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I remember the moment I finished the first episode of the Raven. While it certainly wasn’t perfect, I was filled with high anticipation for the continuation as I felt it showed promise to perhaps be a memorable adventure game.
However, when I was finished with the second episode, I was left feeling a sense of dread and worry- a premonition that the series had taken a wrong turn and was headed straight into a dead end.
Now that I have played through its finale, I must regretfully report that I was right, in more ways than one.
The best part of episode 3 was this dog.
The story begins just moments after the events of the second episode and continues to follow the thieves’ action throughout the previous episodes.
As I mentioned, it is nice to see events from a different perspective but it’s something that was already done in the second episode so the novelty has certainly worn out.
Filling in the gaps of events for continuity sake is great and all but one can’t help but wonder if at this point, this isn’t just some cheap attempt at reusing assets and creating as little new content as possible.
I obviously won’t go into details of the events that follow because if I were to spoil the story, there would be no reason to actually play this game. However, I will state that there isn’t anything particularly interesting or worthy of note that plays out in this episode and everything that happens is mostly something the player was made aware of in previous episodes.
Been there, done that.
Also, halfway through the first episode of the The Raven, I came up with a theory on the identity of the Raven and apparently, I was right. I am not some profiling mastermind nor am I an avid reader of detective novels. So if I could guess the ultimate mystery the title has to offer with ease, I’m going to guess that many others will be able to as well and that’s truly a shame.
A mark of a good mystery is not only in its clean execution of methods and motives but remaining unpredictable so the reader (or player in this instance) will not be able to guess the outcome so easily.
Regardless, I found the ending lackluster and a disappointment after a trilogy worth of buildup.
Even more unfortunate than the predictable ending is the numerous glitches within the game. I felt there were a lot of animation hiccups in the previous titles but in the third episode, these glitches are constant as I observed dozens during its short 2-3 hour campaign.
The player character would be on one side of the screen and suddenly appear climbing the ladder many yards away at an instant. The pathing on where the characters would walk would often times glitch out leaving them walking in place, sometimes forcing me to ALT-F4 to escape an infinite loop.
This is me, just walking in place as I’m caught in an endless loop, forcing a restart.
The terrible selection of clickable surfaces rears its ugly head once more and I was left almost in despair clicking on every part of the screen just to get to the next set background in futility for five to ten minutes at a time until something within the game clicked and allowed me to progress.
Every single problem that was in the previous two episodes made a return in the finale: more frequent and in greater effect.
It’s truly a great shame to see a title which showed promise go out in a whimper due to predictable writing and a myriad of glitches.
The Raven is dead and his good legacy was smirched in the end by his very own hands.
Rest in peace.
Fun Tidbit: The little puzzle solution involving the umbrella wire was one of the dumbest, needless solutions I’ve seen in an adventure game.
Review copy of game provided by publisher.
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