Eriksholm: The Stolen Dream Review

This was a completely random game for me to play. I browsed social media and this title popped up and heard it was a stealth game of some kind. It also seemed to be released at a reasonable budget price so I decided to buy it without waiting for a sale

With that said, I'll praise this game for the fact that the game is so unapolgetic about the kind of audience it's appealing to. If you enjoy early Splinter Cell before Chaos Theory and games like Shadow Tactics, it is very much a game in the style of those where much of the time is spent is failing over and over until you finally get it right.

Two big points to Eriksholm's favor is that the game is only about 8 levels long and while there isn't a saving anywhere feature, it tends use invisible save states where you respawn a minute after death as long as you are in a safe spot. It can take at least one game over before the save state can kick in. You can beat the game in 5 hours but depending on how many fail states you get, it could get longer but it won't be nearly as draining as Shadow Tactics since that has 13 levels. All this played a massive role in how I got to the end of the game.

The story while awkwardly presented at first and can get a little hard to follow does have some interesting characters and writing. With Alva and Sebastian being standouts. The former I inherently have a bias towards since she resembles the Thief series' Garrett. She does have the whole surrogate mother dynamic with Hanna. They both had a falling out where one embraced the thieving life while the other wanted to escape with her brother. It's an a solid dynamic to work with. Sebastian choosing to help due to the aforementioned characters, past histories instead of just getting away from it all does give him character.

What I love the most is that, it's a modern story driven game and an original story not connected a pre established franchise where it has a standalone complete ending with no cliffhangers or sequel set ups. That was very refreshing to see.

The gameplay is weird, too weird in fact. I'm familar with the aforementioned games like pre Chaos Theory Splinter Cell and Shadow Tactics. The latter I never finished but I'm experienced with the stealth genre or games about evading guards without being seen. I knew what I was getting into when I first started it.

When I was just playing as Hanna and there was no blow pipe to use, the game was enjoyable. This is about the first 3 of the 8 levels and some of the last level. You can't be seen and it's a game over if you do but since there is only character to account for and it's about oberving the environment to find the "avoidance path", it's a game of just figuring out what order to do things to for the optimal outcome like a stealth game with a heavy emphasis on problem or puzzle solving. There were game overs but I learned with each failure.

Things were starting to look up when controlling Alva since she can climb up pipes, cause distractions and shootout lights like Garrett and Sam Fisher can do in their respective franchises. There is also a darkness system which only made things more promising.

Then the problems all start rushing all at once. After the brief section where you control Alva in level 4 and the sewer puzzle with Hanna. What Eriksholm becomes is a game of where there is only one ideal way of solving any problem. With only Hanna, this was fine since I'm just accounting for her outcome to slip past the guards, with Alva and later Sebastian I now have to account for 3 characters to slip past the guards.

One character getting seen is or a unconcious body found is an instant fail with it also accounting for 3 characters, everything just turns into failing over, over and over again just to have an ideal outcome with Hanna, Alva and Sebastian can all get to the end of a section.

The biggest problem and the thing that just really annoyed me about this game is trying to get Hanna's blowpipe not to get you a game over every time it's used at all. If Metal Gear Solid 2-4's tranquilizer pistol is Rey from Star Wars than Eriksholm's blow pipe is Finn. Every frustrating part was trying to get the blow pipe to work in a way where using it wouldn't lead to a fail state. There's also other aspects like knowing when to knock out guards as Sebastian, finding ideal ways to destroy light sources and getting a vantage point as Alva and unlocking paths in the levels so one of the 3 characters can get to the other side. Much of these design decisions I can agree with but the blow pipe especially when upon firing a dart, it takes few seconds for the guard to get knocked out and firing one out of the order the script demands will lead to a game over.

There are times where where was on the game's wavelength but was lost because not everything 100% aligned with what the game designer expected

Overall, I know who this is for and what it's trying to do but feels too strict in what can be done in gameplay.