Complete playthrough. A very solid send-off for the best detective game in a long while, The Lemurian Vampire brings three new, fairly complex scenarios that are once again thoroughly satisfying to solve. A few new mechanics add novelty to the gameplay, now with each chapter taking place over multiple points in time, alongside a quality-of-life improvement that carries "known information" between chapters. It's a shame that this is the final DLC for the game as I'd take as much as I can get of these scenarios, but I eagerly await whatever Color Gray Games come up with next.

Man, that last case is some bullshit. I pieced together the story events and understood what was going on easily enough, but putting the right words in the right spaces proved troublesome. I don't think the game is succeeding in the intended way if the real challenge is found in using trial and error to get the exact wording down when formulating a sentence. There were just too many potential variations with the noun selections. It didn't feel fair to me. And the hint system was useless because it was telling me things I already knew, so in the end I had to resort to an online guide. Yes, my pride took a major beating as a result.

Otherwise, business as usual. A really intriguing story told via only brief cutscene snippets and dialogue exchanges. Golden Idol does so much with so little. Analysing a scene, taking note of character interactions/visual cues and paying attention to all the minute details makes one feel like a true detective. I think the main game comfortably surpasses the DLC though, because it has plenty of those "Eureka!" moments, and when they come, piecing together the sentences in the Thinking screen usually goes smoothly. Also, I prefer the smaller-scale cases of the main campaign compared to the fewer-in-quantity-but-much-broader-in-scope cases of the DLC.

Mais uma boa DLC. Gosto mais da anterior mas essa ainda é ótima.
Eu vejo muita gente reclamando de uns saltos lógicos absurdos que o jogo pede mas eu sinto demais que isso vai de pessoa pra pessoa mesmo. Eu tive dificuldade para deduzir partes que não vi tanta gente reclamando enquanto outras, como o final, eu deduzi quase instantaneamente e tinha muita certeza de tudo. O jogo te afoga de informação e contexto e é muito fácil se confundir ou se sentir sobrecarregado com tanta coisa. Mas a graça é justamente navegar por todo esse mar de evidência e achar a verdade.

Finally the final (or rather, beginning) to this incredible game.
I already knew that this DLC is a prequel to the events of the main game, but oh boi, the closure of this story presents a nice explanation to how everything begins.
As always, art and music... impecable.
The only downside was in the second case, were I got completely stumped in the story section and I couldn't complete it. Just to discover that I've missed a hint. Again (the same happened in the second case of the first DLC. Deja vu?). But I guess the hint was so well hidden, that I just didn't noticed. Oh well.
But, in the end, it was an incredible experience.
A few weeks ago, it was brought to my attention that Color Gray was trying to hire, and so I applied: although they rejected me (no hard feelings :') I am looking forward for their next releases, and hoping that that too is also a banger.

A welcome surprise, the second and final set of DLC for the detective showpiece The Case of the Golden Idol takes you to the mysterious Monkey Paw Island, where you examine the origins of the Idol's appearance in the western world during the main game. The story follows some of the characters and ideas from the first DLC and is Part 2 of the prequel to the main game. I really loved how much more developer Color Grey Games was able to build out their alternative historical world, and the primary new mechanic here of time-traveling between different periods is a great concept and one I wish was used more often in the main game. Fitting for the finale of the cases, these three new solves are intricate and complex, asking the player to delineate ancient traditions, unseen deceptions, and covert missions all from the consistently grotesque and detailed environments you are thrown into. There isn't as much variety in design here, but this is made up for with the sheer volume of locations you can explore around the island. Unfortunately, like the first DLC, the second of the three cases this time around left me with a feeling of an unearned solution, and I felt that some of the clues didn't entirely give enough information to bring the case all together. There is still a lot to love, but these cases didn't feel as tightly constructed as the main game's. Despite this, the DLC is a worthy and welcome addition to the adventure, and I can't wait to see what this team tackles on their next major project.

Much like the previous DLC expansion, this is a quality addition to the Golden Idol package, concluding the prequel chapters leading up to the events of the base game in such a way that one might be tempted to play the story chronologically instead of doing the DLC last.

All well and good if not for one thing: this is a hard DLC, with some conclusions that I cannot call anything other than logical leaps. One character in particular has motivation to do a certain thing, but the game then escaòates their role to such a point that you might end up confused by how you were expected to figure it out.

All that aside, which your mileage may vary on, as this is the sort of game where people get stuck in spots that others find trivial, this is yet more great content, though not quite on the level with the original. Like the previous DLC, it's definitely missing much of the appeal of the base game's story and setting but there is absolutely no reason to skip it.

Probably the worst of all the levels in the game, yet they are still a lot of fun.

For the first time, there's a level where I felt played by the game when the ending was revealed (which I had to go look up online). This is especially disheartening, since having the solutions be hinging on reasonable logic jumps is what makes the Golden Idol levels so fantastic.

The last level of all ties up things nicely, but isn't even close to being as good as the main game's last level.

An alright set of 3 new levels, but you can feel it was getting time to pull the plug on this amazing project.

I tried to make this one last, just like with the previous entry, but I wasn't able to... I just wanted to keep going, and then before I knew it, it was all over. But what an all over!

There are new mechanics that are introduced here with no explanation, but discovering what they do is a fun little meta puzzle, one that adds a fun layer to the puzzles.

The story slips in and completes the circle, finally telling the missing piece of the story and I'm sad it's over. I am so excited to see what these people do next, and I hope they do it ASAFP.

This second and final entry into the Golden Idol Mysteries saga consistently delighted me in all three new scenarios. Still, the bite-size experience ultimately left a bad taste in my mouth.

The newly introduced daypart mechanic is a standout of this DLC. It's a creative, compelling addition that allows the devs to wring even more intrigue out of each untimely death, with more runway pre and post-mortem to play with. The new setting is visually engaging in the signature Golden Idol art style. Its layout offers clues as to what's really going on in the narrative before you even realize what you're seeing. The new cast of characters is memorable, and each plays nicely off of the returning crew we came to know in the Spider of Lanka.

Overall, this set of mysteries felt easier to solve than the scenarios presented within the base game and Spider of Lanka. This, on its face, is fine—I have no problem with being made to feel smart. The balance of this group of puzzles is what really felt off, though, and that's where The Lemurian Vampire's issues begin.

In my experience, mystery two was significantly trickier to solve than either one or three. The steady increase in difficulty in the base game and consistent challenge of the Spider of Lanka were gone here. Granted, this is a relatively minor criticism, but it's indicative of the carelessness that soured the game in a major way for me.

The most glaring issue that took the shine off the Golden Idol apple for me is that this DLC was released while a catastrophic save function glitch still plagues the Switch version of the game. All progress is wiped whenever a player exits the game on Switch. This led to me (and a cursory Google search indicates many others) spending tedious hours re-clicking hundreds of word bank clues and filling in the puzzles we had already solved just to reclaim our lost progress. I went through this ordeal once already, up to the penultimate puzzle of the base game. Doing it for all base game puzzles plus the Spider of Lanka content would have been a non-starter. Thankfully, at the very least, Color Gray enabled a skip scenario function (activated by pressing minus and Y simultaneously) that allows players to mark mysteries done and move on to a starting spot of their choosing. But I had to dig online to find this. At this point, with two DLCs out on the platform, it's inexcusable that this bug still exists on Switch and that the solve for it isn't made known to the player in-game.

A noticeable number of typos, strange syntax choices, lines that seem unintentionally duplicated, and other textual quirks are also present in The Lemurian Vampire. While distracting, if these were the game's only demerits, I could look past them. But they're not.

I have every confidence that the lessons learned from all the Golden Idol projects so far will empower Color Gray to make The Rise of the Golden Idol a triumphant return to form. Until then, Lemurian Vampire is well worth playing. Just keep your Switch in rest mode.