Mahjong Mysteries: Ancient Athena

Genre: Card Game / Puzzle

Players: 1

.

Review:

Mahjong Mysteries is a version of solitaire Mahjong released on PC in 2012 and ported to Nintendo 3DS in 2013. This game inexplicably ties the Mahjong gameplay to an archaeological race to solve a modern mystery about the Ancient Greek god Athena. For the record, Mahjong tiles come from 19th Century China, and solitaire Mahjong is a modern creation designed for computerized videogames… neither of these have anything to do with Ancient Greece or Athena.

The presentation here is good, using 3D tiles against a backdrop that looks like a rug or mat with the white bust of a Greek character on it, with this visual backed by relaxed music that fits the game well.

Unfortunately, it is the presentation that is one of this game’s biggest problems. Start with a non-traditional tile set where it’s not always easy to distinguish one tile from another (with other tile sets needing to be unlocked to use them), add an apparent lack of a zoom function, and then just to make things worse, make the game’s camera default to an angle where you won’t be able to see the tiles in the back. You can move the camera using the circle pad, but for some bizarre reason the game wants to make this difficult so it will slowly tilt the camera back to its default position the moment you release the circle pad.

As if this wasn’t enough, the game’s control scheme is bizarre. Tiles are shown on the top screen, and to select the tiles to match them, players use the touchscreen to move a cursor on the top screen. You don’t select by tapping, either – rather, you release the touch screen to select whatever is under the cursor at the time. This means that if you need to scroll the cursor multiple times, you need to be sure to release it when there’s nothing underneath it.

I swear, I have to shake my head at some of the design choices this game makes.

It’s a shame that so much of what this game does is such a terrible mess, because there’s a pretty healthy selection of game modes and options here, with different ways to play solitaire mahjong ranging from timed games to games where the tiles randomly shuffle on you, to games where the faces disappear after selecting them. There’s some good creativity going on here, but it’s disappointing it had to be in a game that is otherwise so terrible.

I wish I could tell you that the good qualities of Mahjong Mysteries: Ancient Athena outweigh the bad, but that simply isn’t the case here. All of the great game modes and options hardly matters if you have trouble seeing the tiles, have trouble controlling the camera, and have trouble selecting the tiles you’re matching. And with so many Mahjong games available to play on Nintendo 3DS, I cannot in good conscience recommend this one.

tl;dr – Mahjong Mysteries is a version of solitaire Mahjong that’s inexplicably tied to a story about archaeologists racing to solve a mystery about the Greek goddess Athena. While the odd theming is inexplicable, this game has worse issues, with camera problems, control issues, and a tile set that’s not the easiest to parse. It’s a shame too, because there are a good selection of game modes here, but if you can’t even see and control the game properly without a lot of frustration, what’s the point?

Grade: D+

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