The Blind Prophet – Review (PC)
The Blind Prophet is one of the many video game success stories that came to us from Kickstarter. The Blind Prophet had an initial release on PC, with console editions coming now that the initial release is out in the wild. So, what exactly is The Blind Prophet? One-part graphic novel, one-part point and click adventure, with beautiful graphics and gameplay that leaves a lot to be desired.
The story is as follows. You play as Bartholomeus, an eternal being tasked with keeping any and all demons from corrupting God’s children. The Apostle takes his job very seriously. As the game opens, we see a woman being attacked which causes Bartholomeus to intervene, saving the woman, but losing the demon in the process. This leads him on an adventure of sorts where he’ll hunt down and kill many demons that get in his way.
Gameplay is a mix of choosing dialogue and investigation in order to move the story along. As a demon slayer, you can sense certain things in the environment that are important to your current task. Everything that you investigate gives you the ability to observe, talk to or about, use or even take. Though those options are always available, if an object can’t use one of those abilities dialogue will pop up and say something like “this is too big, I’ll never be able to carry this.”
Investigating is where the game really falters. With the limits of the point and click you’ll end up clicking all over to try and solve the puzzle in order to move the game along. Sometimes by the time you figure out what you needed to use in order to solve your current situation, you’ve lost interest and are ready to move on. This is a shame because the story is pretty interesting and deep, and these moments break it up a little too much. It’s much more interesting when you’re talking with other characters, getting to know them, and learning more about what is going on in the world. The look and feel of the game will remind you at times of Pyre. Where Pyre excelled though was in the gameplay that broke up all the talking. Having a fun game to play in between made it exciting, while the investigating in The Blind Prophet becomes tedious and frustrating at times.
The greatest strength the game has is with the visuals. The Blind Prophet is gorgeous. So much so that it would be great to have an actual graphic novel to read based on the game. With the gameplay falling behind both story and visuals it feels like a great way for the developers to help finance their next game which hopefully with have all the pieces hitting on all cylinders in order to make it a masterpiece that this game could have been.
Recommendation: The Blind Prophet is a gorgeous point and click adventure that lets you live through the events of a graphic novel as if you’re living in the pages. If only the gameplay and story could have hit on the same level as the artwork, The Blind Prophet could have been a masterpiece. As it stands it’s a gorgeous playable graphic novel that will leave you wanting more.
Check out our Review Guide to see what we criteria we use to score games.
*The Blind Prophet was given to the reviewer by the publishing company but this fact did not alter the reviewer’s opinion*
