Gabriel Knight 2: The Beast Within

If you are familiar with old school PC adventure games than you should play this game. It is the best of the FMV games that were popular in the mid 90s. It has an epic and mysterious story, and great game design. It is atmospheric and drew me in every time. I played it for the first time in 2000 and after 19 years I played it again in 2019. Can you believe that in 2019 I enjoyed it even more than I did when I played it in 2000? This game is a classic. For a game released in 1995 to still be so engrossing and enjoyable 24 years later is a a testament of greatness. I take my hat off to Jane Jesen and everybody involved in making this game. They should be proud of it.

After finishing it, I count The Beast Within among my favorite adventure games. That's an impressive turnaround for a game I almost abandoned at the outset. The Beast Within did not have the advantage of nostalgia with me, as I've only played Gabriel Knight games in recent years. Additionally, I am generally skeptical of FMV games. Even after enjoying Sins of the Fathers, I almost passed this one by when I realized it had abandoned the hand-drawn art of that first game for video. What a mistake that would have been! I now count The Beast Within among my favorite adventure games. I was in fact put off by the FMV at first: while the budget is no doubt impressive for games of the era, its limits do sometimes show, and the acting has both high and low points. A slow-to-start story was doing it no favors either. On the basis of the first game and good reviews of this one, I pushed forward. The story soon gathers momentum if you give it a chance. Wonder of wonders, somewhere along the way I realized my friction with the FMV was gone. The video helps to deliver a moody, atmospheric tale that I now can't imagine being as good without live actors. Get past the sometimes-awkward introductory parts of the game, and I think you'll find yourself pulled in too, so long as this sort of horror/mystery is up your alley. After all this praise, I do have to hold out the warning that The Beast Within suffers some of the same issues many point-and-click adventures do. Puzzles largely have one single solution, and you better be up to the task of figuring it out or at least stumbling into it. Unless you enjoy a head-scratcher or two, you may want a hint now and then. Overall, I heartily recommend Beast Within to any adventure player - especially those who either love FMV, or are FMV-skeptical but open to being proved wrong.

I just finished playing this. Just wow. I was around during the peak of the CD-ROM FMV craze. I have fond memories of such games, but this game is something else. The acting is great for an FMV game from the 90s. The plot is another great mystery for the series, with some tense moments. How I managed to not play this until 2025 I will never know! Only small negatives I can point at the game are: - Low resolution photo-relaistic backgrounds can make pixel hunting for interactive objects hard sometimes. - Game relies on particular sequences happening in order and you can get stuck and not know why because you failed to click somewhere. The above are nitpicks though. This game is amazing. Highly recommended.

I just couldn't get over FMV. There is substance to this game but gameplay was very limited. These sequences grounded me in reality, actors were laughable and underlined shallow characters, even the main protagonists acted like a part of some soap opera. Were they directed to do that? It truly was an interactive movie and not a particularly good one. Despite using 6 CDs it seemed like there are only things which are absolutely necessary to advance the story and even then they didn't have time to do it properly. Jokes were falling flat and when I did laugh it was not intended by the game. It took my focus from what's good in this game to everything bad and ugly. It is nice that they introduced Grace as playable character which was an influencing move. It was fully fleshed out in the sequel where these characters existed in the same space and I enjoyed different commentaries on various objects.

Probably the greatest FMV game ever