Rite of Passage: The Sword and the Fury - New HOPA on Big Fish

Today's game for Club Members, tomorrow's game for all.

You can download Rite of Passage: The Sword and the Fury here.

To view the comments and access the link to the Collector's Edition, click here.



As always, please remember to come back and tell us what you think.

Happy gaming!

Thanks, Marian!

Ana

Enjoy your day, Ana.

Just finished the CE version. This is the fifth game in the series that I have played. Some weren't all that impressive. One game (Lost Tides) had such VERY easy puzzles that it wasn't much fun, and another (Deck of Fates) had such a punitive and "brutal" aspect to it that I didn't go beyond the Demo Game. But The Perfect Show and Child of the Forest both were good, so I tried The Sword and The Fury. Was glad I did.

Sword and Fury was long, with a mixture of too-easy versus challenging puzzles. Some were so easy as to not be puzzles at all (!), while a couple of them were difficult, indeed. Some people might hate this "range" of difficulty. On the whole, though, I found them all easy enough to complete without needing any help or having to Skip any. I've played games with MUCH harder puzzles.

Finding your way around was no problem, and I never needed the Map. Some scenes could be finished with the items found in it, but other times, you'd carry something around for quite a while before figuring out where to use it. ha ha I did have to ask for a Hint a couple of times, when I found myself stumped about where to go next. This was mainly because the hot spots in many scenes were quite small by casual game standards, and it was easy to overlook something and then be missing an item you needed. It was a satisfyingly long game without a lot of shagging your butt around needlessly. It was not overloaded with HO scenes.

As for CE versus SE: The Bonus Game was a short prequel that explained the motivation of the character who started the Main Game but is not vital to the story, if you want to buy just the SE version. In the CE version, there are the usual morphing and collectible objects, for those who like that sort of thing.

I gave this game my second highest rating and plan to Replay it at some point.

Thanks so much for all of that information about the game, Reenie. You've encouraged me to give the game a try. It sounds like a good one.

I am curious about Deck of Fates - I only played the demo of this game - what made it "brutal" and punitive? Are you referring to the atmosphere/setup of the game, or something else?

The way the plot was constructed, as I recall, for each "deal of the cards" there was someone in the base group of characters who was going to die by being torn apart by some horrible beast. After the second time this occurred, I got the point and was finished. As I said, I didn't play the game past the Demo and may even have quit before the Demo was finished (I didn't see anything in the plot that suggested my character suddenly would turn to rose gardening or raising puppies after the Demo was over. )

I can't tolerate the stress of graphic violence because of a traumatic childhood. I know I will begin to have nightmares. So I have never played combat games and don't go to films or read books that use it as the deus ex machina. I can tolerate the occasional "fight scene" in these silly Casual games, but to have a game's plot line be comprised of a series of inescapable pursuits and brutal deaths was simply too much for me.

P.S. In Sword and Fury, there is a recurring scene where you have a sword fight with a baddie, but you apparently can't die, so the stress was only in arraying things correctly a few times in order to vanquish this creature.

Thanks so much, Reenie. That explains everything very well.

I had a rather traumatic childhood in some ways, and I certainly understand the effect it can have on a person's psyche. Again, it's great that there are so many games from which we can choose.