I finished Athanor 2 last evening. I needed some help. Some puzzles were too obscure to me. I would describe Athanor 2 as a typical French game: beautiful graphics and nice music, but lacking in gameplay, and in this case, also lacking in story. The mix between text adventure and graphic adventure doesn’t always work. I feel like the game would have been better if it provided detailed room descriptions. Most of the time you have to click the screen for clues, but sometimes it’s a bit unclear. At one point, you find torches in the floor, but there are no torches in the image of the room. It makes you doubt whether you missed something and you start to click all over the place.

While it is nice that the box comes with some feelies, it is also somewhat unclear what they are for. I never used the key that came in the box. It wasn’t clear to me when I had to use that. I also didn’t use the vial. I think it has something to do with the math puzzle, but I don’t know what to do with it. One other thing that I couldn’t figure out was the sort of secret “passage” on the cliff. Luckily I found a walkthrough for the Amstrad CPC version in French. Google translate made some excellent garbage of that, although the English translation of the game is not all that much better.

All in all, I feel somewhat ambiguous about this game. I’m glad that these games are still released in this day and age, but they are also almost more frustrating than enjoyable. I think that I will first play a more high profile release before I attempt Legend of Falconia or The Shadows of Sergoth.