Aside from the premise of playing a teenager from modern times that's been pulled into a medieval dimension, the other interesting concept is that Simon just does NOT know how to be nice.. to anyone. Would-be love-interests, friends, total strangers; nobody is safe from Simon's scathing wit and harsh cynicism. On the whole, I think Simon is almost totally unlikeable in this game, unlike the previous one where he could at least be shown to have a kindness behind the jerk-face exterior. Besides the fact that Simon is a total prat this time around, I'd also have to knock off some points for a few of the puzzles. Several situations have solutions you wouldn't logically expect, and in some cases have obvious solutions but don't work cause you have to do it just the right way. For instance, you can't simply USE a Hammer to nail a door shut, you have to USE a Plank on the door and then he'll use the hammer and nails. A number of the puzzles might as well be solved by sheer luck, cause the solutions aren't obvious or even hinted at. I gave the game a high score cause it is musically well done, the voice acting is good (although still suffers from not being distinguishable from the music at times), and visually the game looks gorgeous. A bit too much cleavage on display, but this IS a British game.
Breathtakingly beautiful world populated by interesting characters and amusing situations. The puzzles themselves are fairly straightforward and don't rely so much on "Monkey Island" logic as others of the genre are known to. The voice acting is well done and the characters come across realistically and believably. Even the music is nice to listen to.. which is good, cause you're going to end up hearing a lot of it as you wander back and forth for hours trying to figure out what in blazes you're supposed to do. All because you never quite landed your mouse on the right pixel somewhere to realize an item could be picked up, or a part of the environment could be interacted with. The User Interface is mouse-driven and pretty intuitive, except that there's a few too many options. Consume, Wear, and Move could have all been assigned to USE or summed up with "INTERACT" had they thought of it, because you'll only use them maybe twice each. The last problem, as someone else pointed out, is that you cannot have both Talking AND Subtitles on at the same time. This is especially grating in a certain tower where the music suddenly becomes louder than the voice or a character starts mumbling. The lack of a music volume also hurts a bit, particularly in the Dwarf Mine. Overall, however, it is a fun and enjoyable game. If you don't let a few problems get in the way of your enjoyment and remember to look everywhere and try everything, one can find quite a lot of enjoyment with Simon the Sorcerer. They're not kidding when they say the writing is top notch, and there's plenty of references to other fictional stories, even a few fourth wall jokes which do not break the illusion because Simon literally comes from our dimension.
As a longtime fan of the Gabriel Knight series, I had been looking forwards to GK3 when I first discovered it existed not long after it came out. I was eager to see Tim Curry reprise the role, excited about what mythos the story would draw from this time, and anxious to discover how the characters I knew would grow over this adventure. Sadly, the experience was both unsatisfying and rather disappointing. It was hard to go from GK2's Gabriel to GK3, partly due to the voice but also because it didn't really feel like the same person. The romance between Gabe and Grace felt awkward and shoehorned in, which was only made worse when it was left unresolved. The plot felt unpolished, as thought they were having trouble fleshing everything out. I'll be honest, I could easily look past the gratuitous 3-D graphics, but it was just another issue to be had with a game that was struggling to meet the expectations of myself and everyone who'd played the first two games. I actually enjoyed the stuff brought up by the storyline, it was just disappointing that it couldn't have ended on a more conclusive note. The various hang-ups within the plot, the inconsistent character growth, the tacky jump to a camera system when the game had gotten by on fixed angles and beautifully drawn/created locations in the previous titles, the lackluster ending.. There was so much that could have been done better, especially when all the negative experiences ended up dooming the franchise that had left things unfinished. It was just further proof that Sierra's time had come to an end.
As the title says, this game is fun and addicting and will have you wanting to keep playing right up until the very end. That said, however, the ending will not be easy for a lot of people to get as it plays out in real time giving you little more than a moment to make decisions. I've been playing this off and on since it's original release and I've still never managed to get the ending. However the visuals are beautiful and the acting is spot on, they really went out for this game. I kinda miss the days when games were like this, to be honest...
