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Not worth it!

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: September 04, 2008
Author: Amazon User

I bought this game originally looking for a long rpg or puzzle game, and the name was the appeal. I am glad, however, that Dreamfall: The Longest Journey turned out to be one of the quickest, easiest games I've ever played.

The game progressed in too many directions, but drunkenly bounced me from one side to the other until I collapsed in some ridiculous ending. The only long part about this game is the list of holes in the storyline. I am convinced that this game could be fun for a pre-adolescent female, but is waste of time for any adult or serious gamer.

Storyline: original, yet annoying and uninteresting
Graphics: par
Puzzles: easy
Battle system: horrendous
Entertainment value: 35%

Very difficult navigation & interface.

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: June 23, 2008
Author: Amazon User

The mouse drags s-l-o-w-l-y. I am still stuck in the house because when I pick up her cell phone, it won't let me read the messages. I have a brand new computer with Windows XP and can run almost any other game on it. I gave up trying to play it until I can find a patch. Also, I hate having to "run up" on things in order to get a huge box to show up around something to see if I can interface with it. It is slow, jumpy, and awkward. What a shame, because I think if I could get it to work better, I would really like it.

I feel like someone gave me a delicious piece of pecan pie ala mode but handed me an enormous pitch fork with a 6' handle to eat it with.

I'll try to play it some other time.

Dreamfall: The Longest Journey

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: May 27, 2008
Author: Amazon User

The user interface for this game is too difficult to navigate for me. I got through a few screens and gave up. I completed the first edition of "The Longest Journey" and enjoyed it very much. That game could be played with a mouse. This new one requires navigation with the keyboard. Having said that, if I was able to play it, it appears to be a beautiful, rich game and I regret missing the experience.

PC Game Review

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: April 29, 2008
Author: Amazon User

Dreamfall: The Longest Journey
The game is a great adventure puzzle game but I felt it did not have the depth or excitement of the original game "The Longest Journey". I believe too much time was spent on graphics and not enough on the quality of the story.

A true Adventure game

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: April 14, 2008
Author: Amazon User

Okay, I love it. It has great graphics, an imaginative story, and fun but not impossible puzzles. It is like reading a novel (in that I was totally immersed in the world) but with something extra. I think this is a great follow-up to Longest Journey and offers a little more interesting than just a shooter.

One of the best

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: February 20, 2008
Author: Amazon User

I can barely fight anything. I was very afraid this would be a nightmare for me. But I was able to do it...and I loved all the places that I went and things that I saw. This was one of the best adventure games for a non brilliant adventure game enthusiast.

If you are around 50 years old, and no good at fighting, but want a good adventure game where you are not constantly figuring out nonsensical puzzles...I hope you love this as much as I did.

This was the best of the year for me.

Shameless attempt to get you to buy a sequel

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: February 10, 2008
Author: Amazon User

Good points: Beautiful graphics, immersive sound, likeable main character, the (unrealized) potential for a good story

Unfortunately the rest is all bad.

The PC interface, which is clumsy and requires two hands at all times, will make you seasick or frustrated.

Multiple MANDATORY (and boring) combat scenes break up the game and add absolutly NOTHING to the plot.

Many, many very LONG cutscenes require you to sit and watch the characters have conversations. Too bad if the dog has to go out at that moment! Hope you have a saved game or you won't know what's going on after that! Oh, you did have a saved game? Well, guess what, maybe you can space-bar your way through the parts you already saw, or maybe not, just depends I guess on whether the designers cared enough to include that particular feature at that particular moment.

Jarring profanity at several points, which also adds absolutely nothing to the game. I guess they just really wanted that "Mature" rating.

Raunchy humor in some spots, which, again, adds nothing to the game. Apparently they consulted 5th grade boys on what might be a funny pun.

Very few puzzles of any sort. Most "puzzles" are merely timed action sequences requiring you to guess the right direction to run before something eats you or zaps you or squashes you or whatever. The (very) few actual puzzles are primarily shuttling: Get the guy a drink, oops go to the market to get the ingredients, oops back to the tavern, oops back to the market, oops now to the other side of town, oops back to the market, oops back to the tavern, etc. etc. By the time you finally "solve" the thing you won't care anymore.

You can die. And you will. Repeatedly.

Frequently, you can't spend time exploring the environment. Or you'll die. Again.

The ending is a complete and total disappointment. Absolutely NOTHING in the entire plot is resolved. Apparently all the heroine's tribulations amounted to nothing -- or maybe not -- the main characters all die -- or maybe not -- the bad guys win -- or maybe not. You'll be left wondering why you just spent 20 hours of your life tolerating this monstrosity since there was apparently no point.

And the final insult: In order to see the last scene of the game you MUST sit through ALL of the CREDITS first!! Unbelievable. The designers should quite literally be ashamed of themselves.

I can't imagine why this won game of the year other than beauty of graphics or sheer length.

Bottom line:
If you want an Action or RPG game look elsewhere.
If you want an Adventure game, look elsewhere.
If you want an interactive story with a well-thought-out plot that ends with a satisfying conclusion, look elsewhere.
If you want to sit and watch a long movie with periodic frantic button mashing which ultimately "ends" in a shameless insistence that you buy a yet-unreleased (and maybe never to be created) sequel to have a clue what's going on, this is your game.

Instead, I'd recommend:
Syberia & Syberia 2 (buy them at the same time -- they're short)
The Longest Journey (the original)
Myst: Riven

Happy gaming!

Waste of time

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: January 29, 2008
Author: Amazon User

First, the interface.......... keyboard is OK for an action game, but why can't they stick with point and click for adventure games? OK, this wasn't much of an adventure game, hardly any puzzles, not a lot of interaction, mostly watching cut scenes of a story that never ended. If they are planning a sequel, include me out! The only saving grace was that I only paid $6.99 for it & maybe I can foist it on some poor unsuspecting person on EBAY.

Have a good time. Be part of the story.

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: December 26, 2007
Author: Amazon User

This game is really good, impressive.

If you like the classical definition of adventure where you need to solve difficult and slow-to-solve puzzles, this is not a game for you.

This is adventure, in the sense you don't know what will happen next. This is not a game of thinking, but rather a game of feeling the story. You'll need to look at characters faces well to understand a lot of things that are not said. Look at faces, read between lines, and you'll see!

Probably this game is like a movie, where you are inside it, and it achieves it pretty well.

Be part of the story.

My exact words were,

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: December 25, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I loved The Longest Journey. The story was amazing and original and had a talented and charismatic lead actress, Sarah Hamilton, who injected April Ryan with warmth, depth, humor and charm. And in April's long, long journey, she traveled the worlds and met many different people, becoming to most of them a symbolic representation of what everyone should strive to be: someone who rises above themselves to accept the challenge because it is the right thing to do. Not only was the story enjoyably epic, it was a lot of fun figuring out what to do with all the things you pick up, as you would in other traditional adventure games like this. One of the things that made The Longest Journey so accessible to so many is that, like in Grim Fandango, it was impossible to die, lose or make an irrevocable mistake, you only had to figure out what to do next.

With that said, I was anticipating Dreamfall with great excitement for a long time. The simple prospect of April Ryan returning so we could experience the next chapter in her amazing life was all I needed to know.

Unfortunately, while I hate to use this term, I'm afraid the developers sold out. To make the game more accessible to the masses (IE, uneducated button-mashing FPS junkies), they side-stepped the traditional adventure in favor of an adventure with the action element of combat. The problem isn't merely the existence of combat, but that it was done poorly. The control during combat is unresponsive and a bit unpredictable. It's not terribly difficult to down an opponent, it's just annoying. I know one button blocks, one button does one kind of attack, another button does another kind of attack, and if I hold down one of the buttons, I do a strong attack but leave myself vulnerable while I wait for it to execute. What I do is basically a stick and move kind of strategy; I wait for them to move and then get out of the way so I can attack while they're throwing punches away from you like a jack ass.

A lot of people here have complained about the control and I really don't see what the problem is. Of course, I have a gamepad. Come on, people, they're not that expensive.

On the plus side, the environments and graphics are absolutely stunning. You get a sense of true immersion in the beautifully rendered locations you explore with a fine attention to detail. Unfortunately, the talking animations have the characters looking stiff. Their lips, jaw and eyes move, but the character models lack a naturalistic touch that gets their whole body moving like a real person would. Some minor characters can't even open their mouths while they talk, too. They also don't have tongues and this combination of no tongues and awkward facial animations made for the weirdest looking on-screen kiss I've ever seen in a game--and I've seen two skeletons kiss for Pete's sake.

The voice acting is also very well done, but I get a sense that the humor and charm that were in the first game are very much absent. Aside from the sexy accent, there really wasn't a lot of personality in the new main character, Zoe Castillo. She had a nice, sweet scene near the very end of the game, but aside from that, I didn't fall in love with her like I did April Ryan. As for April Ryan in this game, she's turned into a sour puss. She's bitter and angsty and, while she still wants to do the right thing, she's just lost her charm completely. I found Kian to be an interesting character, a religious crusading zealot who turns out to have so much more potential. The saving grace in the humor department is, of course, Crow. He is consistently funny and gave the story much-needed comic relief. Like this line, for example: "Stay brave! We're not giving up until you're safely out of here! Or, dead!"

The story is the real strength of the game, and fans of The Longest Journey are used to long exchanges of dialogue, simply because it is well-written, well-acted and very compelling. The problem with Dreamfall is that there isn't much gameplay to accompany the story. There's way too much sneaking around and doing the same exact puzzles with Zoe's mobile software. I don't have a problem with sneaking or simple mini-games, it's just that there isn't anything else for you as a gamer to do.

Back to the story, though. I had bought this game last year and put off playing it after a few chapters. Once I started over and got back into the game, I couldn't get enough. Despite the flaws of the game, the story was enough to keep me invested in playing.

In the beginning, after a short introduction, we see Zoe in a hospital room in a coma while her father sits in vigil and then we flashback to two weeks earlier and we start the game. And at this point, while trying to reveal as little as possible, all of our heroes are against the ropes and it looks like the bad guys are going to win. We finally reach full circle and see how Zoe ended up in a coma. And then ... the credits roll. My eyes widened and I said, "What the hell?"

Cliffhangers. Lots of them. I don't normally dislike cliffhangers, but they just don't work in video games, especially when completion of the sequel is years away. I felt like the third act, or perhaps the third, fourth and fifth act, were missing. It felt like half a game. Just when the three main characters are in the same place at the same time, before a satisfying conclusion can be reached, it ends.

What infuriates me is that the sequel will be released, eventually, in downloadable chapters over time and most likely they'll all be available in one box at retail stores after they're all out. My Dreamfall installation takes up 5.73 GB of hard drive space, so you can see my reluctance with downloading files that will take days to complete.

Despite its flaws, the gameplay is forgivable and the story is enough for anyone who loves a good story, but I simply cannot recommend Dreamfall at this time, at least not until the sequel is out and fully realized.

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