Dreamfall Chapters: The Final Cut

I backed the campaign and didn't expect too much but surprisingly, Dreamfall Chapters ended up absolutely wonderful. It not only tries to tie up all the loose threads that Dreamfall left open but it's actually a very good game on its own. It's a beautiful modern adventure game with large locations to explore but doesn't annoy you with pointless collections tasks, inventory puzzles or hidden objects. Most riddles are exploration based, which is a good thing as you want to explore the wonderful environment. Almost everything bad in Dreamfall was improved: the locations are larger, no more stupid fights or logic puzzles and this time the mouse/keyboard controls work perfectly. The graphics are more or less state of the art with nice shaders and lighting. However, the quality of facial details varies a lot. While Zoë looks stunning and Enu or Saga still look great, some important side characters like Hanna or Nela lack any detail and look cartoonish. And some characters like Commander Vamon or Warden Murron have exaggerated facial features that make them look like caricatures. There are also some issues with the shadows and I had a few crashed while loading new chapters. Even worse, there are story bugs: e.g. though the player decides to kiss Anna etc., the game concludes that Kian is gay. That makes the player's decisions feel somewhat worthless. Also displaying names of backers for extras felt wrong and distracting - especially in Marcuria. Anyway, my main point of criticism is the lack of any kind of save or sub chapter restart system. The people of RTG should take a look at the outstanding "Life is Strange" to see how to implement a sensible chapter/save system that allows you to revisit parts of the story without destroying your main save game. But well, despite of these points, I still had a lot of fun playing Chapters. I'm so happy that this Journey has finally come to a good end and still hopeful that I might return to the Dreamfall universe with Saga one day.

More of the same kind of thing as in the earlier episodes, but less combat and stealth. TONS of dialog (still). The story-forking decisions play an expanded role in this episode. Still a fair bit of errand churning. If you've played the earlier ones, you know what to expect, but if not, please read a lot more reviews, or you might end up really unhappy, or, you could be pleasantly surprised with a new franchise. The storytelling leaves you with characters you will never forget, like your favourite books. If you don't have a favourite book, you'll probably hate this within 5 minutes, and be tearing your hair out and cursing new combinations of words to try to exorcise the pain. But if you do enjoy sweeping stories that take root in your mind, then this might be just the trick. During the episodic release cycles, the dev team updated the game engine from a strained Unity 4 engine to the Unity 5 engine, and it really looks amazing. I replayed the almost two chapters, and while the general story remains unchanged, the activities and visuals are often really different with the engine changes, and less glitches too. The previous games always looked beautiful (not always the most cutting edge, but gorgeous nonetheless) for their respective release periods, and similarly so here. It's not Witcher 3 realistic, but completely immersive, and I'll often stop and look around, appreciating the sounds and sights, or appreciating the same rye humour embedded throughout, like the others. The story developments and characters evolve and attach to your feelings, and it's a big environment too (though it has a few invisible barriers, but it's plenty big enough). I haven't finished the end yet, but I already feel completely justified in my purchase. My only question is about the 'Final Cut' package. As the different chapters and fixes were released, some bits of content were added too. Is my 'standard version' with all the cumulative updates the same as the Final Cut version (excluding the DLC content), or has there been all new actual sections added? In the video, I see a crow flying through the Arcadia park in Chapter 2, and I don't believe I saw that in either the Unity engines 4 or 5: maybe there are new cut scenes? That should be clarified in the description, because you can't always count on what everyone says in the forums, and you can't always count on the marketing people to be clear either. Someone needs to spell out once and for all if there is new content is in this version that isn't in the most up-to-date, patched 'normal version', and if so, is it all new scenes, or just some brief transitory cutscenes that might be beautiful, but don't alter any information in any way...

When I completed this game I felt so, so sad... not because of anything to do with the game or gameplay, but because I could never experience this game for the first time ever again; I did not want it to be over. This series has one of the most captivating and wonderful stories in any game I've ever played ever. It's incredibly well though out, and has the perfect mix of fantasy and reality. Yes, the first game has aged and you need a VM to even play it now, but playing the first two games and concluding with this one has been one of the best game experiences I've ever experienced. I cannot recommend this game series highly enough.

Love the story.

Dreamfall Chapters is a sequel to the adventure games [url=https://www.gog.com/game/the_longest_journey]The Longest Journey[/url] and [url=https://www.gog.com/game/dreamfall_the_longest_journey]Dreamfall: The Longest Journey[/url]. Chapters includes a recap of the previous games to ease the new players into the story. The game consists of 5 episodes with a varying duration. Most of the episodes take about 3-4h to finish with the exception of episode 2, which takes about 6h to complete. Dreamfall Chapters is set in two parallel universes: Stark, a cyberpunk future Earth, and Arcadia, its magical fantasy counterpart. Although the game features a linear plot with a set outcome, the players have to make many choices throughout the game that have far-reaching impact on the later story events. The gameplay focus is on the exploration of the environments and the story and on solving puzzles in the third-person view. While not a completely open world, the game contains several free-roaming exploration levels. The on-screen interface is hidden by default to improve the immersion. Also, there is no combat or stealth gameplay in Dreamfall Chapters. Dreamfall Chapters was originally developed on the Unity 4 game engine, but was retroactively upgraded to Unity 5 before the release of Book Four. There are some great looking environments, character models, and the [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGBW5KoFhfo&index=1&list=PLhPp-QAUKF_iS-WCuzhnU8LsdcGj8LEGB]soundtrack[/url] is amazing as well. I highly recommend playing the first two games, since I did have some trouble understanding a few things here and there, however, the game is playable and enjoyable without the first two games, especially with the in-game recap video.