Dreamfall: The Longest Journey

This game tried to be many thins at one time and did nothing well. Adventure? Mostly strightforward or not really logical puzzles. Last third of the game is more like walking between cutscenes. RPG? Boring "collect that, to get this" quests to be done without any kind of a map. Dialogs lead to the same end, no matter what you choose to say. Action? Camera work and controls are rough in open areas, but in closed areas it is just minblowingly horrible!!!!! Getting stuck on obstacles less than a foot does not help here either. Other than that? Every attempt to set up pad ended up in hanging game. I can see only two pros of this game, it's graphics and the story. All in all I see it as an irritating sequel that wasted a great story.

I played Dreamfall in 2006 when it was released and had very fond memories of it. At that time, it was beautiful and one of the first 3D adventures where you could freely move around. Actually it impressed me so much back then, that I bought and played Longest Journey to learn more about April Ryan. However, that game was technically horrible even in 2006 though I still liked it, especially for April and Crow. So I happily pledged for Dreamfall Chapters on Kickstarter in 2013 and now that all chapters are released, I decided to replay Dreamfall before starting Chapters as I forgot most of the story's details. So now, after ten years, I played Dreamfall again and of course it looks a bit aged now. The environments and characters are all very low poly where some locations still look nice but the faces of most main characters are somewhat scary due to complete lack of detail. Also all of the locations are very small and you get a (short) loading screen every few meters. Worst of all is that the mouse look is completely screwed up. Even when fixing the inversion etc., you still can't look up and down which makes it impossible to fully inspect the scenery and which is totally annoying in a longer dungeon sequence. Game wise, Dreamfall is somewhere in the middle between an interactive movie and an actual adventure. There are some typical adventure puzzles but most of them are extremely obvious and straight forward. Some locks involve puzzle games but they are very simple. Also the few fight sequences are total crap. And there are a lot of scenes where you do nothing at all but running and talking. And yes, there is some stupid running around but as the maps are all very small, it's not that annoying. Well and there's one totally screwed up puzzle (musical runes) which is just bad design. Still, even without Dreamfall Chapters I think Dreamfall is worth experiencing though it's certainly not a perfect game. For every owner of Chapters, it's a must play anyway.

This game comes from a time in wich adventure games were trying to figure themselves out in the 3D era. I'll sum up the game in pros and cons. PROS - Great story, great characters, interesting and thought-provoking themes - Graphics are pretty good considering it's a game from 2006 - The acting is solid almost across the board - The soundtrack is really good CONS - The world is fleshed out, but without playing the previous installment I feel you could feel kinda lost sometimes when it comes to the lore, the terminology, etc. - It's more movie than game, there are really annoying bits in wich you basically have to run from one point to the other just to trigger a cutscene to advance the story, or fetch-questy equivalents - Puzzles are ridiculously easy to the point I have solved a couple before even realizing there were puzzles to solve. There's this one puzzle though, it's terrible: at one point you'll have to remember a tune, problem is you get no hint or anything that would make you think that tune is important and you can only hear it once during a cutscene. No musical memory? Maybe you were not paying attention to the music? You can't solve the puzzle. I've had to look up a walkthrough after wandering aimlessly for 40+ minutes. - The stealth sections range from annoyingly easy and tedious to one example of truly rage-quitting awfulness (I'm talking about the Troll's Cave, when you reach that bit look up a walkthrough or load a save game from later in the game, trust me) - Combat is super janky and unresponsive - The game ends on a bunch of cliffhangers. You'll get little to no resolution without playing Dreamfall Chapters. OVERALL It's boring, it's janky, it's tedious, it's not well designed in many spots, but for me the quality of the plot and the writing makes a playthrough worth it (if you don't want to watch the game on Youtube), especially for fans of the previous installment. If you're a "gameplay first" person, stay away from this game.

Also braindead puzzles. By its predecessor's standards it should be legally tagged as a "walking simulator". I've started off the series with this game, overall liked it (solid story and dialogs, above average voice acting), but didn't catch all the references to the previous game. After finishing The Longest Journey and replaying Dreamfall: TLJ, I found out that the game is reference-pandering an awful lot towards the fans of the characters and the world of the first game. Just a shame that they've utterly dumbed down the puzzle challenges, making it borderline interactive movie (on the other hand, the 90s standards for puzzle challenges wouldn't fly in 2000s, so I can understand decision to streamline the story-telling the developers were certainly interested in the most). What I can't understand and won't forgive is having no conclusion to the story whatsoever, leaving the audience with dreadfully blatant cliffhanger and entire premise in the state of perpetual mess (damn Valve and their bigger than life HL2 project for normalizing that trend among the games!) Still, the ride was interesting while it lasted, so if you're okay with cliffhangers and want to hear a good old world conspiracy story full of half-truths and mysteries - go for it.

This series The Longest Journey, Dreamfall:TLJ,& Dreamfall Chapters is genera definining! The story is transcendant. Released over many years, the 1st part is early in 3D playstyle but the story outshines any technical shortcomings from the era. The play becomes more polished with each of the 3 parts, choices matter and you deal with consequences as the story irresitably pulls you along. GET THIS