Let's Play Malcolm's Revenge #10: Tic-Tac-Oh-No
115Limbo is certainly one of the strangest places I've been to in the Kyrandia series, though it's not the oddest; that accolade goes to the land in the clouds Zanthia visits in the second game. How the fish are able to survive without being underwater is unknown and while you'd initially think that the whole kingdom is underwater, the waterfalls and the water slide say otherwise. That aside, Malcolm is in a bit of a tricky situation, trapped as he is at the beck and call of the fish queen who wants a tic-tac-toe opponent. Unless we can figure out a way to get rid of the queen we'll be stuck here forever, showering false praise upon her while she continues to be the worst strategist we've ever seen.
Unfortunately this section of the game, while wacky and weird, is a fair bit like the bone collecting puzzle on the Isle of Dogs in that most of it is busy work. The objective of this area isn't hard to figure out, but achieving it requires repeat journeys to and from certain screens where you repeat various actions to accumulate an item, in this case money. It reminds me somewhat of the puzzle in Hand of Fate where Zanthia could go around picking up random objects on each screen to hand over to various people, save that was mostly optional and ultimately played for laughs. This isn't optional and while it is highlighted as silly, it doesn't quite have the same effect as the same situation in the previous game.
This is the second section of padding this game has had and it's a big one, which is a shame as aspects of Limbo are quite good. They are sadly marred and blurred by the sprawling item collect-a-thon that replaces puzzles with tedium, all to make the experience that little bit longer. I'd of gladly had a shorter game if it meant things like this weren't in it, but it's all bad. We have Malcolm to keep us entertained and he's pretty good at that, being a former jester and all.
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