Some objectives can only be completed by going home at night, and sleeping and progress-granting tapes can often only be acquired by checking the tape player by Elise’s bed in the morning. But this eats up two whole hours, so that has to be taken into account. When Elise is hurt, she can heal by sitting on a bench and resting. You’re expected to go back to Elise’s house and sleep every night. The reason for this is that, after 8 PM, enemy encounters become much more prevalent, so there’s an additional element of managing your time. When you travel to other areas, a specific amount of time is used up. Elise has a little crab clock that tells her what time it is and the minutes continually tick down as you play the game. Granted, you could fight more if you really wanted to. There are so few encounters that I can’t imagine that I spent more than half an hour fighting during my entire playthrough. I’m not sure why Broken Pieces even has combat, honestly. This is literally all there is to the combat. When it’s yellow, it throws a hook, which you dodge by moving backward. When an enemy’s arm turns red, that means it’ll attack with a jab, which you avoid by dodging to the side. You can dodge straight backward or to the side (complete with Elise doing a bizarre twirl). The trick is to shoot them right before they attack or just after. She frequently misses targets right in front of her. For whatever reason, Elise is the absolute worst shot I’ve ever seen in a video game. But the single enemy is so easy to dispatch, and healing is so prevalent, that you’ll never have to worry about using this ammo.Īs enemies approach Elise, you need to lock onto one and shoot them until they die. You can find materials that automatically get converted into higher-quality ammunition if you put them in your item box. Aim down sightsīut there’s a reason that most games do things the standard way. There’s only a single type of enemy, and the combat to deal with them is pretty different from any other systems I’ve ever seen. Occasionally, Elise gets locked into an area by barriers, and two or three ghost enemies start walking toward her. The combat is easily the worst thing in the game, and feels tacked on. There are a few sidequests that grant additional background info or weapon upgrades for anyone who cares enough to see them. It’s fun to learn the layout and open up new places to explore bit by bit. The town itself is fairly large and interconnected. Later, interacting with fountains will turn the season to winter, complete with snow, which lowers the water level and freezes water.

Whenever she’s outside, Elise can summon a storm that will knock certain things down. You’ll find items that you need to use to open doors, solve puzzles to create new pathways and gather information, and stock up on items to help Elise on her way.

Exil and progress revolves around exploring the place. Details are revealed at a decent pace Broken Pieces certainly isn’t boring.įor all intents and purposes, Broken Pieces is a 3D adventure game. Still, the tapes you find are somewhat interesting. There’s nothing psychological about it, and it obviously isn’t a thriller. The game is marketed as a psychological thriller, but that’s not accurate. More importantly, though, the game isn’t remotely scary. I’m not going to spoil it or anything, but you’ve probably seen variations of this story time and again. It follows the same route we usually see when zombies, ghosts, or demons aren’t involved. In the end, the story is extremely typical. There are some interesting characteristics here, mostly due to the glowing stone Elise has on her wrist which can summon a storm or change seasons, but even these seem somewhat random.

You’ll find plenty of tapes that fill in the plot, but you don’t meet any characters other than Elise, which makes the narrative feel a lot lonelier than need be. But the mysterious activities of a cult alongside strange happenings with the town itself draws the military, which abducts the townsfolk during a festival. But it’s a creative game, with gorgeous visuals and some compelling ideas that’s worth playing through as long as you weren’t hoping for a particularly original story or impactful side content.īroken Pieces puts you in the shoes of Elise, a woman who moved to the French town of St. Not all of it works and some of it seems misguided. With its focus on an interconnected French village and non-standard combat, the game swings for the fences in an effort to shake things up. Broken Pieces is a “horror” game that takes a good amount of cues from older titles. It’s hard to fault a game for trying its damnedest to break out of the mold.

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