Nemezis: Mysterious Journey III is the third game in the Mysterious Journey game series developed by Polish developers, Detalion Games.

Detalion, their original name, started making games in 1999 with "Reah: Face the Unknown", their second game being the 1st of the mysterious Journey series in 2001, using their own made V-Cruise Engine. The 2nd in the series was in 2003 and in 2005 they stopped developing under that name after just 6 games but some members teamed up with City Interactive to work on other things. 16 years later in 2021, some of them got back together and released this game under "Detalion Games", It is also the first of their games using the Unreal engine(4), which is screamingly obvious when you turn it on.

With all that being said about their history in development and their return, I am disappointed. And I think you would be, too, if you had waited 18 years for the third game to come out.

The Game.. 

Nemezis is a puzzle-orientated adventure game. A story of two siblings, Amia and Bogard, two highly intelligent twins who went to the planet Regilus as tourists, under a false pretense by the Teleportation Travel Agency that this was the best place to go. It's very obvious when you get there that something isn't quite right.

As soon as you land, you are separated from your brother and a voice on your com tells you there has been a transporter error and you jump straight into action to meet up with him again. As you meet your first NPC, you see a collectable out of the corner of the screen. This made me happy; I do like collecting collectables, It gives me a good reason to explore. Not that I needed a reason for this game.

Regilus is an alien planet with strange plants and beautiful scenery. It looks beaming with life, but also... desolate.

While on the way to completing your first puzzle, which stretches across the whole of the play area here, you take in the view and notice the life running around you.

Erm, is that blood all over the path?? 

The first NPC you speak to does mention "blood-soaked ferns" but I didn't know it was literal. Not that there's any blood on the actual ferns itself though.

This first area is a good introduction to the puzzles in the game and the story. While the puzzles seem easy enough at this point for you to grasp, with some logical thought, the scripting and voices are already starting to look sketchy. For example, when meeting the second NPC in this area, Amia says, "Although there are many exotic plants here, I don't see any animals on this planet." well...

I've walked past at least 6 just to get there. Including fish and lizards.

Once you finish the puzzles in this area you move on to the next level but playing as Bogard, the brother. The voice on the com explains once again how you ended up here and that you must complete puzzles to meet up with your sister. Each time you complete a puzzle level you alternate between the siblings and move onto the next.

The story tries to be mysterious and hint towards what is happening but you can pretty much guess early on what is going on. I really wish there was some more depth to the story but it just felt like it was missing.

The scripting is well off, it feels like they didn't go back to read what they had written and compared it to the visual of the game. At one point my character says "And is it true that I am here just by myself? I feel as though someone is watching me...." he says this as I walk past 2 people I had JUST spoken to. *facepalms*

Why is it like this??

The generic story, poor scripting, along with the obvious bad cadence in AI voice acting, along with no visual synchronization of audio and mouth movement and overly gesturing hands makes the game feel like it's rushed and its main focus is the puzzles themselves. Which I kind of expected as a puzzle-driven game but as it was apparently "story rich" and as it was the 3rd game in the series I had some hope for something more.

The puzzles themselves were great. I had good fun with them as I do like a challenge. Some were pretty easy while others had me scratching my head. One in particular seriously frustrated me, making me put my pad down and try again the next day. I've never been good at those ones in particular so it was going to frustrate me easily anyway. Although I didn't have much fun with that one, it felt good to be able to finish it and move on. There was no moving on until you had completed it, no skips available in this game.

You can take a hint if you want but if you do, you lose your achievement for passing a level with no hints. I wouldn't bother using hints anyway, you don't need them much and, well, you can always just google them if you are struggling.

The achievements are pretty simple. They are self-explanatory and the collectables are easy to spot as you play.

The harder difficulty wasn't much different and included all the same puzzles, offering nothing new. Some of the puzzle solutions were exactly the same, some required extra steps to complete them and this difficulty also doesn't allow hints but if you are an achievement hunter like me, you weren't going to use them anyway.

The game has full controller support and as someone who plays mostly with a controller I was happy about this but I found that using a keyboard and mouse was probably best for some of the puzzles. It was only halfway through that I actually realized you could move around by just holding down the right button and you only need the left click to do everything else, so I pushed my keyboard away, put down my controller and sat back to relax and played with only my mouse. This was nice, my cat liked the extra lap space it gave me too.

Conclusion..

Overall the game is pretty short but I liked the challenge that came with the puzzles. I wouldn't expect an in-depth story but the game was well made in terms of gameplay. I didn't even find any bugs and I'm normally good at that.

If only they didn't have AI voices which is a real put-off for me. And maybe some better translations as one thing that was said that really stood out to me, I really hope was a translation error. While speaking with an NPC further into the game, they ask "Oh Bogard, you must be Amia's fiancé" to which I reply "Ha, almost, I'm her brother"... what do you mean almost??... There is nothing almost about this!

If you like puzzle games that make you scratch your head then check out this game, its short but fun. Just don't expect it to captivate you through its story telling though.

Personal Game Rating: 2.5/5

Game title: Nemezis: Mysterious Journey III

Developer: Detalion Games

Release Date: 8th July 2021

OS: Windows 7/8/10

Platform: Steam, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Microsoft Windows, Xbox One

Steam Price: £15.49/ $19.99