The Book Of Unwritten Tales 2 is an adventure point of click game developed by King Art Games and published by THQ Nordic. Fulfill your destiny and write one for the history books.
Story:
Prophecies and legends have spoke of it and people have believed it for a long time. Now join Wilbur and his friends in this adventure to claim your destiny in the wicked world of AdventAisla. What mysteries lay in store for you?
Game play:
Unwritten Tales 2 as stated is a point and click adventure game, but its sprinkled with a lot of charm in its setting,environments and its great use of comedy. Like traditional point and click games, you will be moving your cursor over to the object you wish to pick up and view and proceed to press the A button to select it. Well that seems pretty simple, well that's because it is, but unlike most point and click adventure games, in this one you actually are able to move your character around the environment and directly interact with the world and items around you,giving you more of a sense of freedom.
I'm a major point and click adventure fan, one of my favorite genres to playthrough, so while this might be a little slow and cumbersome to some people to have to physically walk and touch an object,rather than the traditional way of just click on an object and having the screen change. To me its a needed dose in the formula from my personal perspective,as this is my first dally into the unwritten tales series. Movement is a a little slow at the times, but it doesn't hurt the game in any shape or form with the puzzle solving.
Speaking of puzzles, man oh man are there puzzles. Usually when I speak about puzzles in these games I look at many factors, such as creativity of them and their difficulty. How hard are they to figure out? how much do they make you think? or are they tedious and feel like they're just here for a little game padding? Those are the types of things I tend to look at. I'm happy to say it falls somewhere in the middle of the road for this game in regards to difficulty of the puzzles and creativity. You'll never run into a puzzle thats too hard to solve or be stuck on any one puzzle at a time, whether it being solving something via dialogue or just being able to see right away what to do, it will never be an issue.
I realize I'm being very vague here, but this is because I'm trying not to spoil some of the puzzles people will come across because this is the type of game I'd like people to experience first hand for the first time. But what I mean by the above sentences is that the game is very expressive visually and because of its expressiveness, you're able to pin point exactly what to do by looking at your environment because its all so vibrant and sticks out like a sore thumb. This is why you'll never have to question for a long time what to do next, which is both a positive for people wanting to experience the story and a negative for people looking for that extra layer of difficulty that just really isnt there and lies somewhere in the middle of the road. Pros and cons from both sides really.
Normally with point and click games you'd think the game play is what pushes the game forward and makes it what is, but surprisingly for this game that's false. To me its the characters and the narrative that push this game into a higher regard due to how well everything just flows and how likable each character in the game actually is. The voice acting is really well done, some AAA studios need to take notes from the developers at King Art Games,because this the type of quality you want. Each character in the game delivers their line in comedic fashion,seriousness or in very snarky ways. One of my favorite points in the game that showed me what I was in for actually started at the beginning of the game with Nate and the genie,Benny. As Nate is falling through the sky,potentially to his death, hes arguing back and forth with Benny to cast a spell and save him and both have a sarcastic back and forth with each other, its hilarious.
A major thing you will notice about this game is that it is longer than the usual point and click games, by far. Most of the point and click games I play will last anywhere from two hours to maybe six or seven hours and that's on a normal day. Unwritten Tales 2 comes in and says ''wow that's weak'' and runs up the tally for game length to anywhere from 15-20hrs, depending how well you do solving its many puzzles. That is a great length and just when it feels it might over stay its welcome, it ends,great balancing was done to not make it feel too short or too long for the story being told to us.
Final thoughts:
Overall I came out of this feeling like ''Man I'm dumb''. Why do I feel that way? well it's because I didn't find or get into this series years ago when it originally released and have barely found it now. Sure there might be a few miss steps like some of the walking being slow and somewhat tedious or puzzles not being at the difficulty people would come to expect, but other than those I can't see too much to complain about.
From its colorful and vibrant design, to its voice acting and dialogue delivery, all the way to its cast of characters, if you're a big fan of point and click adventure games and are looking for a longer than usual time due to its length, then I highly recommend giving this one a look, I really don' think you'll be disappointed.
The Book Of Unwritten Tales 2 is out now on Nintendo Switch.
*Review code provided by THQ Nordic
