I like puzzle games. Monkey's island is one of my favorite games, I still will boot up old adventure games all the time.

You know what I won't boot up again? Broken Age. In Monkey's island there's a lot of fun and silly stuff the player does, In most games it's an enjoyable story, and Broken Age has a moment or two of that.

But it's a one or two note game, that tries to make a whole symphony.

The beginning of the game you get the choice between two characters, that seem unrelated. There's the girl who... seems to be immediately thrown into peril without ANY backstory, so much so that I thought I skipped a cutscene. Nope, just "hey you're going to be imperiled to start the story!" She has a mediocre world to explore.

Then there's the boy, and honestly I like the world the boy is in far more. Only thing is, that world goes on entirely too long, and the good parts of the world wanes fast. If the game stopped after the first act, it'd be a good recommendable game

But then in the second act, the game changes, and... it's not for the better in my opinion. It's got an interesting story arc there, but does nothing with it, and it seems that you have to go.... listen I try not to do this, but I need to talk about spoilers. It's a rather major spoiler, but if you want to know about the second act, it's below.

The Second has the boy and girl change locations, they go through the same areas and explore almost the same environments with some time has passed. The girl's areas are quite uninteresting, and the boy's areas have already lost their charm. There's a few good points in the second act, but after the first act, you're essentially going over the same areas, and less interested.

Then again the quality of a puzzle game is based on the quality of the puzzles, and the good news is most of the puzzles are simple and easy to solve. But that's also the bad news. They're too simple. Put round battery in the round battery sized hole. "Talking" usually makes things almost blatantly obvious and you have to talk to everyone at least once to get all your objects anyways.

Then there are the puzzles you don't get. If you miss a slightly puzzle, the game won't hint or help you along. You're stuck. Hopefully you know what to do (because the game won't help you if you get lost, or return to it after a couple months) but even if you know where you want to go, you better hope you know to do X and Y, because if not, you're going to stand around and have to just stare and hope it comes to you. Or go use a guide.

And yeah that will happen, 90 percent of the puzzles are "go elsewhere, get something and return to me" Where 10 percent are "you have an item that will work but we won't even hint at it." I know I'm annoyed at the easiness of the puzzles, but the esoteric puzzles don't even give you a hint if you're stuck. You just either get it or you don't.

Finally the story should be mentioned. While it's a story, it feels like it's a story written for the modern generation. Gone is the long exposition or talking. There's beautiful moments in games like Monkey Island, where Guybrush and Elaine will talk for almost 2 minutes without player interaction. In Broken Age there appears to be a rush. The game almost never spends more than 2-3 lines without expecting the player to hit a button to say something. You constantly have to choose something to say, so there's no elongated exposition.

Everything is rushed along, and quite a few parts of the game could use a little more talking such as the beginning of the game. The story never fully develops and now in hindsight I barely remember anything that was truly unique or I'd want to see again. I compare this to Monkey's Island again, where Elaine and Guybrush meeting, the three pirates, Stan the boat seller, and even the insult fighting are all amazing moments I could enjoy again and again. To me that was a better story, this well, this isn't what I was expecting when I funded the kickstarter.

It's a shame because while act one is acceptable, I can't in good conscious recommend this game to anyone. I'd recommend Monkey's Island, Grim Fandago, maybe the King's quest games, or the most games from Telltale game instead of this game. But Broken Age, it was an interesting Kickstarter, but not a very good game, sadly.

(Note I backed the game on kickstarter, I played the game on Ps4, as part of Playstation Plus. I did pay for this copy)

Keep in mind that I loved the first act of this game and the second part was pretty good too, but I can never ever recommend this game because of the conclusion. The way it ends is genuinely jarring and unsatisfying. It feels like I'm playing a game that's 2/3rds of the way completed, and considering how great the rest of the game is, the ending is genuinely insulting. It's not even visually impressive, it doesn't look like an ending in the same way the beginning looked like the beginning. It's not climactic, it's not engaging, and it's not good.
Don't play Broken Age. You'll love it, but then it'll spit in your face for it.

Gorgeous graphics and lovely soundtrack. But boring game with little direction.

Disappointing game. The characters are very flat and uninteresting, the story is poorly written, the voice acting is emotionless. I mean, I didn't manage to care for my protagonists even by the end. Some of the NPCs were more interesting, and had more character to them, which is pretty bad.

The overall plot is very weak, and it's never fully explained even in the obligatory Evil Boss Monologue. And it's not the suspenseful kind of unexplained, but the "wait, that does not make sense" kind, like the writers were too lazy to make up the proper background. Just like Shay's robot parents, who turn out to be his real, flesh and blood parents, and yet no longer interact with him directly. We even see a family picture showing this has been otherwise, yet Shay seems to be genuinely surprised to see that they are human. Why did they stop seeing him in person? Why doesn't he remember? There are no answers, and there is no narrative point to make. It's just random, like much of the plot.

Other than that, many of the puzzles are more tedious than exciting, and the level design forces you to travel back and forth over an area, without any map or quick-travel feature. Again, tedious.

Also, a whole unavoidable conversation back and forth elaborating on stool jokes. Not funny. At all. I actually cringed. And it was as much out of character for Vella as she has character.

The only plus point is could say is that the robot puzzles in the last part of the game by utilizing different patterns was actually clever and inventive.

Halfway through, I just wanted it to end. The puzzles get so ridicolous, there's really no correlation between the items you have to get and the tasks you have to complete in order to progress.

Act 2 puzzles suck.

Charming as ♥♥♥♥. Glad to see Kickstarter campaigns like these succeed. Kudos to Tim and the people at Double Fine.

I was a backer on Kickstarter for this game and I'm also a huge fan of Tim Schafer and his Double Fine Productions. That's why I backed this in the first place, but also because I'm a fan of the adventure game genre, of course. Nevertheless Broken Age is the first game which I've played on Steam which I can't right out of my heart recommend, but why is that?

The game is split into two acts and while the first act is just brilliant not only because of it's warmth, colorful visuals, lovely soundtrack or its charming characters, but also because of its well designed and thus entertaining puzzles. So everything's fine up until the end of act 1. It's ending will eventually already make your eyebrowes raising, but since everything is still open you may advance to act 2 to see how it's going on only to discover that starting from there everything is getting really worse just in every aspect.

First and foremost act 2 is filled with convoluted, weird, very hard puzzles which often require much more trial-and-error then logic. This gets very frustrating especially at the end of act 2. Other than that you have to do a lot of boring backtracking, but what really disappointed me the most was the fact that none of the characters, their relationships, motives or anything at all story-wise gets a satisfying, logical explanation (or no explanation at all). All of it makes just no sense at all whether it be the connection between Shay & Vella, the whole Mog Chothra festival and the villains motives behind it nor the reveal of a secret villain in an blink of an eye which just felt totally random. All of it just feels weird and totally out-of-place. I could go on and on with other things that really made me sad just because it all started so well with act 1.

So no recommendation from me unfortunately.

Ignore the amount of hours played; just the completionist attitude, and I'm pretty sure I left it on overnight. The sad fact is Broken Age really was BROKEN. Most of the puzzles didn't feel like puzzles, and this game does that awful thing where it FORCES you to only use ONE solution, rather than SEVERAL. Point and Click games don't have to be linear, nor do they have to be obvious. This game is both, and tedious to boot. The world-building is minimal and character depth is shallow. I didn't care about any of them really. Spend your money on something else.

Simply a bad game, which is dissapointing to a fan of Tim Schafer; the comedy and writing in general is so much worse than all his older games, and the obtuse walkthrough-requiring 90s puzzles just do not feel right nowadays.