The Bookwalker: Thief of Tales Review (PlayStation 5)

by Jim Smale · June 27, 2023

For our The Bookwalker: Thief of Tales Review, we experience a narrative adventure in which we play as Etienne Quist, a writer-turned-thief with the ability to dive into books. We use our powers to journey between reality and book worlds and steal legendary items like Thor’s Hammer and Excalibur to restore your ability to write.

The Bookwalker: Thief of Tales Review Pros:

Decent graphics.
2.14GB download size.
Platinum trophy.
You get the PlayStation 4 and the PlayStation 5 versions of the game.
Look sensitivity slider.
First-person view.
Adventure gameplay.
Clear big icons on Interactive parts of the environment.
Multiple choice questions and encounters.
You go into a book in order to get something or do a particular task.
When in the book world it turns into a 3rd person adventure game with a point-and-click feel to it.
The interactions in the book world are comical and full of multiple choices.
You can Warp between the real world and the book world in order to progress the task or story.
Fast loading times.
Pop-up text when you hover over the environment and in the menus.
The presentation and writing are very much like a choose-your-own-adventure book complete with highly descriptive encounters and choices.
Turn-based combat.
Collect materials and craft items at the workbenches.
You have an overall narrator-type character that can be contacted for help at any time.
Ink is like a currency as you need it to play actions within combat, you have a move at all times that drains ink from enemies.
Multiple ways to approach a problem or interaction.
The rooms/locations you enter can be zoomed in and out with a button press.
Puzzles throughout.
The game plays out a lot like an old Lucasart game whereby you are getting an item so you can make or get a different t item that is then used here to do that and do this.

The Bookwalker: Thief of Tales Review Cons:

A cold open where you literally open up in a corridor, no real explanation.
Cannot rebind controls.
You cannot even see the controls.
Slight performance hitches as you move around.
The writing and color of the text make it hard to read in certain lighting.
The movement is not as smooth as it could be.
Random game crashes.
Never sure when it was saved.
Offers no tutorials.
Interactions in terms of moving things around is horrible and clunky to control.
The direction of progression is not always clear.