14 DAY TRIAL // 
KING Art has released its latest game through Steam and with it, chapters two and three from The Raven: Legacy of the Master Thief trilogy.
Chapter one, The Eye of the Sphinx, is nothing to write home about, but despite shortcomings, it has a good cast, with good voices and a strong story filled with brain-teasing puzzles for you to solve.
The second chapter of the game, Ancestry of Lies, picks up right where the first chapter left off, with constable Zelner tied up in the infirmary and the killer ready to terminate the only person that realized what happened aboard the ship.
The first chapter seemed almost like a video-game reenactment of one of the famous Hercule Poirot movies seasoned with fragments from Agatha Christie, even the playable character, constable Zelner, bearing a striking resemblance to the famous detective.
After saving several people from an explosion, rescuing the passengers of the train from dying of intoxication and finally stopping a moving train cart with a small child aboard, our hero manages to get himself on board of the ship that's traveling to Cairo.
Here he finds himself tied-up in the cargo hall by the Raven, escapes through his (your) own puzzle solving skills, and while investigating the murder of the baroness, he manages to again get himself caught by the murderer.
I must admit that the beginning of this second part is great, and if the game had carried out like that until the end, it would have been one of the finest adventure games. You must react fast and think even faster as death spares no one (this is all I can spill without revealing more from the story).
After recounting events from the first episode with the people on the boat, Zelner gets to travel to the famous Cairo museum and inspect it in its entire splendor. He gathers important clues by talking to people and by observing various exhibits. Just when you think Raven is gone, he shows up again, in a characteristic explosive style, amazing everyone with his tenacity.
It's now up to you to use your detective and puzzle solving skills and to follow on the tracks of the famous thief right into his lair. Now this is where the game takes a weird turn (weird is good): the Raven has an accomplice and the entire perspective of the game changes, throwing you back in time before the first chapter and allowing you to play a different character than before (you'll be quite surprised to see who it is).
Besides the first minute, which is really thrilling, a quarter of the game is spent talking to characters about what happened, about what will happen, about some of the character's history and personal relationships.
The dialogue is quite boring and drags the adventure experience down as no puzzle solving is required during this time and only a fragment of the huge amount of info will be required further on. The game picks up in intensity once the thieving begins.
Puzzles are not very difficult to solve and they require lots of item gathering and attention to the elements in the room. At times it seems that searching for the location of the items is a much harder task than figuring out where each element goes. If you really run out of options (that rarely happens if you've played at least one adventure game), there is also the hint system and the notebook that's just filled with useful information.
The actors' voices of the, starting with the Swiss accent of Zelner, continuing with the British accent of most characters and finishing with the amazing voice of the Cairo museum director, are very good, allowing you to ground the characters while making the story believable. I've really enjoyed the echo given to the character's voices while in the big hall of the Cairo museum.
Graphics are still disappointing, with even more animation glitches. The weird walk of all the characters is sometimes hilarious; scenes are limited, especially in the museum where you only get to view a couple of rooms. If the voice of the characters deepens the story, the animation will ruin it and you'll be left with just the mediocre gameplay.
Nevertheless, even with the bad animations and the average looking scenes, there is still a feel that you've really traveled back in time and are investigating one of the biggest thefts in history.
Compared to the first chapter of the game, the second one is significantly shorter, the puzzle difficulty and their frequency are decreased and many scenes require revisiting, narrowing the available locations.
The highlights of this chapter barely seem to overcome the downsides, making it sort of disappointing (if you've played the first chapter), so I eagerly await the last episode to change / improve my overall opinion on the whole game.
