Circle of Blood

The Good
I thought the graphics were REALLY well done. Its all cartoon animated , no pixelated images at all.

The story really got me in. Its not a serious game , but the plot is interesting all the same.

The controls were fairly easy , you really have no trouble with them at all.

The game mixes humour in just enough to make it uplifting , but not too much as to wreck the serious aspects of the game. (Im not sure if you know what i mean by that)

The game is a long and challenging one, you travel all around europe in your searches.In fact , one of the longest (and most enjoyable) i have played.

The Bad
The LAME ending. It spoiled it totally.

The cd changing was slightly annoying.

Thats about it.

The Bottom Line
You dont want to see it end.

The Good
The fact that is is one of the few adventure games that rivals the Lucasarts games, basically everything I said about in my review of the PC version, in short this game is great

The Bad
The Playstation version suffers from load times everytime you leave a scene, this can turn off some gamers, and because of the reduced resolution some objects can be hard to find.

The Bottom Line
One of the few brillaint graphic adventures on the Playstation

The Good
Voice actors do a good job with variety of accents, and the rest of the sound and music is also well done. The "An American Tale"-style graphic animation is a delightful respite from the legions of Myst-alikes that shared shelf space with this one when released. Although not up to Sierra/LucasArts standards, the plot and script are entertaining enough that you'll probably want to play this through to the end.

Looking back at it from the post-Da Vinci Code era, the first installment in this adventure series seems especially prescient. The whole Templers conspiracy plot, along with the quasi-romantic link between an American man and a French female, lays the template for the Code phenomenon—so much so that a part of me strongly suspects Dan Brown of plagiarizing this game!

The Bad
There is WAY too much pixel-hunting -- you might know what to do but still fail to do it because you have to put your mouse pointer in just the right (extremely small) place.

Some puzzles are not very logical. It's also possible to visit a location and get "stuck" there due to some of the disc-swapping that occurs when you travel abroad.

Finally, some attempts at humor fall flat on an American audience, and some actually render the game inappropriate for a young person. Sexual innuendo and anti-religious sentiments reflect this game's European origins.

The Bottom Line
A pleasant diversion that coulda-shoulda-woulda been a classic.