A Bavarian Tale – Totgeschwiegen PC Review
Summary: RPG Detective story set in Bavaria with some dice and pen and paper mechanics.
3.8
Sleuthing Schmidt
I was looking forward to playing A Bavarian Tale – Totgeschwiegen as the idea of sinking my teeth into a good detective story/game was quite appealing. Unfortunately, for me, the fun was lost in translation.
A Bavarian Tale – Totgeschwiegen is set in 1866, as medical student Valentin Schmidt, you travel to Wolpertshofen and when a sudden death causes chaos in the village it’s up to you to take on the role of detective and stop the murders.
Visually the game is quite decent though I found the introduction switching from 2d animated style to the games 3D art style a little odd… it didn’t seem to add anything to the story beginning in 2D so I’m not sure why that was done. The actual game play visuals are perfectly fine… they lack a little polish but overall are quite nice and some scenes are down right picturesque.
The audio is a little hit and miss however. Some of the recordings sound a little patchy and the dialogue can be a little hard to follow at times because of the harsh sounding accent (though perhaps that’s just me). Whilst on the subject of language… the translation seems somewhat incomplete (or at least was at the time of play). I found I would be reading something and suddenly there was a word that I didn’t recognize, presumably something that was left out of the translation. If this was only once or twice it might be forgiven… but it happened with more frequency than was comfortable.
The game mechanics are interesting. The RPG elements see you improving stats which then improve your chance of getting desired results from dice rolls that occur when you are investigating. In addition to that you have your “detective vision” which basically hones your senses and helps point out areas of interest. This vision is limited though and when it runs out you have to… eat a pretzel. It seems a bit arbitrary and I found it somewhat frustrating… but I guess it’s a bit more novel than simply having a cool down and waiting for it to recharge. Asking the right questions or taking the right approach to conversations can make all the difference and can have a knock on effect.
There is an interesting story here and it can be fun at times… but personally I just found the translation issues a little too much to endure. Part of that could well be on me and being averse to challenging audio… but in it’s present state the missing translation items can be a bit jarring as well. I did come across a note saying this is still being worked on, so it may be corrected in the future… the translation that is, not the harsh audio.
Final Thoughts?
If you are looking for a bit of RPG detective action (and perhaps either speak Bavarian or don’t mind a bit of rough sounding audio) then this might be worth looking at. If you like a bit more polish on your games though… perhaps give it a miss.
About the Author
Chris O'Connor Father of four, husband of one and all round oddity. Gaming at home since about 1982 with a Sinclair ZX Spectrum. Moving on to the more traditional PC genre in the years that followed with the classic Jump Joe and Alley Cat. CGA, EGA, VGA and beyond PC's have been central to my gaming but I've also enjoyed consoles and hand helds along the way (who remembers the Atari Lynx?). Would have been actor/film maker, jack of many trades master of none.
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