I played another CDi game, so now I have a whole new rant about older stuff being "better". You can Skip down below the line if you don't give a brap about this shooting the shit style rant.

Found this game by looking at other CDi games after playing Tetris Cdi. I looked up a trailer and was just fart blasted by the music. This shit is so fucking beautiful, its godly, angelic. It is the first song you hear in game (besides the 7 minute opening cutscene). Another song. Playing this and Tetris CDi (and I've also started watching X-Files) has just got me ruminating on soundtracks. I only have 3 that are past the year 2010. This is gonna be like my Tetris review where I go a little boomer, but like, what is up with soundtracks now? Why is there so much epic orchestral (this isn't strictly video game osts). Music so big it cannot be personal. That's ultimately what I'm loving about these 90's soundtracks, they feel deeply personal. What Angelo Badalamenti did for the Twin Peaks Theme is like connecting your soul to the screen.

I understand numerous nuances/caveats (idk the right word) to what im saying. Sure, beautiful shit like this might not work for whatever Marvel movie. I might not have exposed myself to as much ost's from not game mediums to see a full picture. Maybe this is less of "This old shit is definitely better" and more "There is an oversaturation of epic". Like the One Piece Live Action trailer, where the FUCK was the music bro?

Idk that shit isn't super thought out, but I just wanted to rant a little; here's the game review I guess.

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Lost Eden is a point and click adventure style game, with thematic(?) strategy. Like the strategy elements aren't really mechanical at all (like a full on strategy game), just the goals of the story and and extremely surface level. You are the prince, Adam, and your destiny is to reunite humans and dinosaurs once again to fight the T-Rexes after your great grandfather was a huge bigot and harmed the relations. After the opening, when you get into the world, you need to travel around locations and build Citadels that will help strengthen the bond between humanoids and dinosaurs. After that, you will be tasked with paying Velociraptors gold and giving them a Object of Power so they can fight back T-Rexes in the area. Triceratops will then appear in the area, befriending them allows the Citadels to become fully upgraded. So there is base building, and fights, but they really don't offer you anything besides locking progress to the story. I hope you get what I mean by "Thematic" strategy and that its not really mechanical.

Besides that main gameplay cycle, the game is a pretty standard "Prince must rise up against the big bad, reunite the kingdom" fantasy story. You kind of get a party of people who you can always talk to, they rotate occasionally. The story is a little weird cause the game is like 3-4 hours, but I think its supposed to take place over a while, but it doesn't feel like that. At one point there is a huge battle you apparently do, but there is no cutscene, just your party members going "wow that was a tough battle!". I'm not saying the story is bad, still entertaining. Here are two people you meet 12. This person has an insane sick nasty ass design its fucking great. Also here is some dialogue so you can get a feel for talking animations and whatnot. Fugg. The King(Your father) has some great reactions to you showing him shit. Also here is the Ending (don't watch if you care obv), it is kind of insane.

I also gotta talk about a specific character in this game. His name is Monk, he is your dad's adviser. When your father dies, he joins your party. You need to go to some embalmers so they can do a ritual to embalm your father. They need someone to help them, but everyone with you sucks. So you go back and get the castle's executioner (he can't talk cause his tongue was cut out; like he tries to talk, but its just noises) and Monk says "oh he would love to do it!". So you bring him to the embalmers and your party is like "bro, he looks scared" and Monk is like "Nonsense, just nervous!".
Later there is a labyrinth you have to find your way through. You can ask your sister at every turn which way to go (she tells the truth), or you can ask Monk and he just lies out of his ass. At the end you find a legendary egg to the Dinosaurs that your asshole great-grandfather stole as a bargain so he wouldn't kill more dinosaurs. The pterodactyl;s in your group family was banished for delivering it and his record will be set straight if he returns it. There is no discernable reason why you should keep this anymore. So of course Monk starts going "hmmm, but why? we should be cautious". So everyone starts calling him on his bullshit abotu this AND the executioner and he just goes "well, im an adviser, should i just bend a knee to every hotheaded fellow? hmm???". I thought he was gonna be a betrayer, but no, he is just an old incompetent fart. And honestly? that fucking rules, such a memorable character.

Another end game spoiler. That egg the dinosaurs love actually is used to predict the future. So at the end of the game they crack open the egg to see whats the future of dinosaurs. The egg turns out to be empty, nothing in it. So they dinosaurs just kind of go "Well, I guess we have no future, we will not continue to exist and you humans will be the rulers.". It's such a funny sour note to end on, because they just HAD to make dinosaur extinction real in in this fantasy game.

The real thing that carries this game is, obviously, the music. As I said before the music is so fucking good. I think the art style and CG Dinosaurs also do a lot of work, if you like old ass CG. Look at these Pterodactyls flying, this shit is great.

At the end of this, I am just wanting more Dinosaurs. Dinosaurs are fucking cool. Especially Fantasy Dinosaurs. I want more dinosaur games.

This game is aesthetically pleasant, short, and has a great soundtrack. If you can pick it up cheap you may enjoy it on that basis.

The problem playing it is that, outside of a promising start, it doesn't really consist of the kind of exploration and puzzle-solving you would expect from a point-and-click adventure. Instead, you have a very light strategy layer that sees you repeating the same basic formula in each location: speak to the locals, then befriend three types of dinosaurs in sequence by using matching items that are scattered randomly around the environment. It's not really possible to drive yourself into a corner or fail (short of walking directly into a t-rex's mouth), as each territory is either making correct progress or is stalled out. The story has some interesting concepts and a couple neat twists, but doesn't quite succeed at stringing them together effectively moment-to-moment. Tough to recommend.