Youda Legend: The Golden Bird of Paradise
2.3
5
3
3
A HOG in the Pacific
After trying Curse of the Amsterdam Diamond I was curious to see whether the sequel would appeal to me a little more.
This time our hero goes on vacation on a lovely atoll in the Pacific. The music is just as stunning as in the first installment.
A few improvements have been made.
There is still only 1 Mode, but:
- the number of HO Scenes has been reduced
- sparkling areas now indicate specific areas
- there is a bit of interactivity in the HO Scenes
- inventory items are now available for use like in many other games
- puzzles and minigames can be skipped
- hints are a little more eager to recharge [and you can speed them up by finding gems, like before]
- the artwork is better, with a brighter and more colorful decor
- there is more action than before, thus turning the game a little more into an adventure
Puzzles and minigames are interesting, offering a fair level of challenge and, for some, quite a bit of originality.
With its 5 chapters this game has a decent playtime.
However, several of the previous imperfections or annoyances remain:
- in each HOS the cursor goes wild after 3 misclicks
- some HO Scenes are a gigantic pile up of junk, and although the huge objects have disappeared, the dwarves and the invisible thingies remain
- hints do not always point accurately onto the searched object; the large blue circle sometimes fails to surround the object in question, and indicates the area just next to it; you need to spot the object in question off the center of the circle.
- several HO Scenes take much to long to complete for these two reasons
- linearity is still optimum
- the intro is unsophisticated
- no voice-over
The 1 hour demo didn't take me farther than the start of the third minigame, because of a lot of time wasted in the first three HO Scenes, the first due to the hint not pointing where it should have, the second and the third for the same reason and also because they are overpopulated.
If you love HOGs so much as to overlook all the flaws, you will certainly enjoy this Bird of Paradise.
It does not offer enough adventure for me and even though I would have like to solve all the puzzles, purchasing this Youda #2 is, as far as I am concerned, just as unlikely as the Moon falling on Earth.
January 9, 2012
could be better has potential
too many dark objects especially the HO There was no way to see them even with the magnifier. This could have been a great game but it was too confusing and clueless
March 16, 2012
Slow and Frustrating
This is the first time I've ever rated a game with 1 star. I think this game is the least fun I've ever had. It's constant HO scenes, and they are bad. The scenes are messy and very undefined. Even if you use a hint to find something, often you still can't recognize the item. Many times the hint button is off center and you're unable to find the item at all. I quit the game after 24 minutes, most of them frustrating. Everything about the game is slow. I'll not be buying this one. I think Big Fish should remove this game. I think it's quality is too poor.
January 29, 2012