What a pity Keepsake's beautiful graphics and sophisticated puzzles are marred by an incoherent story.
Keepsake has a very distinct puzzle collection with large number, high density of appearance and wide variety of types and difficulties. The most common puzzles are to repair, operate many kinds of machines (rotate the cogwheels, control the pivot ect). Besides, there are ones concerning chess games, magical door ect... Most of them are so innovative that players will feel as if it is the first time they encounter these puzzles. If at first it takes only few minutes to figure out the answer, later game will increase the difficulty level so that the time of pondering over a chess board, for instance, can be half an hour. However, don't worry too much about that since Keepsake has an internal mechanism to help overcome too tough puzzles: each of them has three hints, from cursory to detailed! In case these hints are not enough, there is an option to skip that part by having the machine to do all the details. After that, we will receive the information as if we solved the quest ourselves. Keepsake also provides us with a "tourist guide" tool to point out the location of each objectives in the play scene. Up to now, you may think this game is like a piece of cake! Don't be so hasty.
The game may suggest how and where to solve the puzzle, but even then you still have to find your way towards that right location. With the grandiose architecture of the academy, it is the real challege of this game. The academy consists of two main part: one on the ground and the other hanging in the space. 2/3 of your time will be spent on the ground. Only after passing three challenging tests can you advance to the space level. However, whichever part you are playing, it will take a huge amount of time to reach the right destination to solve a quest. One reason is the maze-like structure of the whole building which contains a large number of hidden paths and accumulating roads in all directions. Another is the annoying default camera angle which somehow makes it extremely hard to find out the access for some paths. Lydia also has a companion, another student in this institute, but he always metamorphoses himself into some kind of animals, hence, feels more like a pet than a friends. His role in the whole story is also insipid, most of the time he just follows you and provides several hints when encountering a new puzzle. There is one strange thing for a puzzle game in Keepsake: the developers has totally rejected the item combining type of puzzle. Moreover, it only provides one save slot so you have to be very careful before overwriting the old file. There are also automatic check points in some room which activates once you solve the puzzles there, but this mechanism seems useless because the story is so vague that you can hardly remember what you have already done in which location.
The strongest point of the game is its splendid graphics, which raise the feeling of a mysterious yet magnificent castle. Dragonvale possesses an impeccable architecture, which consists of two totally different parts: The first floor is more like an ancient castle with sophisticated design in its interior; the second looks occult like a wizard laboratory with experiment tools and many magical doorways. Furthermore, we will have a chance to contemplate miraculous scenes such as the growth of strange plants into a fanciful bridge. Unfortunately, sound part does not match the graphics. If the lack of background track makes players feel lonely throughout the game, the horrible voice play is an insult to beautiful character models.
Keepsake is an good looking game but suffers too many internal problems. Hopefully one day, we will have a more indepth sequels of this game.