Saturn Quest: The Loneliness Of Captain Navigator

Saturn Quest: The Loneliness Of Captain Navigator is the 4th and supposedly the final Saturn Quest game. Well this is indeed a Saturn Quest game with a fantastic OST and stunning good retro visuals as expected from the developer but it focuses more on being mostly a simple puzzle narrative game with only one big cool multiform final boss sequence which feels like a massive step down from previous games gameplay wise. Story is kind of a mess with a sad & confusing ending as I honestly can't make heads or tails on it whether its a sequel to RUNE 3000 or an alternative timeline(?) sequel to Blast Effect O_o!? Now the critical part that I dread typing about: the annoying AI voice slop Narrator(I'm actually disappointed that you used AI slop for your most recent games giving your track record on how well crafted your previous games are which is why I refuse to review Bioysque despite how fun that game was) which honestly wasn't needed and pretty much ruined the whole experience to me. Even as a "joke" I honestly believe a simple text narrative would've been a WAY better option. For the primary reason above I simply can't recommend this game :(

Saturn Quest "4" technically provides a coherent conclusion to what otherwise was a very vague series of games, and while I do think it's the worst game in the series, if you made it this far, you might as well finish it. To be fair, I think the last 20 seconds of the ending animation were pretty neat, giving a cozy final farewell to Roro and Captain Navigator, assuming you trust Arkhouse that this is the final game, which I don't, maybe a few years from now, or maybe 10 years from now, I will see a trailer for Saturn Quest 5: The Legend of Terra. I mean it's the same person that is telling me "it's the final, final, really final, truly final boss". More of a walking-simulator compared to the previous bullet-hell & boss-rush games, it only has about 20 minutes of action at the end, it's not super easy, but relative to the other games, you probably won't have any issues. Not sure how I feel about the lack of gameplay here, I found the game a bit boring, I personally liked the bullet-hell in the series, at least when it was reasonably balanced, so it didn't feel like a Saturn Quest to me. 90% of the game is just a narrated visual experience, often forcing you to backtrack and doing fetch quests. It's almost like you took all the slow and annoying exploration parts that I complained to you about over the years, and put them into one game. It also feels like the game is self-deprecating, it's making fun of how tedious it is to do objectives and how little control you have over it, not sure if it was meant to be like a social commentary on goals in video games, I might be giving Arkhouse too much credit there. This game is tedious with backtracking, often forcing you to do mindless objectives with little progression for solving them, and I can't say that I really enjoyed it. The game seems to be fully narrated with AI distortion, I thought it was a different language for like the first 90 minutes, but then I realized it's just English with a heavy filter. Even though I found it a bit charming how she narrated the thoughts from the perspective of the player, like commenting on saving the game "just in case", or being confused by the puzzle, I just don't like that you are using AI in the first place, I would have preferred just noises or text personally. In my experience, no matter how much you use AI, you will always attract negative attention, and I think it only undermines your original work, even if you find a creative way to use it. You had a good excuse for it in the last game, but honestly, don't use it, it's not worth it. [h1] Pros: [/h1] (+) As the conclusion for the series I liked the ending enough (granted it's not amazing), and I liked the visual effects at the very end. I still think the ending for Rune 3000 was somehow more wholesome though, I mean you had him on the [spoiler] bed with a blanket [/spoiler], hard to beat that. I guess the story was okay, if you don't mind it being AI narrated. (+) It's still an Arkhouse game so you will get a few neat music tracks and some interesting visual effects, not as much as the previous games it feels, it felt like you had a combination of old and new music? (+) Mixed feelings on the AI narrator/filter, and the whole seemingly intentional tedious objectives, I only liked when she commented on the same thoughts I had, like facing a weird and unnecessary puzzle in the Arkhouse games. So at least me and AI can agree on one thing, sometimes your game design is not as fun or clever as you think. [h1] Feedback: [/h1] - I just found the game kinda boring, again you doing these backtracking objectives that are just moving around, nothing is happening, I am not doing anything. It feels like you intentionally made the game tedious, and personally I am not into it. At least the other games were tedious because they were challenging, this game is annoying because there is nothing in it for the most part. - the "puzzles" where you had to stand on random gaps kinda confused me, I thought they were empty pits just because of how they look - I think I would have preferred text or sound effects to AI, I think it undermines your original work, even though maybe it kinda fits the vibes you going for, it feels mentally distracting to me [b] Overall Thoughts: 6/10 [/b] I mean sure it kinda provides some closure for the series, but it does not have the content or gameplay of previous games, it does not have anything new to add to the series or anything particularly interesting, and all you do is walk around for 2.5 hours listening to AI that sounds like international Airport. Some art panels and a few new songs were nice, but that is about it, I am really not sure what is the fun in this, it feels intentionally tedious based on the commentary, and that is exactly how I felt, bored and detached from it. [code]Niche, obscure and underrated games: http://store.steampowered.com/curator/31294838-Hidden-Gem-Discovery/ [/code]

после прохождения этой части, я могу сказать что мне она понравилась, как фанат этой серии игр, я обожаю все части, интересная подача сюжета, а также некоторые моменты, до которых не сразу дошло что нужно делать итог: игра классная, если вы хотите начать знакомство с серией, лучше попробуйте первые 3 части

This time we have mazes. And we can understand the character(s) too! This was truly the end of the saga.