Inspector Schmidt - A Bavarian Tale

The game is not too bad overall, it's enjoyable, but if you want to complete the achievements it's nearly impossible, it's so bugged that I had to play it multiple times and I get stuck for different reasons each time because of different glitches. On top of that all the achievements are only in german, why? just why

Game places a ridiculous drunk skill test where you have to cross logs and a plank bridge while the character randomly swerves off the path and you have to start over in a timed event. Big time waster and not germaine to the plot. It feels more like a juvenile prank and ruins the game.

This falls into that difficult category of, "I really liked it but it's hard to recommend." One of the tough things I've found about these kinds of detective games is that suggesting an LP really removes a lot of the choice elements that make them compelling. I do think going along for the ride with this one would still be worthwhile because the mystery was just great, but a lot of its tone is definitely tied up in the different ways you can choose to pursue the plot and you do lose that with an LP. Let's get the bad out of the way: the technical aspects of this game are terrible. It's so poorly optimized that my computer was insanely overheated the entire time I was playing in a way it hasn't been with any other game. For a game that looks and plays like Morrowind but came out in 2023, that's mind-boggling. Further, there's just a real excess of gameplay elements. I don't know that much about the engine that was used, but I wonder if some of the gameplay pieces here were premade and included because they could be, as I can't come up with any other reason for the surfeit of systems in place here. The entire item-collecting and barter mechanic was pointless; the vast, vast majority of items were unuseable and I ended the game with an inventory with well over a hundred bits of junk. The barter system was similarly pointless; at no point did I need to purchase anything, so I don't know why there were shops or money. The stamina mechanic was insane; it just meant you have to stop investigating every 30 second to use a consumable that was nearly infinite anyway, and there was one mana-looking bar that I don't even know what it did. The fistfighting was pointless, especially because there was also a stealth mechanic that you were supposed to be using to avoid fights anyway. There was just so much gameplay bloat. A game where you talked to people with occasional stealth sections where you found clues and eavesdropped would have made for a better game. Literally nothing else was necessary. The one functional system, the skill checks, was also bafflingly put together. For one, I cannot understand why you had to pass each skill check 4 consecutive times. I genuinely don't understand why anyone would design a game this way. Additionally, there were way too many stats -- why were agility and dexterity separate? Literally what was the difference? Why were Charisma and Insight split into five different stats??? It meant assigning skill points was a crapshoot because there was never any way to know which of the 47 Charisma checks was going to be the one you needed. It should have been Strength, Agi, Charisma, Insight and that's it! Whyyyyyyyyyyy There are some gameplay things I liked. I loved that you could bypass skill checks if you had the right information -- that was excellent and I'm honestly baffled no one else has come up with that system. I also thought the rock-paper-scissors tone system was clever, if unrefined -- the idea that a good detective would change their approach based on the suspect's personality is a really neat thing to implement, though it did make Schmidt seem a bit mercenary -- not necessarily a bad thing, though. And A+ for the fast-travel system (though the map was far, far bigger than it needed to be and didn't have a map marker for your current location... I repeatedly got lost in the woods). But the real selling points here are the setting and plot. The game takes place in 19th-century Bavaria, and the setting is just so unique and perfect for this kind of story, and the team knew exactly what to do with it. One of the reasons I love country-house mysteries is that they're fundamentally a critique of manners -- the heart of the country-house killing is that something horrible has happened somewhere idyllic, and the investigation involves getting into the ways that people's appearances don't line up with their actions; people aren't the same in the town square as they are behind closed doors. The dirty secret of the country house is that there are dirty secrets, but we live in a society that can't deal with that, and so the detective has to take things over from the police because they know human nature in a way institutions, which are invested in the appearances, fundamentally can't. The decision to have Schmidt be a kind of census-taker (really, an anthropologist in modern terms, I think) whose job is about parsing the realities of people's lives for an institution that will always reduce them is a really great iteration of this. The ending sequence where you hear your superior whitewash the whole thing was great. This game really knows what this subgenre is for, the questions it's best at asking. I actually don't want to say too much because for all the problems with the gameplay, I really, really enjoyed the story of this game, found the people to be compelling and complex, and I genuinely think it's worth tolerating the weird and bad gameplay choices for the experience of investigating this town and its people. This is the only country-house-style mystery I've run into so far and it's so great to see it done well and taken seriously, to see it aptly and consciously use this 19th-century setting to bring up problems we still have, to think about the roles institutions play in our lives and they myriad ways they can fail us. This is a subgenre that's rarely taken seriously and this is such a unique take on it that I found it to be a complete treat. There's a sequel game with a free standalone demo (the only good kind of demo imo) and I'm definitely going to play both. I would even if I knew the gameplay experience was exactly the same. I just enjoyed the mystery itself that much.

Eigentlich ganz nettes Rollenspiel, auch wenns technisch mindestens 10 jahre alt ist. Paar lustige Quests, unter anderem mit einem SauPreussen 😂 Aber leider danach aufgegeben, wem diese Betrunkenenquest eingefallen ist weis nur Gott selbst.

While the game is fun and I was into the story, I've twice now gotten hard crashes of my entire machine while playing the game, not to count the number of game crashes I've had. There's a lot of potential here but it's too buggy to fully enjoy right now

Die Idee klang recht gut, da ich Rätsel und Detektivspiele mag, aber das Spiel war eine Katastrophe. Ich hab lediglich bis zur Überquerung der Brücke gespielt und das Spiel dann aufgegeben. Als man ohne ein Intro einfach auf der Karte erschien und loslegen sollte, war ich schon sehr skeptisch. Außerdem konnte ich das Spiel nicht mal wirklich starten, da es da wohl ein bekanntes und bis heute nichts gefixtes Problem mit der Auflösung gibt, so dass man im Fenstermodus die Auflösung umstellen muss, da man sonst keine Buttons drücken kann... 1) Die Grafik ist im besten Falle als mittelmäßig zu bezeichnen, erinnert mich an PS2 Spiele 2) Die Steuerung ist unhandlich und hölzern, das Schleichen und Kämpfen ebenso 3) Die Musik im "Combat-Modus" ist so nervig und deplatziert, dass ich deshalb das Spiel am liebsten sofort ausgemacht hätte. 4) Die Dialoge sind völlig unnatürlich, krampfhaft und einfach schrecklich. Dass der eigene Protagonist NICHT vertont ist, macht es noch seltsamer. 5) Die Aufgaben bis zu meinem Abbruch bestanden aus sinnlosem Stöcker sammeln, eine Karte suchen, die 1 m neben dem Queststeller lag und die Wachmänner mittels einer Ablenkung umgehen. Als ich diese "Sequenz" sah, war für mich quasi der Drops gelutscht....50 cm neben den Wachmännern ploppt eine Strohpuppe auf (dafür waren die 5 Stöcker) und diese blinden Gesellen halten diese offensichtliche Zweigfigur dann für einen bekannten Räuber.... -.- Dass man danach ganz unbekümmert an diesen Leute vorbeilaufen kann, macht das Ganze auch nicht glaubwürdiger... Ich kann das Spiel also nur bis zu diesem Punkt bewerten. Mein Gefühl ist, dass das ein Studentenprojekt mit dem Thema "Macht mal was zu bayrischer Kultur" war und dieses dann irgendeinen Preis gewonnen hat und das wurde dann, egal wie schlecht die Idee und Ausführung war, bis zum Erbrechen durchfinanziert. Hauptsache "Kultur"....

Das Setting des Games in einem kleinem bayrischen Ort ist echt erfrischend und die Sprache ist echt bärig. Alles in Allem zu empfehlen und ein klarer Geheimtip. Leider gibt es etliche kleinere Bugs in dem Game die es mir unmöglich machen das Spiel uneingeschränkt zu empfehlen. So wollte ich nach dem ersten Durchspielen nochmals starten da ich einiges übersehen habe aber da passiert es das ganz am Anfang der Junge mit dem ich reden soll nicht da ist - ein Deadlook ganz zu Beginn des Games. Auch ist es sehr leicht möglich was zu übersehen oder Dialoge nicht zu erhalten wenn man Gespräche in der falschen Reihenfolge führt. Das Scripting ist einfach nicht perfekt. Auch sind die Hardwareanforderungen sehr hoch - ich schaffe es gerade mal 30fps zusammen zu bekommen - aber wenigstens läuft es gut mit 30fps. Schade das ich das game nicht nochmals starten kann um weitere Enden freizuspielen. Der Deadlook ganz am Anfang macht das für mich unmöglich.

Ein entspanntes und gleichzeitig spannendes Spiel! Detektiv- und Rollenspiel in einem. Danke an die Entwickler!