Your knowledge of Wolfgang Amadeia Mozart is exhausted by the words “Salieri” and “Requiem”, and the word “Lacrimose” is associated exclusively with the German Gothic-Metal group? Never heard the “little night serenade”, the famous piano mozart's sonatas or symphony No. 40 Sol Minor? Maybe you don't know what sonata and salt minor are at all? In this case, you have a great chance to make up for some gaps in a musical education – using the game Mozart: The Last Secret. The French from Gameco Studios They invite everyone to try on the Camisole of the great composer, personally participate in the creation of his great works and give several autographs to enthusiastic fans who politely ask to sign “Here, immediately after Haydn”.
Mozart and Masons
However, the central theme of the plot of this game is by no means music (although it is here everywhere), but a difficult relationship between Mozart with Masons. In 1784, the composer joined this secret society, after which he often wrote music by order of free masons. So, the famous opera “Magic Flute” was crammed with the corresponding symbols, during its first performance in Vienna, some famous Masons played on stage, and the libretto of this work was dedicated to Ignatsu von Born, the Masonic Lodge Master of the Masonic Lodge.
Some, however, believe that Mozart in this opera, on the contrary, ridiculed and betrayed the Masonic rituals to unnecessary publicity, and the Masons poisoned the composer in revenge. In December 1791, a couple of months after the premiere of the Magic Flute, Mozart went to bed, and soon his body was swollen, covered with a rash, a few days later he died. There are, of course, other versions of his death – for example, the renal infection or the envy of Antonio Salieri, a less successful composer, who allegedly poisoned Mozart.
But the authors adhere to the version with the "Masonic trace". They unobtrusively draw parallels between the death of the composer and the no less mysterious death of his patron, emperor of the Holy Roman Empire Joseph II. Based on the hypotheses of historians and their own speculations, they created a confusing and rather fascinating story, which was falling apart and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, poor and poor health of the Austrian composer who contacted dangerous people.
Mozart: The Last Secret should not be perceived too seriously: fiction here is no less than historical truth. The game looks, however, very convincing – largely thanks to precisely recreated historical scenery. The action takes place in Prague, where Mozart often visited and where his “marriage of Figaro” and “Don Zhuan” went successfully. Chic outfits, the proprietary Gothic beauty of Prague, the elegant and rich interiors of the Royal Palace and the famous Prague Opera, comments in the spirit of “such a composer have not succeeded in such a counterpoint” … The audience is scattered in front of our hero in compliments, praising his works, and the musician, meanwhile, experiences Serious financial difficulties: the game begins with the fact that the composer mired in debt is simply not released from the hotel room. This is quite true – after the death of Joseph II, Mozart even had to flee from creditors to forced tours.
In some places, the authors, on the contrary, gave too much freedom of their own imagination. So, within one evening, the composer manages to witness the murder through a mechanical scarab, to visit prison, and then-in captivity of a kind of gypsy (for some reason she walks around in the village), who plays Mozart’s life with a Bohemian nationalist (!). Such things, of course, cut their eyes, but we recommend simply not paying attention to them: in most cases, the authors still managed to do without obvious vulgarities and bends, so the plot is intriguing most of the time, and not annoying.
Mozart code
The main instrument in the player’s hands, which helps to touch the Masonic secrets, is the “Book of Heavenly Harmonic”, compiled for Mozart, his comrade Joseph Haydn.
It is a score and notes with the works of Mozart, in which some Masonic postulates are encrypted. At the same time, the cryptographic key is the music itself. The decryption takes place in two stages: first we perform a certain melody, waving a conductor's wand in an arcade mini-Iver.
Then, depending on successes, the game invites us to remove 10, 7 or 5 letters in chaotic pile of text and isolate one tied phrase from it. For example, "The number is three sacred".
You can try to draw again so that there are less extra letters.
The power of music
As for gameplay, Mozart: The Last Secret is a completely classic quest with a serious musical bias. There is a combination of objects in the inventory, and traditional puzzles about manipulations with locks, but about two-thirds of the game time are still devoted to playing music. Literally every five minutes, Mozart sets up tools, writes and rewrites the scores, plays himself and conducts. In addition, to open some code locks, you will need to exactly repeat the heard melody.
The authors were cunning when a year ago they assured us that the player would not need special musical knowledge. Only conducting is arranged as an arcade mini-game, where you need to accurately and quickly lead the mouse to the beat of the given movements. In all other things, without knowledge of musical notation and at least a minimum (or better – absolute) hearing we are doomed to act at random. Of course, you can go through the game, but you will have to suffer pretty. Say, there is a puzzle here in which you need to place in about a few dozen confused notes-you need to be able to distinguish from the lane from La Bemol, otherwise the puzzle will turn into an extreme simulator for the development of visual memory. And all because it was not necessary to skip solfeggio in childhood!
Classical music in the game works wonders: it helps Mozart to decipher Masonic texts (see. More details are our insert), she heals the monarch and makes the ill -wishers conspiracy – listening to how the composer plays the violin, the sensed guard simply releases him! Finally, before the music performed by Wolfgang Amadeus, even secret doors graze: they open under the influence of enchanting sounds. It looks, of course, quite ridiculous, but the authors can be understood-after all, they made a game about Mozart and sought to add to it the maximum of his ingenious music. Unfortunately, these conventions have to stumble quite often.
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But I really really want to leave all these small flaws out of brackets. Mozart: The Last Secret is a real aesthetic pleasure, a triumph of good taste and style. And music is really a lot of it here, and there is no need to describe its magnificence once again. In every second location there is a piano or harpsichord, you can put Mozart for it – and your room will be filled with magic sounds … The parents will breathe a sigh of relief behind the wall, otherwise all Guitar Hero Yes Slipknot.
P.S. Although the review was written on the basis of the Russified version of the game, we cannot evaluate the translation yet – at the time of delivery of the Mozart number: The Last Secret was still at the localization stage and technical errors skipped in Russian texts.
Rehibition – no
Cool plot – no
Originality – yes
Easy to master – no
Evidence of expectations: 75%
Gameplay: 7
Graphics: 8
Sound and music: 10
Interface and management: 7
Waited? A quest about Mozart as a chance to find out and love classical music. The game turned out not without flaws: somewhere the scriptwriters were weaker than artists and designers. https://sister-site.org/eclipse-casino/ But the music turned out to be stronger than all.
Mania rating: 7.5
"Fine"