I haven't really been gaming a great deal lately because of other things in my life that have popped up and taken the majority of my time. some would call this "being an adult" and I don't like it!
I had previously said that the story in this game is absolutely outstanding and several hours later, I still think this is the case. New characters that I have been introduced to are few and far between but every new character that ends up having a voice is voiced in a wonderful way and they fit into the story in a meaningful way. I like when we don't just have people being thrown into a story for the sake of having more people involved. At the moment there are 4 major characters and they swap in and out of your party for various stages of your missions.
They all have a purpose and this isn't something you have any control over.
one of the biggest revisions I want to make to my previous analysis of the overall game was when I said that I didn't think there was enough variety in activities or missions for you to do to keep the gameplay interesting. Now that I have progressed a bit, I see that my initial opine about this was not correct.
I spoke too early because as you move on a bit further, and combat becomes more necessary and normal, things get mixed up quite a lot. This doesn't mean that you are just going to brute force your way through it all, you are still a one-and-done child who dies right away if someone gets a hold of you. But your objective quickly changes away from just being helpless if spotted and you have the option and are sometimes required, to fight your way through using your very limited weapons.
The fact that you are always slowed down by your younger brother Hugo, is intentional. If you find yourself in a situation where it seems impossible because the child is too slow and you must always hold his hand, that is because it is MEANT to be impossible and you have in fact chosen the wrong way forward.
Stealth is the name of the game for the most part, and I will stand by my original statement that the mechanics of the guards in this game are really simplistic to the point of lack of realism.
Nobody actually follows the same path over and over again when they are a sentry or guard, but that is what every single one of them does in this game. I suppose it would be too difficult if they behaved in any other way, not to mention the fact that it would be really difficult to program something like that.
You are going to spend a lot of time crouching in the grass where you simply cannot be spotted at all times (which in itself is ridiculous) until the guard goes on their very predictable path way towards some other high grass in the distance. What an amazing coincidence!
It's all fine though outside of a few instances where I felt that the checkpoints were a bit far spread out and you had to repeat some tedious sections that stopped being fun around the 8th time you had to do the same motions.
Here is something you should definitely consider though: If something or some route that you chose is requiring pinpoint precision and timing in order for you to get it right, you probably are doing the entire area incorrectly. There are some sections where you do have some level of freedom of choice as to where you are going to go and who you are going to either kill or sneak around, but for the most part, the game is pretty linear but with a couple of options. There are probably some trophies involved in the more difficult to access areas but I am not really a collector and have only 2 active friends on my friend list on PS so none of that matters to me at all.
There is a midway section level called "Damaged Goods" and this is where as a player it becomes evident to you that your offense is all of a sudden going to become a much larger part of the game. Up to that point you were actively (because of the urging or outright prohibition of the controls you are allowed) avoiding all confrontation, but things change in this game where with at least 4 opponents, you are forced to kill them.
Unless some speed-runner out there has figured out some sort of workaround or glitch you have no choice but to eliminate these two guards and you have not been faced with something like that up to this point.
This change in direction or objectives as far as your strategy is concerned was a very welcome one for me and now we find that a lot of the new items we are acquiring are different sorts of offense intended for different situations.
Now that we have the rather simplistic (but still fun) combat, the puzzle bits, the decisions on how to handle swarms of rats, and the various skills of our new friends, I can say that the game has plenty of variety and has not fallen into the slog of repetition that I feared it would become.
This game is far too expensive at the moment for a game that is as old as it is though. They still are charging around $40 for it and while I do think it is a great game, you would be hard-pressed to get me to say that I think ANY game is worth $40.
If it goes on special though, say like $15 or less, I would definitely pick it up. I got it for something like $5 but that was a while ago and I actually forgot for a time that it was in my library at all!