Nikopol is based on Enki Bilals graphical novels known as the Nikopol Trilogy. In this game though, you don't play as the main character of the books, but as his son, so you get an entirely new story, which was done under supervision of Bilal himself.

First thing to note is, that the game has great graphics. Pre-rendered settings are detailed and beautifully made as are the characters, which have been made loyally to Bilal's artwork. Also the audio works well, albeit the graphics are the strong point of the game.

In the end Nikopol is a bit lacking as a adventure game: the puzzles are rather easy and the game isn't very long. You can run it through in about 5 or so hours, maybe even faster, so it's a tad hard to say it's worth the full prize tag. But the plot is interesting, so, if you are interested in adventure games, then Nikopol might work for you as a tasty little snack.

There are two things I really liked about Nikopol: it was unabashedly weird and it inspired me to hunt down the books (whether or not they're any good will remain to be seen). The game takes place in a very strange alternate history France where a religious dictator prophet has... y'know, I'm not going to bother. It's strange, and as someone that likes strange, this was almost too much. Not because of the weirdness, but because very little attempt was made at all to flesh out the ideas (I'm hoping the books do that).

This is a first-person point-and-click adventure game, I guess like the more modern Myst games in that you can mouse-look in any direction but movement is restricted to certain areas that you click on (I'm just assuming that thing about Myst, I have no idea). The game doesn't run in widescreen, though it does support widescreen resolutions; the graphics are actually quite impressive on highest setting and it ran fine on my modest gaming system.

The gameplay is pretty standard: click on things, pick them up, solve puzzles, etc. Unfortunately there is very limited interaction with the environment and some of the puzzles come down to pixel hunting (including my least favorite example ever, the "random stone in the background that can be picked up," that one gets me every time). Some of the puzzles were pretty cool, but a lot of them (especially a couple annoying logic puzzles) are just annoying. There's also a couple timed puzzles and plenty of instances where you can die and be restarted at a checkpoint, which I never like.

So you're getting into it, you probably grabbed a walkthrough after one of the harder puzzles, you're about to accomplish your first real big goal and... that's it, it's over. I figured it was going to do this (the walkthrough seemed a little short), but the game is reeeeeally short if you know what to do. Like, maybe 3 or 4 hours. And nothing is resolved.

For the 5 dollars I paid for it, I'm satisfied, and I'm going to check out the books it was based on in the hopes that the very interesting and surreal world is explained a little better. A fun diversion with a walkthrough or a painful challenge without.

Pros:

Nikopol had about 4-6 hours of fun game play while with a few basic puzzles. the Environments look pretty good and it is easy to see them as real and in deep detail.

Cons:

The game is a point and click type with a minimal ability to attach objects or actually try different things. Pretty much you will just go to each scene and use every object you have and click on everything around you. The game has a few main puzzles but they were kind of challenging for the average person not because they were hard but because they were not really made for casual players. There is barely any actual interaction with the environment if it is not involved in the puzzles so it is kind of hard to get interested in it.