Recent reviews by Narayan

"Brothers - A Tale of Two Sons" is a journey through fable-like world that focuses on inducing variety of emotions. The environment is very scenic, often having you traveling high up and admiring beautiful landscapes. It's inhabited with trolls, giants, griffins and other mythical creatures. Everywhere you go there's always something nice to look at. The camera's position often emphasizes the best fragments of a scene. It's not photo-real, but definitely eye pleasing and charming.

You control both brothers at once - left hand for the older one, right hand for the younger. Many puzzles rely on syncing them well together. For me that was something new. Personally I had to keep them on the left&right sides of the screen in accordance with the control scheme. Whenever they switched positions due to my running around, my brain just went out of whack and chaos followed. I had to slow down and reposition them to be able to continue comfortably.

The puzzles themselves are fairly easy. Some variants are recycled throughout the game. There is no greater planning involved and you solve many as you go. There is also no backtracking, so even if you're not sure how to tackle a specific problem, in most cases solution would present itself after simply going a little further. I feel that puzzles are just meant to be a way of reinforcing the bond between brothers and making player more attached through gameplay. Most of them require both protagonists working at the same time or in a longer alternating sequence.

The reception of the story differs from person to person. Many people got their hopes up by other reviews/opinions and were disappointed. Others were ecstatic. For me the general experience is above average, that's for sure. Also the ending squeezed a tear out of me or two, so the narration trough gameplay mostly did it's job. But I didn't experience strong emotional response from the beginning to the end like some. Still I find the whole journey enjoyable and well worth my time.

The game is pretty linear. No choices to be made, no events that can be prevented or played out differently. Apart from the main task that the boys are focused on, you can interact with many objects or NPCs and observe separate animations for each brother. Those do not affect anything, but make the world feel more alive and characters more fleshed out. All the inhabitants communicate in a made up gibberish sounding language, so the gestures and body language are especially important.

The whole world might look like it's fable-like, but in reality it's quite harsh. Brutal and cruel at times even. Good things happen, then bad things happen. You save someone, someone will die as a direct result of helping you (or even a worse scenario). One has the impression that no good deed goes unpunished. Sometimes you won't be able to help - you'll just witness the effects of a tragedy that already took place. You meet both friendly NPCs, and mean or outright ill willed & hostile ones. Although there are very few moments in the whole game that actually pose any danger (story wise, not from manually letting go a ledge or other mechanics associated deaths).

Completing the game takes about 3-4 hours, even when interacting with every possible object/person. So it's quite short. There is no need to replay it, other than experiencing the exact same story again if you really were swept away by it. If you have a chance to grab it on a sale - I wouldn't hesitate, fully recommended. At full price, I would say it's not for everyone. Definitely for people that can appreciate the emotional content and enjoy the journey aspect without making fuss about easy difficulty, length or minor issues - basically, recommended for informed customers :)

Subjective Assessment - 7.5 (more than nice, not yet great)
[utilizing full 1-10 scale, where 5 means average]

Minimalistic design, engaging narration & enticing music. Breathes life into quadrangles to a point that makes many characters in "proper" games seem flat in comparison ;)
The game is simply brilliant!

Eerie mood, great atmosphere. Well done puzzles and gameplay. You will constantly feel the need to discover the very next corner of this seemingly hostile world and keep going :)