very nice game. beautiful graphics and story. Great map to use. I ve enjoyed collecting coins a lot. Mini puzzles much easier than in other similar games (although I had to skip few of them - I did not know how to restart mini game). I played it in one session since it was very pleasant time to play...

CPU 3 GHZ refers to if you have Pentium 4 processor minimum to run this game and we're talking the non essential instructions. Many computer today can run these games due to the multi threading capability of their processors making the requirements misleading.... I was able to run this on a very low level Celeron Processor running at 1.1 ghz and 2gb OF ram. This was a 2018 Lenovo Netbook.

Well, I really like this game! Usually, I just try a game out to make sure the download & install went okay, but I've been playing it for 2 hour ! There are plenty of things to do. Finding the coins is an extra challenge. And the hint system really is useful - not all hints in games do a good job of that! And I love the map as well.

The game is interesting, and the game map with a possibility of instant passing between locations is an excellent bonus. Unfortunately, the need to find well-hidden coins, which are necessary for the further passage of the game, soon bothers.

As another bonus, during installation I’ve got the game in Russian localization. Unfortunately, mini-games have no explanation what to do and most of them have to be skipped. I do not know if this is a feature of Russian localization only.

gosh, i would never have remembered playing this if i hadn't kept notes. i played it when it was offered last time. here's what i wrote.

take care,
tinyearl

Legacy Tales: Mercy of the Gallows

[star ratings on scale of 1-5:]
fun 5
visual/sound 4
challenge 5
storyline 5
overall 5

I enjoyed the game. The visuals are rich and almost photorealistic. The portraits of William and Isabelle are jarringly cartoonish by comparison.

The music was peaceful and beautiful, though the operatic vocals frequently became too much for me. I admired the lifelike artwork and was interested to learn at the end that the buildings are real sites in the Netherlands.

The level of challenge was good. I got stuck a few times but figured everything out eventually.

The storyline was poignant, even though I predicted early on how it would pan out.

I recommend this game!

(System info: Win7 Pro 64-bit, 32GB RAM, i7-6700HQ, GTX 970M, 1920 x 1080 resolution)

I got a 'failed to connect - try again later'. From past experience it will work eventually. I just have to remember to try later in the day.
~Annie

This was originally given away on the 26th August 2017 HERE, where it received a 97% positive thumbs up from 34 votes with 30 comments.

Legacy Tales: Mercy of the Gallows

In Brief

An adventure Hidden Object game with excellent graphics

Introduction:

Strange things happen in and around the dark castle at the Dutch coast. Find out how William van der Decken, famous for his battles against pirates, and his lovely wife Isabelle vanished. What happened to her and why was the captain found dead, dressed as a pirate? Follow the trail of clues to solve this untold story in Legacy Tales: Mercy of the Gallows. Meet the ghost of a sad, young woman who needs your help and start this pirate adventure! Go inside the castle, find your way to the mighty battleship, the Batavia, and unravel the mystery!

Reference accessed HERE. 27th June 2020

The Game:

Review 1:

Legacy Tales: Mercy of the Gallows sees players trying to solve the long-held mystery surrounding Captain William van der Decken, a famous military man that worked to free the world from pirates, until he was found dead on the Dutch coast in full pirate regalia, including a hook for a hand. His wife Isabelle had vanished some time prior, increasing the mystery. Unfortunately, the story is pretty sparse after the introduction, as we’re only given brief glimpses into the lives of the van der Deckens via short journal entries or paintings scattered about the family’s abandoned castle.

Over time, the game slows down more and more. It lacks traditional cut-scenes, but the narration during dialogue sequences (including a few interactions with ghosts) is excellent. These are few and far in between, however, and you’re simply left to progress by wandering around an abandoned seaside village, and searching through the castle. Hidden object scenes are lacking at the beginning of the game, but increase in frequency and in difficulty over time.

These hidden object scenes are mostly those that ask you to find items on text lists, with a few offering further interactivity in the form of doors or containers that must be opened or moved before finding a key item. There’s also a brief inclusion of silhouette hunts, which challenge players to find items based on shadows, rather than names. It’s a shame that there aren’t more of these kinds of scenes, as the text scenes are artificially inflated for length by asking players to find multiples of a specific object (seven feathers or five horseshoes, as examples).

Outside of hidden object scenes, there’s a great map system that allows for fast travel, as well as providing players with a constant inventory of locations that still contain a task to complete. Coins add another element to the game, with coins being found in bulk in most locations. These too are marked on the map, as coins are perhaps the most important item in the entire game.

While the game initially presents coins as though they might be a voluntary collection system, it’s actually mandatory that players collect them in order to unlock treasure chests throughout the game. These chests contain key items that you must retrieve before moving further on, so it’s unfortunate that many coins are so hard to find.

Legacy Tales: Mercy of the Gallows is an instantly striking hidden object puzzle game that has everything it takes to pull players in. Great voice acting in the initial cut-scenes speaks of a lifelong romance that actually wasn’t: as the wife of a noble captain vanishes, and the captain is found dead on the coast of the ocean. While the game starts off with a bang, it quickly fizzles into a slow moving and ultimately disappointing experience.

While Legacy Tales: Mercy of the Gallows comes with two difficulty options, even the easier of the two comes with a slowly filling hint recharge meter and lack of a permanent in-game cursor. This prevents you from seeing when you’re hovering over a key item, so you can walk all around a building never finding the item that’s been right in front of you the entire time.

Puzzles are handled well in Legacy Tales, even though the majority are those we’ve seen time and time again (jigsaw puzzles, tile rotation/swapping puzzles, and so on). The graphics throughout are especially good here, as the closer an object is to the player, the more detail it has been given. Some legitimately look lifelike, but that sort of appreciation quickly diminishes when you’re left with slow object animations and lagging transitions.

If there’s one word to describe Legacy Tales: Mercy of the Gallows, it’s “slow.” From the slowly recharging hint and skip meters and the unnecessarily lengthy hidden object scenes, to the slow unraveling of the game’s story and secrets, this is one experience that had a ton of potential and did a lot of things right (the map and fast travel system, as examples), but has even more flaws.

Edited reference accessed HERE. Originally posted by Brandy Shaul on 16th May 2013 . Re-posted by Whiterabbit-uk 25th Aug 2017 and again 27th June 2020.

Review 2:

The very first thing I noticed when playing Legacy Tales: Mercy of the Gallows was the soothing, realistic sound of waves gently lapping, as if I were standing on a windy dock. That and the background music do a great job of setting the perfect tone for this pirate adventure.

While the sound effects throughout the game are really great, I found myself wishing the narrator would speak a little faster. I found myself cutting him off and hitting "next" because I had already read the page and the narrator was only halfway through... come on already... I don't have all day!

The graphics in Legacy Tales: Mercy of the Gallows are strikingly detailed and beautiful. Unlike other games of the genre, however, the screens took awhile to load. I thought maybe it was my computer but changing the settings or restarting didn't seem to resolve these issues, so the slowness appears to be game-based.

The main characters, William van der Decken and his wife Isabelle, lived long ago and are the subject of local folklore. The sea captain and his wife lived in a fairy-tale-like castle located, of course, on a dock. This Captain was a crusader against pirates who wreaked havoc on the townspeople and their fishing boats. The Captain and his wife, were heroes and well loved by the people of the village. Isabelle, the Captain's wife, was always at his side. Legend has it that she slowly took ill, and was seen less and less by the townspeople, until one day, it seemed she disappeared. After her disappearance, the Captain suffered horribly and fell into a deep depression. Finally, he went off on a quest to find her himself and was never heard from again.

Years later, his rotting corpse was found washed up on a beach. He was dressed like a pirate and had a hook in place of his hand. Of course, nobody ever discovered what really happened to the Captain or if his identity was a sham. That is your job to find out! By the time you enter the scene, the castle and ship are in disarray and full of ghosts who are trying to tell you something. Who are you to believe?

If you like the paranormal and the morbid, you will enjoy this game. There are skeletons in cages where their original owners died of hunger and thirst, and rumor has it that Isabelle used to take pity on them and give them water to make their slow deaths more bearable.

The castle has been abandoned for generations, yet, when you, the first live person to enter the grounds since before living memory, look up, you see lights on in the upstairs windows. There are also moving pink and blue lights in many scenes that signal eerie activity, especially in the graveyard!

Legacy Tales: Mercy of the Gallows requires a keener eye than other hidden object games. In different scenes, you must collect gold coins in order to unlock places in the game. You cannot solve these unless you find the coins, and the developers did a good job of hiding them. Ready to be spooked by ghosts and uncover a watery mystery? Enter the castle, in Legacy Tales: Mercy of the Gallows... if you dare

Edited reference accessed HERE. Originally posted by Beth Taylor on 22nd May 2013. Re-posted by Whiterabbit-uk 25th Aug 2017 and again 27th June 2020.

Other Reviews and Videos of Legacy Tales: Mercy of the Gallows:

You can see community reviews of Legacy Tales: Mercy of the Gallows HERE and a walk-through HERE, and you can see some videos of game play (most are of the Collector’s Edition, but the basic game play is still appropriate) HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE and HERE. You can see a slide show of almost 80 images HERE. Some of which may contain spoilers

Conclusion:

Legacy Tales: Mercy of the Gallows is a nice looking hidden object game with excellent voice acting. The story line is rather lacking but the hidden object scenes should appeal to most HOG lovers; they’re not too challenging, nor overbearing. The map is a useful addition to the game, and the puzzles are original. Overall Legacy Tales: Mercy of the Gallows is a decent HOG worth a 7.5 out of 10 from me (I'm not a HOG lover, but have enjoyed playing this one).

Useful Information not related to today's game giveaway:

Don't forget to check out the giveaway forums. Delenn has posted the latest freebies. This weeks Epic Game giveaways are AER: Memories of Old and Stranger Things 3: The Game. Next week we get Conan Exiles (just the base game an excellent open world based on Robert E. Howard's novels and hue a puzzle adventure. Just pop over to the game discussion threads HERE and HERE for links to most of the free games.

There's also a couple of new additions to the Indie Gala developers freebies HERE and HERE (Snow White Solitaire Charmed Kingdom, Adam Wolfe (Complete Edition) and Spirit of Xanadu).

Finally, Steam have also added Injustice: Gods Among Us Ultimate Edition to their free list (temporary) which you'll find HERE. The legendary Steam Summer Sale started yesterday.

Please Stay Safe everyone