Customer Reviews

Murder in the Abbey

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

The Abbey

This is a traditional point-and-click adventure set within the confines of a monastery. You play as Leonardo, delivering the king's son, Bruno, to the abbey.

Installation is long, roughly 30 minutes, and initially without indication that anything is happening. Once installed there is no requirement to have the game disk (DVD) in the drive while playing.

The game detects your video setup and sets up accordingly. Unfortunately, in my case, it chose an incorrect resolution and it took some time before I realised that the graphics were not severely dark. After correction the graphics were much lighter and this made a big difference to gameplay. The whole is in cartoon form, including the characters. Cut scenes were good.

The story is basically a who-done-it. Your object is to uncover evidence and work out who the killer is. Investigations take the form of conversations and object collection to solve puzzles. The game is fairly conversation heavy. Puzzles are mainly object based. The main character was fine, Bruno childishly annoying, other characters suitably suspicious.

Occasionally the conversation sound was absent (fortunately the subtitles worked perfectly, so nothing was missed). This could have been a fault of my system, but bear this in mind if you purchase this game and experience the same fault.

With perhaps one exception, the puzzles were fair and progress was steady. There was no pixel hunting as all usable objects were well sign posted.

Expect about 40 hours of play. Despite there being an inbuilt map to zoom around quickly, the character movement was very slow.

Voice acting was good. The lip-synch was poor but at least there was some attempt made. Ambient music was well suited to the subject and did not annoy.

Expect to visit and re-visit all the available venues as characters move around and objects become available that were previously inactive.

There are 5 chapters to play through, with the story maintaining interest throughout.
I didn't guess the killer, so the suspense carried right to the end.

The game is only loosely based on "The name of the Rose". Do not expect the same plot or characters or you will be disappointed.

Overall I enjoyed the game. It's not a stellar experience, but worth playing.

This game is good. Although it has its flaws, I am very much disappointed from the bad reviews I constantly see here.

Pros:

- Good graphics. No the game is not slow, unless you have some quite old
- Great sound. Played from the Czech Philharmonic, they enhance the games atmosphere.
- Great atmosphere. A monastery full of strange facts gives you exactly what you must get: Peace and Evil in one mix.
- The riddles are good, and although mostly inventory- or chat-based, they are easy.

Cons:

- The close up of the characters is rather weird. But you will get used to it.
- Somewhat short( but there are WAY shorter ones like Nikopol).

Resume:

You should have a nice mystery game in your library. Worth the money.

This game is ok but certainly not great. First of all, when inserting the disc, expect it to take several minutes before it starts installation. This made me wonder if something was wrong.

The story is interesting but the conversations can be very long, however, you can right-click to cut it short. Even if you like to hear all the dialogue, you will still end up not knowing where to go at times since it is not always clear. Some things didn't make any sense. Not a well written story to follow.

Be careful to check all rooms since some items will not be seen unless you move your character away from standing in front of it. Or, there might be a candle you must check thoroughly to get something from it. You will also notice when any characters speak, the voice acting is decent but will not be timed well at all. It was way off.

I completed half of the game and could not finish it. In the crypt within the Church, there is a bas relief you are to check with a parchment...the 2nd time to the crypt at night with Bruno only. One of the figures is suppose to open a secret door. It did not work. After reviewing a walkthrough, I had done everything correctly, tried a few more attempts, also from a save point (before entering the crypt), but it still would not work. Apparently there is a problem which requires a patch.

This game is not good enough to bother with especially when they don't make a working product.

what can i say that hasn't already be said, long install, too much dialogue, cartoony graphics, nice story and voice acting, i knew nothing about this game going in and was pleasently surprised at the get-go. Those of you that ahve given this game a "bad" review just has too high expecttations - kinda like i did with runaway 2 - what a disappointment that was. this game is different than many adventure games - more of a interactive cartoon story. so if you think you'd like that- get this game, if not avoid.

Feels like old school with this adventure game, had a blast, not to difficult but did require lateral thinking!!

We finished playing this game, and found it kind of so-so-ish.

The good:
- The graphics were nice, an animation-style that's a little different from most games today.
- The game was challenging, and for the most part the problems were interesting to solve.
- Unlike other people here, we didn't think the dialog was particularly long. In mystery games you need to find out information, and for the most part the dialog served this purpose. Towards the very end the dialog could have been a bit shorter, but other than that we didn't mind the length of it.
- The characterizations were quite good.

The bad:
- The translation of the dialog was absolutely awful. In many places it made absolutely no sense, or was clearly translated by someone with no idiomatic understanding of English. It was really a shame. Similarly, no one apparantly advised the voice actors about how to pronounce things, causing some truly embarrasing mistakes.

- Occaisionally the game was buggy, although generally not in a way that completely disrupted gameplay.

- There were large chunks of time in the game in which you got really no hint or indication of what you might need to do to move the game forward, and you just found yourself walking around in circles going from place to place. Obviously, this is part of adventure gaming, but a good game gives you some clues as to what you need to do without outright telling you. This game lacked in that department, to the result that we used UHS hints more than we would have liked to.

So overall, we found some parts of this game fun to play, but other parts were really frustrating. Not a 'must-play' as far as we're concerned.

Finally, nitpicker moment: if the creators of this game intended it to be a Medieval Mystery, they had some serious, serious historical inaccuracies: the monks are eating potatoes, which were not introduced in Europe until later, there is a big barrel of gunpowder, which did exist in Europe during the later middle ages but was not at all common until later and there would be no reason to have it in a monastery, and the Spanish Inquisition in the form that it appears in this game did not exist until the latter 15th century. However, since the game's creators never explicitly set a date on the occurances, I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt that the game actually takes place much later (perhaps in the sixteenth or seventeenth centuries, where the referneces to The Emperor also make more sense), and that all references to a "medieval mystery" are coming from other sources. Obviously this has nothing to do with the gameplay at all. Just my own nitpicky self.

Yack, yack, yack...I was bored out of my mind with all the never ending dialoge in this game. Actually, I could probably have played the whole game in about 2 or 3 hours without all the talking, which means that there is not as much game as it may seem. The graphics are really nice and some of the scenes had lots of potential. I was disappointed that many "places" were not developed more cause they could have been really intriguing. I think this game was rushed and to cover up for the lack of game the developers through in a bunch of boring dialoge. I'm playing Evidence - The Last Ritual right now. Now there is a game! To go from Murder in the Abbey to Ritual really highlights how shallow a game Abbey is. Again though, the graphics are really good and the game ran well so that's why it got a few stars.

Only play very begining, right away I don't like it all, too slow, and talk too much.
I had played many, many games never had one like this one.
Inventory in the glass window, load and save are terrinle.
overoll, I don't like the game.

I was going to award 4 stars to this products...the game features lush graphics, excellent dialogue and a well-written story (all of the above hard to find in recent adventure games) but that bug...I was 95% done with the game when the bug struck (I was not able to enter the smithy after getting the wick from the candle) and was stuck with no way to have the story proceed...too bad. I checked walkthroughs and forums but no dice. 3 stars voila.

Though the quality of the programing is something less than steller(for 2009 and our wide screen monitors being the standard of at least 1920x1200 or more resoluton!) the game is very fun and witty. It is full of quirky characters and the only strait man is your play character, the Grande Inquisitor, Leonardo whose voice acting is supurb sounds a bit like Jeromy Irons or maybe Liam Neeson or something in between. The rest of the acting the same, if anything gives this game it's "salt" it's the voice talents and also the greet dialogue(script writing). Game play is typical point/click but those darn footsteps and slow bi-pedalling across new areas can get tedious, and the echos of the slow feet of Leonard is monotinous and irritation to listen to. I guess your taut as a player the disiplins of a Monk's patience and tollerance(my "Bruno" real personality comes throuh and mine is taxed here). You have the option to "warp"(or whatever here) to a location you've visted but thiers so many new ones too. The locations of the Abby are fun, the mystery is unravelled by being assertive, not violent. You talk people's ears off, then you go look for clues.(you can be patronizing to Bruno too, if you wish it) You deduce not through merely a collection of items(though you'll have opertunity to collect as any "graphic adventure" game) but mostly through what people do and don't say and implication. I never knew abbies had so much self containment, a smithy, a stable, a doctor, ect. Because they are relclusive they must be also self sustained. asside from a few graphic problems mostly pertaining to resoluton conflicts and what is 1400? you must also not use a resolution your screen can't handle or it will black out, freeze out your controls and not allow you exit from the first cut scene into the "options" to change it over. also sometimes the game won't save your options choice of graphics and it "defaults" on resart(even if you did -NOT- crash and exited properly after a sesson) and you get 0 volumnes for SFX, music and speech and you get the irrittating 800x600 crapsody graphics! other than the tech whiz it is still a fun game! All characters are well voiced and well scripted(dialouge wise). Story is great! Unique perspective to play a monk, not a superhero!