I know this post is months old, but... Are you freaking serious?! I'm only a couple of hours into the game and already the voice acting has me both facepalming and pissing myself laughing.

Well... There's always the possibility that memory did not, in fact, serve me right ;P. Note that this is the only time I prefix a statement with such doubt and that it doesn't take anything away from the rest of the review. On the other hand - I don't recall it being a deal-breaker, so it was, at the very least, decent enough for me not to recall it as a flaw.
Either way - this game was an amazing experience for me; I do hope you'll enjoy it, overall, as well ^^.

So far, it's fine enough that I'll probably finish it, but it really doesn't live up to the original. Hopefully things'll pick up once the story really gets going.

Dreamfall Chapters is under work right now ;)

As for Dreamfall, I will not comment on voice acting because it's only a technical detail in such a great game.

The major flaw is, for me, their attempt to integrate some gameplay elements borrowed from other genres (infiltration, action...). They should have focused on doing an adventure game and nothing else. Most of the time, this kind of experiment fails, for example the ridiculous FPS parts in The Nomal Soul.

But apart from that, wow, what a game!!! Settings are awesome, I loved the characters, the music is incredible!!! There are many extremely moving moments. When the game ended, I was left stunned by this experience.

Hesusio, you'll see, there is a very boring passage as regards playability. But if you find the courage to go pass it, your effort will be rewarded because the end of the game is dramatic.

I'm noticing that too. The stealth and combat is freaking horrible and has no business existing in this sort of game. Aside from that, I'm noticing there's really not enough gameplay at all. Normally you'll just be walking between conversations and the odd cut scene with very little in the way of puzzles and the like.
I'll admit, for the most part the narrative side of things is pretty good. I loved the conversation between Kian and April when they first met. Though on the topic of Kian, so far he's getting sweet fuck all screen time, which is quite a shame as I think his character is significantly more interesting than Zoe's.

That and the fact that the devs managed to avoid the whole shoehorned romance sub-plot shtick in the first game, only to succumb and put one in Dreamfall is just a tad disappointing.

I think 3D engines encourage devs to integrate action parts into adventure games.

You're right, there's not much to do. But I never felt playing an interactive movie, which I did with many other adventure games. The ratio action/dialogues is acceptable in Dreamfall. I remember TLJ1, dialogues were interminable. I ended up skipping them as some were exaggeratedly long.

As for the romance, it remains unobtrusive in Dreamfall, so it's not really a problem. On the contrary, it emphasizes the loneliness of the heroine.

When you finish the game, please leave your feedback about it. :)

It would've been fine if it were done well, but it just happened far too quickly to be believable and the scene itself was done rather poorly. Was that cheesy music when the subject of romance came up really necessary? It's supposed to be an adventure game, not a porno.

That said, I'll definitely post my full impressions once I've finished. I think I'm about halfway at the moment, should be done in a couple more days or so.

Right. I've finished Dreamfall, and now I feel the need to subject you lot to my general opinion (naturally, there will be spoilers).

Overall, I was quite disappointed by the whole affair. The story was a complete and utter mess, and the cliffhanger ending did it no favours in that regard. Zoe was just a clone of young April (young woman with no real direction in her life finds out she has special powers and has to save the world), April had some potential, but not developed enough and Kian was a main character in name only, considering how little screen time and development he got. Whenever the story tries to be emotive, it only succeeds in being hammy and pretentious (the overly sappy music during "sad" and "romantic" scenes, for example).

The stuff going on in both Stark and Arcadia is barely even hinted at being connected in any way (the only connection I can think of is the Azadi tower is supposed to be the Arcadian equivalent of Dreamcore, as evidenced by that cave underneath it that April somehow knows is called "the Cave of Dreams" and there's some entity that's controlling both), much less explained and properly resolved. It just makes Zoe's trips to Arcadia feel completely artificial and not at all something that would believably happen to this character. I know there's the whole Faith and her "save April Ryan" arc, but it really doesn't help the coherency of the story, seeing as all she ends up doing is watch April get stabbed from a distant platform, and is then declared successful. Are we supposed to assume that Zoe being in the same general area reactivated April's shifting abilities? But that wouldn't work, because we clearly saw her get run through and then fall into the swamp, so what exactly is achieved by Zoe just standing nearby while all this is going down? Again, standing on that platform and watching April get gutted was supposedly the whole purpose of Zoe's little excursions to Arcadia, and yet she did nothing to alter the course of events, so why exactly did Zoe ever need to go to Arcadia in the first place? Most would be forgiven for thinking that the April and Kian story arcs would've run their course just fine if Zoe had remained in Stark throughout the whole game.

The way the story is told is not exactly stellar either. Take Zoe's rescue from Friar's Keep by April. First off, we just hear April being told about it. Why could we at least see a cutscene of Zoe arriving in Arcadia and being subsequently hauled off to prison? The cardinal rule of any sort of writing is "don't say it, show it", no? Then there's the matter of April's motivation. Why would she be so willing to rescue Zoe in the first place? They met just once, very briefly. They're certainly not friends and barely even acquaintances. Oh, right, because "she's got nobody else to turn to" or something. Then what about everyone else in Friar's Keep? It's pretty well established that it's used only for political prisoners, so why is April only interested in rescuing Zoe?

Then of course, there's a few little discrepancies that annoyed me. Take the way clothes worked in The Longest Journey. April's outfit of the time was always as it was for some practical purpose. During the opening dream sequence, she was in her underwear. That's because she actually sleeps in her underwear. In Dreamfall, Zoe's in her underwear during the dream sequences, yet every single time, she went to sleep fully clothed. It's not just dream sequences that are guilty of this. In the Longest Journey, when April went to Arcadia, she actually had to go out of her way to acquire and put her Arcadia outfit. In Zoe's case, she's just wearing her Arcadia clothes as soon as she arrives. It's that sort of attention to detail that we got in The Longest Journey that's sadly missing from Dreamfall.

I do wonder though if perhaps the garbled ending is the result of financial troubles rather than just bad writing. The final scenes of the game feel quite rushed to say the least. I wonder if it's simply a case of running out of money before they could resolve everything?

Anyway, that's just a few examples of why this game was quite disappointing to me. I'm sure I could come up with more if I were inclined to put together a full review, but I figure this post is long enough as is. I must say, it's quite a shame that a franchise that started so strongly had to end on such an unflattering note (barring the unlikely event of Dreamfall Chapters ever seeing the light of day).

I don't think that Dreamfall Chapters is unlikely anymore. They have already gained government grant for production and plan to raise rest of the money with the Kickstarter. In any case Ragnar has stated in several recent interviews that Dreamfall Chapters is a direct sequel to Dreamfall and it will answer to our questions. Dreamfall was always meant to be first part of a longer story, but it wasn't planned that the gap between the games would be over six years. Funcom wasn't interested in making a sequel, because they are more interested about MMORPGs, so Ragnar had to open a new studio and buy the license to be able to make a sequel. Now he has rights for several games which happen in TLJ universe.

In any case the game didn't specifically explain how Zoë saved April. I have speculatedt that she saved April from herself, but that's one of the questions which will probably get their answer in Chapters.

Whether or not the kickstarter is successful is a pretty huge "if". Tornquist doesn't exactly have the same following as Tim Schafer or Obsidian. Personally I won't get my hopes up until he actually has the money and begins development.
Though April was boarderline suicidal right until the very end. throughout the whole game, Zoe had absolutely no influence on April's (entirely non-existant, for that matter) character development in any way. Not to mention, the "you'll be sent where you're needed most" line from the White Dragon right before Zoe is warped to the swamp does suggest that her physically occupying the same general area as April is what did the job.

Not to mention, the broader problem of that arc is that it just feels completely tacked on as a means to provide some connection between the goings-on in Stark and Arcadia. If it were removed from that game, that would really be the only difference to the overall story.

It's been a while since I last played the game, but my impression was that Zoë and Kian were starting to get through April's defenses. I can't figure out any other way how Zoë could have saved her, because she clearly didn't save April from Azadi warriors.

I enjoyed this game very much. I have not played the original game yet. I was pleased to be able to use my game controller for all of the action and streamed it onto my flat panel HD TV which immersed me a bit more into the experience.

It's no MYST or RIVEN but I really didn't expect it to be. At times I found the plot to be a bit convoluted yet it carried my interest throughout and it was gratifying to be able to puzzle my way to each goal pretty much on my own rather than having to consult a walk-through every other minute as some adventure games demand. The learning curve on some of the more difficult tasks was programmed fairly in my opinion, so while I may have had to suffer death a half a dozen times here and there at least I didn't have to suffer it for half a dozen days before applying the correct amount of dexterity to succeed.

Some of the locales were rather beautiful and the falling snow was a nice touch. I like the finer details. It was also interesting to switch off and play from the different perspectives of characters who were at times opposing one another. It was an enjoyable little sci-fi ditty and I felt that it was well worth the price of admission.