Moebius: Empire Rising

The Good
I very much liked the story, I though it was excellent and as a fan of Ancient Roman history I though the historic references were a very nice touch. Story wise it one of the best adventure games that were made in recent years that I played, Jane Jensen clearly didn't lose her touch for telling a good story and while it isn't as brilliant as Gabriel Knight it is still better that a lot of other adventure games.

Malachi being a misanthrope didn't really bother me and the strong homo-erotic innuendos were a nice addition and not something you see often from a main character in a computer game.

The Bad
The main failing of the game is the extreme limited gameplay, there is little objects to explore and people to speak to that aren't linked to the game progress, there is also a very limited freedom to try solutions, for example you could use your inventory items on a very limited numbers of hotspots, you can't try to combine two items unless it certain you succeed, in fact you can't even pick up items until you come across the problem that you will need them for solving. This all make Moebius the most rigid and linear adventure game I ever played.

The puzzles were nothing special and were no problem to experience player such as myself (no need to use the hint system) some of the detective work where you need to make observation about the characters you meet could be very frustrating since quit often you given no clues as to what you should base your observations on and are going by pure guess work.

The graphics is another major failure, I'm not a graphic whore and normality don't mind outdated graphics, especially in adventures games which in my opinions should be judged base on quality of story and puzzles, I do however expect the graphics to be done in a satisfactory way, this is not the case with Moebius - the characters proportions are deformed, their animation is buggy and in some cases missing altogether. Clearly this area lacked good professional input and was done in a very amateurish way.

The Bottom Line
Despite all the game flaws I did enjoy it and the game manage to captivate my attention to the plot long enough to reach to the end. I'm looking forward to a sequel and hope Jensen would choose another, more professional studio to work with, the quality of Phoenix doesn't do justice with her brilliant work.