Review: Chronices of Mystery The Scorpio Ritual

 Goutham Jayaraman

Ravencrow Game Review #25

 

Chronicles of Mystery: The Scorpio Ritual

https://store.steampowered.com/app/34800/Chronicles_of_Mystery_The_Scorpio_Ritual/

Genre	Point and Click
Platform	PC
Developer	City Interactive S.A.
Publisher	City Interactive S.A.
Playtime	4 hours
Date Completed	8/6/2021
Date Reviewed	8/6/2021
Overall Grade	B

 

Chronicles of Mystery: The Scorpio Ritual is a short point-and-click game featuring a story revolving around Knights Templars and set in beautiful Malta. It is worth noting that The Scorpio Ritual is actually the first game in a series of 4 games.

The game’s shallow plot follows a young archaeologist who is summoned to Malta by her uncle following a recent discovery of his. There, she discovers he has somehow disappeared and finds herself entangled in a sinister plot involving 4 square stones, some portals and a box with a scorpion engraved on it. While the story was enough to push me through, it was never anything substantial or terribly interesting, sad to say. This was also compounded by the fact that the game lasted a mere 3.5 hours, which certainly came as a surprise to me.

As for the gameplay, it is what you expect from a point-and-click game, but also came with some frustrating sections where I honestly had no motivation to try and solve the puzzle on my own. This would probably be because the puzzles were more about busywork as opposed to actually wracking your brain to find the solution. Heavily lineralizing the puzzles and having an uninteresting protagonist was not exactly helpful either and so this game quickly fell to the wayside during my Point-and-Click sessions.

So yes, this is one of those games where I can’t really say that I had fun. However, with how beautifully rendered it is and with it mostly still being decent enough, I can’t say that it’s that bad of a game either, so I would still recommend it if you can grab all the games in the series as a bundle.

 

What I liked

-          I liked the environments quite a lot actually. I have been to Malta once and found it to contain gorgeous landscapes and cityscapes. This game does an honorable job of capturing the essence of Malta.

-          The background music was quite solid, and brings the Templars to mind.

-          The logs in the game, which recorded everything faithfully.

What I disliked                                                                   

-          None of the characters were likeable

-          Sylvie’s constant berating comments upon performing a bad action

-          There were some tedious puzzles

-          The game was way too short

Gameplay 8/20	+ Standard Point and Click mechanics with substantial inventory involvement.   - Abrasive protagonist and lack of constructive feedback made for an unpleasant experience. I didn’t like constantly having to hear “Trial and error they say” in a berating voice or “Sylvie, think” in a condescending voice   - Lack of sufficient Quality of Life features made for some annoying moments (repeatedly walking back and forth, having to manually place objects back, being unable to skip texts at some points)
Game Design 2/20	- Aggressively linear puzzle design (You often need to do a particular action before triggering another action somewhere else)   - Puzzles not particularly creative (most are just busywork)   - Poorly designed feedback system. The only feedback you get is when you have forgotten to do something or have to do something mundane in order to proceed. Not much there to point you in the right direction when dealing with actual goals that needed to be completed before moving on.   = There is technically a notes section but I never really found this until I happened to notice it at the end of the game.   - Some confusing, unintuitive or tedious puzzle design.   One example would be the puzzle where you have to take some stones and plug them into cracks to stop moving platforms. There’s really nothing to figure out here, it’s just a matter of timing. But, even then it took multiple tries and a walkthrough to finally get the timing right because it wasn’t perfectly in sync with what was being displayed on screen.   Another example would be using stones to slot into holes to climb a wall. The stones are all scattered along a long wall and you could only carry 4 at a time. They appear very small on the screen and most are 2 parts of a whole so it is difficult to know exactly which ones you need. This ends up creating a lot of walking around at a slow annoying pace. Sylvie also apparently refuses to simply haul the stones closer to the location and instead insists on returning the stones to the same location as before.
Graphics 18/20	+ The graphics are certainly good. The game features locations in Malta, Rome and Istanbul, and they all look gorgeous and realistic.   + Cutscenes are plentiful, and you do have the ability to review them at time.   - Character models appear stiff   - Forced low resolution (Game runs in a 4:3 window with black sides and cannot go fullscreen)
Audio 16/20	+ Good background music that resonates with the Templar concept   - Instances of dull and stiff voice acting break immersion
Story 10/20	The story is decent enough and quite easy to grasp, but is nothing all that interesting. It does have a fair number of points where the plot develops though.   Story could have been longer and better written though to include additional lore and events.   Somewhat horrid ending that doesn’t make sense at all and pretty much breaks the rest of the story.
Lore 12/20	The characters in the game are largely bland and unappealing. Sylvie is the only one with a strong enough personality for it to come out. However, given the way she writes in her notebook and the things she says, she just seems to be full of herself and thus becomes unlikeable.   Poor character design aside, the game does include a decent amount of Templar lore and should be commended for keeping a logbook that records conversations, documents, goals and a diary.
Value 14/20	- Very short game - No replay value + Low cost + Part of a series, and so can be more easily grabbed as part of a bundle - Not a memorable experience overall
Overall Grade 12/20	B
Score	58

 

Chronicles of Mystery: The Scorpio Ritual is overall a rather unremarkable game with a good setting but poor gameplay and uninteresting plot and character development.

 

Given that the game is only about 3-4 hours long, I suppose the flaws can be overlooked as you won’t play the game long enough to mind any of them. If you are interested in the series as a whole, and able to pick up all the games in a bundle, then feel free to purchase and play this game, but I wouldn’t bother too much otherwise.