Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers

The Gabriel Knight series has always been one of my favorites. The writing is fantastic, Jane Jenson is brilliant. Cannot recommend these games any higher if you love a good story.

Still to this day the second best Adventure Game ever, second only to the sequel, The Beast Within.

GK (SotF) is a solid graphic adventure which, unlike its Lucasart counterparts, manages to keep a serious and somewhat realistic tone, relegating the funny parts to some small comic reliefs. The solutions to the puzzles are always logic (even though quite a few are really hard) and there are three endings (only one is canon). The graphics are ok and the vopice acting is very good. I loved it!

Overall an excellent adventure, with great voice acting and good puzzles. Despite the blocky graphics, the experience is quite immersive. Do note that this is one of the adventures that require a lot of attention from the player. Hints have been scattered everywhere: cutscenes, background NPCs, items you wouldn't expect. A walkthrough will come handy if you play the game with a limited time budget, but just make sure to only consult it when stuck. Otherwise you will be losing much of the plot, as every walkthrough I found just lists the actions to be done with no explanation about the logic behind the actions. My main annoyances with Gabriel Knight are related to its interface/presentation. First, while overall I didn't mind at all the blocky graphics, the developers have overestimated in more than one cases how much information they can convey. This turns what would otherwise be a reasonable course of action into a pixel hunt with no clues. Then, I don't see why there are no alternatives for some actions. E.g. why do I need to "pick up" the newspaper to read it, and "operating" or "examining" it won't do? This felt like a remnant from text-based adventures. Finally, the interface does feel a bit archaic even for its time. There are no keyboard shortcuts (e.g. press w to select walk), so you have to either frantically right-click to cycle through actions, or manually select each action. Also there is no "double click to walk fast", so you spend a lot of time watching Gabriel dragging his feet across the screen. I personally enjoyed this original version of Gabriel Knight a lot, but if you prefer a more polished experience, maybe you are better off with the remastered version.

I prefer this version over the 25th anniversary remake - better voices, better music.