YMMV / The Mystery of the Druids

• Alternative Character Interpretation: After he escapes his brainwashed state, some players concluded that Halligan retains some knowledge of Druid magic. Some of his inexplicable answers to the puzzles could only work by using both it and some adventure game logic. Otherwise, he nearly killed Melanie on a complete crapshoot of a plan relying on a solely "word of honour" promise with Serstan for seemingly no reason.
• Aluminum Christmas Trees: Many would assume that Halligan is destroying his would-be parachute and call it fake when he manages to successfully float with it later. But plenty of parachutes do indeed have a hole (called Apex Hole) in them to keep the parachute from swaying violently.
• Cliché Storm: Halligan's interactions with his boss come right out of Da Chief playbook, complete with exasperated yelling, cigar smoking, and off-screen visits from the mayor.
• Complete Monster:
  • Druid Serstan is the tyrannical leader of the Druids. Having murdered his family and household, Serstan, knowing that the era of the Druids of Britain was coming to an end, sought out a spell to grant his five children Druid powers to carry out his scheme of Druid control over the Earth, burning his entire Druid brethren to complete the ritual. After Detective Brent Halligan and Melanie Turner arrive in his time period, Serstan has Druid Maglor killed for helping take him down, and threatens Melanie with death should Halligan not give him the items required for the ritual.
  • Lord Sinclair, one of Serstan's five sons, is the leader of the Circle who seeks to carry out Serstan's plan to take over the world. Having been granted the power of the Druids, Sinclair partook in ritualistic cannibalism to make himself immortal and stronger, having done so for centuries. When Halligan arrives at his mansion, Sinclair has him captured to be later used as a sacrifice, brainwashing him into joining the Circle after he escapes, and later kills Mr. Blake for assisting Halligan and Melanie.
• Crosses the Line Twice: Detective Brent Halligan is what happens when an adventure game protagonist that has to solve a Moon Logic Puzzle almost every other ten minutes is an unapologetic Jerkass that will do anything to solve a mystery. This ended up being one of the favourite takeaways next to Lowry because of how hilariously obscene Halligan can be as a result, with the drugging of the beggar and his stabbing Melanie without warning to be particular highlights.
• Designated Hero: Detective Halligan's heroic actions include poisoning a homeless man to steal his change to use a pay phone, stealing a fisherman's expensive rod to obtain ordinary salt, and stabbing Melanie in the stomach in a nonsensical plan to defeat the villain. Despite the game calling him out on these actions at times, none of that does anything story wise, and he never changes or develops as a result, making it stand out more blatantly.
• Epileptic Trees: Later on, Melanie reveals that she has an ex-husband who would constantly appear in front of her house or at the museum to scream at her drunkenly. While she then states he got re-married and became the director of the Anthropological Society, Retsupurae speculates that he might've been the unnamed drunk in front of the museum at the beginning of the game.
• Esoteric Happy Ending: Sure, the day is saved with Sinclair/Serstan and his druidic order stopped for good, as well as Halligan and Melanie having their Big Damn Kiss. But Halligan would inevitably be fired from Scotland Yard in shame, especially after refusing to return the case file, and he has no physical proof whatsoever about anything nor would anyone believe him on the truth of the Skeleton Murders. This isn't even considering Arthur Blake's house blowing up with Halligan and Melanie standing outside it in plain view before running off. Considering he's so poor he had to mug a beggar for payphone change and only has his detective role to his name, Halligan's basically one evening away from losing everything, and Scotland Yard has nothing to go on for officially putting a close to the case. That is assuming that the events of the game weren't erased from existence.
• Everyone Is Jesus in Purgatory: Maybe it's giving the game too much credit given its more than questionable quality, but to an average player Halligan comes off as a downright crazy and sociopathic bastard that somehow gets the job done. To various players and viewers alike, however, some have considered the idea that he's a Deconstruction of the average adventure game protagonist, willing to do anything and everything to solve the case regardless of ethical boundaries and logic to the point that numerous insane puzzles he solves are not the solution, but his solution. This also would explain the whole eating human flesh at Sinclair's order thing if he wasn't already brainwashed; he was just... doing adventure game protagonist stupidity.
• Fan Nickname: Due to the way certain characters mangle the pronunciation of "druids", the game itself is commonly playfully referred to as "The Mystery of the Droods" by the fandom.
• Fridge Brilliance: It's a game about Celtic mythology, and at the end, Halligan tricks the Big Bad into making a vow he ultimately can't keep, causing his death. While not a perfect fit, this basically amounts to a geas.
• Fridge Horror: The game has an Artistic License – Chemistry scenario when Halligan gets knocked out by a medical substance as a test of proof, and then uses it to knock out the beggar. The substance? Medical ethanol. As said on the main page, the stuff tends to contain methanol and mere milliliters of it can blind or even kill a man. Not only did Halligan potentially do permanent damage to a random beggar on the streets just to rob him for a few quarters, he more than likely suffered some of those effects himself — and his severe spree of sociopathic assholery really begins after the testing incident.
• Funny Moments:
  • In an intentionally funny moment, when Halligan and Melanie wake up back in time, they notice a pair of men running towards them, complete with P.O.V. Cam.
    Halligan: Don't panic, let's find out what they want!
    (Cut to black as he gets punched in the face.)
  • A few conversations with Lowry reveal that he and Janet have started going out, and Halligan (implied to have previously dated her) can prod him about their current relationship status. Given how one exchange reveals that Lowry took her out to a Schwarzenegger film, it seems neither of them will get very far.
    Halligan: You know how to handle women, don't you?
    Lowry: Of course! Janet did actually say that she didn't like the film, but I know for a fact that she was very keen on it.
  • Following the puzzle to find Lord Sinclair's address, you have to head to a photocopier to copy your file to drop off at Melanie's museum. Once a copy has been made, selecting the photocopier again will prompt Halligan to photocopy his own face on the glass.
• Memetic Badass: Who else but Lowry can inexplicably hover in the air over his office desk and chair indefinitely? Those brought in by the Bile Fascination took this and ran with it.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • The infamous face on the game's bizarre cover is quite exploitable, with people inserting it in various images.
  • Within the viewer base of MandaloreGaming and Shammy due to a stream of the entire game, the character Steve Lowry became somewhat of a Memetic Badass thanks to an error with the pre-rendered background making it look like he's levitating above his office chair.
  • One going around for a long time before the game's re-release on GOG was that the mystery's secret is that there were no druids. This was so commonly said that it was effectively reported as fact. Now with it being easy to obtain, people know that the druids are central to the game's plot.
• Memetic Psychopath: Detective Halligan is a rare deserving example. Despite be the game's "hero", he steals from about everyone he meets, nearly kills at least two people (one of them being his own girlfriend), and even partakes in cannibalism at one point. Naturally, Halligan's misdeeds are what players remember him most for, to the point it is a running joke among players to keep a tally of how many crimes he commits.
• Narm: Just about all the game's attempts at being cinematic and suspenseful fall amazingly flat through very crude and unintentionally creepy-looking visuals with even flimsier writing.
  • When Halligan first meets Sinclair, the game plays a a sound akin to some kind of jump-scare, seemingly trying to indicate he isn't to be trusted. The sound effect makes the scene unintentionally funny though, because it already is clear Sinclair isn't trustworthy, and comes across as the game trying too hard to make the player feel scared.
  • The very bloody human sacrifice scene would be more frightening if the game didn't play literally the same scream over and over without variation.
  • The following dinner scene is also very odd in that while it's supposed to be a creepy, uncomfortable moment of Halligan being brainwashed into eating human flesh as indoctrination into The Circle, the scene's direction is way too casual and breezy to be disturbing. It also doesn't make very clear whether or not Halligan already begins the scene brainwashed, so him casually obliging with eating what he's being told is cursed human flesh is really jarringly surreal.
  • The scene where a brainwashed Halligan finds Melanie in the mansion, wordlessly walks up to her and... starts limply slapping her in the face. It doesn't even make a particularly loud sound! This one can probably be chalked up to the team lacking the experience and budget to sell a more forceful attack between two models given the tech at the time, as seen moments later when Melanie knocks him out of his stupor by lightly tapping him in the head with a nearby skull.
• Nightmare Fuel: There is one legitimately creepy moment, when Halligan sees for himself the gored human sacrifice actively having the flesh sickled off of his bones by Sinclair and his druids while the victim can't stop screaming at the top of his lungs. Of course, that last part and the poor CGI might end up becoming something of a Nightmare Retardant for some, but points for definitely trying.
• Padding: The library section is a pointless part of the game that drags out a simple objective of "grab a book for Blake". Unlike other sections of the game with one-off characters or problems, none of what happens in it impacts the rest of the game save the book, the issue feels artificial and forced because the librarian and the man at the computer are unreasonably asshole-ish to Halligan for no reason, and the logic for the puzzles feels forced and unnecessary, such as Halligan insisting that it would be impossible to find the book by simply checking the reference card, or having to frame the man at the PC just to use it. It could be cut and nothing would change except needing to find a way of finding Blake's book, which itself doesn't feel super important to the plot either.
• Romantic Plot Tumor: The romance between Halligan and Melanie is forced, to put it lightly. It rears its Narm-tastic head when as the two approach the Twelve Bridges, the game screeches to a halt with them standing outside to engage in a long and awkward Infodump about Melanie's personal history for very little reason. It reaches it's peak when Melanie's reaction to waking up from having been stabbed to the brink of death by Halligan is to give him a kiss.
• So Bad, It's Good: Confusing puzzles and lengthy padding aside, the game is fun to watch just to see how utterly bizarre and incompetent it gets by the end. The fact the game actually has some amount of logic to it adds to the quality of it because some would argue it isn't outright bad, it's just strange.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Lowry is given a big rivalry with Halligan early on, and with him previously investigating the case, the game seems to be setting him up as a potential rival character, antagonist, or even an ally later on. Instead, Lowry doesn't do anything more than just be annoyed at Halligan and never does anything significant despite the game having him set up in a way where he seems like he should be.
• Took the Bad Film Seriously: One noteworthy aspect of the game is that, aside from the word "pizza" often being mispronounced with a German accent, the game's English voice acting is consistently very professional and well-directed, in contrast to the extremely crude graphics. This is a major contributor to its So Bad, It's Good status, making the slow moments easier to stomach and the bizarre moments even more bizarre.
• Unintentionally Sympathetic: The homeless man outside of the library is treated as an annoyance who gets in the way of Halligan's investigation, and isn't taken seriously by Scotland-Yard when he reports Halligan's actions. Despite this, the fact Halligan gets away with basically almost killing him, and the man is still homeless by the game's end, makes him more sympathetic than likely was meant, especially when he never gets any kind of compensation from Halligan for his actions.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Halligan is railroaded to do some ethically questionable things in order to solve the puzzles throughout the game, but the puzzle where he really crosses a line happens to be the final one: stopping The Circle from completing their ritual, with the solution being to fatally stab Melanie, breaking Serstan's vow to ensure that "nothing will happen to either [Halligan] or Melanie afterwards", initiating a geas and causing the neo-druids to vanish out of existence. Halligan does manage to heal Melanie,^note Using a method he has never successfully attempted before, and does not know for certain will work. who forgives him very quickly, but many players were not happy by the fact that by all accounts, Melanie wasn't in on it — Halligan is never shown explaining the purpose of the promise he made with Serstan to her, implying that stabbing Melanie was part of his plan all along. It's also been noted that based on the phrasing of the promise, Halligan likely could have stabbed himself and gotten the same results, or if he was really worried it wouldn't count if it was self-inflicted, he could've volunteered to have Melanie stab him, but neither of these is never presented as any kind of option.

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