Endless Fables 4: Shadow Within

I play a lot of hidden object games published by Artifex Mundi and recently been bingeing on games developed by Sunward. This particular episode of Endless Fables, "Shadow Within" is about a C grade. I'm not complaining about the consistent formula of very familiar puzzles and visual searching. I'm not especially snobby about stilted voice acting and cheesy dialog. But the Endless Fables series is increasingly dependent on attempted jump scares and lazy unmotivated plot devices. There is so little plot or narrative in these things, and magic is so universal, you'd think the writers would come up with a connected thread, but this episode in particular has several things that just left me going WTF? In fact, they not only don't have verbal explanations, a couple of them are accompanied by a rapid jumble of blurred images. Example [spoiler]You give invalid Hans the Hedron, and suddenly he's out of bed and a possessed bad guy to fight/evade. The hint/narrative/self-dialog immediately before this was "Let's give it to Hans. He'll know what to do with it." Short flurry of incoherent images follows and now Hans is going for your throat.[/spoiler] Perhaps this is a programming bug and that flurry of images was supposed to be a well-paced visual explanation of what's happening. But I suspect it's just sloppy writing and overdependence on jump scares. There's other really lazy stuff. There's a middle-aged character who's introduced as Dr. So-and-So, but you drive with him to a castle where there's an announcement for So-and-So's doctoral exam. Just ... no. Academic committees don't administer oral exams in castles (at least ones that aren't also college buildings). Announcements of doctoral exams are usually not posted like concert flyers. And paper stuck to fences isn't going to last 20 years in the weather. A couple of sentences could have explained the exotic circumstances of So-and-So's unusual recent academic career, but no. So, this is quite playable and familiar if you're just in it for the puzzles. But it's also rather annoying if you pay any attention whatsoever to the plot.

Game softlocked near the end. I referred to the game guide for what I needed and it seems like you can miss picking up the exotic fruit and crystal leaf items, which will leave you stuck at the end of the part 4.

[i]Oh boy, I was so mistaken.[/i] I reviewed the third installment of this series back in September of last year, and I thought that was the end of it. To me, it ended as a trilogy. It was a good ending to the trilogy, but boy, I was so wrong. I found Endless Fables 4: Shadow Within in my folder of HOGs. So, with this review, I hope to rectify that mistake of mine. The Endless Fables isn't a trilogy, it's a quartet/tetralogy. And this game is the true finale to that series. This game was released in 2019. Considering the year of 2026 in time of writing, it hasn't been that long compared to other games released in the 2015s. The increase of quality is noticeable. Voice overs are very characteristic, and there is distinction to each character you interact with. The portion of the areas themselves can rotate (e.g. front to back of a car), but also in some larger areas where one can move from left to right. This introduces a range of unique perspective and depth for the player as they continue to explore. By the technicality, there is indicator for collectibles. Just a small star on the lower side of the screen, not too invasive or distracting to the player. What is unlike other Artifex Mundi games is that the map in this game shows the picture of the area when you hover over them. This may provide an easier experience to casual seekers because a simple HOG game would take about 25 to 30 map areas to all go through. I found this a cool addition to the gameplay, subtle but helpful. I've spent about two and a half hours for the main story and just around an additional half hour maximum for the side story. The latter does feel quite short though but I would still rate this an [u]8/10[/u]. I enjoyed my time playing and would recommend to anyone interested to the main premise of it. A well-thought finale to the series of Endless Fables, one that I scored personally higher than its predecessor.

Моя оценка этой части серии, такая же как и на предыдущие, так что просто повторю свой отзыв, который писал раньше: ... На самом деле мне очень нравится эта серия(первые 3е части, и эта 4я), но с каждой новой игрой, такое ощущение, что загадок а ля "под какими таблетками делались эти загадки", становится все больше и больше. Вполне красивый арт, неплохая музыка, плюс-минус нормальный сюжет для такого типа игры, многие загадки выглядят интересно, но этот интерес, к сожалению, спотыкается о такие вещи, как невозможность вынуть бумагу из бутылки просто перевернув бутылку, а необходимостью искать СПЕЦИАЛЬНЫЙ предмет для этого как в прошлой игре, так и такие же ситуации в этой. Несусветный маразм, но это же поиск предметов, так что иди ищи. Или, банальное, "Я художник - Я так вижу" в некоторых нелогичных загадках на мышление, а не просто поиск, когда ты составляешь какую-то идею решения, а оно, буквально, выпадает случайно от совсем нелогичного положения предметов. Ну и хотелось бы, все же, что бы с каждой новой частью игра добавляла что-то новое. В прошлой игре был амулет борьбы против злых духов, и в этой он так же есть. Разумеется, Я все еще рекомендую эту серию, это была интересная игра, просто хотел поделится и тем, что мне не понравилось, раз уж это мой отзыв на эту игру. На Метакритике поставил 7 из 10. По полной цене, наверное, не стал бы советовать, но со скидками - да, определенно можно взять поиграть.

Disappointing after the well done third game in the series. Nothing connects the way it should, the pacing is off, most of the puzzles are random clicks to get random stuff to put in a random place to get more random stuff. While this is typical for the hidden object genre, it has never been that apparent or frustrating for me in other games. It's just badly done here, without polish and with little thought. The pacing is also off, and the dramatic music routinely sets in when there's no immediate tension. It's as if the third game was done with love by a team passionate about the genre, while the gameplay here was rote routine severly lacking inspiration- some cutscenes and some of the art excepted. A pity. edit: An egregious example of the many puzzles that are sloppily done and end up not working as they should because of this, breaking the flow of the game into a slog: You have collected three weapons, which should fit into the empty hands of frozen knights, but don't. The reason is that you first have to take one of the weapons that they still have - a spear - in order to reach a bag in a neighboring scene. When you get the bag, the spear disappears, and only now can you give the - unchanged - three weapons to the knights. Horrible design.

After playing 4 of the Endless Fables games, I realize they are just shorter, easier games than the average HOP game, by an hour at least, if not more. Not necessarily a bad thing if the story comes to a close without feeling rushed or incomplete! These games are just shorter, and the endings are good. :) There are recycled music themes in the series, but each has some unique music to the theme of the game itself (Nordic, nightmare, etc.), this game especially had a creepy musical interlude within the nightmare, which was creative! The puzzles were fun to play, a bit too much of the matching up compared to most HOP games, but the more games, the better! I did find that there were moments when I wished there was a HOP to play, instead of the actions they chose to do. Felt like missed opportunities. Overall, all 4 games were good, and worth buying at a discount! :)

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-{Сюжет}- ☐ Запоминающийся ☑ Интересный ☐ Скучный ☐ Очень плохо -{Графика}- ☐ Неописуемо ☑ Неплохо ☐ Могло быть и лучше ☐ Плохая -{Геймплей}- ☐ В это можно играть вечно ☑ Интересно ☐ Ну такое ☐ Всё очень плохо -{Музыка}- ☐ Восхитительно ☐ Очень хорошо ☑ Хорошо ☐ Сойдет -{Сложность}- ☐ Как в это вообще играть? ☐ Это будет сложно... ☑ Обычная сложность ☐ Нажмите кнопку "F", чтобы выиграть -{Время}- ☐ В это можно играть бесконечно (До 100 часов) ☐ Довольно длинная (До 30 часов) ☐ Средняя (До 10 часов) ☑ Короткая (До 5 часов) -{Цена}- ☐ За такую игру можно и душу продать ☐ Всё хорошо ☑ Ну можно и скидок подождать ☐ Лучше бы купил другую игру -{Баги}- ☐ Очень много ☐ Много ☐ Иногда попадаются ☑ Практически нет

Fun !

excellent