Lydia's first day in wizard school isn't exactly going as she imagined. Instead of a warm meeting with her childhood friend after many years of separation, she is welcomed by silence. The gates are closed shut and even after successfully opening them the school grounds are vacant. The only living soul she finds is a talking wolf who is supposedly a turned dragon! With him by her side, she has to navigate through abandoned halls, overcome many obstacles to become a full-fledged wizard and hopefully find her friend. And also ultimately find the answer to what has happened to everyone.

I have fond memories of Keepsake in terms of an interesting and emotional story, beautiful graphics and nice music (those points are still valid). The voice actors of our main duo are fine and do a good job in their roles, but other mostly supernatural characters are talking very slowly to the point it can be annoying (played in English, can't speak of other language versions). On the other hand, it seems like I have completely shut out the unpleasant things about it and I don't even remember how I felt when I played it long ago… as for now I for sure felt heavy frustration in the second half.

The game is practically divided into two acts. The first is taking place in the lower grounds of the wizard academy and although the area is quite big with a lot of places to visit orienting in them is quite well-arranged and you usually know where to go next. Some locations are closed off and require additional action to be performed to get open, so be prepared to do a lot of backtracking. But it's not so horrible. After getting to the upper part of the school it's not so easy anymore. The area is probably even bigger, but every location is accessible, so the biggest problem is that you can go wherever you want and do whatever you wish, which can be pretty frustrating if you don't know what exactly you are supposed to do at the moment - because you can be struggling with some puzzle but no one will tell you that you are doing it too soon and you don't have proper requirements for it! To make the navigation around the school even worse you can't use any means of fast travel. You have a map at your disposal, but it only serves to crosscheck your whereabouts. Add to it teleportation platforms in the second act, which is a puzzle by itself, and the "fun" is complete. The game would be a lot quicker without the constant roaming through the halls for sure.

The puzzles are interesting, varied and most of the time rather hard. There is a built-in hint system, which will give you a hint three times on how to solve the puzzle and if you still don't know it can be automatically solved. Sometimes the hints aren't useful much as they describe what you are supposed to do (which you know) but don't say how (which you seek from the hint). What annoyed me was that later in the game you can't tell if the puzzle you are trying to crack you should be solving at the moment - so when uncertain check the hint, if you are too early it will tell you that you miss prerequisites and you can stop wasting your time and go somewhere else! Another problem is connected to translation (again talking about English) because sometimes the assignment doesn't make any sense or point to a completely different solution than is required. And both of that can pretty much spoil the fun of the puzzles.

The game sadly has yet another frustrating problem - it can crush on you so save often! Luckily there are only three places where it can happen (at least for me). Two times during a bigger puzzle, which you have to complete under a certain number of moves to prevent the crush, and finally during the credits so if you wish for a corresponding achievement you need to switch the language to French and you are clear to go.

Sounds horrible I suppose, but even with all that was said I still recommend it to lovers of good adventure games, the story is powerful and emotional, the graphics are rather good and the puzzles are challenging and mostly fun. Be wary of the flaws though and don't hesitate to use the hints!