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| 11 FEB 2011 at 10:48am | |
AnnacatIntergalactic Janitor  Posts : 97 Joined: 23 JAN 2005 Status : Offline | This post contains minor spoilers. Major spoilers are tagged. Reading this shouldn't ruin anything for you, but if you don't like to know anything about a game before you play, you may want to skip this. I just finished playing this game, Dracula 3: Path of the Dragon, and was curious what others thought about it. I have decidedly mixed feelings. For starters, why is there a "3" in the title? Not only does it not require you to have played the previous two titles in the "series," it actually can't possibly be part of the same chronology because of a major storyline contradiction. Spoiler AlertLast Sanctuary and Resurrection both feature Jonathan and Mina Harker as major characters. In Path of the Dragon, the story is that author Bram Stoker was writing a veiled account of Ioan and Luciana Hartner's story and made up the Harkers. Either is a fine premise, but the same "series" can't have it both ways on whether these people existed! So yeah, it's not a sequel, and branding it as such seemed lame. I thought the atmosphere was great, the pace was pretty good, and the characters were for the most part interesting. I actually liked the story a lot. It was basically a mystery with just some traces of horror, but I like that kind of thing. I found the main character pretty compelling. His story and emotional journey were interesting. I also appreciated that the game made some effort to explain how the POV character knows how to do all this crazy stuff, and I could suspend my disbelief on the rest. I really liked the village setting visually. It had a nice balance of small town coziness and just the faintest hint of menace at first which grew as the story progressed. The trip to "Budapest" was a disappointment, though. Not because there was anything wrong with that setting, exactly, but because all we see of it was an office, a small private library, a hallway, and a cityscape through a window. We never even get to step outdoors! That portion of the game could literally be set anywhere. It seemed like a waste of a potentially very interesting (and thematically fitting!) location. The puzzles were a mixed bag for me. Most weren't very challenging, but that was fine with the fast-moving potboiler plot. A few were challenging only because they weren't adequately clued. (For example, the blood test related puzzles, especially the first one.) The medical puzzles in general seemed tedious to me. It was kind of fun once, but when you have to do the same thing for four more patients, it gets pretty boring. Luckily there weren't many of these, but every time I knew I was going to have to do a puzzle in the Dispensary I would put it off as long as possible because I knew I'd be stranded there for awhile doing repetitive tasks. My other complaint about the puzzles is that they weren't always very well integrated into the story, particularly as you approach the final showdown. Some of the tasks in the cellars really seemed like puzzles for the sake of puzzles. Not that they were necessarily bad, but... what exactly does, for example, a Japanese tile puzzle have to do with Dracula? Yeah, I don't know either. There are a few puzzles where you have to draw with the mouse. Most aren't overly sensitive and you should get them in a few tries, but one was a real beast for me because of minor cursor lag and pretty high sensitivity for acceptance. It almost made me give up on the whole game. It's highly frustrating to be stuck when you know exactly what you're supposed to do but the just game isn't accepting your mouse-drawing efforts. The ending: Spoiler AlertI liked what they did with Maria/Martha. I thought it was quite well clued that Maria was on the dark side. (Or else the laziest doctor ever! But her lack of work on the blood testing did come off as willful.) The revelation that she was Martha was actually hinted at, when I look back; I was genuinely surprised when it was revealed, but I actually think I could have guessed it from the available clues, so it struck the right balance for me. I feel kind of let down about the rest of the ending. Obviously Dracula isn't going to go down easily, but Father Arno really accomplished nothing. He didn't defeat Dracula, or save anyone, or free the village. His death was pretty much just in vain. As were my hours spent playing for this ending. I realize taste in this is very subjective, and not all stories have to end happily. I just prefer in a game to have some sense of accomplishment, or that the character's journey was worth it. Would I play a sequel? I dunno. I'm not sure I want to play through another character's story only to watch him or her fail to defeat Dracula. It felt like the ending was such a blatant setup for a sequel that the writers forgot that the main point of the scene was to wrap up this game, not foreshadow the next one. I actually liked the little epilogue in the 1940's, but the actual ending of the game was a let down for me. So yeah, I thought it was fun and entertaining, but I had some complaints too. Anyone else play this? What did you think? |
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| 11 FEB 2011 at 12:18pm | |
TravellerGuild Master  Posts : 4039 Joined: 3 JUL 2010 Location: US Status : Offline | Hi Annacat! Long time no see! Ok, just a quick post: I played the game quite a while ago, and enjoyed the characters more than I did with the first 2 games. In fact, I actually missed them when the game was done! In many ways this game does not seem like a direct sequel, no, so agreed about the superfluousness of the '3' in the title, though to me that is a minor point and didn't really bother me. To me the first 2 games were more intense and 'spooky', but they were just a re-hash of the "same-old" Dracula story, where this one had a better, more original story, I thought. The medical puzzles in general seemed tedious to me. It was kind of fun once, but when you have to do the same thing for four more patients, it gets pretty boring. Luckily there weren't many of these, but every time I knew I was going to have to do a puzzle in the Dispensary I would put it off as long as possible because I knew I'd be stranded there for awhile doing repetitive tasks. I couldn't agree with you more on that one.... [smiley=hair_pull.gif] Boo! to especially the lab work... (not to mention the idiotic washing of hands !) These parts were much worse than the lab work in CSI, somehow.. (Which reminds me I've been wanting to play the latest one - sorry, just thinking aloud here) Regarding the ending, I liked it very much. I thought it was a very fitting ending - it gave me a real 'feel-good' emotional rush, and changed my view of the protagonist immeasurably, from regarding him as a bit of a wet wimp, to feeling really positive about him. Spoiler AlertRegarding him not defeating Dracula: of course he didn't. Not completely anyway. Didnt'cha know that you cannot completely destroy "The Lord of Darkness" ? : Well, you can defeat him temporarily, but he always returns... * * * Just call me Trav. * * * “Despite my ghoulish reputation, I really have the heart of a small boy. I keep it in a jar on my desk.” - Robert Bloch
"They are not reciprocally sublated--the one does not sublate the other externally--but each sublates itself in itself and is in its own self the opposite of itself" (Hegel, from The Doctrine of Being)..." |
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| 11 FEB 2011 at 10:35pm | |
AnnacatIntergalactic JanitorPosts : 97 Joined: 23 JAN 2005 Status : Offline | Long time no see indeed. I haven't been doing much adventure gaming lately, I go in phases. Oh, the washing of hands! I get it, it's realistic, but it crossed the line into too much realism for me. The point of a game is some level of escapism, and to me that dragged things into overly mundane territory. (I think I was also resentful that they bothered with multiple handwashing animation cutscenes but they didn't animate more important things like the burning of a certain building at a certain point.) Ending stuff, again: Spoiler AlertWhile I agree to an extent, Arno didn't even temporarily defeat Dracula, or get the better of him at all. Dracula flew off in a cloud of mist, laughing. Arno just managed to destroy a castle that had been mainly destroyed anyway, which Dracula didn't seem to really mind. Nothing will be different because of Arno's sacrifice. That was my big problem with the ending. Dracula wasn't weakened, or convinced to at least free that village, or... anything. The villain just laughed at the protagonist's feeble efforts, and left. The end. They could have done something similar but kept things more satisfying for me, by having Arno at least defeat/kill/imprison/best Maria in some way. Or maybe shown in a cutscene that Dracula decided to leave that village alone because they weren't worth the trouble. Or had Dracula have go into hibernation to lick his wounds. Or something. Oh well. |
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| 12 FEB 2011 at 8:30am | |
TravellerGuild MasterPosts : 4039 Joined: 3 JUL 2010 Location: US Status : Offline | Hmm, I see the ending rather differently than you do. Spoiler AlertFirst off, if Arno didn't kill himself, Dracula would have drunk his blood and made him a vampire as well - can you imagine how terrible that would be to a faithful priest like Arno? So he was removing himself as a potential servant of Dracula, and preventing Dracula from taking him and subjugating his soul to Dracula's own evil purposes. Secondly, he destroyed the tunnel to Dracula that Kruger and cronies were digging towards Dracula. Remember, they were also following "The Path", but in order to purposely resurrect Dracula and to receive the power of vampires themselves, a power which they were planning to use for personal gain and personal power, as we see also in the epilogue to Drac 3/prologue to Drac 4. We see how they eventually do succeed much later, as Nazi's, of which their society would seem to be a precursor of. So Arno did at least temporarily block their progress to Dracula, and one would assume that Maria was also destroyed in the blast, and so I personally assumed that that meant that the attacks on the village would cease for now. They don't spell it out, but I'm sure it can be assumed, since it would be difficult to convey this in a short scene. They should perhaps have shown Maria's dead body to have made the ending more satisfying, but I was actually not even thinking of her by the very end, and there might have been gamers who would have found it upsetting to see a pretty young woman, even though she was a vampire, die. It might have given some people more immediate satisfaction to show her dead, but one did tend to feel rather ambiguous/conflicted towards Maria, as she could have been lying about trying to fight Dracula in her own small way, but I believe that she had truly been enslaved by him against her will, and could truly have been trying to fight him in whatever way she still could. After all, she had been a good person before she had become affected by the "vampire curse". So yeah, though I agree it would of course be better to have her dead, I also could not help feeling sorry for her. * * * Just call me Trav. * * * “Despite my ghoulish reputation, I really have the heart of a small boy. I keep it in a jar on my desk.” - Robert Bloch
"They are not reciprocally sublated--the one does not sublate the other externally--but each sublates itself in itself and is in its own self the opposite of itself" (Hegel, from The Doctrine of Being)..." |
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| 12 FEB 2011 at 1:54pm | |
JKingSchattenjger  Posts : 2349 Joined: 4 MAY 2008 Location: 0 Status : Offline | Casting my net of memory back, I don't think I was disappointed by the ending. Spoiler AlertIt was chilling, though, tht's for sure. I think, theologically-speaking, Arno did win a victory, because he did destroy one of the devil's instruments (Maria) and prevented one of God's instruments (himself) from being used to evil ends. In a more base, human sense, one might otherwise suppose that Arno felt he at least scored a personal victory by denying Dracula his soul and mucking up his plans at least insofar as he no longer has a base of operations, nor a slave in Maria. Keep in mind, also, that the castle is clearly very important to Dracula. The Path of the Dragon wouldn't lead into it were it just some castle, I'd warrant: it's his castle. Thus one can safely assume that it is a major setback: Dracula doubtless had much invested in the place, corporeal and spiritual, and it was doubtless a blow. Perhaps it wasn't a fatal setback (I think it would be a folly to expect one, given the background material), but it was not for nothing. That's just me, though. You can't kill someone in a studio. |
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| 13 FEB 2011 at 3:58am | |
AnnacatIntergalactic JanitorPosts : 97 Joined: 23 JAN 2005 Status : Offline | I like your interpretation, JKing. Just one point of disagreement: Spoiler AlertI didn't see any indication he destroyed Maria. She walked away before the confrontation with Dracula, and while she may have been crushed in the building collapse, I don't recall seeing any evidence of that? Janos and Krueger weren't killed, so why would a vampire be if she too was outside the main blast radius? Regarding the sequel thing, it annoyed me not so much because it was unrelated, but because it couldn't exist in the same story chronology for the reason I spoiler tagged in my first post. It's as if a game claimed to be in the Myst series but the plotline was that travel via linking books was a fake story made up to cover up aliens or something. It simply isn't a compatible game world to what the player saw in the previous games. The contradiction is the part that bugged me about that. By the way, one other thing that confused me... Why was it always dark in the village, but always light at the castle? I kept expecting to find out some kind of darkness curse had affected the village, but I never came across any reference to that. My only possible explanation is that the devs intended the distance between the locations to be greater than was indicated visually. So if one left the village before dawn, maybe with travel time by the time you got to the castle it would be full daylight, and by the time you walked back it would be dark again? That's all I got. |
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