The moment I fell in love with this adventure game came early on - almost the first scene, in fact. You stumble into a cabin of the Orient-Express only to find your friend murdered. Shocked, you get rid of the corpse and leave the cabin; the train conductor sees you and screams. You're covered with blood - well, you DID just handle a bloody corpse, didn't you? Sorry, game over. Next time you'll remember to check yourself in the mirror and get cleaned before opening that door. And you'll also have to pay attention to things one wouldn't normally consider in a game, like hiding valuable items when leaving your cabin.
Premise and setting are fantastic - a detective story on the Orient-Express during its last journey before the onset of World War I, with a group of fascinating individuals to spy and a murder mystery to solve.
The game bristles with interesting ideas. For example, it makes a great use of different languages: the protagonist understands some, which get subtitled, and ignores others, in which case eavesdropping on other passengers gains no further knowledge (unless, I suppose, the player happens to be proficient in that language himself, surpassing his own avatar). Events unfold in real time: you often have to be at the right place at the right time, with an efficient save system - the arrival at a new station may mean defeat if you have not taken care of business with a specific passenger in time.
A few action scenes with quick time events are irritating, but they're balanced out by the engrossing plot and characters - Russian noblemen, anarchists, arms dealers, beautiful violinists.
The denouement features a weird genre shift, more Philip K. Dick than Agatha Christie, but the epilogue is memorably bittersweet.
An underrated gem.
Premise and setting are fantastic - a detective story on the Orient-Express during its last journey before the onset of World War I, with a group of fascinating individuals to spy and a murder mystery to solve.
The game bristles with interesting ideas. For example, it makes a great use of different languages: the protagonist understands some, which get subtitled, and ignores others, in which case eavesdropping on other passengers gains no further knowledge (unless, I suppose, the player happens to be proficient in that language himself, surpassing his own avatar). Events unfold in real time: you often have to be at the right place at the right time, with an efficient save system - the arrival at a new station may mean defeat if you have not taken care of business with a specific passenger in time.
A few action scenes with quick time events are irritating, but they're balanced out by the engrossing plot and characters - Russian noblemen, anarchists, arms dealers, beautiful violinists.
The denouement features a weird genre shift, more Philip K. Dick than Agatha Christie, but the epilogue is memorably bittersweet.
An underrated gem.