Mostly a hit, but misses the fifth star – New York Mysteries 3 HD Review

I played this game soon after the second in the series, and my expectations were high. Lantern of Souls definitely starts off with a great hook. I don't want to spoil the storyline, so I'll just say there was a near–immediate twist that involved an unpredictable supernatural element. The cut scenes are fantastic and captivating. I was invested in the characters and couldn't put my iPad down for the first couple hours. The minigames are clever. I really liked the games where you build the violin and in which you remove glasses with various templates. The HOP are silhouette-based; when you find an item, you use it to manipulate or find other items in the puzzle. There is a logical map that shows active tasks and whether you have any collectibles remaining in the scene. You also have a journal that tracks the key points of the plot. There were some negatives, however, that dragged down the rating of the game for me. The musical soundtrack is repetitive. When an item triggers a voiceover, you cannot stop it and the voiceover will repeat each time you click the item. Morphing objects are often too close to interactive items; several times I had to mash the screen repeatedly to acquire a collectible. Both of these problems, however, are mitigated by zooming into the scene. A recurring problem from the second installment is the reset of minigames if you click away to look at the related clue in the room. All of these issues should be easy for the developers to resolve, and I hope that they are corrected by the next game in the series. Perhaps most disappointing was the bonus chapter. It was much shorter than I expected, and it felt like a trite escape game rather than an adventure. There were few mini games. The one interesting puzzle involved reflecting light beams through mirrors, and although I solved it, the game didn't recognize this and I was forced to skip it. When I finished the bonus chapter, I was also frustrated to discover that the collectible cards I had acquired were not available to read. I had paid little attention to them during the game, assuming that I could read them at the end, but sadly that was not the case. I was happy with the price of $4.99 and don't feel that I wasted my money, but I probably will not replay this game.
Review by jennifer626 on New York Mysteries 3 HD.