Shadows on the Vatican - Act I: Greed

Conspiracy mystery in the style of Broken Sword and Secret Files.

It's a short game (about 3 hrs), there's not many locations or items, so the puzzles don't take too long to solve.

It's not a complete story, there's only three parts available at time of this review.

The game started slowly the first time I played, so wait when first loading it.

This is a review of Shadows on the Vatican Acts I and II, as I find them inseparable. This series has quickly become my game of the year, even playing it after so long, and right on time before the release of Act III.
What does such a late release mean? This is not an indication of laziness. Quite the contrary: that can mean only one thing. This is a work of love, of passion, of huge investment in time and resources because this story WANTS to be told, and HAS to be experienced. This is a story beloved to the producers and storytellers, so much so that they have battled many an obstacle in these years to make it happen. This is a game that wants ITS VOICE to be heard.
As you load the game and the title screen appears, you are treated to one of most sublime game soundtracks I have ever heard. I mean Lara Croft’s theme in the original Tomb Raider level of epic. The music in Shadows is simply jaw dropping. I have the full OST in my playlist and I often listen to it, alongside Hans Zimmer, Dan Gibson, Carmina, Bach. You can find the full OST on Youtube as well (and I recommend listening to the track "To Silvia").
Let’s talk about the story and dialogues.
Inspired by the essay "In nome di Dio", Shadows on the Vatican is a thrill-filled story full of intrigue, mystery and some of the most deep and memorable characters I have ever met in a video game. James Murphy and Silvia are well rounded and beautifully designed — seriously, the comics-style, hand drawn characters are heart-stopping beautiful — and they have a deep personality. The plot will capture you and drag you through the two acts, leaving you wanting for more. There are tons of historical facts, trivia about Rome, the Vatican… there is so much to learn!
One of the best parts of this game are the dialogues, the thoughts of the characters, their motivations, their shady past and uncertain future. Every character evolves through the story and I can’t wait to see where the next two acts will take us.
Puzzles and gameplay are classic, as one can expect from a point and click adventure game. There are inventory based puzzles, riddles, as well as some more difficult puzzles based on reading, numbers and deep thought. Some of them may be a tad too difficult, so don’t feel too bad if you have to check a walkthrough once or twice. It’s worth it! However, I also found some of the most fun, original and quirky puzzles as well, winking and giving a nod to typical cliches of point and click games and turning them around for the fun of it.
In this respect, there are TONS of easter eggs, funny achievements, references to the world of gaming, and to other games developed by other software houses.
In my opinion, the only reason why we don’t see a flood of overwhelmingly positive reviews is the fact that some players are reluctant to give it a chance before the four episodes come out.
That is exactly the opposite of what we should do, as it is with our support NOW that can make a new act possible, that energies and budget can be allocated to the telling of this story.
Last but not least, let’s talk about the elephant in the room: the graphics. Not the comics-style drawings of the characters, but the 3D backgrounds and character models. Yes, the graphics is a bit rigid, and can feel outdated, even though it NEVER for a second bothered me or distracted me, and I actually find the backgrounds quite well detailed and well designed.
But we must keep this in mind: They were other times, there was no Kickstarter to bump up the budget of an indie company, there was no Steam to advertise, there was no indie trend, and the engines available were quite different.
I don’t want to hear it. Of course the graphics is a bit outdated. However, it shouldn’t affect or distract us too much, considering that we live in the era of masterpieces like Undertale and The Return of the Obra Dinn, purposefully reduced to bare bone graphics, for one reason or another. Whatever the case, we should be open-minded and accepting enough to give it a fair chance.
If you do it, you will be rewarded with amazing character designs, a jaw dropping soundtrack, memorable character, and a beautifully told story.


My Curator page:
https://store.steampowered.com/curator/43938467/

This is the first game of the series Shadows on the Vatican, you play as James, an ex-priest who became a doctor after an incident in the 90s. At the present time, he received a phone call from his friend Cristoforo who was asking for help, little did he know that there were secrets about the church he didn't know and must discover in order to help his friend.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2929519693

The gameplay is like any classic Point&Click. I liked the portraits of the characters and the artwork of the comic cutscenes, however, the characters looked dated during the gameplay. The areas and scenery look great though.

The dialogue and voiceovers are good in my opinion, although I've read in some of the reviews stating how bad it is. The puzzles are easy, and if you fail to do anything the game has autosave as well as manual save. You can explore the city with the fast-traveling map.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2929519870

When you first play the game, you'll hear an outstanding theme song on the menu screen, I liked it so much, and the developers are nice enough to put the soundtrack on steam for free, I would pay to listen to this music. The soundtracks of the game are really good.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2929522691

Pros:
+Interesting story.
+Excellent writing.
+Interesting characters
+Beautiful soundtracks. (Especially the main menu theme)
+Good puzzles.
+Manual save.
+Steam achievements.

Cons:
-The game is quite short, there is even an achievement where you can finish the game in less than two hours.
-Dated characters look.

Some of the achievements are missable, but there are some good guides here on steam to earn them all if you are into getting 100%. I highly recommend it to people who enjoy P&C games and don't mind the religious aspects. P.S. Mario is my favorite character.

Other Reviews:
Shadows on the Vatican - Act II: Wrath Review

[quote]𝐹𝑜𝑟 𝑚𝑜𝑟𝑒 𝑟𝑒𝑣𝑖𝑒𝑤𝑠 𝑐𝘩𝑒𝑐𝑘 𝑚𝑦 𝑐𝑢𝑟𝑎𝑡𝑜𝑟 𝑝𝑎𝑔𝑒 𝐹𝑒𝑒𝑛𝑎'𝑠 𝐶𝘩𝑜𝑖𝑐𝑒[/quote]

Pleasantly surprised by this game, looking forward to continue with ACTII and I've seen on Twitter that devs work on ACTS III/IV which is great.

There are some rough areas like for example stiff character models and missing signposting at times, but i can overlook these as i am a sucker for such kind of point and clicks with conspiracies etc.

Keep it up guys, greetings to Italy from Greece.

Lead voice actors are awful. Especially Silvia. She speaks too slowly in her voiceovers and is clearly reading her lines rather than acting them. She strikes me as the type who doesn't understand the difference between reading a scene and acting a scene. They probably told her over and over to put a bit of emotion into her acting but she figured since she was reading from a script, she should sound like she's reading. Godawful.

Puzzles in this game are mainly inventory puzzles, but very few of them make sense. Half the time I have no idea why I'm doing something. Hero is stuck hanging from a scaffold and he uses keys to pull himself up? Um, not only would that never work in real life, but it doesn't make any logical sense. The other annoyance is how linear the game is. You aren't allowed to do things unless the game decides it's time to do them. Hero will say over and over that something doesn't make sense until he finally decides it does. I spent the first hour listening to him refuse to do anything. Why would I do that? Um because I'm telling you to that's why!

This game isn't exactly horrible. It just suffers from poor acting and illogical puzzles. Visually it looks great and the gameplay and controls are everything you'd want in an adventure game. I've heard the second game is better. Here's hoping.

It's not a bad short game, only worth it when it's on sale.

Good music and voice acting. Just be aware, there is no ending to this story. Only 2 parts of a 4 part series.

Edit: ehh, maybe they're still working on it?

Loved this game. Same review for both Acts, being them part of a unique game.
Good investigation context, nothing to make you lose you mind though. The Vatican and surroundings are for sure a captivating scenario as well.
Localized italian dialogues made it even funnier to go through the story.

A short game based on a book, the story is somewhat simple but ok to play through for your first go. The graphics are ok, maybe a bit plain in its design. Audio was ok and the opening music was good. I would say you will get a few hours out of it.

This game is not worth even half euro.
Game is broken. In the middle of the game I got an error:
Error loading texture: interface\info_mappa\Llocale1280.png
Out of memory! Execution can't continue.

I've got 32GB RAM!!! How much more this s...y game would need?

But... Even if it would work I would not recommend it, coz of:
- horrible animations
- time lost for neverending waiting
- gameplay style of Leisure Suit Larry I in 2k14

pros

+ great looking pre rendered background graphics
+ when you click to space, hotspots is highlighted. No need to hunt for pixels.
+ interesting and some funny cast of characters
+ da vinci code type conspirancy story interesting
+ mostly enjoyable puzzles. there are also inventory puzzles you can combine some items
+ comic magazine style cut scenes looks good

cons

- low frame rate
- some bad voice acting
- slow gameplay
- slow animations
- too much loading screens
- game is short and episodic. it concluded with a cliff hanger.

overall this is an intriguing and fun to play point n click game but unfortunately game is episodic and first episode pretty short but i liked the game and i intend to buy and play another episodes too.

While I have seen the investigative mechanics and puzzels done better, the story still holds up and would make this a worth while buy for people interested in point and click storys.
That said:
The last update on act 3 (out of 4) came 2015 and ever since it's silence or an ominous ";)" from a Dev in the forums, so while I am not saying that this game is dead, I will recommend to hold off on the buy until all 4 chapters are available just so you don't waste your money. What's there is fun with 2 likeable main characters, but it's only half the story - not selfcontained.

*EDIT* It seems like I missed a developer announcement via facebook regarding chapter 3. Work seems to continue, link below by Paggio, one of the Devs.

Do not buy until the rest is released. The recommendation would be a firm "Yes" if all chapters were out.

As far as Indie point & click adventures go, I'm usually happy to forgive their low-budget shortcomings, so long as there's a spark of creativity there to win me over. Unfortunately, I could not find this spark in Shadows on the Vatican Act I. The story is uninteresting, the puzzles run-of-the-mill, the characters flat, and the voice acting amateurish. I don't plan to buy Act 2.

Lackluster in every way.
- Looks terrible. The car chase sequence is a joke. The cartoon panel cutscenes are not bad, but not great either.
- Sounds terrible. Some of the music is nice, but not varied enough. There is no sound design at all.
- The limited voice actors does nothing to save the abysmal script.
- The story isn't very compelling. It's set in Rome, but there are next to no references to the city geographically, and Vatican city is completely absent. Curious, considering the game's title.
- Most importantly, the puzzles themselves are completely uninteresting and don't require any creative thought besides some simple logic and a bit of pixel hunting.
Even in the limited landscape of adventure games, stay away from this one.

Took me about 30 mins just to finish the tutorial, not a huge fan of that. The tutorial wasn't the problem the game was really slow, the character, the dialouge and the box that comes up took too long to come up. I really tried, sorry.

Writing this review just to point out that the Key Features section of the store page for this game is almost entirely false.

"...a thrilling new point-and-click adventure in 4 acts" False. There is no indication that parts three and four will ever be complete. There is a hint that the remaining acts will follow, announced April 2022.

"Art direction by Lorenzo Ruggiero" True, but a third tier inker with a bog standard resume seems like stretching the truth a bit too far in order to use the Marvel/DC credit.

"...with high resolution graphics and Full HD support" False. Low quality models, backgrounds, etc., The HD version will not run on many systems and the developer's (paraphrased) solution is "Oh well, just run standard. The only difference is full HD backgrounds" meaning that "Full HD support" is an outright lie.

"Realistic characters with hours of motion-capture animations" False. Awkward student-level character model design and laughable "motion capture."

"Well integrated puzzles..." False.

"Animated coloured comics..." False. Zooming in and out and panning on a still image is hardly animation.

All told, you'll have a better time reading the wonderfully florid text of the store page. The quality of writing here is far better than the in-game text and dialogues. It was so well written, it convinced me to buy this below average, overly-ambitious game with all the red flags of a terrible adventure experience.

In short this game feels very rough. The animations are clunky and jerky as well as character models are not the best quality. The comic cut scenes, which I looked forward to most, are low res. Imo, the best thing in the game is the character portraits while talking (if you have that option on). The load screens are absolutely awful, long and drawn out. Especially when saving/loading. It feels extremely boring and unclear of what your next task is and it feels slow and almost pointless in how to progress. The game was lacking, the story seemed like it might have potential. Personally I'd rather just watch a walkthrough.

Enjoyable Story with some great puzzles that make actual sense. I like the artwork and the setting.
Has maybe not aged fantastically well. Good Game all in all, for 6 bucks you get between 2 and 3 hours of old school-y Point and Clicking. Just keep in mind that it is only the first part of a story, but a fine one at that.

i like religion plot.. music and suspense.. the only bad thing is, that this game is so short.. but bought it on steam sale and it was worth it ! Cheers mates and enjoy playing SotV: Act I ! here you have polish achivment guide -> http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=595285949

Based loosely on the novel "In Nome di Dio" (In God's Name) by Dave Yallop published originally in 1997. This is a four game series two of which have been released. (Shadows of the Vatican Act 1: Greed and Shadows of the Vatican Act 2: Wrath)

Storyline: James Murphy left the priesthood in 1996 after the Vatican's investigation into his mentor's death was less then effective and the Vatican proved to be even less interested. In present day he is a medical doctor in Chicago, IL (USA). He has returned to Italy at the request of his friend Father Cristoforo who has urgent and vital information for him. Before Cristoforo can impart this information to James, Cristoforo is nearly killed when he fell (or was pushed) down a flight of stairs. In Act 1, James is trying to find out what Cristoforo wanted to tell him by following the clues Cristoforo left for him.

Gameplay: Classic type point and game with a strong linear storyline. The space bar brings up small magnifying glasses for search areas or areas of interest. Since it is based on a book the storyline follows the plot of the book, and dialogue is essential to follow the story.

Despite the 3D graphics most of the game has, the cutscenes are drawn comic book panels. This in no way detracts from the gameplay and a simple picture or two progresses the gameplay quickly and concisely.

There is only one actual puzzle, a maze more concisely, in this game. It is a car chase!

Mystery, intrique, greed, deception and quite possibly murder, what more could anyone want from a thriller?

Interesting while it lasts...

This is a very short prologue of an adventure. The three and a half hours it took me to complete it served to build up a tense atmosphere that began to draw me into the plot. Sadly however, it ended abruptly and very frustratingly, with nothing resolved.

I am not sure about these episodic adventures. On the one hand, it is understandable that developers need to release titles in parts as they need the finance to finish off the game, but on the other hand it can be very frustrating for the player that enjoys the full works. I guess this has to do with the generally low price of retail nowadays, compared to, say 15 - 20 years ago when full, long games cost at least 10 times as much. So it's not surprising short episodic chunks are being brought to us.

The graphics are good and easily serve the purpose, creating a solid atmosphere. The dialogue and voice work is very well done. The main character is particularly well-voiced. The puzzles are mostly very easy as everything points the player in the right direction. The only time I had any length of difficulty (and it wasn't very long) was in a pixel puzzle where something needed to be picked up to move the story along.

I notice that the second episode came out two years after this one. There are supposed to be 4 episodes in all, so it looks like this game won't be concluded for another 4 years, if the developers keep at it. Thus, I'm going to sit it out and wait for the rest to be released before I play anymore.

Summary: A lackluster point and click adventure with standard puzzles. Recommended for fans of the genre only.

Pros:
Good backround music.
Backdrops and cut scenes are well done.
Interesting plot.

Cons:
I found the voice acting poor.
Character animation is poor.

Would I buy episode 2? Yes but I would hope for an improvement.