It also continues to have the absolutely dreadful spell-casting interface, that works nicely on phones and is a buggy broken mess on PC. The game feels just as solid and neatly presented as before, the text scrolling from top to bottom in torn notes, the writing exemplary.
It continues to look beautiful, the three-dimensional maps on which you play looking like they should be printed on a tea-towel (this is a very complimentary remark, anyone under 35). That doesn’t sound like me! How did I forget doing that? (I think there was an opportunity earlier in the game to slaughter that seventh, that I missed, and so chose to live with the consequences.) It gets a bit more complicated when I try to remember what I said to one now-recurring character of three long-forgotten given choices, or who was the innocent I’m told by the precis that I killed. So thankfully it reminds me of the equipment I’d gathered in Part 3, the loss of my little finger, and my inept failure to prevent one of the seven serpents from reaching the evil Archmage to warn him of my arrival.
As such, the implications of a player’s individual choices at an increasing number of moments need to be more keenly felt as the series progresses. By Part 3 it had entirely shed its linear page-turning simulator, and managed to replicate the same sensation of choosing one’s own adventure while more freely able to move around the world - and indeed across two overlapping time periods in the same world. As the Sorcery! series has gone on, Inkle have stepped further from the source material and into even more eloquent and elaborate games. The good news is, the game makes a good effort to remind me of the broad strokes. It’s also a little unsettling when returning to an ongoing series after a five month gap to realise that to properly follow it I need to recall a whole smattering of minutiae across three previous games. Which is often great, meaning I can go back to things from the past and enjoy them all over again (with the slight caveat of my brain remembering absolutely crucial details at the worst possible moments in order to induce the worst spoilers possible). My memory isn’t what it used to thingy, and with the constant rush of games flowing past my eyes I really do struggle to remember the intricacies of individual plots. Which is to say, while you could begin Part 4 with a new character and a pre-determined past, the tale of the Analandar bravely exploring outside of her/his home village to reach the fabled city of Mampang, to prevent the evil Archmage from destroying the world with the Crown Of Kings, it’d be a daft thing to do. Here's wot I think:Įach part of this interpretation of Jackson’s seminal choose-your-own-adventure series has been broader and more involved than the last, and each has followed on directly, carrying over the incalculable choices you’ve previously made and tailoring itself to them.
And the trajectory of each game being better than the last is not broken in this fourth release, the best yet, and indeed one I now feel comfortable calling one of the finest RPGs ever made. It's still sourcing its core tale from the Steve Jackson classics, but having taken wonderful leaps away to include its own far more elaborate possibilities. With Part 4, Inkle’s triumphant Sorcery! series reaches its conclusion.