The last case of Benedict Fox

If you also like puzzles and 2.5D jumperyou will really enjoy the game. The last case of Benedict Fox this is pure metroidvania, so there are more than enough puzzles, jumps and fights. What I have to appreciate first is the originality and handling of all the puzzles. You will play with mathematics, deciphering, tarot, chess, playing the piano and, above all, with your own patience, because you will need more than enough of it. A sleight of hand game won’t help you in this regard. At the same time, puzzles are separated from the classic gameplay. They appear in a separate window and give you time to think, although you can often feel like you are mechanically doing the same thing over and over again. In addition, you will often have to return to many puzzles later, only after obtaining a certain item that can be used, for example, to open doors. Still, the subsequent satisfaction from your own sharp mind is invigorating when you figure something out after a long time. Apparently I’m not that bad yet. However, if you didn’t manage to open any of the doors, or you were just too lazy to solve puzzles at all, you can afford to suggest what you are missing in the game settings. Or even automatically allow – unless, of course, you have the necessary objects to resolve it.

However, I ran into quite a bummer. The developers thought it was fun to torture the players and added a puzzle with a decryption door to the game. That if one of the three ciphers wasn’t mirrored, this wouldn’t be a problem. But having to suddenly come up with an illogical solution to a puzzle is really annoying. Players have even complained about one door on the forums saying it’s a bug. That’s such nonsense. I can say the same about the so-called. knock the doorwhere you have to click symbols on the keyboard as quickly as possible to open them. On a pair of doors, not only did the symbols blend in color with the background, but I could not make out the symbol on one key. After some time and searching the web, I realized that it was an up arrow even though the character looked like an apostrophe. In limbo with the developers!

But to get back to the rest of the gameplay and part of the story, we have to mention our demon helper. He will lend you some of his abilities, such as double jumping or tossing enemies into the air. Later, he even unlocks the ability to upgrade your demon with a mysterious tattoo artist who allows you to get a tattoo on your arm in exchange for ink. Dropped by every monster killed. The title is like this soul-like I play. In order to keep the ink you win, you must send it to a portal that will open in certain places and also unlock fast travel. But if you don’t, your ink will fall to the ground with every death, and will completely disappear unless you pick it up before your next death. But don’t worry about losing them completely. You can get them from the same enemies that you killed earlier, but you didn’t have time to send their ink to the portal.

In addition to ink, you can also get “stars”. They are earned for every item found or quest completed, and can be exchanged for various gear upgrades or potions. And in order to improve your pistol, for example, you will need not only stars, but also a certain item. In some way, everything is connected to everything. And especially with the map … Everything can be found on it in different ways. And she’s not exactly small. Because I often returned to places that I had already passed ten times, but still did not find what I was looking for. Try to look for a needle in a haystack, it may be so easy to find your way on a local map. There is no quest tracking in the game, so you feel like you are spending half your game time doing nothing but opening the map and wondering where the hell you are and where to go. Of course, sweet ignorance and searching for places on your own has its own charm, but when I have already passed the same place five times and opened the map every second … Maybe I deserved the achievement for having opened it a thousand times. And I should get three of these achievements. Even though I often forgot where I actually went when respawning because the map is very confusing in that direction.

For you to understand me well, the surroundings are beautiful and the graphic design of individual parts of the house and limbo fascinates and many times I caught myself stopping in place and enjoying the view of scary paintings, mysterious flowers … or just blindly opening the map again and he was looking, where the hell to go. Yes, for almost the entire game you will feel like a search dog looking for “something”.

As for the bosses, I’m sure you’ll be just as confused as I am at first. With the first one, I thought the game was glitchy because I didn’t harm him in any way, I didn’t see his lives or any kind of reaction. The only one with visible lives in the game is the player himself, so you often think that the monster has finally given up, but he rises again and continues to hit you. Boss fights consist of mechanics trial and error: You try your best until the boss suddenly makes another move and you proceed accordingly. Whether it’s a game of hide-and-seek, a monster escape or a poke game, you’ll be crazy but have fun at the same time. Personally, I can’t stand these running bosses, with one you don’t know where to run, and with the other, flying wood that just touches your hair kills you. Or maybe there’s a boss where you see the light at the end of the tunnel and just jump out. But no, your character has to wipe his mouth after each jump, like a pensioner running to Kaufland, and this move costs you your life and you can start over. What about flying monsters? Their attacks can be dodged, but I feel like half of my playthrough was just waiting for the monsters to attack me so I could kill them. They don’t even have a very original design – there are three types of enemies in the game and the developers just change their colors, size and strength, but they are not original in terms of mechanics.

I found the same amount of unoriginality in one overly repetitive part of the game. I mean dark corridors. I understand that the basic equation of darkness is tantamount to danger, but Benedict Fox goes beyond common sense on this. The dark corridors here are not just a gameplay feature, but a simple slap in the face from the developers to slow you down.

But what I never want to experience again are the dark dark dungeons that the game made me enter again and again. And I died in them again and again. And with it my hope. While I like original ideas and these dungeons are original, it took me a long time to figure out how to navigate this darkness. After many failed attempts, I meekly jumped into each dungeon with the feeling that I would die there anyway. Ideal part of the game for sadists. My flashlight was only on for 15 seconds and I had to run as fast as possible through the dark tunnels and reach a certain point. But I can literally say that the darkness was biting my ass and I hated it for it. The game gives almost nothing and I had to figure everything out myself. So knowing that I needed to shine longer to charge the flashlight, and not just walk through it, was a blow to the waist, because I could forgive myself for hours of suffering, tears and a broken table. I guess I’m too spoiled for wanting to have a small map in the top right corner and look at it dreamily, but that wouldn’t be proper sadism on the part of the developers.

But the real nightmare has been the bugs that have hindered my progress so far. Just imagine: you are calmly hitting several enemies at once, you are happy with how you are doing, and there is a portal nearby that needs to be opened, but nearby monsters need to be killed. At this point, your controls fail and you can’t even move and just tearfully watch as the monsters beat you to death and Benedict falls to the ground with all the collected ink.

You may end up flying into the nearest poison slime when you open the door because you can’t see what’s behind it. Vision is blocked by unexplored landscapes, and you don’t even have a chance to know what is behind the locked door.

Is Benedict Fox’s latest case a game for everyone? Absolutely not. Fans of jumping, interesting puzzles and horror atmosphere will definitely find something for themselves. The game is visually beautiful, has many interesting ideas, but also throws a lot of unnecessary sticks at the feet of the players. It took me about 16 hours to complete the game along with ragequity with all the map and puzzles and I really enjoyed it and I really hope The last case of Benedict Fox was not Benedict’s last adventure.