I'm amazed at this short point & click game because it has the most interesting story I have ever listened to in a while & I'll try to explain why I like this game. (I might give spoilers because I want to be 100% accurate or at least try to)

Pros:

1. Remember My Shivah Review when I said the lack of clues was an issue? In this game it is a huge improvement & I'm glad WadJet Eye Games took a notice of adding more clues to combine

2. This game has an interesting concept about the paranormal & a ghost whisperer named Rosa Blackwell who can't get over that she has a quest to save every lost soul in the world with the help of another ghost named Joey Mallone a.k.a The Blackwell's Family Guide

3. Good Voice Acting

4. Good Commentary

5. Good Art

6. The game has lots of references like for example the KISS poster in Kelly's room (Dave Gilbert explains all the references he made if you turned on the commentary)

7. I might be the only one that thinks this but when Joey & Rosa are together it was a laugh riot for me

8. The puzzles in the game are good

9. Good Music

10. Accurate Locations In New York City like for example the Brooklyn Bridge

Cons:

1. This is a minor complaint but some of the commentary repeats itself

2. Some of voice actors do breath pops when they're talking but that's just a minor complaint

3. You can't combine much items (The only item you can combine in your inventory is the dog treat & pill)

Overall I want everyone to play this game because ghosts are awesome & WadJet Eye Games did a good job on this game.

The Blackwell Legacy is the first game in the Blackwell series (the others being Blackwell Unbound, Blackwell Convergence and Blackwell Deception in order of release, with a fifth and final game coming soon).

Modled on old school point and click adventure games, this takes both the good and the bad from the genre. While the story and the characters (and when I say characters I mean the protaganists) are well developed and some of the puzzles are well thought out, there's a lot of backtracking and a few puzzles that just don't work and the game refuses to help assist you, with no hints or advice.

The story involes Rosa a young girl in New York whose only relative, her Aunt, recently passed away having spent most of Rosa's life in a mental ward. Whilst investigating a local suicide for a newspaper article Rosa encounters the ghost of Joey Mallone who explains that like her Aunt she is a medium and must help lost sprirts move on.

There's more to the story in the game, and it also develops further over the sequals, so to say anymore would be spoling it. The game is fully voice acted and Rosa and Joey's actors put in excelent performances, though the rest of the characters vary from poor to good. The graphics are relaible, with charcter models and backdrops looking a lot like older P&C adventures, but still seeming fairly modern.

I got stuck once or twice at some of the previously mentioned poor puzzles (THE F&%*ING DOG LEAD) but there are plenty of guides online to help you out. The game is quite short and will proably take aywhere between 2-4 hours to complete first time round, however there are 8 achivements to earn, only 3 of which you get for just playing the game to completeion as standard, and a commentary mode by the creator (wherein he talks about the creation of the game the difficulties and what he learnt from it) which adds extra playtime.

Quick Sumarry:
+ Intresting Story and Charcters
+ Some clever puzzles
+ Good voice acting for the main protagainsts
+ Great music and decent graphics
- Some really frustrating puzzles
- Too much bactracking
- Alot is just set up for the sequals.

Score 7/10

It's a good concept. A loner girl solves ghost mysteries with the help of a smartly dressed family heirloom ghost and then sucks ghosts into an afterlife gateway in her brain. All wrapped up in a tasty point-and-click adventure game package! Hell, put like that, it's a GREAT concept.

I don't know what happened between concept and reality, but it should have looked both ways before crossing the street.

The Blackwell Legacy manages to spur my advances at every turn. I want to love it for its concept, I want to love it for what it aspires to be. But it's got so many issues it's dealing with, and it knows I don't find it pretty, and it doesn't think anybody could love it, so although it permits me a date, the date ends early with both of us going home alone, crying.

I hope that metaphor made sense to someone, because I'm not proofreading it.

At the very outset, red flags go up. In the opening cutscene, our heroine offers some clunky dialogue to an urnful of ashes, and we're shortly thereafter given control in front of a dull building with nothing to meaningfully interact with outside of a frustrating 20-something barring us access to our own apartment because he doesn't recognize us. It's a bad note to start on. Already I want to punch something and I've only been playing for two minutes (and as I don't recall this person ever being set on fire, I can safely say that the situation doesn't end satisyingly enough).

Soon after, you encounter another hurdle. Puzzles in The Blackwell Legacy don't work like those of a traditional point-and-click. Which is fine; innovation is commendable! But it doesn't really know what to replace them with. Solving problems usually consists of one of two things: clicking dialogue subjects at people and on each other in order to eek out a tiny bit more plot to go on, or fiddling with the world around you. Here, at the beginning of the game, you do the latter, and it's entirely too unintuitive for being the first puzzle of the game (or any puzzle of the game). And it's here, also, that you discover another major issue: your character kind of sucks.

Rosangela, the protagonist, is herself one of the biggest obstacles in the game. I understand the point of watching a character get over their personal problems. But it almost seems like her personal problems are simply an excuse for having Rosangela refuse to do most of the things you want her to. I don't think I've ever had a character in my control say the word "no" so much in a single game, and this one's only two hours long.

It gets better, but only in some aspects. The mediocre writing lasts the entire game, and the voicework never improves very much. Believe me, I understand that, this being an indie game and all, professional talent was not in the budget. But also believe me that Kelly, a girl you visit in her dorm room before long, is a baffling vocal mystery. I cannot tell whether she is a voice concocted by a severely inexperienced voice actress, or if somebody played themselves and actually sounds this agonizingly stupid in real life.

I hate Kelly's awful voice. Did that come across? I don't want to leave any doubt. Honestly, how do you even close your nasal passage tight enough to make a simple "no" come out as "dohwwh"?

The ending's alright enough, and Joey's decently voiced for a cast which sounds like it probably consists of volunteers. Now and then I became interested in the story, which, with better presentation, may have hooked me the whole way through. But boy does the pacing need some work. Nothing says enthralling gameplay like a 25-page folder of exposition. And I hinted at it towards the beginning, but the locations in this game are just uninteresting to look at.

I tried to give The Blackwell Legacy the benefit of the doubt so many times through the two hours it took me to finish it. I want to love point-and-click adventure games, and the basic concept here was so promising. But in the end, so much needs to be fixed for this game to be good that it's probably better that they just moved onto other games instead of trying.

If you're a fan of point'n'click adventures: This is your game series.

+ Amazing writing/dialouges
+ Lovely animated and sophisticated characters/background stories
+ Adult humor
+ Great Story development/excitement curve
+ Awesome voice acting
+ Additional "Behind the Scenes" material and commentary
+ Convincing all-over-atmosphere
+ Fitting music

The story can get quite emotional without relying on heavy romances.
The games are still more of a detective story involving ghosts, personal
tragedies, intrigues, murder and envy.

The series is easily one of the best modern point'n'click productions and
you can really feel the commitment and engagement that was used to produce these games.

If you liked this series, you will probably also like other games from Wadjet Eye:
- Gemini Rue
- Resonance
- Primordia
- The Shivah

Great effort from Dave Gilbert. The VGA-like graphics, so lovely! This is a great adventure game, with strong writing, fun investigation notebook puzzles, and a really cool main character. I also loved the commentary mode :)