This game is unique. Brilliant. Backgrounds and characters are made from Renaissance art pictures; almost everywhere there are personages who play musical pieces of art. Despite some amount of dialogues is vulgar, mostly all of them are clever and fun, words are hand-picked to amplify solemn and hilarious atmosphere of satirical quest. I spent probably more than hour only in art museum! And listening to music.. Trying different things or playing lute to different characters produces sometimes surprising, fun results :) Jokes in this game have layers. I highly recommend this game.

Thank you! <3

"I saw a shore, and happy faces of the close ones. To whisper of waves we were forgiving each other... I wished not to awake."

After beating the game already quite a time ago, I have a mixed after-taste. This game is pretty beautiful, and pleasant tranquil moments can be enjoyed during walking through the island. But.. first of all, game doesn't have any detailed tutorial. This is part of the game's idea, but in the beginning it may create really a lot of frustration. Probably, authors expected players who don't figure out how to handle new types of puzzles just to skip them after some efforts?.. It didn't work well for me. I spent hours breaking 'codes' for puzzles, training areas for which were elsewhere, before knowing of training areas. I doubt devs wanted to create such levels of irritation I reached at some point. Whole idea, I would say, is spinning around perceiving new things with a clear mind and trying to understand the underlying nature and structure of phenomena - is in question new puzzle rule, plot or something belonging to environment. But then, all the puzzles despite numerous extra rules are, in the end, pretty similar (with exception of few really unique but 'easy' mechanics). Yes, puzzles were fine, I would say of fitting complexity for me to solve them with no hints and not reaching tiredness and frustration, but looking at whole process - yes it has become a bit tedious and very repetitive, especially in the cave of trials which is bonus area of a sort. I found myself walking from one rectangle to another, besides looking for environmental magical things and audio logs with unhealthy eagerness. I really should tell about environmental puzzles separately: they became much more interesting than normal puzzles quite quickly and were keeping a lot of attention during walking on detecting them. Yes, they are great. Solving them may seem like something almost magical, but on the other hand wish to find them pours out the tranquil feeling of 'walking simulator' between areas of interest and substitutes this experience with anxious search for round objects. Devs clearly understood this effect on player: in extra (hidden) ending, there is a video; as far as I see it, it is a signature marking that there is no sense in the game (except described above simulation of scientific cognition): 'looking from alternative point of view' which game offers is just finding a coordinate from where puzzle will work, an intellectual grin; and it is also admitting that.. too much is really too much, have fun of yourselves, dear players :) There is also one additional ending on youtube by devs, which only reinforces this conclusion, but it is better not to watch it before others.

I was interested in this game due to art style and offered non-usual way of gameplay. Then I was even more interested in the game when I listened to soundtrack thanks to certain someone <3 Game surprised me. It's mechanics really was unique. Graphics was charming, especially I loved these foggy forests, but buildings were spooky in a good, successful way too. Characters were reminding me all the way Tim Burton's dolls and story turned to be not bad. I like how whole this mechanics of choosing replicas influences endings (there are slightly different possible endings). Music was just gorgeous and whole setting was pretty, lovely and consistent, I was totally able to ignore any moments in plot, dialogues and mechanics I may not liked. Dialogues.. well, store page says that plot revolves in tradition of old horror films about 'group of young people gets in the forests..', so there are quite a few vulgar jokes and discussions, but, fine, this fits characters. This totally gave me negative impressions in the beginning, but great things in this game made it up.

Frankly speaking I was reluctant to play this game after watching a film https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thirty_Nine_Steps_(1978_film). God, this film is terrible. It starts great, it is pretty fine quality film (entourage, shooting, actor play) and it creates corresponding expectations only to disappoint spectators with plot full of inconsistencies and silliness, and correspondingly stupid characters. Turned to be that this film was not actually following the novel plot. Played this one because of sister and I am glad of it. Game is adventure looking as a visual novel. And I have to say, in the best meaning of it.
This single game has so many beautiful backgrounds that a lot of even 'bigger' adventure games could envy. Some of these are so pleasant that we spend a decent amount of time only enjoying these views. Plot of the game brings the main character from London up to Scotland, oh green fields, small towns, cottages. Cunning villain upon heels! Atmosphere is great, creating immersion into Britain of 1915, and game is made with style. All the small details are done perfectly, and encyclopaedic meticulous approach to giving information and thoughts of character was adorable and somewhat British.
Also Finland was mentioned :3

This is my Game Of The Many Years. Yes, I played Commandos and Desperados in childhood and Commandos 2 was one of the most remarkable games, games I remember and which probably contributed to my gaming tastes for years to come. I still remember gaits of characters and whole soundtrack. Mechanics were incredible (and unfortunately there was no decent followers of this type of games until Shadow Tactics). I don't remember how many missions were in Commandos 2, but.. I was there. We went through whole damn war together, from Burma and Pacific to Europe and North Sea. This war never ended.. and started long before :3

System requirements!
Game is implemented in a really clever way. At first game shell is loaded, then for each mission, environment is loaded (may take few minutes on slow PC) but then loading during mission happens really quickly, and is limited rather by CPU/RAM. This enabled playing the game on Ultra on about 7-8+ y.o. PC with quite a great comfort! These devs, Mimimi studio, know what they are doing!

Meet your team! Know your enemies!
Enemies can be classified in 3 types: Usual Guards and Officers (investigate threats but can be lured to traps easily), Straw Hats (disciplined soldiers not leaving their posts), Samurai (investigate threats, are immune to most attacks due to armour, kill any character if engaged in combat with one exception)

Mugen (as Green Beret). Master samurai, the only one capable of fighting enemy samurai. And running with 2 bodies :3 Throwing huge rocks at enemies! Killing virtually infinite amount of non-samurai enemies if they are close enough in one stylish go! And luring peasants with sake bottle. Stunning samurai in combat with bare fists - easy! Through plot, Mugen is a quintessence of Japanese dream of samurai heroes in more than one sense.
Hayato (as Diver/Marine). Probably, Hayato performs the fastest close range kill amongst all the characters. And shurikenjitsu! Throwing shuriken and at the same time engaging in melee enables to get two enemies standing close without a problem, and throwing stones to distract enemies makes these things even easier. The only major flaw could be, that Hayato hauls bodies while standing. He does it very silently and quite quickly, though, and frankly speaking if he could do this while crouching, as other light characters, combined with superb attack skills it would be too powerful and tempting to solo with him. Shuriken has so long throwing range that some enemies with moving cone of view can be killed in front, running towards them when they turn head just for a second and engaging in throwing range. Marine in commandos was my main silent attacker too, being able to solo few enemies at once.
Yuki (as Thief). This Yuki is marvellous! Having bird reedpipe and a trap, she can lure enemies around corners and obstacles and get rid of few at once alone if carefully planned; and what can be done in team...! She can lure enemies for quite a long distances playing reed few times in a row. Adding up crouching while pulling bodies, she is a character who can practically solo missions and do it in extremely safe manner compared to Mugen or Hayato who can't move bodies, distantly observable by enemies. Yuki has probably the largest melee killing time, making 3 stabs with a small knife, but I didn't find this a big flaw. It is cute!
Aiko (as Spy). Elegant kunoichi with elegant skills. When disguised, she can divert enemies or groups of them (e.g. patrols), making disposing of big numbers of enemies a child play for team (plus brutally killing one of targets she speaks to, herself). I found myself many times purposefully not using disguise just not to make game too easy. Blinding powder reduces cone of visibility of enemies for some time, enabling again, to dispose of enemies literally in a plain sight. Combining both skills, she can approach enemies and destroy few of them in a row in a broad daylight. Powder is indeed one of the most elegant and complex skills which fits great to Aiko's persona and as a dual to skill of disguise. Only samurai can see through her play.
Takuma (as Sniper and Sapper). He is a superman. Engineer, chemist, weaponsmith, wiseman, sniper, ruler and hero of tanuki folk. Everything he can is almost a cheat, thus it is good that his ammunition is very limited. Sniping inconvenient foes from great distance? Easy. Destroying huge pack of enemies including samurai? Let him throw a grenade. He produced a small hand cannon for each of other characters, allowing them to injure/stun a samurai for a short amount of time to finish in close range. He has very warm replicas. And mission of his revenge was just hilarious :3
Kuma (as Seductress and Dog). Tanuki fatale! No true Japanese can refuse a savouring delight of watching tanuki singing and dancing in the moonlight, even if dead bodies were appearing in the area real recently. No one left the Kuma's performance disappointed. Yuki likes Kuma too :o In my game Kuma is totally a girl since I tried googling Japanese tanuki art pictures (Ug:C

Alarm system is implemented cleverly. May alarm occur, guards arrive and search the area. Some of them are remaining in area, thus punishing player for imprudent actions up to adding guard officers who will run all over the map and talk with all guards about importance of safety :3 Overall, system of enemy reaction is much more realistic and complex than it was e.g. in commandos and most existing games to day. E.g. if someone used to patrol the area and meet on a way with other guards, absence will be noticed and brief search will be initiated, bringing either threat or opportunity, and enemies may search buildings and bushes :)

Game is real time and with no pause. With pause it would be completely different game about party of hive-minded killer machines. Not bad either, just different and less realistic. Instead, game has a shadow mode: each character can be assigned a planned action and all 'saved' actions can be executed simultaneously. This is a great feature, providing a lot of epic fun moments when plan works and when it does not ;) Minus is, that one command is not enough. There can be implicitly encoded maximum of 3 actions as: 'run to enemy'(even if character is crouched), kill/stun enemy, and take the body, but after this is executed, there are character standing with bodies of enemies and they finish their sequences in different time, and sometimes it becomes really silly: while you assign to everyone where to move, someone can be noticed by patrolling guards. Adding where to drag body would be really nice. Another shortcoming is, that if the plan is to execute such action e.g. as jumping from a roof at enemy, it can be queued only when action is enabled at the moment, thus assigning actions to few characters and then execution may require waiting for patrol routine repeating up to few times if not acting really quick.

Game has system of walkthrough badges, offering to play level in many different styles (not to kill anyone, not to use specific skills, perform specific actions or take certain walkthrough routes, to kill only while disguised, not to pass through 'loud' areas as mud etc). It is quite refreshing and challenging, and really, without them I wouldn't attempt most of these hardmodes, would just let myself play efficiently with all available resources. Badges provide really diverse and full of fun gameplay, allowing player to learn new mechanics and tricks. In sense, allowing player to explore and learn more about own playing skill and preferred styles. Not many games reach that deep level of interaction with player. I would dare to say that badge system is implemented in quite ingenious way, adding replayability and interest in the perfect manner. Playing levels a few times never got boring.
Game has a normal mode and a hardmode. Complexity grows just perfectly: after finishing game on normal, I played whole game on hardmode and didn't notice the difference. I was pretty surprised to notice later, that normal mode is really much more forgiving and it became really easy! More to that, after finishing the whole game and learning mechanics, even playing on hard with extra badges mostly felt much easier than first walkthrough on normal. This was a great learning curve. Superb, bravo!
Then, game has a time challenge for every mission. I haven't yet beaten these challenges for most of missions, but walkthrough implies timing all the actions perfectly, avoiding every enemy which could be avoided and quickly and elegantly killing the rest. Time challenges are basically the only thing which I haven't yet unlocked in badges, and I plan to try them without looking at hints yet. Frankly speaking I don't like time challenges in any games; ..will see.
Making walkthrough for few badges at once and on hard is special kind of fun. I remember beating the Attack on Kanazawa mission on hard, killing all the enemies only with Hayato, not killing any officers, not using Takuma, and.. I didn't realise back then that Mugen could e.g. stun enemy samurai and let Hayato finish them. This would be so easy! And didn't use other characters' skills.. cleared whole thing with Hayato, was throwing bodies on top of samurai to stun them etc. And getting team together without killing officers was fun too :3

Game has a lot of interesting achievements and they don't correspond to badges. Some of them required to replay missions, but all of them were fun, unlocking some aspects of gameplay or walkthroughs or just incredible Easter eggs. 'Doing all not yet received achievements' totally was not a waste of time, unlike in too many games where I couldn't 'care fewer'.



Entourage of the game creates full immersion in medieval Japan of Edo period. Music is pleasing, graphics make accent on beauty of the nature and architecture as well as every small feature of the environment looks extremely detailed and made with love. They didn't save time on it!
Not only I love this game's genre mechanics which is improved over Commandos in all regards and a lot of new aspects are added, I love historically-based games generally and I like traditional Japanese theme too. Graphics was beautiful, music was great, gameplay fun. This game just hit so many my sweet spots I can't really list them!.. Plot reveals some dialogues which are not too numerous but tell stories of characters in pretty clever natural manner, making their personalities deep. When I think of Commandos, characters are just faces and specific weapons. Here, while skills are even more character-specific, I remember first who they are and what they were talking. Game has quite a touching plot, not going to spoil it. I only have to say that I like this studio. They are really clever.