Where Angels Cry Review

Where Angels Cry is another puzzle-adventure game from Cateia Games, the same developers behind The Man with the Ivory Cane. In this great instalment, you play as a monk investigating a mysterious disappearance in a medieval monastery, isolated in the Alps.

As with previous instalments from Cateia Games, you can navigate Where Angels Cry entirely through the touchscreen, or by using the right analogue stick and ZR button. You can freely go between both these methods and I do recommend utilising both. There are three difficulty settings – Casual, Adventure and Expert – but the changes between each setting are relatively minor.

The mechanics are simple in that you point and click around the game’s various environments to find necessary items, talk to other characters and combine items in your inventory. There are also 21 well-hidden angel statues to find throughout the game, and particular achievements can be unlocked by accomplishing certain tasks, like completing a set number of mini games without skipping.

While the mechanics of Where Angels Cry may be easy enough to grasp, some items in the game are notoriously difficult to spot. It’s not always clear what objects can and can’t be picked up, so some areas may have you going in circles and fruitlessly tapping your screen hoping to come across something useful. This can frustrate, but fortunately, there’s a Hint feature to keep you from getting completely stuck. The Hint bar takes some time to recharge once you’ve used it, which is unusual, but keeps you from relying on it too much.

Your objectives and notes can be found together in the protagonist’s journal, helpfully written out to keep you from losing your thread. This is particularly useful if you play the game over several sittings.

Where Angels Cry has a brilliant atmosphere from the off. The beginning cut-scene, while stiffly animated, pulls you right into the action with no deliberating and is more than enough to draw you in. The world-building is quite exquisite, with snow-capped mountains, the looming monastery and sprawling chapel all working together to make the setting immersive and, best of all, entirely convincing.

This is helped, of course, by the high quality of the in-game graphics. The characters are a little wooden, but the backgrounds that make up the game are beautiful. Not only does Where Angels Cry look good, there’s a sense of creeping unease throughout that fits the narrative of a religious conspiracy. Uncovering the truth is a genuinely intriguing puzzle that will keep you hooked until the end, and with a man disappearing under mysterious circumstances, hidden crypts, and a statue apparently shedding tears of blood, the unease rarely lets up.

The ending of the game, however, feels somewhat rushed. After the tension and build-up to the major reveal at the end, you might find that it’s over quite suddenly with little of a climax at all. It’s a brilliant story until this point, but it will leave you feeling a little cold.

The music in Where Angels Cry is well done and fitting for the feel of the game, with good use of strings and choral backing. The voice-acting, on the whole, is decent enough, with most of the characters having fairly convincing Italian accents. However, some of the voice-acting really is questionable, with false accents that stick out like a sore thumb and some less-than-stellar delivery of lines.

A drawback of the game may be its puzzles. While half of them are completely doable but difficult enough to provide a sense of achievement, the other half is incredibly challenging. This may not be a problem for some players more adept at puzzles, but for those who struggle, you might skip more than a few. The Skip feature means you can skip as many mini games as you want, but it’s a shame that Where Angels Cry may feel inaccessible to some players on this front.

All in all, Where Angels Cry is an intriguing puzzle-adventure game wrapped up in a beautiful dark murder mystery. The religious themes are a point of interest and everything about the game, from the world-building to the puzzles, has been done with care. Games of similar genres have been done by Cateia Games before, like Twin Moons and Mystery of the Opera, so if you’re a fan of this particular developer or of puzzle-adventure games in general, you’ll enjoy Where Angels Cry. Simply put, this game is great, and certainly worth your time.

REVIEW CODE: A complimentary Nintendo Switch code was provided to Bonus Stage for this review. Please send all review code enquiries to press@4gn.co.uk.