And here we are at the end of the line with our dynamic ghost-saving heroes' final adventure. I will admit I've been looking forward to seeing how it all turned out, and really I was not disappointed. Come on in and lets talk.
Story: Rosa Blackwell is getting good at her jobs... on the surface, she's an "unofficial detective" that the cops use when they have a major crime and absolutely no trails to follow up. In these desperate times, they send her in since she seems to "have ways" to learn things they could not possibly know. Being a mysterious woman apparently pays fairly well.
But Rosa also has another job... one without a paycheck, but she's one of an elite few who can do it. She is a medium (or a bestower as others know her) and as such she can see and talk to ghosts. In fact, part of the deal is that she is haunted by one named Joe Mallone and together they help the dead who are still in this world move on. And they are getting good at their job, often doing both at once. But tonight, things are about to get grisly.
On this fated night, the cops sent Rosa to an abandoned and dilapidated building that was basically falling apart at the seems with no real clue as to what they are looking for... a fairly routine job for the duo. But what followed was anything but. Leaving the building, Rosa found herself witness to a murder, and when the ghost crawled out of his body, it roared in pain before being ripped apart right before the her very eyes! (Joey was not thrilled to see ghost-destruction, either.) It didn't help that before he died a second time, the man said he was looking for her and that "not even Grace was safe." A scary night that will begin one final adventure for our duo as they seek to find out who this man is, who Grace is, and how they can prevent this final fate from falling on anyone else.
Of course I am going to recommend if you have not played the previous 4 games in the franchise, you probably should do that first. After all, this is the last chapter of the story and while it does stand on it's own well enough, you will miss a lot of the subtext established around these characters over the other titles. And this game really is a damn near perfect finish to the larger story at play here, explaining things left empty by the previous titles. Seriously even if this game didn't have details that just make more sense if you have the history of the series behind you, it would itself be a serious spoiler for the rest of the series if you play it before them, so do yourself a favor and come here after you finish the other titles.
Still the payoff for all that time is more then worth it as the writing here is absolutely rock solid and finishing the tail spun between all the games absolutely brilliantly. There is no real way for the story to continue after the credits roll, but it's such a perfect ending you won't care. THIS is how you wrap things up right!
9/10
Graphics: Like the rest of the franchise, Blackwell Epiphany is a point and click adventure drawn in a low-resolution style like you might expect from the days of playing on an MS-DOS computer. As such, if you (like me) grew up with these games, the look of the world will appeal to nostalgia as much as anything. To be more real about it, most of the time, you will be in a world produced to look like a modern city while the snow falls around Rosa and Joey and these artists are very good at it, at least for the areas that allow it. There are several locations inside buildings as well, but it all looks pretty damn good, almost always keeping the illusion of the old days up perfectly. I will say almost because they somehow missed the runner on her treadmill when looking at the gym you will visit from the outside. But aside from that, it is a complete and damn nice looking package.
But that runner is a sprite and not a scene the adventure will take place in and really outside that resolution issue, she looks pretty good and fits in with the rest of the game well. In fact I can say that about just about all the characters you will see befoer the game is up. True, the game is not intensely populated, but those who are here all fit the mood and are, at least for the resolution the game is designed to work with, well detailed and colored. Hell, if there is anywhere that will betray the nostalgia, this will be it as they are also pretty much all fluidly animated. You wont be picking frames out from walk animations as easily as you might have in the hayday of this game time. But these are not the elements that will hold your memory.
Rather it will be the airbrushed profiles whenever someone talks. Most of the time, this will be Rosa and Joey, but nobody getting this level of attention looks bad to put it mildly... true, it's not photorealistic or anything, but every character feels like the artist took their time to design it like they could be pictures for the cover of a comic book (and I mean when they were good, not the past few years).
In short, the game looks really good, if intentionally dated. If old-school style is your thing you will find a lot to love here. And even if it's not, you will still find a lot to like.
7/10
Sound: Don't expect a lot out of the sound effects in this game. In fact outside of the footsteps of your character in some scenes and an occasional prop clanking around, there is little to no actual sound effects in the game. These sound good enough, but they are sparse by the nature of what you are playing.
Voices, on the other hand, are very common. In fact there isn't a single bit of dialog that isn't voiced and voiced well. Everyone plays their roll beautifully as one might expect with many of the actors and actresses having played these rolls for a few years over the series' developement. But as always in this series you seem to spend the most time listening to Rosa and Joey as they investigate the goings on and try to solve the mystery of what his happening to these spirits and how to protect them. And once again just let me take some time to draw attention to Joey as he will be the highlight of this game again. He is constantly bringing a wise-ass 1920s attitude brilliantly to the front and makes for a character you just love to hear. And yet for once, the ghost that's seen it all is shaken by what he just saw... and even reflective as the story progresses. We not only discover far more about him this time around, but he developes around those discoveries, making him far more fleshed out then he's ever been. I usually appreciate the actor's work above the rest because, well, he got to play the most fun character in the series and it shows. But this time, there is just more to it, and he played every aspect brilliantly.
Towards the middle of this mix, however, is the music. Its moody and fits the roll well enough, but it just doesn't stand out from the crowd. You will barely remember most of the music to this game shortly after you shut it off.
8/10
Gameplay: Like the rest of the series, Blackwell Epiphany is a point and click adventure game. As such, you will interact with it primarily in two ways: If you want to look at something, right-click on it and if you want to interact with it, you give it a more normal click. Anything you can do these actions with will highlight a name when your mouse is over them, eliminating a lot of the "pixel hunting" this genre is known to have an issue with. And in the meantime clicking anywhere you don't see one appear will have your current character try to go there. As a side bonus if you do not have both characters on the screen and it's possible for them both to be there, you will also see a "call" button in the lower right side of the screen you can click to change this, bringing the missing member of your duo into view.
To go with these basic controls is a drop down menu that will scroll into view whenever you move the mouse to the top of the screen containing a few things you will also need to use to complete your mission. The first of which you will notice is a bar across the interface that will carry the inventory of who you are using right now and working with it is the exact same controls as the rest of the screen. You will also have a a J and an R below that to let you swap who you are controlling at will, which will be important.
When you are playing as Rosa, you will be able to interact with everything and everyone as you might expect, but Joey is much less corporeal. On the plus side, this means that provided he doesn't go too far away from Rosa, he is not restrained from going anywhere and looking at anything. However, on the downside he can't do much with what he finds or to interact with anyone who isn't also a ghost. At best, he can blow on things and give people the chills or push lighter objects around doing this. It will be up to you to combine Rosa's and Joey's skills to discover what needs to be done and how to do it. Most of these things will involve learning about other characters and the events around them as well as exploiting what you learn to get deeper into the mystery before you, but even this won't be enough.
Which is why when in this menu as Rosa you will be glad to have access to her phone. Like most people in this day and age, she has a smart phone which you can use to access the web and look up details you find out about, download data from local sources, answer emails, or even go through notes you will pick up as you play, combining them to come up with new revelations to use to your advantage. This is actually a fairly large part of the game, and while it is a cool addon, it is also the one real weakness the game has. The notes have been part of the formula since game one and an amazing way to let the game's puzzles stand out. But free text lookups expecting you to know what to look up on "the net" is a lot more annoying, since it almost seems like a throwback to the days when you had to type commands into Kings Quest... only worse since it's only for certain things and you don't always get a good idea of when that is rather then an (admittedly primitive) consistent interface. Expect this to be the main reason you get held up and maybe will want a guide to push you in the right direction once in a while.
Overall it plays VERY well, despite that weakness though, so don't let those moments prevent you from seeing this final chapter through.
7/10
Bugs: It took them the entire franchise, but the Devs finally did it! Not only did the game itself run flawlessly, but for once when the credits finish rolling, the game returned to the title screen instead of dropping to the desktop! Not even that bug remains!
Score: This is honestly a damn good game. Maybe not an alltime great, but a pretty solid one in it's own right. However, the real strength here is just how good the writing is and how much of a great final tone for the whole 5 game long epic this really is. If you've been with Rosa and Joey this far, you owe it to yourself to finish it.
However, between the game really needing a little help to figure out what the devs were thinking form time to time and really doing yourself a disservice should you like the game and want to play the earlier ones, I would also say this is probably the only time you SHOULD play this one. It's not because it's bad. It's far from, but it really is that much of a spoiler to the earlier games. Rather this is a grand finale and should be treated as such.
8/10
System Requirements:
- 1.8 Ghz CPU
- 512 MB RAM
- anything that can run DirectX 9.0c
- 1 GB hard drive space
- Windows 7
System Specs:
- Ryzen 7 (5700X) 3.4 Ghz
- 32 GB RAM
- AMD Radeon RX 6650 XT (8 GB VRAM)
- Windows 11 (64 Bit)
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