The Bible Retold: Following a Star

I am wary of religious-themed games. They tend to either be cloying and simplistic, or offensively extremist. This, fortunately, was neither: in fact, I found it to be massive amounts of fun.

So, apparently I am Balthasar, one of the Three Wise Men off to pay homage to the newly born King of the Jews. My companions Melchior and Gaspar are nicely characterised -- Gaspar moreso than Melchior, in my opinion, but perhaps it is only his brashness that makes him more memorable. Also, I am apparently the guy who has to do all the dirty work. Well, fair enough, I am the protagonist after all.

The middle part, the mission to obtain the three gifts, made up the bulk of the game. I found this pleasantly open-ended without being aimless. The objects of my quest were always in view; but the true reward here, I found, was in the seeking out of sidequests and accomplishing them. I think I have yet to find them all, in fact. My one quibble here is with the puzzle surrounding the acquisition of the myrrh: it seemed to me rather *cough* beneath me as a Wise and undoubtedly Moral Man of the East.

The only real bug I found was that Gaspar is still referred to as being astride his camel when we see him in the inn.

It seems, from the events that occur in Jerusalem, that we are supposed to have accidentally(?) set fire to the provision store in the city wherein we started, but this seems rather difficult to do without actually flat-out saying "burn the house down" or something of the sort. Certainly, I could never bring myself to do the obvious action. Yet here the storekeeper reappears to harangue us, and as far as I know, we'd never done a thing to him; in fact, the first time around, I'd not set foot into his store at all, and had no idea who he was. Similarly, one of the characters who joins in the final chase scene seems to have a very different idea as to how we'd obtained our Myrrh.)

Oh yes, the chase scenes. It's all a madcap, hilarious romp, and I almost wonder if our Three Wise Men might not better answer to "Larry, Curly and Moe".

And there were sandwiches. Mm, sandwiches.

Eggs Benedict with lox in place of ham, a plate of fresh figs and dates, and strong Turkish coffee.