Dark Chronicles: The Soul Reaver

Dark Chronicles: The Soul Reaver is an enjoyable hidden object game that is clearly aimed at novice players, considering the easy difficulty of puzzles and the straightforwardness of the gameplay.

Despite it having a lot of locations to visit, with all of them being very beautifully drawn, it constantly felt that the scenes had the potential of offering much more content. Currently, there’s one mini-game and / or one hidden object scene to solve in each location, apart from picking up a couple of objects. While I really like the fact that not much back and forth between locations was needed (a fast travel map is also available), I kept thinking that all this potential was lost simply because the game doesn’t give the player enough things to do. Sure, there are a lot of minigames and puzzles to solve, but they’re so easy that the player can just sweep through them in a matter of seconds. And ultimately, it’s a pity that there was so much work put into creating such charming graphics yet in some ways Dark Chronicles: The Soul Reaver fails short in delivering a rich gameplay.

In terms of design, Dark Chronicles: The Soul Reaver has everything you would expect from a HOG: there are mostly familiar puzzles but also a couple of new ones; there are scenes with lists of objects, but also fragmented object scenes (HOPA-style); a lovely diary will help you keep track of the story and the map will also show you which of the locations have actions available.

The story is cliché and marginally predictable, yet still fun to experience due to its dark, thrilling aspect. With a medieval setting and fantasy elements, an evil witch that collects souls and a dear friend haunted by nightmares,
Dark Chronicles: The Soul Reaver is mildly scary (there are a couple of scare jumps too) and mysterious. There are no voice overs, but the haunting sounds on the background make up for it plenty.

It’s a game you can play in one sitting (it takes around 1.5h to finish it) and sadly, since it’s an HH-Games port, it doesn’t have achievements or collectibles but it’s still worth picking up (maybe with a discount) for HOG fans, especially those new to the genre.