Faces of Illusion: The Twin Phantoms is a point and click adventure game with a decent variety of puzzles, but abysmal storytelling and voice acting.
The game’s visuals are great when it comes to the still images and backgrounds. On the other hand, the animated portions of the game are often laughably bad. Anytime a character moves, they look they are sliding across a 2D background instead of being a part of the scene. It gives the game an amateur, low budget feel, which unfortunately goes well with the voice acting.
The voice acting is some of the worst I have ever heard in a game. Every character mispronounces the word “grimoire”, except for one that says it correctly early in the game, then begins saying it incorrectly later on. The accents are all over the place, with some characters sounding like over-the-top caricatures, and others that sound wooden and emotionless. It is such a bizarre contrast that takes away all the tension and weight of the story.
Storytelling in this game is often stilted and awkward. Some plot points try to be deadly serious, while others are almost comedic. The tone changes so often that it has hard to even tell what the writers were going for. There are a few “twists” that are so obvious, I didn’t even realize they were meant to be twists until they were dramatically revealed later in the story.
The dialogue is also a weak point for the game, with most of it sounding like a poor google translation. Presumably, the writers didn’t speak English fluently, because there are several sentences that are borderline nonsense. Grammar issues plague the dialogue, which impacts the voice actors’ performances quite a bit. The silver lining is that this gives the game an almost B-movie vibe, where the writing becomes an unintentional comedy. Obviously, the developers didn’t intend for this, but it still makes the game much more bearable.
The biggest issue the game has is gameplay. While the voice acting is terrible, it still has some life to it, making it somewhat enjoyable. The writing is awful, but it comes off like an earnest attempt. However, the gameplay is just boring and derivative. It features your typical old-school adventure game moon logic puzzles, with ridiculous leaps of logic required to figure out. Thankfully, the game usually has hints that clear up the confusion, but it makes the weird logic even more noticeable because of it.
Overall, while this isn’t the worst adventure game you could play, it doesn’t have much going for it, aside from some unintentionally funny moments.
