Reviewed by Melissa Yamamoto
Fans of Dream Chronicles had to wait for a year to continue Faye’s journey on her quest to save her family from the evil fairy Lilith. In the original game, the fairy casted a sleeping spell on the entire kingdom, and kidnapped the main character’s husband, taking him to the fairies world. Although is quite common that sequels don’t live up to the original game, Dream Chronicles 2 is actually a good sequel. It’s not perfect, but it has its good moments.
Faye now has to leave the mortal world and journey to the fairies’ world. It’s your job to explore the beautiful sceneries and solve the 80 puzzles in order to rescue her husband Fidget and their daughter Lyra.
The gameplay works pretty much as in the first game: finding and collecting items (that will automatically appear in your inventory at the bottom of the screen) and interacting with them. The inventory can only carry 10 items, which can be annoying since sometimes you will need to save some space, depending on how many objects you need to collect to accomplish a certain level.
To open a door or to fix a boat, there’s always a puzzle to solve. It’s all about logic and memory, and while the puzzles are simple some of them aren’t so easy. There are some very interesting puzzles but you won’t feel lost, and some of them will require back and forth movements, like collecting items in one place and using them in another scene. As far as the use of objects, they’ll disappear instantly from the inventory when you use them.
The camera works fine, but it doesn’t add any qualities to the game, since you won’t see your character moving. To go to another place, all you have to do is to click with your mouse and that’s it. It makes the game simple, but improving the camera and the character movements would have been a plus.
You’ll come across the dream pieces (sparkling gems) again, which will add more points on your final score. But this time around, there’s something new to collect: the Dream Jewels. Every time you complete a Dream Jewel after collecting enough gems, it will appear in your diary and surprise! – there’s another puzzle: scrambled words. Once you put the words in the right order, it will give you a clue for the next conundrum. There are 15 Dream Jewels available, only 8 can be collected on the first time you play; the other 7 are only available on the second time.
Dream Chronicles 2 has all the ingredients to be a good game: the graphics continue proving that the developers were really concerned about giving the gamers the experience of playing a mystical game and turning it into a real world. Each scene brings in its own gorgeous view with some animated objects, like falling leaves. Again, making the graphics look better is fine, but improving the character’s motion would have brought the game more realism.
The music is a plus, as it interacts with ambience sounds, helping to keep the game interesting for those who find the plot boring. Classical songs with a touch of thrilling gives you the sense that something is really going on, pulling you into the character’s drama, adding mystery and suspense to Faye’s journey.
Even though they could have worked the story better, I still found myself enjoying this sequel. There are some interesting revelations waiting to be discovered, but nothing that couldn’t have been predicted earlier. Even with no substantial differences from the first one, Dream Chronicles 2 manages to be a solid sequel.