Love Story 3: The Way Home

Love Story: The Way Home
by Media Arts - June, 2013

Series:  Love Story 1: Letters from the Past, Love Story 2: The Beach Cottage, Love Story 3: The Way Home

Available at:
Big Fish for PC



Katherine couldn’t wait to grow up. For seventeen years she’s been passed from orphanage to orphanage, yearning for the day when she can leave to discover her true home. With six months until her eighteenth birthday, she’s sure this orphanage is going to be the worst. But she’s about to discover that love always finds you just when you aren’t looking for it. Live her life story in this heartwarming hidden object puzzle adventure!

• Strategy Guide
  
• Walkthrough (Big Fish)
  

Click images to enlarge

Simple, Basic & Short
  

BASED ON DEMO

There really isn’t much in this for most of us. Unless you are a fan of the PREVIOUS games in this series. (I’m not, I thought they were overly simple too). Those who are can look forward to a game that has not improved in any way much from the last one.

NONE of the now-expected technical improvements, such as WIDESCREEN, VOICEOVERS, INTERACTIVE MAP, not even a JOURNAL. The GRAPHICS are OKAY though not anywhere near the QUALITY I expect from a game. Colours are BOLD and CLEAR, but somehow CARTOONY, and no real DETAIL. The MUSIC is repetitive.

The STORY is SIMPLISTIC. Meet cute boy at latest orphanage that you have been sent to. Frankly, I thought this love affair was presented in a totally juvenile fashion that sounded exactly like me when I was about 14!

The GAMEPLAY itself is also very PRIMITIVE. We have (above average admittedly) INTERACTIVE HOS, with occasional MATCHING PAIRS. Due to the simple graphics, items are not hard to find. PUZZLES are all FAMILIAR and NOT CHALLENGING even for me.

HINT is quick and VERY GOOD outside HOS. It actually says things like: “There is something interesting in the garden.” SKIP felt like it took forever, but that’s probably just my impatience to be done.

There are diary pages to COLLECT, both for him and her. They give a bit more DEPTH to the STORY, but are NEITHER COLLECTIBLES or necessary to the game progress.

Lastly, it was very slow. Nothing much actually happened, there was TOO MUCH READING, and pace of the story had no momentum.

From the WALKTHROUGH, I judge this game to be EXCESSIVELY SHORT. There are only 5 Chapters, and I had almost finished the 2nd one when I ran out of time – and I was eating my dinner and distracted at the time.

This is a definite NO BUY for me, and I’d hesitate to recommend it to anyone other than fans of the series, who may be willing to forgive the lack of progress this developer has made since the last instalment, but as it has no DRASTIC NEGATIVES, I give it 3 stars.

I Don't Recommend This Game!