Dracula Origins 5: Into the Castle Depths

Ooooh! I have made it to the final portion of the game, obviously. Got to Transylvania, and am dealing with the rather nasty inhabitants there. But first, I had to finish the Vienna section.

The only comfortable room in the game. Nice fire too!

Good puzzles in Vienna! With one simple hint I was able to figure out the chemistry puzzle, which leads to a combination puzzle, which leads to the key to the door and an item. That gets us into the library.

Once in the library (which is quite nice, actually), I had to figure out how to open the secret passage into the forbidden monastery. There I hope to find the ancient but still-living monk who can read the even more ancient document I found in the evil tomb in Egypt.

The Library. Very nice.

First, I have to fine a bunch of wooden bats (or are they angels?) that fit into a pattern. The puzzle gives you about half of them, including the one we found with the key. Yes, they all have to be in that library, because it's the only location to which we have access. So they're all there. Naturally, there will be some we can just pick up, and some we have to extract from hidden places. I managed to get all of them except the last. But it had to be there. There was only one place in the library that I hadn't been able to do anything with or to. So I picked a likely inventory item and poked around with it in that place. Voila! There was the bat (or angel--it's hard to tell the difference in real life too!).

So I made it into the monastery, and pretty easily opened the desk, revealing another nifty logic puzzle that kinda looks like the one on the front door of The 7th Guest. Sadly, no, it doesn't work like that. I'm going to confess that this one stumped me. I kept winding up with two dots I couldn't access. Yes, I decided not to be frustrated and got the solution from the WT. Even after that I still couldn't figure out the secret to the thing.

However, I zoomed through the rest of the puzzles quite nicely! It was really just a matter of searching for inventory items, sometimes combining them inside the inventory screen (that, it turns out, is the real secret to this game). There is some serious violence I really didn't expect in this game. We are confronted by a mad monk, and the solution turns out to burn the guy alive. Really. There's a cutscene. I will not include a screenshot of that.

Then we find a satanic mass going on there in the monastery, with the poor good monk we've come to see imprisoned. I was able to figure that one out fairly easily, and then we got a nice cutscene traveling to Transylvania: 

I continue to be impressed with the artwork in this game

And we arrive in Transylvania! Of course we do! The introductory screen is very nice of the castle:

Nicly stormy. just as it should be!

First we arrive at the only inn available. Not very nice, but somewhat picturesque:

Puzzles in here too

There's a fairly nice set of puzzles here. First, we have to get into the stable. After that we have to find out how to stow away in the carriage that's obviously going to Dracula's castle. This involved a buncha steps. Trial and error solves it. Our reward is another nice cutscene:

Stowaway Van Helsing

There's yet another complicated, many-step puzzle in the castle stables. That one almost stumped me, but again, if you just keep hunting around you'll get it. One thing's for sure: if you can't leave an area, that means you've got everything you need there in that scene. It's just a matter of finding it all and putting it together in the right way.

So I did that. However, I have now run up against what initially looks like one of the most complicated puzzles I've ever encountered in any game. I am not in the mood. I will tackle it later.

That puzzle opens the door to the crypt, so it's pretty clear that I'm nearing the endgame. Yes, there's even more stuff in an adjacent large hall (where I encountered one of Dracula's vampire "brides," but I don't think she's going to threaten me very much.

I have to tackle that door puzzle. Tomorrow.

So far, an excellent puzzley adventure game! Great artwork, solid story, decent voices, really nice puzzles and clearly, not too short either! Although I may change my mind about the game if this puzzle is as bad as it initially looks.

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