The Longest Journey

I do not usually play adventure games nor do I usually write game reviews... but this game is definitely worth the effort. First of all, I did not play this game when it was initially released, so this is not a nostalgia review. Long story short: buy this game and you will like it. If you hesitate for some reason, just wait until it is on sale and get it for almost free. Just do not let the graphics fool you. This game is not about bland, “realistic” 3D models like most modern games are, it is about the journey. And the journey is indeed long and interesting. The story line is an outstanding, unique mix of Sci-Fi, Cyberpunk and Fantasy genres. Every NPC in this game is unique and memorable, every dialogue has a sound and the voice actors did a great job. And the humor is great and used when it is relevant. Every puzzle is doable and logical. They vary in difficulty of course but even difficult ones are doable. The one about “the eye” (if you know, you know) took me a long time, but still it was doable and logical too. It is one of those good old games that will take you about 20 hours to complete (not quite long according to the “modern” standards) but the content of this game is so unique and there are so many different events in it that you will feel way more attached to this game and its characters than you do in most bland, modern games that take you 200 hours to complete. The only problem that I had with this port, was a couple of random crashes after cut-scenes. But reloading the game and skipping a scene, resolved this issue. Everything else worked flawlessly.

Playedwhen originally came out but never finished. Enjoying second time through

I really like adventure games and kinda felt like I had missed something, by not buying this when it came out. After all people had been giving 5 star reviews. It does NOT deserve them. For starters, the main character is annoying as all get out. She is given all this obnoxious cliche-ridden dialogue that we are supposed to find ironic smile at but it just makes me want to gag her. I prefer logical mechanical-type puzzles, Myst-type code breaking, riddles, and in modern games, physical puzzles to pixel hunting and inventory puzzles. Here the "puzzles", are pretty much exclusively of the latter two types and particularly objectionable because while the plot is serious the actual solutions make far less sense in the real world than even the puzzles of a Discworld game -- which at least had puns to fall back on to explain them. And finally the plot is delivered through exceptionally verbose dialogue trees that seem unending in their delivery of pointless and repetitive information. I'm sure the journey would be much shorter if not for all the detours and flat tires, but as it was I turned for home before the end of it. Go play GOG's three free RPG's instead. Beneath a Steel Sky, Lure of the Temptress, are both solid four star adventures (BSS maybe even a five I'd have to play it again to be sure). And Dragonsphere while rather too easy is worth playing for the well integrated plot.

Unless you have played this title back in the day and are in love with the series I'm finding it very hard recommending it to anyone who would like to start with it now. It hasn't aged well both visually and gameplay wise and I quite frankly find the voice acting a bit difficult to stomach. I will say that it is better than most point & click adventures out there, though that isn't a big accomplishment seeing as the majority of those titles are terrible anyway. When compared to point & click titles Lucas Arts has brought out over the last 25 years The Longest Journey is just not that good, plain and simple. Sure the story might be compelling placed in an interestingly realised setting but when it all moves along at such a slow pace with average dialogues i personally get bored very quickly. Having heavily outdated graphics doesn't help with it either and in the end just make me lose all interest and actually make me want to reinstall the 3rd Monkey Island again. Now that is a timeless point & click adventure. Thanks to it's cartoon look it still holds up very well till this day while also having great voice acting and being genuinely funny. They even remade the first 2 titles in the franchise because they were outdated and that instantly blew new life in to them ready to be enjoyed by the current generation. So perhaps that is something that should be done with The Longest Journey as well. The story is there, the characters are there, you just need to give it new life because as it is i cannot recommend it to anyone else than it's fans. Sorry fans.

I'm glad I finally finished this game. It's as good as everyone says it is. Well written and most of the voice acting was great. Reading the reviews, you love it or hate it. There seems to be no in between with this game, but most of us clearly love it. I've noticed that most people who don't like it seem to have passed judgement too soon. You've gotta get to the meat of the story before much of it makes sense, which is pretty typical for story telling of any kind. Too many people seem to have quit early and gave a bad review because of their own impatience. The rest seem to have completely skipped the story because they seem confused about things. That's also their own fault. You don't have to like the game, but if you don't give it a chance or don't pay attention to it while playing, then your opinion is invalid, I'm sorry to say. The story is a slow burn for the first third of the game. Once it gets going, though, it doesn't stop and sucks you in. But you have to read/listen to everything to understand it. Yes, there are two or three extremely obtuse puzzles in this game, a couple of them are infamous and make it into Top 10 lists all the time. Unfortunately, they all appear in the first hour or two, but they can all be figured out by doing the old Point-and-Click Adventure Game Shuffle. That is, rubbing items together until something happens. Every other puzzle in the game can be figured out pretty easily. Just remember that you can look at items and April will talk about them. These bits of dialog contain most of the information you need to solve things. Yes, the graphics are woefully outdated and it's a turn off to a lot of people, myself included. Over the years there have been a few options ranging from reShade to add anti-aliasing, dgVoodoo to add supersampling. These worked pretty well, but now there's a full HD mod that you can download that used AI neural networks to clean up models, textures, and even the FMV cutscenes. I recommend Googling for it.