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In Hollywood, the ghosts of the past never sleep! Embark on your next adventure into the past with Estrella Drive, the sixth expansion for T.I.M.E Stories. Like all T.I.M.E Stories adventures, you and your fellow players are members of the T.I.M.E Agency, sent to investigate a disruption to the Time Stream. This time, you and your fellow agents are sent to 1982 to investigate a temporal anomaly in a supposedly haunted Hollywood mansion.
Please note that Estrella Drive is recommended for mature audiences as certain themes within this adventure may be objectionable to younger players.
bigmac33070
I soloed through the new T.I.M.E. Stories scenario in 4 runs on Saturday 12/24. Here are my thoughts all spoilered away: First of all, good thing they added the Mature Audiences tag. Graphic Violence and swearing all over the place. This mission seems completely based off of the whole Charles Manson crime in which his gang murdered actress Sharon Tate and others. You atart in 1982 and explore the mansion where the crimes happened in 1969. Once you activate a séance, you go back to 1969 right before the murders start. The jump from 1982 to 1969 was really cool. You essentially are playing 2 games. You pick new vessels, have a new Plan, everything. You see younger versions if characters from the 1982 mansion. Neat stuff. However, the scenario is not without problems. One, there is absolutely no puzzles to be solved anywhere. Unless you count how to visit the fewest Locations as a puzzle. I don't. It's all about the combat (or how to avoid the combat) and the theme. So, if you like your TS with puzzles, stay away from this one. Also, there is no moving along the overall story arc that T.I.M.E Stories has been pushing through the first scenarios. No getting a cool box to hold onto, no QR codes to scan and read extra material. This is really a very standalone set. Lastly, and I am feeling this way for the game in general, is that the whole Groundhog day thing is getting a little tiresome. Spending 20-30 minutes of real time to find out that what you just did was a dead end sort of sucks. Yes, you know for the next run, but it still sucks. This module has many of those dead end moments. Be prepared. So, sort of wishy-washy on this one. I liked the theming a lot as it is really well written. But overall, this would be my least favorite of the scenarios by a wide margin.
Arkeas
This is by far the weakest modules in the series and continues the proud tradition of bad translations and lack of proof-reading that T.I.M.E Stories modules have experienced since day 1. This contains such literary gems as "got got" and "light spills forth dimming the darkness". By the time we entered the third location, we had already run into nearly a dozen of these issues and you continue to see several mistakes per location throughout the entire course of the game. The whole thing is incredibly jarring as a native English speaker and really pulls you out of the experience as we're constantly having to go back and re-read sections of a sentence as it feels like we've somehow skipped a line but did not actually do so. Seriously guys, hire a damn proof reader whose first language is English; they'll catch stupid mistakes like this! And surprise, Bob is angry when you fail the scenario for the first time because he did not give you enough TU. This schtick has been exhausting since the third module; either give us more TU at the start to avoid "costly re-insertions" that you keep bitching about or find another team who can do it in the unreasonable amount of time. Having to read through his whining and re-do the first section of each scenario every single time sucks a lot of enjoyment out of the modules. The "mature" setting is simply there because they seemingly want to tantalize people into buying it and I guess keeping their sales going when in reality, the setting is a joke and a poorly realized, thinly veiled retelling of the Charles Manson murders. It honestly would have been better as anything else that was half-decently written instead of trying to write this setting as poorly as they did. There is nothing of interest gameplay wise and they simply introduce time sinks for the sake of artificially extending the game to keep their Groundhog Day effect going which has become incredibly old and tiring at this point. This is the 7th module - give us something new and exciting instead of dragging up the same old things time and time again. And this time there are literally zero puzzles which is a big step down from "1 crappy puzzle" we've gotten used to seeing in previous modules. This completely killed off any remaining enjoyment we had for T.I.M.E Stories; we sold off our copy and won't be wasting any more money on this series.
charlest
Full review: https://www.miniaturemarket.com/reviewcorner/time-stories-estrella-drive-expansion-review/