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Mixed feelings

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 4 / 6
Date: November 12, 2001
Author: Amazon User

Very beautiful graphics, interesting and different story line, unique puzzles. If it wasn't for the unnecesaary gutter level language in this game, I would have given it 4 stars. Too too much dialogue to wade through and, in some sections, just too much "walking" to do to go from point A to point B. I felt like the authors were "padding" in order to make the game run longer.The language is very offensive.

The 100 Years War was also long . . . and about as fun

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 6 / 12
Date: August 23, 2001
Author: Amazon User

Is it a game? No, not really. That would imply some meaningful interaction from you, the player. But instead, you are principally called upon to hit the return key, as you select line after line of inane dialogue. (Don't worry about choosing the question to ask or the comment to make . . . you have to choose all of them. Then you have to listen to all of them.) The structure is painfully linear, sometimes senselessly so.

Is it good interactive fiction? No. The characters are unappealing, and all of them go off into pages of needless exposition. ("How did I come here, you ask? Let me tell you from the beginning . . ." "ARRGH!!!" we scream, stuffing our hair in our ears.) Sometimes the dialogue is even offensive, presenting a sophomoric idea of relationships between men and women that we had hoped gaming had left behind, and giving us keen (but unwanted) insights into the social lives of the game designers.

The one star is for truly awesome graphics. By the end of the game -- and the journey WAS long, as we were painfully aware -- we felt a maternal pity for the graphics team. We hope that they will soon find gainful employment with a game company -- that is, a company that knows how to design a game.

Great graphic and sound, kind of dull otherwise

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 6 / 12
Date: March 04, 2001
Author: Amazon User

The game has nice graphics and sound effects and this is about it.

Puzzles are dumb, the plot is overcomplicated. Most puzzles consist of exhausting dialogs with numerous game characters. You just talk and talk without any change of the scenery, until there's nothing else to say, then go to another character, talk more. After speaking out several more pages of dialogs, the previous character, of course, has more to say to you, so you go back to him or her, for more talking. And, boy, are those dialogs lengthy! After awhile, I developed a strategy, that eventually let me enjoy the game. In the game settings, enable "time skip". Then start conversation and continuously hit escape until it's over, then select another branch and keep doing it until the person has nothing to say or start repeating herself. Don't worry about the order of the phrases (it doesn't matter) or that you miss some important information (all relevant facts will be summarized in April's diary). That's the only reasonable way to play. My wife tried to listen to all that was said. I got bored, and eventually went out to do some chores. Half hour later I checked on her - she was dozing in front of the computer, the game at the same scene at which I left it, few branches of conversations still not tried.

Believe me, skipping conversations IS the only way to complete the game, or it WILL be "The Longest Journey" (that is, if you manage to complete the game at all, with all dialogs spoken out without interruption, which I have strong doubts about).

Another thing about the game that slowed me down initially - many scenes are so dark, that you cannot see some objects around you. So I was stuck couple of times and had to go look at the hint pages on the internet. Finally it got me, and I interrupted the game, to find out how to change my video settings to brighten up a screen. Remarkably, that this was the first time I ever had to do it. My display settings were adequate for all the software I ran on this PC so far. Learning how to increase the brightness was the last challenge of this game. I still kind of enjoyed completing it. On the other hand, if I hadn't paid for this game, I could have very well switched to something more interesting.

This is the review I have ever written, and the reason I did it - all the reviews I read before I bought the game was misleading (IMHO). I hope this one will help others.

Disappointing at best

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 5 / 9
Date: February 10, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I can usually approach media with the sense that it comes from a certain time or period. But when I bought The Longest Journey based on the positively glowing reviews, I expected to be wowed regardless of technical limitations. I expected not just one of the best adventure games ever, but "one of the best games ever."

I have played other games in the adventure genre and what I found reassuring, I suppose, is that it would give you gentle guidance on where to go and what to do. Even if it ended up killing you, you would be able to eliminate one possibility.

The case is not so with The Longest Journey, and this was what I found to be merely one of the very frustrating aspects to the game. In each new area I would become stuck, knowing exactly what I was *supposed* to be doing, but not knowing what to do in order to trigger the event. Eventually I learned that I had to talk to characters an inordinate amount of times to trigger everything that I was supposed to. This took away from the flow of the game by forcing me to backtrack often, and to listen to a lot of text 5 minutes long that could really be simplified into 5 sentences.

It's not that I don't enjoy dialogue, either. I love hearing the characters come to life through inflection, but I need something more than a bare wall to stare at while I'm listening. All of the character faces are animated, I can see them moving as the characters speak, but we never are close enough to see them. This seems like an especially poor decision to always distance the player from the people involved. That is also why I put in a recommendation for Knights of the Old Republic instead of this game. KOTOR manages to spend the majority of the time talking, and still not seem boring about it. It's not that I'm a slave to graphics, either. Blade Runner managed to be an excellent adventure game in all its pixellated goodness, and Bad Mojo is one of my favorite adventure games of all time. But all these games shared a deep connection with the characters involved, which brings me to my next point.

The story, supposedly the selling point of most adventure games, seemed lackluster and very, very anticlimactic to me in this game. Often there would be characters that would be introduced or placed in danger, and I knew I was expected to feel some sort of response for that, but the encounters between characters were often either too short or not focused on the characters themselves, leaving me confused why they were placed in the game at all except as a deus ex machina, a vehicle to conveniently push the character forward. Furthermore this left me confused as to why the lead character, April, should care so much about people she had just met, and made it very hard for me to relate to her.

Next, the puzzles, supposed to be the secondary focus of adventure games, were sometimes very easy (inventory items and on-screen hotspots accounted for most of this) or much too obscure. (Maerum temple, anyone?)
I was never given any indication of how to solve any of the puzzles, although most of them I figured out through a bit of foresight and some tedious errand girl running back and forth. To me that doesn't make a very "fun" game. That makes a frustratiing and needlessly nitpicky game.

Finally, and I realize this is a bit of a cheap call, but the ending was pretty lame in my opinion. It answered no questions, gave no excuses, and seemed altogether too sure of itself. It seemed to me as if the screen faded to credits, and the developers turned to the player to say "See? Wasn't that *amazing*?"

The game was at its best when it first introduced a new area or character, because it was then that I was filled with that sense of wonder and anticipation characteristic of many adventure gaes, but I was consistently disappointed with the results due to a lack of technical prowess and an insanely disappointing lack of intuitive gameplay.
I would suggest looking at other games first, most especially KOTOR, but even something as moderately entertaining as "Primal" on PS2 has this game beat, I'm afraid.

With some hope, the sequel, an action-adventure hybrid, will feature a more close relationship with its main characters, not to mention a better concentration on contextual rather than incidental storytelling.

A tip for Geforce card owners...

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 6 / 13
Date: November 03, 2000
Author: Amazon User

If you have a Geforce graphics card, Enable "force antialiasing" in the display driver, even at the lowest setting the 3D characters will blend perfectly with the pre-rendered backgrounds.

Good, but TOO MUCH useless dialogue

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 3 / 4
Date: August 13, 2002
Author: Amazon User

I really liked this game at first. A lot. Then I realized that EVERY character has WAY too much to say. It becomes a distraction. I ended up sitting back listening more than playing the game.

Much of that dialogue was not really needed. Or perhaps changing the camera angle instead of a static shot on two (most of the time) distant characters talking at each other.

April (the main character) *ALWAYS* had comments to say and then comments on top of comments... it really got annoying.

The graphics, interface and stability of the game were excellent.

If the dialogue was reduced to realistic levels (I know FEW people that have to tell me a FULL COMPLETE story every time I talk to them).

The latter part of the game seemed rushed. Many plot points that were brought up at the start were never finished (white dragon.. what's the point!!!)

My dad tried it too (thought maybe it was just me) *and* my roomate... BOTH thought the same exact thing.

I'd get it, but only if you don't mind a game with tons of dialogue that isn't really adding value to the game.

I cried at the end of this game, because I wanted more.

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 3 / 4
Date: July 19, 2002
Author: Amazon User

The Longest Journey, known as being pretty much the only game FunCom created prior to Anarchy Online, is an adventure game set over 300 years in the future. In it, you play April Ryan, a young artist haunted by strange dreams...dreams of another world, where magic is real.

Those dreams, too, are real. Dreams of a real world, the counterpart to Earth. A world that April is destined to travel to as a Shifter, one of the few people capable of penetrating the veil between the worlds. A world created to preserve the Balance.

The Balance between Stark and Arcadia, between magic and science...between order and chaos.

And the game itself is every bit as cool as it sounds.

First, the characters. April Ryan meets up with a very large number of people on her journey across the worlds, ranging from a talking bird to a foul-mouthed hacker with a very strange sense of humor. Each one almost feels real, though you can sometimes tell when characters have the same voice actor.

It's an adventure game in the grand tradition of Monkey Island (complete with someone...well, something...named Guybrush!), but has few, if any, hunt-the-pixel puzzles. Most of the puzzles actually make sense, and the closest thing to a sliding tile puzzle involves an altar with stones and rotating rings. It's an annoying one, but doable.

The storyline is truly epic, including thirteen chapters (fourteen if you count the dream sequence in the prologue) spread across the twin earths of Stark and Arcadia, a war between the Sentinel and the Vanguard, and four dragons (sorry, Draic Kin) who guard the Balance.

The game has enough twists and turns to truly surprise you, including an amazing final chapter with an ending even I didn't expect. But no matter where you go, whether fighting mad alchemists or puzzling out the history of two peoples, you'll find yourself staying up until you only have two hours to get to class and/or work.

Are there flaws? Of course...no game is perfect, much as we'd like to find one that is. The game is...well, wordy. They talk a lot, enough that it is more like a movie at times than a game. And if you Alt-Tab out, the models are rather screwed up until you reload.

But I'm still giving this game five stars, because it's good enough to make me look past it.

Ragnar Tornquist is a genius, plain and simple.

The adventure game to end all adventure games

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 3 / 4
Date: February 07, 2001
Author: Amazon User

This game had me sucked in from the first second to the very end. It's riveting plot, and incredible scenery is unprecedented, and you truly begin to care about the many characters you run into. The challenge level is just right with puzzles that challengic yet logical. Do yourself a favor and get the overnight shipping on this badboy!

So Far So Good - But...

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 3 / 4
Date: March 27, 2001
Author: Amazon User

I do not consider my self a gamer..and I have not played that many games (King's Quest, Thief II, ..) but I have mixed feelings about TLJ.

The scenery and characters are pretty realistic..the conversations are good between the characters..but my biggest complaint are the puzzles. The puzzles are overly complex and sometimes do not make sense.

For example:

In one scene there is a key attached to some electrical fuse box on a subway rail that she needs to get.

Insted of April jumping down on the tracks..using a glove to shield herself from the current and grabbing the key I have to

1. Find Rope 2. Find a rubber inflatable duck with a band-aid on it. 3. and get a clamp.

Then .combine the rope with clamp...blow up the rubber ducky. Take the band-aid off the rubber ducky..combine the rubber ducky with the clamp and rope and the use the whole thing lower it to the rail to get the key. (Thank god for hints!!)

Now...thats..ridiculous. There are some other weird puzzles as well.

Oh well I'll continue playing it though cause it's fun.

Game that I'll never forget

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 3 / 4
Date: December 26, 2000
Author: Amazon User

My impressions of this game were the most wonderful ones. I've never played any game that was so absorbing before. "The Longest Journey" has a beautiful story, nice characters, and awesome graphics. You'll be "hooked" with the game until you finish it. I personally experienced the withdrawal effects when I completed it. Being not a great fan of adventure games myself, I really liked "The Longest Journey." I would recommend the game to everybody who likes to play computer and video games because it is impossible to get bored playing this one, no matter how fiercely you hate adventure games.

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