Customer Reviews

Rhiannon: Curse Of The Four Branches

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Rhiannon : Curse of the Four Branches

This is a traditional point-and-click adventure game. It is set in Wales.
You play as Chris (take this as male or female to your taste), a character drafted in to hold the fort in the absence of the owners and their daughter Rhiannon. The latter was having nightmares and hearing voices so her parents decided to holiday elsewhere.
Naturally you explore and dig around to see if you can help.

The game installs from DVD and does not require the disk in the drive for play. I played without any bugs (worth remarking on these days). I've an older computer and it is below the min spec required (regarding processor speed).

The story holds interest throughout. Puzzles are inventory based with perhaps only a couple of exceptions. Essentially this is series of scavenger hunts, so expect to visit and revisit locations to check if objects seen earlier have become available for picking up to help solve the current puzzle.

The graphics and animations are to a high standard. Controls work well. There is a little awkwardness regarding navigating. Presentation is Myst-like i.e. a succession of stills. Also in common with Myst, you play as first person, there are no conversations, so it is a lonely experience. The game engine is by Wintermute which is slow when saving. There are up to a hundred save slots. Incidental sounds are well done. Background music is sparse, not annoying when it does play.

I found the game relatively easy, not requiring a hint of any description. In fact, once the first couple of the five chapters were done the play seemed easier simply because I'd got more into the swing of the game. There is some pixel hunting, particularly above eye level and also below.

There is ogam (ancient script), homeopathy and ghosts in this game. None were overdone. You never do meet Rhiannon.

All in all this was worth playing. A solid adventure but not a ground-breaking one, suitable for the family (but not very young children). There's no violence and no cussing in this game. Expect roughly 30 hours play (shorter if you find all the objects required without delays).

I normally do not write reviews. Mainly, because I am inept at doing such things. So, this will be very brief.

I enjoyed this game very much. The atmosphere was just spooky enough to keep my interest. After all, it's a ghost story of sorts. I found the puzzles quite challenging. I didn't think they particularly were always logical though. Perhaps, it was just me. I am not always logical :)

It's a lengthy game, but that's good for me. As long as it holds interest. This game held my interst. I like it very much. The player is the only person throughout the entire game. The only person the player corresponds with is using email a few times. That's it. The scenery is gorgeous. The player does a LOT of walking. The only drawback for me was going back and forth over and over again....mostly because I would get lost. Some objects you cannot pick up until you have done something to trigger it...allowing you to do so.

All in all, a nice game. I normally buy, then sell a game. This one I am keeping on my game shelf. I plan on playing it again one day.

Thank you
~CB

From what I read online Rhiannon: Curse of the Four Branches was created by former amateur gamers who partnered as Arberth Studios and developed the game themselves. When people do something for love, you don't want to be critical. At the same time, the game has a hefty retail price and is being marketed as a professional effort, so I feel I have to warn potential buyers. First, the game designers have to be complimented for creating an interesting and compelling plot. I wish other adventure games had such well thought out plots. At the same time, the design and interface completely ruined the play experience for me. After playing beautifully designed games like The Lost Crown, Nikopol, Overclocked, & Sinking Island, Rhiannon looks and feels like an old, old game. I think its design is so primitive because the designers simply didn't have the resources to produce something up-to-date and visually compelling. There are so many better produced games currently available, I suggest you save your money on Rhiannon and find something that will give you better value for your dollar.

For fans of Barrow Hill, here's another adventure steeped in ancient Celtic origins located in a creepy, lonely remote countryside. The graphics are beautiful and the story unfolds with a satisfying sense of anticipation. The story is about a series of females, all named Rhiannon, who have a connection with the house and property over the centuries and are seeking spiritual release.

I was happy to find no conversation in this game (who doesn't get impatient very quickly with endless chit-chat!). Occasionally you will need to read articles, journals, or letters, listen to phone messages, and there is a history book that requires reference, but overall not too tedious. There's a search for different types of tree branches that seem to blend with the countryside, so be prepared to pixel search. A few times I hit a wall and had to really backtrack through my inventory to figure out what to do next. Some of the actions were not readily obvious, but eventually I figured them out.

The solitude is enjoyably spooky, and there are a few times you even get to be startled. I want more of these kind of games, so bring it on!

This is one of the best point and click adventure games I've played in a long time.It ran smoothly on my 4 year old computer (XP) I encourage every adventure fan to get this game. I have played over 100 adventure games and I really love this one!

Game was interesting to the entire family. We opened it christmas eve night - it was a gift for my mother. Everyone wanted to play it and it was a struggle to keep Granmda off the computer!

I'll be short and sincere: I despise this game. I've played Scratches and Barrow Hill, both games mentioned on the cover of this one, and enjoyed both of those thoroughly. This game, however, literally makes me say "I really hate this game," out loud, at least once every half hour.

The static graphics are fine, but any motion whatsoever is basic at best - and the "horror/suspense/mystery" graphics are laughable. I paid for this level of graphics design? Yeeesh...

The music...seriously? I don't play a musical instrument to save my life, but I could have come up with a better sound track even for the few brief moments of music that do exist in the game. My husband literally looked over at my screen this evening and said, "What was that? It sounded like an old Scooby Doo cartoon."

What is really annoying is the absolute randomness of the gameplay. As with any adventure game, I started out by exploring every possible area that I could; interacting with objects, of which there were many. But only a very select few could you actually pick up and take along in your inventory. You cannot actually pick up items and keep them in your inventory until the game thinks you are ready to do so.

Even some of the most basic items that any logical person would think: "Wow, I'm in a house that is obviously haunted and there is a mystery here to solve, I think I'll take this set of batteries along with me, just in case..." NOPE! Sorry, you are not ready/worthy to take those lithium batteries along with you! Not until you know that the color red is created in a bonfire by the chemical lithium! And that, of course, matches the saddle's color, which is obviously the connection to burn them together. (Sound absolutely random? Just wait until you put those annoying types of connections together 40 times. In. A. Row.

I ~love~ the idea of using an old Welsh myth and a historical location to tell a ghost story...but the story is so utterly wrapped up in the random order of collecting objects that it's degrading to the storyline. And yes, there is a storyline around here somewhere...but I don't get to find out about it until I go and try to grab that ladder for the third time.

I will finish this game, just to say that I did complete it. (I hate quitting.) But I will NOT be purchasing another game from this creator in the foreseeable future.

Good luck adventure gamers!

Rhiannon: Curse of the Four Branches was a pretty great game overall and right up my alley - quiet, solitary exploration and no talking!

****Navigation:
There would be only one star for navigation, but I am giving four because of the map! Once you have been somewhere, the map fills in and you can zip to any location with a single click of the mouse. This is a feature that is sorely lacking in most adventure games. I would not have finished this game without it, as the regular slideshow navigation was pretty klutzy.

***Graphics:
Not spectacular, not horrible. Very 2d. One annoying problem is the pop-up inventory at the top of the screen and the other pop-up at the bottom that are always popping up when you accidentally get the cursor too close.

*Sound:
Ambient sounds were appropriate, but there was no music except at the end of chapters, and that music was just awful. I think it was computer generated.

**Inventory Management:
You do have to hang on to a lot of documents, many of which you won't ever need. At times you will have an awful lot of things in your inventory, and you can only scroll through it one item at a time (as far as I could tell). No biggie, except there seems to be a delay before you can click again, so it's click, wait, click, wait, and so on. Yes, it's only milliseconds, but I could tell.

****Gameplay:
Gameplay was pretty good. Most of the time, I was able to carry on with no hints, other than those provided in the lame-o notebook. The notebook was lame because it would give you hints that were so obvious you had to roll your eyes, and then when you really didn't know what to do next, it was strangely blank.

Also, the notebook gives you hints like, "Go read [such and such] article", and I would go read it right away, and the task would not get crossed off until the end of the chapter. I actually had one hint "Find the study key" that NEVER got crossed off throughout the whole game, even though I already had the study open by the time the hint came. It doesn't sound like a big deal, but it means that your notebook opens to the first page with an uncrossed task, so you have to page back and forth to find the pertinent hints. I guess that's what they call a bug.

The whole "ya can't pick it up until ya need it" thing was not that great. You try to pick Item X, and you can't, so you read a poster on the wall, and then you try Item X again, and this time it whooshes right into your inventory. Whatever.

****Story:
The story was good - a little bit of Welsh history. It was NOT scary, or even spooky, but that's all right with me.

****Puzzles:
The puzzles were pretty much all inventory. There was some light chemistry, mechanics, acoustics, astrology and homeopathy. I would have liked the puzzles to be more involved in the science with less of the seek-and-find, but they were ok.

*****Performance:
No problems here.

This game will be good for Myst fans, not so good for Syberia fans. In any case, DON"T TRY THE DEMO. The demo is different - it doesn't give you the background story, things are in different places, and you can't do anything anyway. Just buy the game.

I am a gamer that likes games with a spooky feel to them, without a lot of chatting with other people or interaction with other characters. I was and still am a fan of Amber Jouney's Beyond, The Seventh Guest, Barrow Hill, etc. I wish they made more games like this one instead of the tedious games that you are constantly talking to other characters and walking around through towns etc. Great game. I will play it again, just like I wish I could play Amber, but you need a windows 98 computer for Amber! Thanks...make more games like this!

Rhiannon is a point-and-click slide-show adventure game with occasional animations played from a first person perspective. Your character is tasked with looking after a farm (Ty Pryderi) while the family is away on vacation. Shortly after you arrive, strange things start happening and as you investigate you learn about the history of the property and an age-old feud, the effects of which have come down through the years and still appear to be occurring. Suffice it to say you end up dealing with the situation.

I really enjoyed the in-depth story and being creeped out by some of the ghostly events. Most of the music was really nice, too. I recommend playing this game with headphones on. A word of warning: there are an enormous number of items and manipulatable things in this game. In general, you're not allowed to pick up certain items or manipulate certain things until the appropriate chapter (there are 5 chapters) or until certain tasks have been accomplished. There is also a lot of reading of mail, notebooks, diaries, newspaper clippings, etc. I found it necessary to make copious notes. The puzzles are generally straight-forward, especially if you pay really close attention to everything. There's a handy walkthrough available on the web for when you get stuck. If you enjoy doing detailed research as if you were actually there, then I highly recommend this game. For me, this one's a keeper.