Revisiting The Book Of Unwritten Tales 2 On PS4

Earlier this year, I reviewed The Book Of Unwritten Tales 2 for PC, with a very respectable 9/10 thanks to its humour, looks, and characters. However, while point and click adventures such as this have traditionally been bound to keyboard and mouse, KING Art have now brought the game to PS4, PS3, Xbox 36o and Xbox One. In the process, they’ve had to adapt the controls in order to make up for the lack of a natural pointing device, but The Book Of Unwritten Tales 2 comes out the other side of the process largely intact.

The controls have relatively simply been mapped to the analog sticks and face buttons, with the left analog taking the place of the mouse movement, while cros is used to select things, circle gives a description of the item, triangle brings up the inventory, and square shows you all the available things that can be interacted in a location. What did kind of surprise me was the lack of use for the touch pad on PS4, as I feel that would fit The Book Of Unwritten Tales 2 making it easier to scroll around the scenes than having to make do with an analogue stick.

Simply put, the button layout does work on console, but it doesn’t feel as accurate as using a mouse, and makes proceedings feel a bit slower. There is one part in the game where you have to transport lit bits of paper from one room to another, transferring the flame from one strip to another. On PC I managed to do this on the first go due to being able to quickly select different objects using a mouse, but on PS4 it took a few attempts before I succeeded. This was because you have to cycle between leaving each room, going to inventory, selecting a strip of paper, use it with the flame, and repeat until you reach the right area.

One of the things I complimented in the original review were the graphics, which have made the transition to PS4 without any noticeable changes. The Book Of Unwritten Tales 2 has a range of vibrant settings full of colour, and even the darker areas exude their own charm in a way. It is a very please game to look at and the amount of detail KING Art has put into each scene shows vividly. The music is also well composed with even the pause menu music alone lending it a sense of occasion.

As this is effectively a straight port from PC some of the bugs that I discussed in the original review are still present, including the muting or sound equalizer changing randomly on the rare occasion. A character may be speaking fine one moment and then sound like they’re in an echoing cave. There was also still the minor problem of characters not quite following paths and needing to go round in small circles a couple of times before reaching an object. Again this was a a very rare occurrence, and luckily this time I didn’t need to reload the game once.

My original diagnosis was that KING Art had created one of the best point and click adventure titles in recent years with The Book Of Unwritten Tales 2, but the emphasis here lies on point and click. While there has been commendable effort to adjust the controls for the console version nothing can really beat the accuracy and speed of using a mouse in this game. It’s for that reason that many modern adventure games from the The Walking Dead to Life Is Strange have moved to direct character control, and eschewed their point and click roots.

Though it’s easier to recommend on PC, thanks to the controls, The Book Of Unwritten Tales 2 is a rewarding game on console as well. It’s funny, will challenge you with some tricky puzzles, and features a brilliant cast of characters to meet along the way.

1 Comment

  1. I have the first one on PC but opted for the ps4 version for this installment – partly because I want to see more of these types of games make their way to console. Looking forward to diving in!

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