Deponias

[Erkki]

The Deponia games don't have a thread of their own somewhy... I remember liking the first three Deponia games, except that the main character became more and more annoying throughout the series, and the jokes can be quite dumb occasionally, plus there are way too many references and even some fourth wall breaking. So it's not without flaws IMHO, but it's still one of the most enjoyable current point and click adventure game series that I know of.

 

So has anyone tried the fourth game (I believe), Deponia Doomsday? How is it?

[Roderick]

I've played (and greatly enjoyed!) the first two, have yet to start the third [or fourth]. Deponia (1) was my introduction to Daedalic and the whole new renaissance of German point 'n click. I can't help but love it for it.

 

As a tangent, I realized when I played it that my memory of adventure games strayed a little from the reality of adventure games. In my head, the [Lucasarts, Sierra] classics had always been like Daedalic's games: stuffed to the hilt with puzzles and interactivity. When I revisited a lot of them years later, to my surprise that wasn't the case most of the time. Screens would have a handful of observable points, maybe one or two items to pick up. My youthful imagination had filled in the rest.

 

So it was a treat - or indulgence - to play Daedalic's fare, which tends to do exactly that: push the amount of puzzles and stuff per square centimeter to its breaking point. I loved it. It felt very true to Deponia especially, situated as it is on a garbage planet. Deponia 2 was more of the same, which isn't bad! Perhaps a little better paced (Deponia 1 had a lengthy early-middle section leading into a swift denouement).

 

Where I enjoyed Deponia, I fell in love with The Dark Eye: Chains of Satinav though. That bears mentioning. There was something extremely moving about that dark, wistful, German fairytale, where everything was just a little different from the usual polished fantasy setting. Its sequel, Memoria, had its moments, but didn't come close.

[Vainamoinen]

11 hours ago, Roderick said:

Its sequel, Memoria, had its moments, but didn't come close.

 

Objection! Memoria was much better, in my opinion. I do loathe the Dark Eye setting, but the tale of Sadja... that was quite a thing.

 

As to the Deponia series, I had fun with the first three. I fully understand that people begin to hate the protagonist, though maybe that was a bit of an experiment with the players. Rufus is so ruthless, so mindless, so selfish that identification/projection becomes entirely undesirable for the player, and doing his deeds increasingly becomes a pain. Which is fascinating in a way – you find out where your personal threshold of acceptability is, and mine DEFINITELY IS e.g. ANIMAL TORTURE.

 

21 hours ago, Erkki said:

So has anyone tried the fourth game (I believe), Deponia Doomsday? How is it?

I did. I must say, I really didn't like it. Even though I love time travel stories. But they just didn't mix well with the adventure game mechanics. Huge parts of this game are time loops, and unfortunately every loop everything you've done and collected will reset. That leads to a whole lot of repetition, especially when you're stuck. Way, way, way too much repetition in my opinion.