The Council was a prime candidate for Difficult Second Album Syndrome as soon as it arrived. Its unexpectedly strong and innovative debut meant that subsequent episodes have a high bar to match, but I didn’t expect the second installment to cause the entire concept to unravel.
Love The Council? Try one of these other brilliant adventure games.
Please be aware that minor spoilers for The Council and descriptions of puzzles from episode two lie ahead.
Hide and Seek, the second and shorter episode of The Council, begins by awkwardly combining the reveal of both your major decision from episode one, and bringing the mysterious Lord Mortimer out of the shadows. Neither feel like they’re addressed with any weight, with your actions in the previous episode practically brushed under the carpet, causing the opening to feel flimsy and inconsequential.
While weak, the opening is the only segment of Hide and Seek that truly carries the pace and chatter of the first episode. From there on out, the emphasis is on ‘90s-style puzzle solving, largely split across two major conundrums.
The first of these has you locked in a room attempting to continue the hunt for your missing mother. The trail arrives in unusual form; as notes hidden within the pages of a bible, their locations within the tome cryptically hidden in the painting hanging on the walls of the room. It’s a problem with a fairly logical solution, but one hidden among awkward layers of lore and mechanics. Walking back and forth between paintings and the bible, flicking through page after page in search of the right note, proves to be an exercise in tedium.
The second major puzzle, acting as the episode’s conclusion, sees you explore Lord Mortimer’s garden labyrinth, at the centre of which is a mausoleum-like structure. Unlocking the door to this structure requires you to slot a stone sword into the correct statue, of which there are many standing in various positions around the labyrinth. These statues are characters from the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur and by examining them you can learn more about them.
from PCGamesN https://ift.tt/2GhknC3
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