Manifest

I played this on ‘Normal’ setting. Because discovering the story is such an enjoyable element, I’m doing this review as spoiler-free as possible, so I won’t give a detailed plot line.

Overall verdict and score A great game, really enjoyable and one to keep for replaying. Score 4 stars. Now to justify that.

Story
This is a well-constructed, coherent story, with more originality than you often find. The story works at 2 levels – there is the story that is happening in front of you and a second one that is only gradually revealed through a journal. This makes for a rich story without overloading the game with huge blocks of dialogue. There are twists and turns in the plot line, but all of them fit in, including a couple of major ones which I didn’t see coming. The party members are not simple clones of each other; each has been given a distinct character and style of speech, and there is a real sense of interaction between them. Even NPCs have often got great lines – check out especially the attempts at sales patter in some of the shops. The only one which slightly disappointed was the main character, Armegmus; he was a bit flat, a bit the generic hero. Just a bit more charisma would have done it. The story-telling got very slightly labored at the end – when a story has been as well told as this one, you don’t need to spell everything out. On a different level – there was obviously careful proofreading. I didn’t spot any spelling or grammatical errors, which again helped the flow of things, and showed the attention to detail that was characteristic of the whole game.
4.5

Sound
I played with the sound off, so I have no comments about the music or sound effects.

Graphics
These were clean, consistent and standard. I didn’t notice any custom features, but if I missed it, I’d be glad to up the rating. Faces have been chosen from stock, but the ones chosen fit the characters, again with the one slight exception of Armegmus. To me that face always looks like a goggle-eyed 13 year old, though I have seen it used for the hero before. I just don’t get it for a choice. The mapping is well done, though I wanted a bit more interest on the world map. The use of standard graphics means that it has to be an average mark.
3.0

Gameplay
The words that all players want to see: this game was bug free. There was, apparently, a significant one, but it was picked up almost as soon as the game was released and sorted out. There is great scope for adjusting the battles to suit your style; you can change from Active to Semi-active or Wait; the battle speed can be changed, and there are 6 levels of difficulty, going up to Legendary, so everyone should find a level/combination which they like to play at. After the inevitable early work of levelling up, I found that ordinary exploring gave me enough encounters to level up without having to go in for those long sessions where your brain turns to mush. Perhaps someone who explores more efficiently will have to do a bit of grinding, but not much. Yes, random encounters, but the frequency of them is well judged.

Characters have a good spread of skills, strengths and weaknesses, so you have a genuine choice on how to build your teams – it’s not just a question of having an A Team and the rest as wallpaper, which, sadly, is the case in some other games. Armegmus has a useful ‘divination’ spell that enables you to read your allies’ strengths and vulnerabilities, so you can construct really well balanced teams. This spell will also work on ordinary enemies, but not bosses. Battles were well balanced and gave an appropriate level of reward for the difficulty. There is a section where you have to operate without any gear at all, so it pays to have worked out in advance how to use the characters’ skills effectively. Anyone who relies just on attack is going to come unstuck.

At the beginning the game is fairly linear, but you have increasing flexibility in how/when to do things, and once you get your zeppelin you can go into full free exploring mode. This is helped along by a world mini-map with 3 zoom perspectives which I found much better than the standard one you usually get (if you get one at all). As you’d expect, there are side quests, hunts and an arena. Unlike in some games, the arena is well integrated into the story, so it’s not just a hack-fest on the side. There is also a neat 2-stage process for getting your ultimate weapons. You only get the weapons that have to be re-forged if you’re prepared to explore thoroughly, and then you have to play a blacksmithing mini-game which involves timing, and uses the ores which you’ve also had to find. So no, you can’t just save up your money and buy your way into excellence; you have to work for it. Another way to work for your equipment is by finding 99 Relics which you can trade for otherwise unobtainable items.

A key element of the game is the excellent lockpicking system which sebthune has devised. It has 3 levels of difficulty, which pushed me into stopping and thinking out a system to deal with them – and the sense of satisfaction that Vellamik expressed on opening the lock was easily matched by my own. There are also some chests and one door which require you to input a code; you can only do this if you’ve found, or been able to work out from the story, what word would be really important to the owner. You therefore need to pay attention to what’s going on, not just click your way through – though with this story and dialogue you’re probably giving full attention anyway.

Another feature is the range of puzzles and mini-games. A few puzzles need to be negotiated to advance the story, but the majority are in an optional series of 8 ruined towers which give you rare gear, permanent stat boosts, items to use in forging your ultimate armor and an item needed for a side quest. These puzzles are well graded for difficulty, both within each tower and scaling up from tower to tower as you progress through. These were interesting, thought-provoking and became increasingly challenging. Although I’ve finished the game, there was one tower which I couldn’t work out; I kept a specific save so that I could go back and I’m still racking my brains. Because I didn’t get all 8 Keystones for the side quest, I can only guess what might happen when they are delivered to the person who asked for them, but there are a couple of distinct possibilities, both of them worth getting the items for. There are some other optional dungeons that have puzzles/mini-games of different sorts, so all together, these represent a huge chunk of extra game play.

There is also a large variety of mini-games: accuracy, gambling, speed, timing, shooting/defence, whack-a-mole type, fishing and so on, more than I’ve ever seen packed into one game. The rewards you get from them are always worth having, including some of the Relics. A number of them do rely on the speed of the player’s reflexes. I thought this was a bit overdone in the later parts of the game. I would have liked a bit more variety of skill here as not everyone has fabulous reflexes (yes, I’m talking about me, so perhaps I’m too biased on this one).

Finally, items in inventory are sorted onto separate pages, so no endless scrolling trying to find something. What a relief. But no ‘Quit Game’ button on the menu; you have to use the red button on the window frame. Fine if you want to close down completely; not so good if you just want to re-load because you loused up. There’s plenty here to give it good re-playability; it’s not just a case of finding things you’ve missed, or upping the difficulty level; there is also the fact that with these characters there’s a genuine wide choice of strategy and tactics which it would be fun to try out.
4.5