The Raven - Legacy Of A Master Thief: Chapter 3 - A Murder of Ravens
Score: 80% Publisher: Nordic Games Developer: King Art Games Media: Download/1 Players: 1 Genre: Adventure
The Story So Far...: The Raven - Legacy Of A Master Thief: Chapter 3 - A Murder of Ravens has been an interesting tale that started off from the perspective of a Swiss police officer by the name of Jakob Zellner. Zellner, on special duty, followed the famous Inspector Nicolas Legrand on a train and a cruise to Cairo as the Inspector escorted a rare jewel to the National Art museum there. Legrand made his name by taking down one of the most notorious art thieves in history, The Raven, but a series of recent thefts seem to bear the dead crook's M.O. The pair of officers have a couple of minor adventures together as the train gets bombed and a murder occurs on the cruise ship. During Zellner's investigation, he not only learned who committed the crimes, but also the true identity of The Raven. Instead of wrapping up the story there, The Raven - Legacy Of a Master Thief: Chapter 2 switched perspectives and put you in the shoes of The Raven's young accomplice, Adil, as he caused the various events Zellner witnessed in the game so far. Where A Murder of Ravens starts off is after Adil has made his way onto the cruise ship and safely out of the hold.
Patricia: The Raven - Legacy Of A Master Thief: Chapter 3 - A Murder of Ravens first puts you in control of Patricia, Adil's fiancee and fellow thief. It was revealed in the last chapter that she knows what Adil is up to, and she plans to help and hopefully outwit The Raven in his own games. Your goal during the first part of this chapter is to swap the real and fake Eye of the Sphinx hidden in the Baroness' cabin. Since Adil doesn't have a ticket, he must stay hidden in the couple's quarters, but Patricia, posing as a rich American heiress, has the run of the boat and hopes to get in and out without anyone noticing. What she doesn't expect is the Baroness' murder and the complications that stem from that. It feels a bit odd going into the level of detail that I am about an adventure game's story. Usually, explaining this much ruins a lot of the game, but given the fact that most of these past two chapters have been going over story that had already happened for a player that's caught up in the game, it isn't all that bad.
Adil: Once Patricia's part is complete, Adil is once again in the player's control. Here we see the rest of the scene where he, as a stowaway, is captured, imprisoned on the ship, and escapes before the ship docks. What I really like about the switch between the cops and the robbers' perspectives is that it shows a lot of Adil and Patricia's personality. While they have both done bad things, and are both thieves, they aren't nearly as bad as the person they've gotten in bed with. Compared to The Raven and the manipulation he pulls off, you start to feel bad for the couple. The Raven - Legacy Of A Master Thief: Chapter 3 - A Murder of Ravens continues the bad-guy perspective in Cairo as we see from Adil's point-of-view just how he got into the museum and got into the treasure room. The puzzles that Adil and Patricia have to solve in order to get through their mission are only occasionally frustrating, but are ultimately solved with tried and true adventure-gaming options. In other words, if you find yourself stuck, then there is probably someone you need to talk to, or some item you haven't picked up.
Wrapping Up: The only hiccups I've really seen in The Raven - Legacy Of A Master Thief seemed to come in Chapter 3 - A Murder of Ravens. While the past two chapters ran smoothly with no issues, there were numerous glitches this time around. A major annoyance was the character's rather off path-finding attempts. There were plenty of occasions where the characters would simply walk back and forth for a while and slowly inch their way past some obstruction. Most of the times that this happened, the game would just pop them into the desired place and go on like nothing happened, but there were two times when I had to kill the game and start back from the most recent save, simply because I couldn't get control again. Only slightly less annoying was the less-than-stellar animation transitions when your playable character would go from walking in a direction to going up stairs, or when they would appear to be walking, but not actually move across the screen. If it weren't for the fact that the game's story wraps up nicely in this chapter and provides a much needed conclusion to the story as a whole, I would almost say that the problems aren't worth the rewards of seeing it all play out. Ultimately though, a gamer who has played through the first two chapters will want to get through this one.
-J.R. Nip, GameVortex Communications AKA Chris Meyer
Related Links: The Raven - Legacy of a Master Thief on Steam Game Vortex’s Review of The Raven - Legacy of a Master Thief: Chapter 1 - The Eye of the Sphinx Game Vortex’s Review of The Raven - Legacy of a Master Thief: Chapter 2 - Ancestry of Lies
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