Gabriel Knight 2: The Beast Within

I haven't played this game since it came out, which was went I was about 12. I did not pick up on it then, but there is a bunch of totally bromantic sequences in this. Very amusing. Even though the video style can get tedious, this is still a very creative and fun game to play.

Keine Deutsche Sprach-Datei.

after gabriel knight i preyed for the second game and there it is. I love it and thanks to you gog guys!

All hail gog.com for doing this for us gamers, Gabriel Knight 2 is one of the best games in the genra and if you havent playerd or bought this yet you have to be insane.... :)

It’s impossible for me not to strongly recommend this game. The Beast Within helped define and refine my taste for games in general. It’s production value, especially for the time, shaped my love for Sierra and the 90s Era of FMVs. Solely for its historical value it’s a 5 Star, it’s a classic. Buy it, play it at least once, even if it is to hate it. I cannot stress this point enough: this game deserves your personal take on it, regardless of the verdict. Stop reading now, everything else is just my very subjective take on it. Unfortunately, 25 years later, I cannot give it more than a 3 as a final score. Every time I go back to this game, I remember all the things FMV did wrong, destroying its prospects for the future. The overall cheesiness of some motifs present in the plot (that weird couple in the tavern… Ugh!), the bad acting (sorry folks, everything else is rose-tinted glasses of those good ol’times imho), weird character motivations (Grace’s feelings for Gabriel in this game manifest in such a way as to be described as ‘silly’ by a 12 year old girl). There’s a particularly painful scene to watch after all these years (talking in terms of acting here), where Gabriel and another main character are interacting with a blonde bombshell: juvenile even for a teenager who strongly supports Flat Earth Theory. The cringe factor… Oh, the humanity! The plot also didn’t age well for me. It doesn’t feel contrived or even poorly written, it’s not that. It’s just rushed at some crucial points (major sin in my book). Exposition is done very poorly in my opinion, in overly large chunks with uninteresting spaces in-between. The premise for the final chapter and the finale itself felt rushed too (oh so common in so many games, even to this day). In the end, maybe I’m projecting and not being fair. Maybe it’s a bit of superficial elitism in the face of getting older. Maybe both. Nevertheless, it left a bittersweet taste in the mouth, leaning towards sour milk.