Here we are again with the publisher Ocean Media giving us another adventure puzzle game where you scour illustrated scenes to find items, solve puzzles, and unravel the story. This time they teamed up with developer Domini Games to bring us City Legends: Trapped in Mirror Collector’s Edition. My feelings haven’t changed for this genre of game, and if you want to know more you can read about it in my other review Darkarta: A Broken Hearts Quest Collector’s Edition. In a nutshell, the formula hasn’t changed in over a decade and these games have always been more of a miss than a hit.

City Legends: Trapped in Mirror Collector’s Edition has you playing as a best-selling novelist. During a book signing you are approached by your agent saying a publisher is offering a multi-year contract but wants your next piece of work as soon as possible. As you are well versed in Pennsylvania Folklore the agent suggests researching Bloody Mary for your next book.

After some research, your agent calls you to inform you a museum has a current exhibit on display of Bloody Mary’s mirror and other personal items. The phone call abruptly ends after a weird occurrence, and you arrive at the museum to investigate. From this point on the mystery deepens as you research more and more about the history of Bloody Mary.

Across the grand scope of the genre City Legends: Trapped in Mirror Collector’s Edition’s story is very average. Still, unfortunately, it is even harder to like due to the technical problems, which I will explain later. All you need to know is the story is there and it’s very middling.

As I mentioned in my Darkarta: A Broken Hearts Quest Collector’s Edition review, I am surprised that these games still exist, as I thought they would have been phased out with modern technology, or even updated. Gameplay is very linear; you move from scene to scene clicking on the environment collecting items and solving puzzles to unlock more scenes and stories to do it all over again.

The Nintendo Switch allows you to play with the controls or the touch screen, but when docked you lose the touch screen function which is a double-edged sword. Now you have a large screen to find all the environmental items easier but lining up the little cursor to click on those items can be annoying. Being in handheld mode for the touch screen is great but now the scene is very tiny making finding those smaller items more difficult.

There are difficulty options that can be tailored with a custom feature. Otherwise, the preset difficulties of casual, advanced, and hardcore can be selected when starting the game. Casual shows activatable zones with sparkles and the skip/hint function recharges quickly. Advanced does not show activable zones and the skip/hint function recharges slowly. Hardcore has no activatable zones shown and deactivates all helpful things on the user interface like the skip/hint, tutorial, actions, and collectables. Those familiar with this type of game will recognise the design, you will either love it, hate it, wonder why the genre hasn’t evolved, or get nostalgic.

There are difficulty options that can be tailored with a custom feature. Otherwise, the preset difficulties of casual, advanced, and hardcore can be selected when starting the game. Casual shows activatable zones with sparkles and the skip/hint function recharges quickly.

Advanced does not show activable zones and the skip/hint function recharges slowly. Hardcore has no activatable zones shown and deactivates all helpful things on the user interface like the skip/hint, tutorial, actions, and collectables. Those familiar with this type of game will recognise the design, you will either love it, hate it, wonder why the genre hasn’t evolved, or get nostalgic.

Now to explain why City Legends: Trapped in Mirror Collector’s Edition falls into the below-average category for the genre, and that is due to its graphics, audio, and performance. Starting with graphics, whether you love, hate, wonder, or get nostalgic, the graphics will disappoint you primarily with the animations and cutscenes. The animations are janky when they are not part of the environmental scene. As the highly detailed illustrations animate, they become jerky like a paper cutout being moved around on a popsicle stick or warped and distorted to portray lifelike movement.

On top of poor animation, they also become heavily blurred making it painful for your eyes as they try to focus. It becomes even worse in cutscenes as everything becomes blurry to the point you are better off looking away until the talking stops and you are back on the stationary illustrated scene. Those illustrated scenes though are of high detail and very pleasing to look at, a common trope for these environmental item-hunting puzzle games.

On top of poor animation, they also become heavily blurred making it painful for your eyes as they try to focus. It becomes even worse in cutscenes as everything becomes blurry to the point you are better off looking away until the talking stops and you are back on the stationary illustrated scene. Those illustrated scenes though are of high detail and very pleasing to look at, a common trope for these environmental item-hunting puzzle games.

Moving on to the audio problems combined with performance issues dragging this game down. Voice acting for this genre has always been more miss than hit, and City Legends: Trapped in Mirror Collector’s Edition is no different. The voicing is bad but not terrible, but lip-syncing is tremendously awful. I believe it is brought on by a performance issue as the longer I played the worse it got, and it became accompanied by massive stuttering and lag.

The music is exceptional, which is yet another common trope for the genre. However, due to the previously mentioned performance issue, the music would just cut out like it had been muted. This performance issue also caused some soft locks where puzzles wouldn’t load correctly forcing me to in the best-case scenario close the game reboot it and, in the worst-case scenario restart the game from the beginning.

The ambient noise did not seem to be affected by the performance issue and when combined with the working music they made for the perfect chill-out session of gaming as you click away at the environment and solve puzzles.

City Legends: Trapped in Mirror Collector’s Edition is a game from over a decade ago in the modern age. If you enjoy playing these games and would like to play them again then City Legends: Trapped in Mirror Collector’s Edition is certainly one I would not recommend. However, if Domini Games can fix the various issues, City Legends: Trapped in Mirror Collector’s Edition would become an average game rather than a below-average game. If what I have said doesn’t interest you or you were hoping the genre had evolved, you will likely find it boring.

Written by: Ashley Barnett-Cosgrove