Good visuals and a unique story are dragged down by a few boringly hard "puzzles" and strenuous item searches.
What Nikopol offers is a very unique story that combines various elements - from Egyptian mythology, to androids, to French settings - in a sci-fi adventure that grows on you. The immersion is much more than you would expect from a point-and-click, so you won't forget the game any time soon (and, despite the many flaws that would make me personally throw down a game in a fit of rage, I played right on through them in this one). The character is a little dull, and the voice-acting (though usually good) is borderline cheesy at some points, but the story is fairly simple to follow but complex enough to enjoy.
Being primarily a puzzle game, Nikopol does offer the catharsis of an "Aha!" moment after many minutes of searching for the next step in a puzzle. But sometimes, this moment will either not come even after ten to twenty minutes of searching - for just one advancement in the puzzle even - or will not be satisfying because you may feel the need to resort to a guide just to keep yourself from a massive headache. This is mostly the result of two problems. First of all, you expect a puzzle to have some common sense, but this isn't always the case with Nikopol. You may find yourself, for some reason, limited to only a few hammer strikes to clear away a breaking wall, and completely fail if you miss one brick. Or you may wonder why you can't intentionally trigger an alarm and run away, rather than trigger it and stand there looking dumb for ten seconds only to be shot by a responding guard. Too many of the puzzles in the game have only one solution, even though in real life there could be a various amount of solutions to the problem.
Secondly, you may find yourself scrutinizing over each pixel of your screen just to find what item you are missing. While I don't want to be handed the answers to everything and only have to decide how to apply them, I would like the more significant items to be more significant on the visual field. But overall, I only had to resort to the guide about three or four times (each time for very minor steps), so I don't consider it prohibitively hard.
Clocking in at about 5 hours (potentially much more or less depending on how long it takes you to complete the puzzles), Nikopol gives you a decent amount of gameplay for your money, but don't expect any replay value at all. You may as well uninstall the game once it is complete, as a lack of any DLC or extras means the game is done for good unless you contract a case of amnesia. If you like action-oriented games that challenge your skill rather than your mind, don't bother with this game. But, if you are a fan of unique, immersive settings and stories and innovative (if sometimes cruel) puzzles, definitely consider this game.