The Emerald Maiden: Symphony of Dreams (Collector's Edition)

The Good
There is almost nothing that I did not like about this game. I have just finished it and I have had a very good time playing it - I even kept my headphones on and listened to the music when I normally turn the sound off after a while because it all becomes a bit boring.

So, where to start? I suppose the first ting that struck me was the story. It started with the female protagonist, I think she had a name but it is not used that much in the game so I have already forgotten it, anyway she was abandoned at an orphanage when she was very young and she sets off to find out about her mother. Now that start and the cover image of the guy with googly eyes had me thinking this was going to be an iffy and probably a sentimental game. Not a bit of it. After the briefest of introductions that gets the woman into the Emerald Maiden the story takes off and it is a good story which I will not spoil.

The Emerald Maiden is quite large and parts have to be explored multiple times but the game has an excellent in-game map which can be used to fast travel as well as showing if an area has an uncompleted task. I did find that a couple of times I was at a loss to know where to go next but between the map and the hint option I was never in any difficulty.
The strategy guide is very good. I did use it once or twice, I think there were occasions where I had multiple actions to complete and I completed one out of sequence so I did not have the required item, a valve part or something similar, to do what I thought I needed to do next. The guide was helpful in getting me back on track. Unlike guides in some other games it does not show the solutions to hidden object puzzles which isn't really a problem because there are no in-game achievements to be forfeited by using a hint.

The game's music was good, it suited the game, it did not grate and it did not become boring even though I played the game all day. The voice acting throughout the game, apart from one notable exception, was also first rate and really added to the experience.

The puzzles fitted in well with the story, at no point did I feel that the developers had shoehorned a puzzle it just to make the game longer nor did I feel that there were vast spells of dialogue or times when I had nothing to do. The scope and the pacing were, for me, pretty much spot on. There are two main kinds of hidden object puzzle, one uses silhouettes - this is usually used when a device needs to be assembled from the found parts, and the standard kind which has items hidden in plain sight and others that require some assembly. The other puzzles/mini games included some logic puzzles, picture assembly, pipe puzzles, and at least one tile flipping puzzle all were clearly explained and all could be skipped.

Finally the artwork. This, I think, was a vey clever mix of drawn and photographed imagery blended together very well. There were a couple of times, mainly in the jungle where the trees and cliffs looked too like a modified photograph and seemed at odds with other scenes but overall everything was clear and easy on the eye.

The Bad
This is my contribution to the 'Bad Section'. It is going to be short, it is being very picky but there is one part of the game that kills the suspension of disbelief that swept me along with the story and that is in one of the jungle sections. Throughout the voice acting had been very good but this chap, who was supposed to be a native of an Amazon tribe, was wholly inappropriate. It sounded like the devs had realised they needed a bit of voice acting doing so they went down to the local pub and asked some random guy to read a few lines inti the microphone to help them out and that is what he did. No acting, no emotion, more a case of "I'll do this just to get rid of them so that I can get back to my pint". He could not have sounded more English or more disinterested.
OK that is more of a rant than I intended for such a piddling little thing but it irked me at the time.

The Bottom Line
I played on the Experienced difficulty setting and I started playing this morning at around 08:30 and I finished the full game and the bonus chapter at around 17:00 with the usual coffee, snack and comfort breaks. That's a full day and I feel that I have been entertained the whole time.
Will I play it again? No I will not because it is not my preferred kind of game. It is a good game and I enjoyed it but the only games I have ever replayed have been the early Thief games, some of the Lucas Arts adventure games and Fallout 3, 4 & New Vegas - games I can lose myself in for days.