Curse of Enchantia

The Good
To keep this short: Curse of Enchantia isn't a good game, but it's not entirely bad either. In fact, it's one of these cool-shell-rotten-core titles that make you drag your best friends to your screen to show them the awesome graphics, but drive you to insanity when you actually play it. Enchantia could have found its place in the annals of gaming history as a light-hearted, humorous fantasy adventure with cool animations, if it wasn't for...

The Bad
...the puzzles. They're the mind-boggling, far-out, illogical kind that keep you banging your head against the keyboard, shouting "How am I supposed to know that I need to whack the robot with a gold-filled sock?" You do not get hints. You never know which icon to use. To push a gun from a shelf with a broom, you need to click on the "fight" symbol. Yeah, sure. Curse of Enchantia is a trial-and-error adventure. Trial-and-error is not entertainment.
Additionally, there's the slightly awkward icon interface, but you can cope with that.

The Bottom Line
Curse of Enchantia features nice graphics, excellent animations and a few really funny scenes. Too bad you'll probably never see them -- the puzzles are ridiculous.

The Good
Surrealistic LSD-enhanced fantasy about a boy, a monster, some garroting, and a giant condom. Some might complain about the supposed "illogical nature" of the puzzles, but we heartily disagree. We recently ran an experiment wherein we attempted to place a fishbowl on our heads and breathe underwater. It worked very well. Additionally, we have seduced troll-like creatures by applying mud and sticks to our child-like bodies. Therefore, we would like to thank the creators of this game for teaching us so much about life. Oh, and I have not yet mentioned the best part: stuffing pubic hair into a giant condom, causing it to seize and explode into the air. Game design at its best.

The Bad
Here are the top 10 things we did not like about this game: 1. Not enough shipwrecks 2. Witch not eternally-youthful 3. Bug musicians use antiquated magnetic tape recording system. Should be recording directly to CD like any self-respecting bug musician 4. Robot not life-like 5. Aerosol deoderant not environmentally friendly. 6. Skeleton in dungeon is uncommunicative. 7. Primative undersea bartering system. 8. Inappropriate use of computer monitor. 9. Bug musicians do not hold exclusive rights to "game bugs". 10. Application of rubber gloves makes some players nervous.

The Bottom Line
FISH = ROD

The Good
The advantages of this game are barely visible and frankly speaking even those that exist are difficult to be found. Maybe the lack of text might be one of them but after a short time spend with this game, I found it a problem due to its myriad of other disadvantages.

The Bad
Let's be honest - this is one of the most annoying and illogical adventure games. First of all - the interface. It is original but it is a curse at the same time. Number of possibilities that you can do with an object does not correspond with logical solution that is really needed. Because of this the player is perplexed why things do not work and he resigns looking for another solution.

The next problem lays in the fact that you don't know what is on the screen until you get close to the object and only then it can be visible from the interface perspective. Bearing in mind that there is no text in this game it is very difficult to figure out what is really needed and what is in the location. Maybe you don't get stuck but certainly get irritated.

Graphics are reduced version from PC and unfortunately it lost a lot - starting with lack of colours and visibility of crucial objects on the screen. Sound is also ridicilous. Some small samples of background sounds and stupid words "Hi" and "Help" spoken by the main character is all you will hear. There is absolutely no music which is an original sin when it comes to adventure games.

Next thing is the existence of arcade sections. Dogdy mouse pointer and blocky scrolling make some pixel perfect sections almost impossible to get through.

The game does not have any introduction (unless you read it in the manual). Basically the player has no clue where he is or what he should do. Puzzles and location seem to be a mixed collection of different styles and tales that does not go together and sometimes are completely out of place and out of time.

The Bottom Line
This is clearly one of the worst adventure games I have ever played on Amiga. Much overhyped by Amiga press back in the day.