Posted on: September 18, 2020
evilsensei
Verified ownerGames: 240 Reviews: 19
It was a muggy summer day of 1993...
The first Gabriel Knight game is really worthy of the label 'classic' because it's so well written and executed. The setting is also pretty unique, since it revolves around voodoo in New Orleans. The characters are great, voice acting is great and it really draws you into the story. Not to mention the adorable pixellated art, and the opening theme will be haunting me in my head for weeks. Gameplay-wise, it has a good balance of active gameplay vs. storytelling, just enough not to feel like you're just passively watching a movie, even though most of the clues come from interviews with people rather than objects you pick up. I liked the fact you always had 'global topics' available to ask everyone, even if they weren't relevant but all the characters had at least one response to every topic. It really added a feeling of authenticity to the game when you had to figure out how to ask the 'right question'. Most of the other puzzles are quite logical, though you can easily miss important details, and sometimes things that seem just 'background noise' are actually important for advancing the story. Fortunately you can never get completely stuck because you have to complete certain tasks to end each day, so it can't happen that you find out on day 7 that on day 2 you forgot to do something important and now you gotta redo the whole game. You can get away without obtaining certain clues, but only those that are not vital in solving the task at hand. However, saving often is useful because you can actually die on multiple occasions throughout the game. Overall, definitely a title worth playing at least once.
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