Two stories, two main characters, one epic experience: in The Dark Eye: Memoria, players travel through different time periods, while following two distinct protagonists: Sadja, a southern princess who wants to be a war hero, and Geron, a bird catcher who wants to lift a curse from his girlfriend...

Follow the journey of Sadja, a princess who longs to be a war hero

The Dark Eye: Memoria, which was originally released for PC back in 2013, is a point and click adventure game, from Daedalic Entertainment, GmbH. It's a sequel to 2012's Chains of Satinav, which is also released on PS4.

The game consists of two stories. By traveling through different time periods, you follow the journey of Sadja, a southern princess who longs to be a war hero, and Geron, the main protagonist of The Dark Eye: Chains of Satinav, who wants to lift a curse from his girlfriend. The quest for answers soon leads to a chain of events that connects both Sadja's and Geron's stories, threatening to turn the present into a grim reflection of a long forgotten past.

While this is a challenging and well designed game I did have a few issues. Firstly the audio seems a little glitchy. It was more noticeable in the very early stages (I suspect that you'll start to ignore it the more the game progresses) with the dialogue often sounding as though it was buffering and in danger of cutting out at any moment. The vocal talents, on the whole, are pretty good. Although, I took a dislike to Geron almost immediately. His arrogant manner isn't the sort you'd expect from a character you're supposed to be rooting for.

Memoria employs hand drawn animation

I also spent quite a lot of the time faffing about trying to get past pretty simple puzzles. I knew what I was supposed to do... but the logic the developers employed wasn't always easy to fathom. In these instances a lot of trial and error was necessary and at times took away from the fun of the game.

These, however, are pretty small issues that may not even be a problem for others. On the positive side, the hand drawn animation looks incredible, the story is deep and engaging and even if you do get stuck you can easily access the hints screen. Also the game has been out long enough on PC that there are plenty of walkthrough videos online.

7

Darren Rea