What the prequel "Chronicles of Mystery: Scorpio Ritual" should have been like
Story:
The biggest flaw of the first game was its hugely lack of background story and twists you couldnt help but feel it lacked some sort of connection with the environments and characters. In Tree of Life theres a huge improvement to its predecessor, the general length of cut scenes in the beginning offer some interest in the story unlike the very short one from Scorpio Ritual and the feel of you character getting dragged into the story and plot is executed better. The characters you meet have gotten a huge improvement in their personality, they actually have some interesting things to say and have a unique style compared to the flat characters from the 1st game. One of the first thing you will notice in a lot of conversations is that the game actually zooms into a closer view of the characters talking while in Scorpio Ritual it was done in the same background as you met them in. The game has better and more cutscenes than "CoM: SR" but sadly the ending cutscene is not one of them, it is very short and unsatisfying like in the first game aswell, but they way there is definitely more deep than Scorpio Ritual (SR). The game seems to have some sort of huge plothole though, already from the starting cutscene a character you meet with a hood and shiny green eyes suddenly is very lackign for the rest of the story, this didnt make sense to me at all.
Gameplay:
Tree of Life (ToL) in general is a more lengthy game than SR and will most likely offer around 15 hours of gameplay, theres way more dialogue now than before but never to the point where it gets exaggerated and it doesnt throw a bunch of documents with 15 pages to read around you either like in SR.
The menu/inventory system is the same as in SR and is very easy to use, the amount of items to carry around is rarely above 10 items which makes it less confusing and you can generally easily find those few items that make it logical to combine early on so you have less choices when stuck.
There is sadly some new flaws to the game that has slipped through with all the new content though. First of all some of the dialogues doesnt make sense to use midway through in some occassions when having more than 2-3 types to select from if you dont do them in order, there can be a midway question you might do that ends with the dialogue where they say "bye" or "thanks for the help" liek they had finished talking while you actually afterwards have 2-3 questiosn more to ask. It does detract a bit of the realism and makes it feel somewhat like they havent tested it thoroughly.
Another thing that is a combination of the above mentioned flaw is that you can sometimes find items where she will use a dialogue to describe a thing she wants to use it for which doesnt make sense to you, atleat not till you have encountered and puzzle/item obstruction. It can be something like "this herb can useful to burn" while you still dont know why you would burn it, again a simple error that could have been fixed through gametesting. by the way most of the time are pretty random things that doesnt make sense yet to
pickup in the game like in SR so its definitely oldschool.
The biggest flaws though in ToL has to be some very annoying and scripted areas, there can be times where you feel stuck but the only thing you had to do is actually talking to someone you had been talking about all before to trigger an event which can be as simple as to get an item youve seen before but couldnt pickup in the sceneray, probably the most annoying aspect overall in the game. 2-3 times i actually couldnt combine an item because i had to trigegr an dialogue/event, for example a gas can with a gas canister, really simple errors.
The non-item puzzles are more heavy than in SR with a increasing difficulty but never very interesting and lacks a bit of logic at times or help for the player
Graphics:
The visuals a slightly better than SR, most thanks to more interesting environments and varioation in landscape, the closeup of characters talking does quickly show some pretty outdated visuals though and thse arent being helped by the very loopy movements of the characters in these closeups. Overall its slightly betetr than SR but not much, especially compared to some other newer adventure games.
Sound:
This is an area thats been quite improved, it was rather dull and uninspiring in SR but feels more orchestrated and lively now but never really anything that will excite you in tense areas or cutscenes.
The voices are somewhat better, all characters have a distinctive style that makes you actually interested in what person they might be but theres also some that feels pretty off compared to the rest of the cast, for example the parrot in SR was one of the more annoying and its dialogues felt kinda more human than animal. There are 2-3 characters, especially the 2 masked characters you meet early on with very poor voiceovers.
Replay Value:
The game doesnt like most adventure games have much to offer, but it does have more dialogue and a diary at the top of the menu with the save/load settings you can read throughout the story that is slightly lengthy, i personally skipped this though as it like the first game you rarely notice or use the top menu than when you have to save/load or quit the game.
Overall & Conclusion
Tree of Life is in general a decent offering in the adventure genre if you can find it cheap and overall is leaps beyond Scorpio Ritual when it comes to content/story and error fixing. Albeit some new errors appear its not something thats hampers the gameplay to the unplayable throughout the 12+ hours of gameplay. Scorpio Ritual seemed very unfinished but Tree of Life seems more like it hasnt been thoroughly tested before its launch. The story never hooks you as much as Longest Journey or some of the better games out there but its decent while it lasts
Graphics: 6/10
Sound: 6/10
Gameplay: 7/10
Replay Value: 2/10