Ceville is an
admirable but clumsy attempt to hark back to the
adventure games of old. Which seems to be the in thing
at the moment. A Vampyre Story tried very much
the same formula a few months back, to mixed results.
While Ceville is less turgid, it also lacks any
of the brilliantly silly humour that lifted the former
out of mediocrity. It's certainly nowhere near the
comedy talent of 90s Lucas Arts.
Playing alternately as a despotic yet lovable monarch, a
self-obsessed paladin and a sneakily clever little girl,
you'll spend your time trying to save the land of
Feryanis from the evils of Basilius, hell-bent on taking
the throne for his own wrongdoings. The range of
protagonist personalities is refreshing, but the
hub-based nature of the game, along with the fact that
you're often able to switch freely between multiple
characters, means certain tasks can get confusing.
Particularly when the puzzles begin to descend into
long-winded adventure-game-logic around a third of the
way in, things can grind to a halt far too easily, a
walkthrough being the only real way to keep on top of
things.
Adventure game
puzzles should be tough, but always guided. Ceville
simply fails in this respect. It's a game that's adept
at setting up big, multi-faceted sections with a clear
goal, but the route is often unnaturally obstrued. When
you do figure it out, there's no sense of reward; only
confusion, as you search the internet to find out if
parsley really does make people instantly fall asleep.
.
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"the
route is often
unnaturally obstrued" |
Elsewhere, an unhelpful
camera regularly refuses to look at what you're trying
to pick up, the script doesn't know who it wants to aim
itself at, and a number of audio bugs create a garbled
mess of the dialogue. Ceville doesn't feel
finished. (Since the time of writing, a patch has been
released that purports to fix some of the game's
technical issues.)
Still, the fairytale world of Feryanis is beautifully
realised, sitting halfway between Monkey Island
and a Pixar film, and should leave fans of both feeling
right at home. Animations are occasionally a little
clunky, and the textures could have done to be somewhat
crisper, but the overall visual style is highly pleasing
in its heavy stylisation.
As a casual experience, to pick up for a quick spin
every now and then, Ceville goes some way to
hitting the mark. There's certainly nothing particularly
hateful about it, except perhaps its questionable
release state. Force longer stretches of play, however,
and things start to violently stagnate. There are worse
adventures out there, but this isn't a successful
homage.
57%
A
mixed bag of old-school adventuring.
About
our scores...
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