16-year-old making a three-point turn into a 20-point turn? Trains don't move like this! A time machine?! What???! I [i]get[/i] that this is a hidden-object game from the 2010s and that realism in this genre is a big ask, but [i]plausibility[/i] doesn't even get a fair shake here and it's ridiculous. Eventually you just roll with it because this game is a game first and to be fair... I don't really care anyway; I was able to get through the game without looking anything up so it's clearly passable even if you simply just need to be persistent. If anything, it's just sometimes annoying rather than frustrating, if that makes sense.
Overall, it's not a bad game nor is it a terrific one. If you've got a HOG itch that needs to be scratched and you've consumed the entire Mundi catalog, then sure. Go ahead. Otherwise find that Mundi game you haven't got to yet - even the lesser ones - and give that a go before you go slumming in the Alawar catalog. Granted, I haven't played their other games, but given how very meh I feel about this one, I don't think I'm going to bother.
