Echoes of the Past: The Revenge of the Witch Collector's Edition

Story - fairly standard for HOG's, nothing special here. You can probably guess the plot just from the title of the game. Graphics - nothing amazing, but very crisp and clear. There are also special animated touches (like a cat statue whose eyes periodically open and watch you), that really add to the atmosphere. Sound - the music was strangely addictive in this game. There are some voice animations, but not much, as you don't interact with very many people. HOP's - a really nice variety here. You have your standard list based ones (with some interaction of objects to find what you are looking for), and some where you take the objects you removed from one HOP and put them into a different HOP. There are also some that involved making something. For example, you need a book whose pages have all been torn out. After you find all the pages, you need to use a string from your inventory to bind them together, then as you close the book, you discover all the gold letters on the cover have fallen off, so you have to find those. In the end, you really feel like you reconstructed this book. All HOP items were properly named, and not too difficult to find. I never had to use a hint to locate something. Puzzles/minigames - this is where the game really shines! It is absolutely packed with puzzles and minigames, of a tremendous variety and originality. A great many of these puzzles/games I have not seen in HOG's before. Most of them take a lot of thought to puzzle through, but I never got frustrated, and I never had to use a hint or strategy guide, making them just the right level of difficulty. Features - The game does have a hint system and a built in strategy guide, but I never used either, so I can't comment on these. There is no map (and thus no indication of areas with stuff left to do, or instant travel), but I found I didn't really miss the map all that much. There is a decent sized bonus chapter at the end, with all new content. There are 3 different difficulty levels. Game length - Playing at the advanced difficulty level, the main game took around 6 hours, and the bonus chapter took around 2 hours. This makes the game almost twice as long as your average HOG. If you use hints and/or a strategy guide, it will, of course, be considerably shorter. Overall - one of the best HOG's I have played, since I love puzzles and minigames, as well as interesting interactive HOP's.

The Revenge of the witch n'est pas un hidden à proprement parlé. Oui il y a bien des SOC mais bien peu par rapport aux puzzles... Et là si vous adorez, vous allez en avoir des durs, des difficiles et des maux de têtes... ^^ Hors, si je n'ai pas de reproche particulier sur ces points, c'est coté histoire que cela m'embête... Car il n'y en a pas. On vous parachute dès le début dans une scène où un mage vous annonce que le royaume est en grand danger... qu'il a été capturé par la vilaine sorcière que je connais pas... et il faut que je sauve bla bla bla... Et le peu d'histoire en elle même est complètement débile... on apprend dès le début que si la sorcière a capturé le mage c'est qu'il a été assez crétin pour enlever les 7 gemmes de son bâton pour éviter que la sorcière ne puisse pas l'utiliser... et lui aussi par la même occasion pour se protéger... on se sent aidé... Et à chaque fois qu'il y a un monstre qui nous bloque devinez qui l'avait mis là pour se protéger... mais oui... et qui avait été assez stupide pour se douter que cela allait foirer et que planquer une potion anti monstre à côté dans un coffre serait peut être une bonne idée... toujours le même... A bien y réfléchir, il y a un côté comique mais pas voulu à la base... Et je ne parle même pas de la fin...^^ Toutes les scènes sont un jeu d'allez-retours assez ch**** il faut le dire sans compter que ce n’est pas très joli dans le design... quelconque sans plus. On ne rencontre pratiquement personne (3 entrevues et 2 scènes avec le mage) et les développeurs ont fait l'impasse sur les animations des personnages... ce qui donne un truc bizarre où on a une voix (rassurez vous il n'y en a pas des masses... ça coute cher le doublage) mais pas de lèvres qui bougent... Au final, que reste t-il... des puzzles dont certains sont assez difficiles à faire mais bien trouvés, des SOC qui sont bien mais trop peu nombreux et... c'est tout. Personnellement, je préfère avoir une histoire avec, c'est pour cela que je ne le recommande pas.

So, you are having a strange dream. A witch is cursing a kingdom, and all sorts of dark things are happening… and then suddenly, you are pulled into that medieval land by a magician, who tells you that you are their only hope. And if you wish to return to your time, you’ll have to defeat the witch. Nice… HO scenes are challenging, minigames fun, and the plot is… adequate. Would suggest getting in the bundle.

Definitely recommend! Pros .Immersive atmosphere .Clearly rendered artwork/graphics/scenes .Three difficulty modes (but no custom) .Lockable toolbar .Very complex adventure play .Various types of hidden object scene puzzles .Moderate to highly challenging mini-puzzles .Interactive elements in scenes .Good length .Strategy guide .Bonus chapter Cons .Music/sounds did not blend well with the experience, sometimes breaking it .No mini-map so no fast travel .Lots of backtracking in adventure play .Toolbar at top of screen .No indication when objects in correct position for possible use .Repeating hidden object scenes Final words (8/10): I found this game to be a challenging but enjoyable experience. The story is very basic but solid and coherent; no surprises but no stupidity either. The artwork, scene movement and interactive elements combine to create a nicely forbidding atmosphere. I really appreciated that the item placement in the hidden object scenes made sense. My only real complaint is having repeating hidden object scenes in a game without a map as every time I ran out of things to do, I would have to to go back and check each hidden object scene to see if they had reactivated.

Just finished it. It's good, don't get me wrong. Large variety of puzzles and such. Just the hit detector was a bit off and I would find myself clicking on things more then once. Also some of the stuff is not as intuative at it should be. If the game had a map feature like most modern games I would highly recommend it. As is I would say buy it if it's on sale. Or if your just a hard core HOG addict like I tend to be.

a pretty nice game

Good game.

This is one of my fav hidden object games of all time, i think its worth the price, the only bad thing is that the puzzles take a while to get hard.