fantastic game! i always love stories that have to do with fictional ancient languages and cultures, and as someone who has a pretty big interest in linguistics this was so up my alley, it's actually crazy. i went into this knowing next to nothing since the premise was enough to get me to buy it lol, this is a rare one where i didn't watch 30 minutes of a stream vod beforehand. that's usually how i find new games to play

really enjoyed the act of learning the languages, it was so fun to decipher and i loved noticing the patterns in the symbols and the differences between each language! loved that they were not all structured the same, like they had unique grammar and vocabulary specific to their culture and it made me so happy to see, the attention to detail and the thought put into the scripts is incredible

i'm sad that this is kind of one of those games that aren't quite replayable, but i've replayed obra dinn several times and enjoyed myself so i don't think it will be too hard lol. i played on switch so i don't have any access to achievements, but after looking at a full list i see there were some secrets i happened to miss, so that's reason enough to play again!

my only negative thoughts about this game are on the stealth sections. i generally dislike stealth in games and there were some instances here that i struggled to see where i was even supposed to go, which just made the stealth even more stressful than usual. most stealth made narrative sense, but sometimes it just felt a bit too forced for my taste (particularly the areas where you are "dead" the INSTANT you're spotted). thankfully there isn't much of a penalty to speak of when you get caught, so it wasn't as bad as it could've been, but it was still easily my least favorite part of an otherwise great game