Game:

Atlantis II (1999)

Category:

Let's Play

Duration: 9:58

4,379 views

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Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6iNuXuk2gdjQZKC3kTEtFf6BsFwm59AV
Developed by: Cryo Interactive Entertainment


The follow-up to "Atlantis, the Lost Tales" although it's difficult to believe. The approach to the story is completely different. It seems the developer gave priority to puzzles this time and build a story around it. At first, it feels like a lot of incoherent nonsense. But when you finally reach the end of the game and do some research about the things you encountered on your journey (google " Crab Nebula" for example) you know there's a well-researched story hidden under it. It's not necessary to know the story of Atlantis I to understand the story of Atlantis II, although it gives more depth to it when you played it's predecessor. (For my playthrough of Atlantis I: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7Y6gd7dA74list=PL6iNuXuk2gdglaFlbxpyCW6veg2QFjNqA)

The game manages (like it's predecessor) to create a wonderful new age atmosphere because of the out-of-the-box design choices and it's rich musical score. Puzzles can be quite unfair sometimes and some of them can only be completed by trial-and-error. But gameplay-wise they implemented some nice improvements, compared to Atlantis I.

The game-manual gives the player some background information:

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MANUAL

A power that came from outer space, represented in Atlantis by the Cube, was offered to the people who were later to become the Atlantides. Thanks to its contribution, this civilization enjoyed a meteoric delevopment. On the island of Spitzberg, this people divided the power of the Cube into two parts, one light, the other dark. A war then broke out between the partisans of the two camps and the Darkness was conquered and confined to a metal head. All decided that in future they would keep the parts separate. Some, refusing that the head be kept, created a scission. While the majority went to live on the island of Atlantis, the "anti-head" camp preferred to go off in another direction and, after a stopover in Muria to restore the Light half to the Cube, they set up in Shambhala. Centuries later, on Atlantis, Creon did the unthinkable: he dug up the head and freed the Darkness once again. In Muria, Seth, the hero of Atlantis, took the Light within himself and vanquished the Darkness once more. Later the people of Shambhala became the guardians of the Darkness. As for the Light, it passed from Seth to one of his children and to many of his descendents. These oblivious bearers were all travelers, vagabonds, searching for something they could not name.
Ideally, the Shambhalans, would have liked the two parts of the whole, Light and Darkness, to be joined together. But they have always feared that the Darkness might overcome the Light, so they prefer to keep the two halves far from each other, the Darkness well guarded in Shambhala and the Light hidden and forgotten. Did the appearance of the Crab Supernova awaken the two halves? Is this a sign? A cause or a consequence? Darkness and Light, each seeks to integrate the other. Which of the two will be dominant?

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TECHNICAL NOTES

- The original version of this game is not sold anymore. Koalabs Studio made a compatible version for newer operating systems but deleted lots of material, like puzzles and character-animation. This is why I wanted to upload the original version of the game. I played the DVD-version in Windows 10. With the 'disk is full' patch (http://pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Atlantis_II:_Beyond_Atlantis) it's still perfectly playable on newer machines.

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© Cryo Interactive Entertainment

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