2/5 ★ – Dima064's review of Asterix & Obelix XXL 3 - The Crystal Menhir.

Completed as of writing this review: Base Game I... don't know what to tell about this... Let's point out the obvious, this is not the true XXL3. The name is only done for marketing, like with Sonic 4 for example. However when the former was initially planned to be different game but was named due to publisher's greed, this one was fully prepared to be "The XXL3". XXL2 remaster before this is the main evidence, they knew what they were going for from the start. But enough with all the talk about the name. If we don't pay attention to that, is this a good game otherwise? It's not. Unfortunately this is a very generic game. I bought it only because of just the prize on sale alone, because why not with a discount that high? And with that, yeah. This is worth the money I paid for. The stages are generic, the story is generic, the pacing tries too hard to be somewhat interesting but fails, the combat doesn't even feel satisfying, just a button mash after button mash with energy running out all the time, the Co-Op is buggy, the exploration is lackluster, the dialogues are presented in a lame way, the optimization SUCKS for a game like this... This is a cheap game, a very cheap game. And that's a shame, because you would think that after the remaster of XXL2 they could've gotten some idea what works and what doesn't but no. Complete waste of time. I guess as a little child I'd like this game but the fans of this franchise are grown adults and rarely teenagers even. So I don't even know who this was made for! As for good things, well, the art-style looks nice and the puzzles in the 4th chapter were somewhat interesting but that's IT! Worst of all, the developers didn't even listen to the backlash, as we see that the next game by them is all the same. Maybe I'm out of touch because top-down games are not my thing really but I honestly tried to look at this with an open mind. But in the end, me and my friend were bored, exhausted and, no joke, tell each other "this is the game of all time". So this is my takeaway from this. Don't bother and play XXL remasters instead, or the true XXL3, which is "Asterix at the Olympic Games". Good luck on finding a copy though.