Deponia: The Complete Journey (2012-2013 / 2014)

An SG win from almost exactly three years ago, it’s difficult to create a cohesive write-up for “Deponia: The Complete Journey” when my impressions of it are so conflicted. On the whole, I feel like I can be happy I played it, and I can probably even call it a good game, but there’s a number of glaring annoyances that bring it down and others that even make me hesitant to ever recommend it. I’d heard a few small warnings about the main character, but it still wasn’t quite the experience I’d imagined when I set out to play it. I got a small way into the first of the three games a year or so ago (“Deponia”, “Chaos on Deponia”, and “Goodbye Deponia” are collected into one title for “The Complete Journey”), but I restarted it completely for this playthrough. And then I had to restart it again because of a game-breaking bug in one of the puzzles. Apparently this bug occurs only in The Complete Journey, and not in the stand-alone game, but if you get to a pigeon puzzle that seems inexplicably unsolvable, the official recommendation is to download a save from the Daedalic web site where you don’t know what else has already been done or solved. On the suggestion of someone else on the Steam forum, I simply re-played the game up to that puzzle a second time (this will have been my third time through the intro puzzles…). This didn’t take terribly long since I already knew what to do, and so it’s the work-around I’d recommend. Thankfully this was the only game-breaking bug I ran into, although there were many other bugs.

The first game is a good introduction to the main character, Rufus. There’s good backstory on his misguided attempts to escape the (literally) junk planet he lives on, and how those attempts continually cause destruction around him. He’s lazy, and selfish, but you can still root for his perseverance. By the second game, you might instead be convinced that Rufus is an awful person, and you start to wonder if you should still be rooting for him. In the third, the developers throw in some additional misogyny, borderline racism (by the writers, not by Rufus himself), and implied paedophilia for good measure. …yeah. I assume some of this is just a showcase of German humor, and I know a lot of the dialog isn’t quite right because of the translation from German to English, but no matter what language it’s in, I’m just glad that nearly every other character in the game also hates Rufus. It baffles me whenever Goal (the “damsel in distress” for the series) forgives him for the things he does, and gives me a greater appreciation for unlikable characters whom you do root for in other games.

The game engine for Deponia is pretty robust. There are, as mentioned, bugs here and there, but they are likely due to programmer/scripter errors rather than faults of the engine. My greatest annoyance is that long pauses in spoken dialog are unskippable, but I particularly liked the (unmentioned) feature of being able to use the middle mouse button to identify hotspots. A large variety of different mini games are interspersed through this otherwise point-and-click title, and they work quite well in context. And don’t worry about the tutorials at the start of each of the three games. They’re skippable, but just do them; they’re quick, and they do add to the experience. Pathfinding was never an issue, and the occasional cinematic animations blend smoothly and are usually the puzzle-solved, story-progressed treat they should be.

Speaking of puzzles, those are… a mixed bag. You will be randomly clicking and combining. Sometimes things are obvious. Sometimes they aren’t. One particular puzzle in the second game requires (small hinty spoiler) thinking so far out-of-the-box that it’s practically outside of the game. For the most part though, the puzzles aren’t that bad. What seems bad, and happens in all three of the games, is the inventory glut. You’ll collect items at a quick pace and have no idea what to do with them because you aren’t that far into the story yet. This happens early on in the first game, and later mostly in the third game. If you’re a long-time point-and-click fan, you know how annoying this is, especially when there are also many different locations to visit with many different hotspots to use items on. And the third game seemed to be the worst at providing extra clues about what to do. The first two had decent hints on the in-game story progress sheets, and additional hints from when you tried to examine or incorrectly combine items. The third just lets you stew until you happen upon the one thing you haven’t done yet. I will admit though, I never used the exclamation icon “Hint” button to solve anything, so perhaps that would have helped where I was stuck longest.

Overall, the writing of the game isn’t bad. Each of the character’s personalities are usually apparent from the dialog, but again, something was probably occasionally lost in the translation from German to English. The story itself was almost quite good, with some interesting twists, but it didn’t really carry the weight and (more importantly) character progression that a more satisfying tale would have. Neither traditionally comedy or tragedy, the ending almost just kind of …is. (Also, some scenes bore too great of an inspirational resemblance to other media for my liking (the Sewer Inn was fine as a parody) and so felt a little lazy, but these were relatively few and a very minor complaint.)

The music isn’t bad either. Many of the main themes are especially well done, even catchy, although some can get repetitive (and maybe give you a headache) when you’re stuck on a puzzle in one location. I have one real complaint here, and that’s the game’s creator doing the singing between each of the main chapters. It’s bad. It’s probably meant to be bad, but it’s awful. This also has some of the absolute worst writing, with some additional misogyny, so that compounded the annoyance. Thankfully, those don’t repeat, and yeah… I agree with the game… “the chorus guys rule.” And… it’s his game… and German-to-English again… so… I chalk up another annoyance and move on.

To the recorded dialog! (Insert German-to-English disclaimer here.) Nearly everything is recorded perfectly. Clear voices, and clear characterizations. Except the Organon in the first game. They tried to murder my ears every time they spoke, but thankfully this is fixed for the second and third games. (Bozo needed to quit snoring, but that was over quicker.) However, some lines miss their delivery, and some are spoken with the wrong “voicing” or other affectation, and these all should have been caught in the beta stage, but weren’t. This seems most prevalent in the last game, so again, I think people started getting lazy. But, mostly… it’s good.

And the art in the Deponia series… is beautiful! This is easily the game’s greatest asset. Every scene has excellent detail, gorgeous coloring, and a very cohesive style. The animation is a little choppy, but with the work done for the rest of the graphics, I can easily forgive a limited number of animation frames. If there’s only one true reason to play the game, this is it.

With many things actually done very well in the Deponia series, it would seem hard not to recommend it. But there are also so many things done in awkwardly poor taste in the third game that they, compounded with miscellaneous annoyances and a detestable main character, seriously detract from the experience. As an adventure game, it will still be a classic, and a large reason for the general resurgence of current point-and-click adventures. Grim Fandango is my favorite game of all time, and it’s great to see more attempts to achieve the expansive spirit of thoughtful adventure that that game had. But eliminate the wonderful graphics, and Deponia would be a a bit like one of its ramshackle, made-from-junk, but mostly functional houses, instead of a beautifully-furnished structure with a tarnished foundation. And like the planet Deponia, it’s also still some distance from its (and its hero’s goal), the utopian Elysium.

• Deponia: The Complete Journey
  #12 of 26 (2017)

  ~46 hours playtime

  73 of 105 achievements

Almost didn’t finish that one before the end of the month! Writing this sentence with three hours to go here on the Pacific coast! :D
This being number 12, one more game to go, and I’ll be halfway through The 26!

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Also beaten…

Highschool Possession (2015)

• Highschool Possession
  

  2 hours playtime

  2 of 2 achievements

Won on SG, and I was interested in the premise. Turns out to be a pretty decent story with good character depth considering the short time it takes to complete it. I’m not usually a fan of VNs, but this one wasn’t bad. Most of the negative reviews on Steam seem to be people upset about the art style or… not having enough sex scenes.

Open Sorcery (2017)

• Open Sorcery
  

  2 hours playtime

  5 of 35 achievements

Simple, but very compelling text-based gameplay. Although implied by the title, there’s no code to write, but the story combines tech and elemental ideas into a truly interesting narrative. Got this from a friendly SG person – thank you again!

Ori and the Blind Forest: Definitive Edition (2015/2016)

• Ori and the Blind Forest: Definitive Edition
  

  42 hours playtime

  46 of 57 achievements

I’ve actually already beaten this, but it gets a special mention here as my girlfriend (who doesn’t play many video games) has now beaten it too! :) So proud of her for climbing that damned tree!

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Also playing…

Drakan: The Ancient’s Gates (2002, PS2)

Emulated. Played the first one on PC a long time ago. Never had a Playstation. On the boss in the Catacombs of Surdana, but this is tough without much health…

ICO (2001, PS2)

Emulated, European version. In preparation for one day playing Shadow of the Colossus. Turned some cranks and stuff… near a graveyard. Or something. Broke a chandelier too.

Realm Grinder (2016, Kongregate/Steam/Android)

Started it on Steam, mostly running it on Android now… thought I was done with these damn idle games… I’m hoping the last two Steam achievements are easily within reach and then… hopefully… I will abandon it.

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Also also…

My SG cake day is coming up. Been working on an event for that for a while now, although I’ve only got 41 giveaway slots and I’m crazy if I give away a couple of the games I’m planning on. But if I can pull it off, it should be good. Part of that time’s been finding out what games I still have from bundle sites since my current income is exactly $zero.dollars. On the other hand, also had a really nice internet-free cell-phone-free trip to Big Sur last week. Waterfall hikes are nice! :)