Pros: Clever puzzles. Smart hint system. Great story, expressive dialogues and flattering music. Impressive graphics and animations.
Cons: When exiting game, it starts at beginning of current quest and not where you last left off. Miss dialogue because of accidental clicking.
Tired of the many hidden object games, puzzles and time-management series? Love adventures with click-and-point game play? Emerald City Confidential is just what you need. Its rich story, based on the famous The Wizard of Oz novel by L. Frank Baum, will impress you. Not only that, but its clever quests await you around every corner of the game.
While this sounds like I'm trying to promote Emerald City Confidential, I simply want to share my experience in completing the game. The game stands out due to its animated dialogues and exceptional storyline.
The first scenes of Emerald City Confidential take you to the wonderful Land of Oz. Be prepared as it is not what you expect to see. The developers thought out every little thing to challenge and surprise you in your adventure all the way to the very end. It'll take a few scenes before you get the hang of some tricky parts of the game.
Actually, Emerald City Confidential is not the same story you know from The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. It creates a new plot surrounding the familiar Oz characters like Lion, Scarecrow, Tin Man and Toto plus it adds some new characters with the events occurring in the future. Much has changed and Emerald City is not what it used to be. Corruption has taken over and strange things are happening.
You take the role of Petra, a young detective, hired by Dorothy Gale to investigate the case of her missing fiancé. As you start your investigation, you quickly realize that things go deeper and go beyond Dorothy's interests. Over time, you discover corruption around magic spells and learn about Petra’s personal life tragedy. Like a click-and-point adventure, Emerald City Confidential suggests you to walk around the city and travel to Munchkinland or Winkie Country, question citizens and investigate the locations. To transport from one part of the city to another, you take Gump Taxis. Every scene has a Gump Stand, just click it and you will get a bird's-eye view of Emerald City and then pick an unlocked location to go there.
Your investigating requires Interacting with people and locations. Listen carefully and collect information. Characters give you hints so you can make use of it. While the story contains lots of dialogues, don't miss a single word as the characters won't likely repeat what they say.
Occasionally, you will have to find some items in the location and use it to solve a puzzle. At times, characters will give you a helpful spell or some magic item for further use. But in most cases, you will have to bargain or smuggle things from them.
Whenver you complete a quest or puzzle, a small gem appears on the progress bar at the bottom of the screen so that you can see your progress. Or you glance at Petra’s journal which keeps the information you get after taking a pill of knowledge and gives you hints.
The hint system gives you some guiding sentences without pointing out what you should do. It keeps Emerald City Confidential fresh and provides an additional challenge.
Emerald City Confidential hides numerous buttons within its locations. They sparkle with different colors, so it won’t be difficult to find them. Upon finding a button, you can travel to Scraps, the Patchwork Lady, and exchange them for concept art of Emerald City Confidential game for later viewing in Petra’s journal. Here is a tip: Don’t be in a hurry to pick up a button the miniute you enter a scene as you risk missing important piece of information when someone is talking to you. Finish the dialogue first, then pick up the button.
Emerald City Confidential has little going against it, but nothing is perfect. One of the minor drawbacks is impossibility to resume the game from the exact spot you left it. It takes you to the beginning of the latest quest (not the beginning of the game). Though it’s not a big chunk of the game, it still leaves a feeling of resentment.
Emerald City Confidential's artwork is great and done in noir style. The scenes are painted with rich greenish colors and teem with beautifully done animation. The game comes packed with vivid and expressive dialogues with well-turned phrases. A great adventure, delicate case to investigate, entertaining characters and clever puzzles make Emerald City Confidential a worthy click-and point game.
