The bugs and combat soured me on Bloodlines, and I don't think the writing is very good, either. I know that vampires are intrinsically corny, and you can't ever completely escape that, but still, it felt like I was playing a game written and designed by the goth kids from South Park. I can appreciate how Bloodlines anticipated lots of later, and now mainstream, design ideas. For that, it deserves credit, and with more development time, funding, and polish, who knows what could've been. Lots of squandered potential here.
I am a huge fan of the previous two games in the Longest Journey series, but Chapters just does not work on any level. The story is a muddled mess that jettisons everything interesting about Dreamfall. I'm at the start of Book Five, and not one of the many hanging threads whose resolution I've been eagerly anticipating over the last 8 years has been picked up. Well, that's not entirely true. You get to play as a baby who's probably the reincarnation of a beloved character from two games previous. As that baby, you play through lots of pointless minigames! That don't advance the story in any way, except to introduce her mysterious parents! A couple of randos who are totally normal and boring, if you can overlook the fact that the mom has green skin. Otherwise, you play as the main character of the previous game, who awakens from a coma as an amnesiac, and also as a reformed religious zealot who served as a conscionable but clueless antagonist in Dreamfall. The amnesia angle is super convenient for the game's writers, as they apparently had no idea how to tie up the loose ends left by Dreamfall. Also, it is the ultimate narrative copout, second only to 'it was all a dream', if you ask me. On a more technical note, I don't like the art style or animation. Everything seems very rigid and hemmed in. The characters occasionally don't mouth their dialogue, the facial expressions are very flat, and the game is riddled with bugs. I think I'll watch how the rest of Book 5 plays out on Youtube rather than play through it myself. So much of the gameplay consists of "Get this person to stop dithering around by MacGuyvering the hell out of something." No thanks.
