Really wish I could have loved this whole game, but it keeps using its mechanics to keep you at arms length from its languages.
The Obra-Dinn style confirmation mechanism is way too aggressive and immediately de-abstracts these complex glyphs into the same handful of English words. The only challenge that remains is to remember whether the plural augmenter goes before or after its object.
The mechanics hit a stride with the Sanskrit-style writing of the Bards, and their Object-led sentence structure, but even this becomes puddle deep when it’s automatically translated into digestible English.
Following this up with the Alchemist language - that closely maps onto English - is such a staggering misfire. What could have been a language built out of equations and science is instead just English again but with an (admittedly) very cool numbering system.
Whilst the final language should be the most exciting, with its layered runes to provide additive meaning, this is revealed at the exact same time that it’s not needed anymore - because it’s all been conveniently scrawled into the notebook.
It’s a real shame that all of these cultures are so paper-thin, with their different languages coming out of convenience & mechanics as opposed to any reflection of the people themselves.
Why aren’t they able to communicate with each other? Why are they divided across the tower? Why is language all they need to break down these barriers?
Game is beautiful though, and the puzzles are all tight enough to keep you from being bounced off or really hit any friction by the time you’ve 100%ed the whole thing.
The Obra-Dinn style confirmation mechanism is way too aggressive and immediately de-abstracts these complex glyphs into the same handful of English words. The only challenge that remains is to remember whether the plural augmenter goes before or after its object.
The mechanics hit a stride with the Sanskrit-style writing of the Bards, and their Object-led sentence structure, but even this becomes puddle deep when it’s automatically translated into digestible English.
Following this up with the Alchemist language - that closely maps onto English - is such a staggering misfire. What could have been a language built out of equations and science is instead just English again but with an (admittedly) very cool numbering system.
Whilst the final language should be the most exciting, with its layered runes to provide additive meaning, this is revealed at the exact same time that it’s not needed anymore - because it’s all been conveniently scrawled into the notebook.
It’s a real shame that all of these cultures are so paper-thin, with their different languages coming out of convenience & mechanics as opposed to any reflection of the people themselves.
Why aren’t they able to communicate with each other? Why are they divided across the tower? Why is language all they need to break down these barriers?
Game is beautiful though, and the puzzles are all tight enough to keep you from being bounced off or really hit any friction by the time you’ve 100%ed the whole thing.