The Last Express

Navigate the all-famous Orient Express in real time while solving the mysterious murder of your friend Tyler. The clock is always ticking; passengers have their own background and schedules, events can take place without you being present, multiple endings... GOOD: A highly replayable, immersive experience with dynamic events in real-time, charming art-style, and multiple sub-plots that intertwine to the overarching narrative. BAD: As expected with 1990s point & click adventures, pixel hunting and obscure progress road-blocks/solutions can be frustratingly common and stall your progress without intuitive ways to solve them. Keeping a guide is a must to experience this classic without wasting your time.

Sophisticated story, interesting chatacters, voice acting is better than I expected. The German and British guys were *chef's kiss* archetypes. The rotoscoped characters, imitating the art style of the time period, is an amazing design decision. It's easy to picture this as an FMV game, but it's better this way. The game runs in real-time (at 6x speed) which is immersive amd adds tension, but sometimes you have no choice but to sit and wait for events to happen. You can rewind, but not fast-forward, which is frustrating when you hit a failure point and have to wait for events again. I removed a star for that, plus some frustrating moments and puzzles that are to be expected from a 90s point-and-click adventure. This is probably my least favorite genre of video game to play, but there's a lot to appreciate and enjoy even for folks like me.

First things first - this game aged extremely well. Graphics scaled to FullHD looks as good as it should be for a 2D drawn animation. There is an interesting timeline based save system - to load, you just rewind the clock to the point you need in the past. And... even though you have to do this often, it is not as irritating as it could be. Regarding immersion - you travel in a train with the other people. They walk around, talk between themselves, read newspapers (you can read them too!). And they talk in different languages, some of which your character understands - you (usually) get subtitles for French, German and Russian, though sometimes I wouldn't mind seeing subtitles for English as well. As for Turkish and Serbian - sorry, I guess our American player character doesn't know them. Not a big deal, though perhaps listening to what do harem ladies chat about could be interesting. However... one hardly can be everywhere all the time, so it is likely to miss some of the conversations (don't worry, the important ones are difficult to miss). Also, you can't initiate a conversation with anyone anytime - but that's easily explained by politeness. You only can start talking when you really have something to say, not just chat randomly about the weather. So it looks like a pretty reasonable limitation. There are only a few puzzles, so most of the action is about walking around, listening, reading, watching and talking, trying to understand what's going on. Sometimes sneaking, stealing and hiding. Even some boxing and crowbar fencing!

This game has been my favorite for years, and have played it more times than I can count. My favorite parts of this game? Everything. The music is great as are the voice actors. The graphics never seem dated even after 13+ years. The story is perfect for an avid murder mystery fan like me. The characters seem so alive, each with his or her own agenda (did I sound like an advertisement?) Just an awesome game, a classic among classics. 5 stars to GOG.com for making it playable on newer PCs.

Jump on it! I'll never forget this game! I played it years ago when it was much more than $2.99. What a rich atmosphere! Based on the real Orient Express, the artwork is phenomenal and the music fantastic. A serious drama, with just 1 or 2 fight scenes that made it a bit challenging for me, but well worth it. Travel back in time amd take a ride on the Orient Express.