It’s a tale as old as any other: A girl returns home to her lover and family after going away on an adventure, only to discover that dark forces have torn them apart. Cynthia: Hidden in the Moonshadow takes this concept and does nothing unique with it.
Cynthia, developed by Catthia Games, is an adventure game which follows Cynthia as she attempts to save her village and boyfriend from an evil cult. The game starts as we encounter Cynthia on a boat, returning home after exploring the world to study adventure related skills. These studies are seemingly irrelevent to the gameplay with the only thing you retain from them being the ability to use a bow and arrows.
Cynthia is excited to return home to see her beloved, Hector, and her family after being away for so long. Despite this, and despite the game urging you to hurry at the start, she spends an entire chapter, after realising that her family village is under siege, attempting to help an injured bird. Once Cynthia finally gets to the village, and discovers the damage that has been done, she is given a piece of the moon amulet by her uncle, and told by a vision of the moon goddess that she must find the second piece. The game does not tell you exactly why you are looking for this amulet and, for the longest time, I thought we were just going to be giving it to the main villain in return for our family members, as he requested.
One of the main issues I had with Cynthia was the shakiness around the plot and why you are doing the actions you are. There is very little explanation, no way of checking what your current objective is and very little to guide you forwards on what is, objectively, a very linear story. It felt like the story expected me to know these things already. Cynthia may know what the moon amulet does – I, however, do not.
There are five distinct chapters in Cynthia, each one marked by a series of collectable notes found throughout the game and changing backdrops. I did like the settings that each chapter was based in. They were unique enough, for the most part, that it was clear that I had moved on in the story, and yet familiar enough it made sense for them to all exist in the same universe.
Graphically, however, Cynthia was lacking. At some points I thought the game was quite pretty, especially with the backdrops. However at others there was clearly a lack of attention to detail. Walking through the coridors in the cave felt a bit like walking through a spooky jumpscare mansion. Similarly, the design of the people other than Cynthia is incredibly weak and the final scene, at which point you confront the evil Isidor, looked as though I was playing a low resolution PlayStation 1 game. This felt especially strange for a game that seems to pride itself on looking pretty. There is a photo mode which can be accessed from the pause menu if you wish to take any pictures of the scenery.
As far as gameplay goes, there are four main elements: stealth, puzzles, collectables, and crafting. Cynthia is, at its core, a stealth game. Despite having a bow, you are unable to use it for combat reasons (until suddenly you can in the final confrontation) and shooting a priest of the north will just draw their attention to you. Instead you need to use the long grass, obstacles, and distractions to hide from view. This got old so quickly. There are four methods of avoiding detection and they are used over and over again. There is very little problem-solving necessary to figure out how to avoid the priests of the north. You either shoot a cart to distract them, shoot a hanging bag to land on their heads, hide in the long grass or ask your bird to fly at them to distract them. In the very final chapter you unlock arrows which can be used to distract two guards at once but there is only really one or two occasions where this is needed.
There are a number of puzzles in Cynthia which I did enjoy. However, again, there is an issue of them being repetitive: shoot a box down to find an item, step on some tiles to open a door, or flick some levers to move bridge pieces. While they came in vaguely different forms throughout the game, they were very much the same puzzles. The biggest issue I had with the puzzle elements of Cynthia is that you are not told at any point how the puzzles work and, in some instances, it comes down largely to trial and error. That said, some puzzles were quite engaging, such as the ‘from left to right’ puzzle, and I did think this was one of the stronger elements of the game.
One of my favourite aspects of Cynthia were the collectables scattered throughout. There are three types of collectable: notes, costume chests and Moonshadow blessings. These encourage you to explore the map, look down passageways and uncover the story as you go, though none of them are necessary to progression as far as I could tell.
There is a crafting element to Cynthia but it is very limited. You can craft three types of arrows throughout the game, but for the majority of it you will only have access to the first type of arrow. The crafting is extremely simple but, to be honest, it works in the context of the game. You need to collect five different ingredients throughout your adventure and simply use a campfire to craft. You hold down the relevant number to the arrow you are crafting and they appear in your inventory.
On that note, Cynthia has some issues with the archery aspect that need to be addressed. While shooting, you need to hold down a button to prepare the arrow before you can aim. This is fairly standard in games with archery and I wouldn’t mind it at all if it worked. It was incredibly frustrating to need to make a quick shot and have the arrow just stop preparing, meaning I would have to start aiming all over again. It really took a lot of the fun out of it as I would have to attempt to shoot three or four times before it would work.
The final gripe I have with Cynthia is the voice acting: it’s not good. For the most part it’s over acted, sometimes it’s downright bad. You can mute the voice acting in settings but looking for people who are more natural when speaking would have benefitted this game a lot.
Ultimately, I didn’t hate playing Cynthia: Hidden in the Moonshadow, but I will never decide to play it again. It felt repetitive, dull and overdone. If you want to play something with a sense of adventure, pick up a Zelda game or even something like Death’s Door. While Cynthia: Hidden in the Moonshadow had promise, it definitely did not deliver.
Megan played Cynthia: Hidden in the Moonshadow on PC with her own copy.
