First I have to say this, I absolutely loved playing through this game. I got deeply drawn into the story and the mysteries surrounding it; I likewise became enthralled by the snippets of theological, mythological, esoteric, historical and semiotic trivia the game offered me through SIDNEY -the research computer that Grace uses within the game. The puzzles, with a few notable exceptions, were well done and often left me pondering over a particularly difficult riddle long after I had exited the game. I did have to resort to a walkthrough a few times because of a couple of illogical puzzles that came my way. These did lessen my enjoyment a bit, but the game is fairly long, and these types of puzzles don't occur very often. The graphics, being from the early era of 3D, haven't aged very well, but there are several tweaks and mods available online that can increase the game resolution and improve the character models; making the game bearable for the modern gamer to look at. The controls are likewise on the clunky side. This being a 3D game, you move the camera manually using the keyboard keys, and interact with the character using the mouse. Don't be surprised to find yourself staring at the blurry, pixelated floor attempting to figure out how to change the camera viewpoint. This certainly takes some getting used to, but after a while it becomes less of a bother as you slowly grow used to the awkward controls. For an adventure game, I was impressed by the length of the story and the level of detail that went into crafting everything. The game uses an old Sierra style point system, and I guarantee that the first time you play the game through, it will be unlikely that you manage to gain a full score. The game takes place over three days, and is divided into "time-blocks". Completing certain activities and puzzles moves the time forward. As far as I'm aware, there is no way to get stuck in the game. If you fail to complete certain tasks in a specific time block, you can either complete them later, or then the story moves forward regardless (but you miss out on bonus points and details). This adds a surprising amount of freedom. After the introductory moments, the game opens up with several different locations to visit on a fairly large map, and each location has many details to explore and puzzles to solve. It pays to keep your eye out for subtle changes in your environment as the game time passes. The game is also less linear than the majority of adventures. You can miss or discover certain encounters depending on where you are and at what time. I became so drawn into the mystery, that I began manually taking notes on every character (you can do this via the in-game computer as well) and every possible clue. I eventually finished the game with nearly ten pages of notes. Although many of my notes ended up being pure speculation, the game inspired me to do research on several eclectic topics outside of the game, and I feel that even though the game is far from educational, I picked up a lot of trivia while playing it. This feeling of being part of the mystery and the game world is what I remember the most, and I find that I can forgive the mediocre graphics, clunky controls and occasional poorly designed puzzle as a result. Now for the part where I rant. All of the above points pertain to the gameplay itself, the following pertains to the version available on GOG and the numerous bugs that have yet to be resolved. Although the game page claims that the game runs fine on Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7 - this is not true! I myself played the game on Windows 7 x64, and as soon as I had installed it, the first problem arose. The game refused to run. A vague error message popped up saying something along the lines of "unrecognized fatal exception". This gave me a headache, as very few people had managed to find suitable workarounds to get past this. After a lot of fiddling, I finally managed to get the game to run. This, however, wasn't the end of my troubles. The game kept crashing thoughout, sometimes spouting the same nonsense error message, sometimes quitting to the desktop for no discernable reason. This happened especially frequently during cutscenes, but would also occur during random moments in-game. I have scoured the forums (and Google) for answers, but this issue has NOT been resolved on Windows 7 yet. The only solution is to keep saving frequently and hope for the best. You can also skip the cutscenes by rapidly left-clicking, but this is far from ideal. Also, the in-game computer, SIDNEY, refused to display properly at any resolution I tried. At first, this only looked ugly, but later I found out that I was unable to progress in-game due to this flaw. The only solution I could find to this was to download a specific save game file from a specific website, move it into the save game folder, load it, and then reload an old saved game of mine from a chapter intermission point. As the review I'm writing is for GOG version of the game, I feel the need to deduct stars from my review due to these fatal flaws. If the game had worked perfectly, I would probably have given it four stars. As it is, I am forced to deduct two stars due to the broken version that is available in the store. Until GOG fixes these issues, or provides the customers with suitable workarounds, I advise against buying this (especially if you are running the game on a newer operating system). If you are willing to put up with the constant crashes and graphical glitches, go ahead. The game itself is certainly worth playing, and I do recommend that fans of adventure games (and the GK series) give it a try.
