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• gamedeal user

  Jul 6, 2015

  I finally managed to complete this game, each time I was so bored I fell asleep. Not because the game was terrible, but because they designed it in such a way that there's no way you would be able to complete it without consulting some form of guide, map or hint system. [h1]Liked[/h1] [b]Music[/b] While not very rememberable, it suits the scenes for which they play. [b]Story[/b] It was the main reason I wanted to complete the game despite not liking the gameplay. It's a very short story, but I liked the way they unfolded. [b]Puzzles you can skip[/b] Without it, I wouldn't have been able to complete the game. And sometimes I am just lazy, which leads me to... [b]Map with teleportation[/b] The convinience of laziness. This is a very helpful feature as you'll be wandering around a lot in the game and it would be extrmely tedious to backtrack all the way. The map also helps display which areas are yet to be discovered or where you need to complete an objective. [h1]Disliked[/h1] [b]Grainy, low quality Hidden Object scenes[/b] The eyestrain is real on these. I swear the quality is worse than the pictures I used to save on 1mb floppy disks. The objects in the scene lacks depth and definition, making it very difficult to tell that they are there at all. A lot of objects are partially hidden behind others, which makes it even more tedious to find them. An annoying (yet interesting) feature makes it so you have to use some of your inventory items to compete certains items on the screen. However, there's no indication of when you are supposed to use them. Sometimes the items are greyed out and you need to go to a completely different scene, then return with a different item. Now try to pair up low quality inventory items with equally low quality items on the screen. An example of how terrible this system can be: [spoiler] You find a room with a skeleton in a corner. When you find most items, you have to leave the corpse, find a ring somewhere else, come back and put it back on his hands to complete "Dead mans secret". How are you supposed to figure that out? I barely even saw the hand in the first place due to the bad graphics.[/spoiler] [b]An ending so cheesy it's insulting[/b] So you have a pretty good story going and how do you end it? Just toss in a character you exchanged a couple of words with and call it a day. It just... made me so dissapointed I wasn't sure if I was laughing or getting mad because I just couldn't believe how thrown away all your efforts felt. [b]The puzzles[/b] Majority of puzzles relies on you remembering things, which is something that is difficult for me, so I just couldn't enjoy them. Even the logical puzzle requires you memorizing the patterns. The only puzzle I remember liking was linking the same pictures to one another, because at least then I didn't have to remember where the patterns were as they were always in the same place. [b]Backtracking and illogical problem solving[/b] This is without a doubt the worst part of this game. Usually these kinds of games will confine you to a certain area, so that it's easy to keep track of where you can go and what you are supposed to do. But this game feels like the whole world is open and there's no logic what-so-ever as to why you have to go places. Making up my own example, imagine solving a problem in the kitchen, then to complete the task, you have to go to the supermarket and pick up a fork, then go all the way back to the kitchen and place the fork on a table. But to get to the supermarket, you need fuel for the car. So you have to go into the woods and find a key. But to find a key, you need to go to the church and talk to a priest, who gives it to you, then you can solve all your problems and get the fork. There's no logic to having to go through all of that trouble for one item, unless you are deliberately trying to drag out a story which is very short. Which is quite obvious, because all of this sidetracking usually have nothing at all to do with the actual plot. The fact that you have to travel so far between each location for a simple item adds to the overall confusion as to what you are supposed to do next. Sometimes you can't pick up an item until you have done seven other tasks, which makes it seem the item isn't for use at all. This is another very illogical thing and makes the game annoying. Imagine being in a very intense moment of the game, then you have to go back to the safe area just to pick up a button, so you can advance where your character is clearly unsafe.
• gamedeal user

  Jun 25, 2015

  Okay, I have been playing Hidden Object Games for a long while now, but this one went and snatched a special place. I will be a bit biased about this game, considering the theme picked is one of my favorites - European Mysticism. I know it's nothing marvelous as a HOG but [i]Alchemy Mysteries: Prague Legends[/i] is a well-made little adventure as it lasts, with well arranged puzzles and a charming story. Some quick to grasp story related achievements are only the flavor. Our main character is Eva, a young orphan who has just came to Prague to discover about her long lost family. In Prague, the throne of European Mysticism, Eva is to find out about the trials of her heritage, learn long lost alchemical secrets and put a stop to the forces of evil. The story takes its basis from the world renowned alchemist duo: John Dee and Edward Kelley, and adds the fiction into mystical history successfully. The characters themselves sadly don't have much in-depth personality for us to witness, and voice acting isn't one of the best, but they are not as annoying as most that we come across within the genre. Aside from the dialogues and the ending being a bit forced and cheesy - okay, it was pure trash - I adored the setting altogether. The atmosphere of the game is a great success. The environment is old, dusty and mystical as Prague itself. Color choices, the art, the eerie background music and the whispering effects of the ghosts of Prague are all welcoming details. What has surprised me the most, is that the designers went into the full trouble of animating characters aside from cinematic cutscenes. Beautifully arranged in-game animations were a welcoming change in the HOG genre which we do not observe often if it's not Artifex Mundi. The gameplay was nicely balanced, between fairly challenging, inventory interactive HOG scenes, and some of the most elaborate puzzles that I've stumbled within the genre. It seems that puzzle setups do change in every playthrough, so it is meaningless to use a walkthrough for puzzles themselves. You really have to think for yourself. The game presents you a useful map to track your progress and gives you means of quick travel for adventure elements. If you like the HOG genre itself, this one is a must to experience. Don't rush it though, grab it in sale. The ending was hinting a sequel, so I will be optimistic about the story's continuation. There are tons of unexplained details, so there has to be a sequel... God, please there be a sequel, 'cause I refuse to endure that awfuly abrupt ending! Grab it and enjoy it! Please also check out Lady Storyteller's Curator page [url=http://steamcommunity.com/groups/ladystoryteller#curation]here[/url] - follow for regular updates on reviews for other games!
• gamedeal user

  Nov 4, 2016

  This was a lot of fun. It was scary as well. I liked the story. The puzzles were not too hard. I skipped a few and used some hints but it was a really good game. I especially liked the map that showed were to go next and allowed fast travel. Neat game.
• gamedeal user

  Mar 8, 2018

  If you expect this to be the best hidden object game that you've ever played you'll probably be disappointed, but if you have purchased this game on sale for under a quid and you have expectations around that same price, the games alright. To get started the storyline is explained primarily through dialogue and cutscenes, which is how I prefer it, light on the reading. The city of Prague and the characters within it offer you a unique world not all to similar to other games. The sixteen puzzles and nineteen hidden object games crammed within this small map ensure you'll spend less time wondering where that crowbar goes and more time enjoying what you enjoy most, the HO and puzzle games! The story (although I do not believe to be scary) correctly displays the danger you are in within this city. Even with all these pros I still wouldn't purchase this game at full price, but for 86% off with Frankenstein: Master of Death... yea I'll be having that!
• gamedeal user

  Jan 22, 2016

  This was not a very great game. It has achievements and trading cards, so that was at least something, and you won't even have to suffer through the game twice to get all of the achievements. It also had some fairly enjoyable puzzles and mechanics, and there is voice acting that is not bad. Other than that, I did not much enjoy this game. The hidden object scenes aren't amazing looking, and there is a fair amount of errors in them (such as repeated objects and mislabeled objects). There is way too much back and forth to go back to random places where new objects or HOS have magically appeared, and finding those places is next to impossible without using hints or your map. Most of the puzzles are very easy, while some are just confusing and rely too much on aforementioned back and forth, while the game doesn't even inform you of what you need to find a lot of the time. More than once, you have to actually backtrack from a hidden object scene to randomly go find something else, and then come back to it later. The puzzles just don't seem to follow a logical order. Towards the end, the puzzles seemed more streamlined and enjoyable, with a bit less back and forth and less random places to go back and look for random things in. The plot is flimsy at best, some of the music is nice but the ~super spooky pieces were a bit grating, and while some of the jump scares get you (warning to those who don't like jump scares) the "scary" bits are so cliche, random, and inconsistent that I could not get into the atmosphere of the game at all. Also, I know this is a small detail, but the text/font bothered me a LOT in this game.
• gamedeal user

  Jul 3, 2016

  In Alchemy Mysteries: Prague Legends you play as an orphan who has wondered about her past all of her life, who receives a mysterious letter that brings her to Prague with hopes of finding long lost family members. What ensues, however, is total chaos involving alchemy, golems, mystical artifacts and a plot to take over the world. In this hidden item game, only you can help Eva set things right. The protagonist of the game is Eva, a naive young woman desperately trying to discover her past. Someone claiming to be her uncle writes her a letter requesting her presence and Eva rushes to Prague with no other information to meet him. She’s greeted by his creepy assistant named Anna who doesn’t matter because you never see her again. Actually, you rarely see anyone in this game. Most of the game is spent with Eva solving puzzles and back tracking everywhere. The story that plays out is rather convoluted with an anticlimactic ending. There are ghosts and a couple of jump scares thrown in but nothing is really spooky about the game. An organization known as the Black Alchemists are trying to take over the world and Eva uncovers clues and tries to find a way to stop it, oh and she’s the chosen one descended from an emperor...yeah…. The puzzles in the game range from easy to “holy crap why are you doing this to me” hard. One notable puzzle that has kept me from getting all of the achievements is the one that guards the alchemy lab. It involves colors and lights and bleh, unfortunately the puzzle is random so no guide can really help you. Oh, and inside the lab there is a puzzle with lights and mirrors that is also random- Fun! The hidden object scenes are more enjoyable, however, the list of items is done in a way that I really hate. The list at the bottom doesn’t show all of the items you have to find until you find other items listed and make room. So if you’re looking for sixteen items the list only shows eight and the rest show up later. Another thing I disliked was the illogical backtracking. Oh, I need to solve this puzzle in the antique shop, well the part I need is in the cemetery. Why? Also, without the useful map or a guide, things can get confusing. The audio is actually fine, the voice acting isn’t too bad but it’s not great either. The music is fitting as well as the sound effects. All of the character models are nice, the scenery is nice. The graphics are dated, however. The game doesn’t fit wider screen resolutions and while the graphics are decent they’re also drab. The hidden item scenes have low resolution so finding items may be difficult at times. None of these issues make the game unplayable, but they do stand out compared to modern hidden object games. I first played this game in 2015 and my opinions haven’t changed much. I wasn’t a huge fan of the story for the most part but aside from a few annoying puzzles I enjoyed playing it. Alchemy Mysteries: Prague Legends is not the best hidden object game on the market but on sale it’s an enjoyable time, it’s also pretty short. The game has Steam achievements and trading cards for collectors out there. If you enjoy hidden object games then I recommend this title, the weird story and the backtracking might be off putting to some but the price is low and even lower on sale so go for it.

  Usagi’s Rating

  <*>Must buy. <*>A good game to buy. <*>Only buy if on sale. <*>Mediocre. <*>Avoid at all costs. Lunar Productions
• gamedeal user

  Mar 24, 2019

  Third in a series of excellent, horror-themed "Jetdog Hidden Object Games." Having played through Cursed (2016), Frankenstein (2015), and now Prague (2014), in reverse order, I can see the progression of the gameplay development. For my type of enjoyment, I found Cursed to be the best match for me. The level of difficulty of puzzles in Cursed was very low, and while the animations were basic, the narrative was strong. I rarely used the Hint button. As Jetdog moved forward in their games, the difficulty of puzzles decreased. When I say the difficulty decreased, I mean that the puzzles became more intuitive. In Cursed, the puzzles are as easy as "take the star-shaped key to the star-shaped lock", while, in Prague, the player is asked to figure out what non-standard item might fix a problem, where the object and location are not obvious. This is the type of interactions that I think are best suited for point and click adventures, and I was constantly struggling. I admit to using the Hint button quite often here, and I felt disconnected from the gameplay whenever I used it. I can see why Jetdog moved the game series in a different direction, but really, I think they just needed to tune it with more playtest feedback. To give an example of a non-intuitive puzzle, the player needs to find a valve for a pipe. The player needs to go back to an earlier room, use a feather-duster on cobwebs in the ceiling corner (twice) to reveal the item. There is a big logical leap going from pipes&valves to duster&cobwebs. The puzzle designers needed to show the path from the lock to the key, but instead the puzzles designers just made the item puzzles simpler, in future games. I think the Artius Mundi game designers do a good job prodding the player in the right direction. I think the Jetdog graphical effects are at their best here. In Prague, the scene transitions have an animated turn effect, which gives the player a feeling of being in the room with a 360 view. The background scenes are very detailed, such as realistic animated NPCs walking through the streets. The cutscenes also have excellent animation. There is also extensive use of voice-acting. Taking a step back to consider the story narrative, I think this is the best of the series as well. There is a pretty sophisticated storyline, with some interesting characters, who seem to have realistic reactions to the events. I liked the way authentic alchemical mysticism got tied into the story and gameplay. I thought the ending was a bit abupt, but I had a good five or six hours or gameplay, by that point. After game-end, all the puzzles are available to revisit. There are a couple creepy moments in the gameplay, although the story is there just connecting one puzzle to the next one. At the full-price, this is an excellent bargain. There is a lot of entertainment hours here, and many people are going to get this game in a game bundle or price-discounted. So even while I voice my concerns for the game, I do not think there is anything negative. I think the whole series is worth getting, for gamers who enjoy a laid back experience, with good graphical effects, a few puzzles, a few hidden object screens, and a narrative with good voice-acting. I enjoyed this game on Ubuntu Linux 18.10 with radeon mesa graphical drivers, on a quad-core with 8GB of memory. I could not play this game on my slower desktop, despite the fact that it met the system requirements. I found no technical issues running this game, which entirely used the mouse for controls. The vorbis-encoded music is found in the local directory. Jetdog uses their own game engine, and the install size was 600 MBs.
• gamedeal user

  Mar 31, 2015

  I'm a massive fan of hidden object games, I think it's a genre that any age can play and the casual nature of them makes it easy to jump in and out of them or simply spend several hours numbing your brain. With that in mind, these are the pros and cons I've found in this game so far: [b]Pros[/b] [list] [*]From what I've seen so far, the story line seems pretty easy to wrap your head around and kept me mildly interested during the time I played. [*]Selecting the harder difficulty gives more items in the hidden object sequences, which I personally love as they're pretty much what I play these games for (more on that [i]later...[/i]) [*]The price tag means even if you find it doesn't tickle your fancy, you're not going to break the bank. [/list] [b]Cons[/b] [list] [*]Despite enjoying the amount of objects to find in the hidden object parts, some of the items are hidden in a really slack, sloppy way, to the point you will sometimes spend upwards of 10-15 minutes scouring the entire screen for a teeny tiny item. [*]Unlike in a lot of other HOGs (hidden object games), the UI, namely the buttons at the top of the screen, can and do block parts, sometimes large parts, of the things you're trying to find, which makes finding them a nightmare. [*]I know it's a casual puzzle game, but for something released only last year I was a bit disappointed with the graphics. Some animations look alright but it looks a bit rough at times. I was expecting it to look a little smoother, if that makes sense. [*]For some reason you get strings of ambiguous characters appearing which, while it's fine to string the story out and provide a few jumps, it gets a bit tedious and loses it's lustre when it happens five times within ten minutes. [*]You will often find that you spend the majority of your time clicking between screens, the movement system is clunky and you can rotate around rooms. The next step isn't always obvious, either, so prepare to spend ages per room slowly skimming your mouse over every object to see if you can interact with it. [*]The resolution on this game was the biggest problem for me. It's boxed in like it was made for the old TVs/monitors, and there's no resolution option. The issue this causes is that it makes the hard to find objects even harder to find because they're smaller than I imagine they would be on a smaller screen/resolution. [/list] As you can see, I didn't have a great time with this game. Despite playing HOGs a lot, I found this one slightly tedious due to the long periods of time purely spent clicking between rooms then scouring them for something I'd missed. You also have a lot of clutter in your inventory that isn't usable for quite some time which adds to the confusion. On the other hand, maybe someone with more patience and a keener eye would fare better. I hate to not recommend this game, as I enjoy the genre a lot, but I feel there are much better HOGs on Steam, and some at an even lower price, that are more enjoyable.
• gamedeal user

  Feb 7, 2016

  This was the first "hidden-object game" I ever played. I hadn't even known that the genre existed beforehand; I was expecting a point-and-click adventure like, say, [i] Leisure Suit Larry, [/i] only set in Prague and with no nekkid ladies. So I guess it speaks to the strengths of [i] Alchemy Mysteries: Prague Legends [/i] that it not only eased me into the genre in a way I could understand, but also impressed me enough that I've gone on to purchase (and enjoy) other "HOGs" as well. Briefly, for those that don't know, a HOG is similar to an adventure game except that the emphasis is on [i] locating [/i] objects rather than using them. You're mostly presented with static images rather than 3-D worlds (though usually with ambient effects like flickering lights or running water), and you have to pick out semi-obscured objects with the mouse cursor. Occasional puzzles and cutscenes are often interspersed between the object-hunting sections. Production values are typically high, they usually tell stories involving magic or light horror elements (we're talking ghosts, not gore), and interestingly many of them seem to have female protagonists. [i] Alchemy Mysteries: Prague Legends [/i] fits this description to a tee. To be honest, though I genuinely enjoyed [i] AM: PL [/i] while I was playing it, I don't really have much to say about it now that it's over. It was perfectly charming and well-made, neither too easy nor too hard... and I hardly remember anything about it a month after I played it. Like some other HOGs I've played since then, it felt a bit like a Sunday crossword puzzle: relaxing, enjoyable, and utterly disposable at the end of the day. I seem to recall a golem turning up at some point, which was kinda cool, as well as a kindly old shopkeeper, and also some hunky but non-threatening dude that I probably hooked up with in a PG-rated kind of way at the end. It was perfectly enjoyable, if not entirely memorable. I hope I'm not damning this game with faint-sounding praise. It [i] is [/i] good. Buy it if you like HOGs, or are curious about the genre. Your two bucks will get you about five hours of chilled-out, well-crafted fun.
• gamedeal user

  Aug 19, 2018

  I'm not sure whether this game is Artifex Mundi quality, but it certainly had some good points. Here's a brief breakdown: The Good: - HOG scenes were reused, but there was a nice space between the first and second visit to a scene. - Items found on the first visit to a HOG were USUALLY not present the second time - The graphics were pretty good and had a bit ogf variety - I liked how street scenes included a pedestrian here and there going about their business - Inventory items were often used more than once before vanishing - The classical soundtrack is really nice - Quite a low price - A decent challenge for beginners, with enough variety to appease veteran players The Bad: - The story felt unfinished due to several different threads which felt more like footnotes - Sometimes you'd see something obviously out of place but couldn't interact with it until later - More tracks would have been nice to avoid too much repetition The Ugly: - The voice acting was pretty terrible in places, sounding more like the actress was reading a book to children