Goodbye Deponia – The Verdict
Rufus is one of those combustible characters that try as he might, can’t help but cause chaos at the best of times. This characterisation combined with Deponia‘s off-the-wall humour has seen Rufus in quite a few predicaments throughout his adventures. The most memorable of which involved him being strapped to a giant circular saw blade and catapulted through the air, but only after the player had solved a mouse trap style puzzle in order to launch the device. The reason I bring up a scene from a past game is simply for comparison. It’s these moments of picturesque hilarity that mould the Deponia games from being simply funny, to hilariously memorable. It’s also something that Goodbye Deponia, the third and final part of the trilogy is sadly lacking a lot of. That’s not to say that these moment aren’t in the game, they are, just not on the same scale.
The change in humour in Goodbye Deponia lends itself somewhat to this in my opinion. With an overall darker feel, jokes about euthanasia and periods don’t fit well with light hearted and comedical situations leaving less room for these to arise. There are still laugh out loud moments, but having played through the entire game I am struggling to remember them.
Thankfully Goodbye Deponia excels in places that it’s predecessors didn’t, namely the puzzle solving logic which has been kept to an illogical minimum this time around. There are still a couple of sticking points where the illogicality really stunted progression but overall the flow of the game and depth of the puzzles work a lot better than in the past two Deponia games. The best part of the game comes when Rufus clones two versions of himself, meaning three times the mayhem and mishap all controllable by the player at the same time. Switching from Rufus to Rufus feels very natural and there are even instances where they can help each other to solve puzzles by exchanging items.
Goodbye Deponia clocks in at around seven to nine hours in length and contains plenty of what fans of the series will be looking for. The beautifully hand drawn backgrounds are back, looking as intricate and interesting as ever. The charismatic characters are all there from Goal, to Rufus, to Toni and Bailiff Argus. The story writing and voice acting is for the most part as great as it has always been, providing the power behind the characters and their reasoning.
This brings me neatly onto the ending of the trilogy, which of course I’m not going to spoil for you in any way. What I will say though is that I was a little disappointed by how it was handled. It comes around rather quickly and without much of a warning as you enter into what I assumed was the last quarter of the game. It certainly didn’t happen how I imagined and after three games worth of leading up to this point I have to ask myself was it all really worth it? I may be overreacting, and I certainly commend Daedalic Entertainment for ending the way they did, as I’m sure they knew it wouldn’t stick well with fans. Were they trying to give us a life message, something to take away from the story and think about? Were they proving the point that they are unlike other developers and don’t pander to the every need and demand of their fans? Or was it simply a sloppy ending to an otherwise well written and delivered trilogy of games? The decision is yours.
Verdict – On Target
Platforms Available – PC, Mac
Platform Reviewed – PC
Steam review copy supplied by Daedalic Entertainment.
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