Return of the Phantom

Return of the Phantom description

Outstanding classic quest, now rightly recognized as one of the best phenomena in the genre of the early ' 90s, albeit adopted after the release is not all.

The game's plot is inspired by the novel by Gaston Leroux "the phantom of the Opera", although in no case is not made even after his "explanation", the novel served as the only source that prompted authors to create this game. The action begins in 1993 (year of release) – and begins with a tragedy at the Paris Opera during the production of the works of Erik, the phantom of the Opera (the world of the game he is a real creature), huge chandelier falls from the ceiling into the crowd and kills a lot of people. Your hero – a private detective Raoul Montand, invited Monsieur brie, Director of the Opera, to investigate this crime. He suggests, though it seems impossible that the crime is Eric himself has already been doing this for over a hundred years ago – in 1881. But how could he live so long?.. Then the story take a sharp turn, our hero travels back in time, namely, in 1881, where no longer appear in the role of detective, and the role of Raoul de Chagny, Christine's fiance Dei – performer of the title role in the Opera. Your task – to save his beloved and defeat Erika and to prevent the tragedy in the distant future.

The game technically uses the side view, but still the prospect of a review here is not quite normal, and the game is not fully two-dimensional. Gameplay is a true pleasure, first and foremost due to the amazing made in terms of ease of interface in the style of "point and click". In the lower left corner of the screen is the list of available actions to interact with the outside world – to explore, to talk, to give, to open and so on. To the right is a bar inventory available for viewing all your items. If you choose any of them in the Central lower part of the screen you will see its magnified image and in the lower right corner – a list of actions that are possible with this subject to do. When talking to someone a list of questions and answers for dialogue is also displayed at the bottom of the screen, the dialogue here, by the way, quite detailed and interesting.

The graphics in the game deserves the highest praise – in my opinion, such precision and thoroughness in drawing is very rare. Any locations, whether it be the Opera house, a library or a dark dungeon, drawn so well that it seems real, and the graphics here creates a real sense of the atmosphere of the adventure novel of the late nineteenth century. The same can be said about the figures of characters, not only about their appearance, but also, for example, smooth animation of their movements. The music is also impossible not to praise, like the sound of most of the elements of the environment (up to the steps of the protagonist) voiced.

If everything is so good, how can you not love this game? Alas, she has two small drawback, which at the time was paid somehow too much attention. First – this is a rather complicated "route" through the game, because it is often difficult to understand how where to go and how to return somewhere (but is it bad?). But the second drawback, unfortunately, more real – most of the puzzles Return of the Phantom objectively too simple and logical. To die "for real" here too – if something does not work, I always give a chance to replay the moment.

But the verdict, despite the last paragraph, of course, extremely positive. It's really wholly classic quest genre, skip, which does not have the right one, who really loves a good old adventure games, though, because don't do that.

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Source: Archive.org, Mobygames.com