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Gabriel Knight III an interesting mystery....

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 6 / 7
Date: March 24, 2002
Author: Amazon User

This is the first "Gabriel Knight" game that I've played, and I'm definitely looking forward to playing more games in the series. "GKIII: Blood of the Sacred, Blood of the Damned" had its moments of brilliance.

The characters were well developed, with distinct personalities. The voice acting, however, ranged from decent to shame-on-you bad. Case in point: Tim Curry as Gabe Knight. His accent seemed to shift wildly from Southern to...something unidentified. Hall of shame nominee: Scottish thugs proclaiming: "We're Scots, God help ye!".

The graphics were generally detailed, but pixellated. 3D models had a tendency to cut in and out of the screen.

There were plenty of places to explore in the chateau, museum, church, and town of Rennes-le-Chateau, and in the surrounding countryside. The puzzles were often difficult, and I frequently found myself backtracking for missed items. Also, there is a lot of downtime in some of the timeblocks so I found myself wandering around for a while trying to kill time.

The storyline was genuinely unlike anything I've ever played before. Although the initial premise is that of a vampire cult kidnapping a child, the ending drastically reinvented the story of Jesus, which is sure to offend many. I *still* don't understand half of the cutscenes and ending months after playing it.

There was a lot of dialogue to sort through, and many locations that I had to backtrack through, so this game kept me busy for quite a long time. "GKIII" is not for everyone's tastes, hence the M rating. It deals with vampirism and a reinvention of the death of Jesus. It was definitely thought provoking and entertaining, and if you're a fan of mystery and the supernatural then "Blood of the Sacred, Blood of the Damned" is worth a look.

I hate to say it, but...

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 8 / 12
Date: January 29, 2000
Author: Amazon User

I very much enjoyed GK2, so I was surprised at the letdown of GK3. I was looking forward to it so much that I bought it when it was released versus after the price goes down (I'm a poor grad student).

The game was slow, there was little "adventure," the characters movements were stiff (Gabriel walks like he has a pole up his butt), the puzzles were obscure, and the graphics weren't nearly as great as they were touted to be. But perhaps the most annoying thing about GK3 was Tim Curry's rendition of a Southern drawl. Besides the grating voice, many of the things he said were just stupidly insulting.

If a GK4 comes out, I'll be waiting for it to be in the sale bin, if I buy it at all.

A different opinion

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 9 / 15
Date: January 10, 2000
Author: Amazon User

I love adventure computer games, but I had a very different reaction to this one than the other reviewers. First of all, there wasn't much "adventure" to this adventure - I thought the story was pretty slow. But most importantly, this game had the most obscure (and in my opinion) ridiculous puzzles I have encountered in an adventure game.

Also, I found the hero both annoying and unlikable. Among other things, he's supposed to be from New Orleans, and his accent is so bad that I found it distracting. In the game's initial movie, I could swear the character is British, but during the game sequences his accent is "Southern on steriods."

Suffice it to say this is the first adventure game I have ever purchased that I had no interest in finishing. Normally, I can't be dragged away from them.

Go figure.

GK3 Reviewed by a FRENCH Player

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 6 / 8
Date: February 22, 2000
Author: Amazon User

I come from France, born in a village very near Rennes le Chateau. This is to say that I have been cradled by the mysteries of l'Abbe Sausniere and most of the stories revealed within GK3. I have played and enjoyed tremendously GK2. I was a bit disapointed at first to see that Sierra went back to drawings, but it gives a much better interactivity than the more film based GK2. And it looks so real! I mean, I have been in the place, and I really felt almost like back home!

Also, even though a few points were maybe a bit stretched, the history is almost 100% accurate, something quite impressive when I take into account that the game was made in California by American people. The French Accent of the people talking in French is far from that spoken there, but eh! only the French will hear it!

You can really trust most of the enigmas stressed in the game. They are true, or ...maybe not, ... the mysteries the game unveils will be within you, weeks and probably years after you've finished the game!

Disappointing

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 6 / 8
Date: November 30, 2006
Author: Amazon User

"Blood of the Sacred, Blood of the Damned" is the third installment of the Gabriel Knight games, a series of adventure games about the roguish detective/writer, Gabriel Knight. Gabriel and his companion, Grace, have been asked by Prince James of Albany to investigate a series of mysterious attacks by so-called "night visitors." When the son of Prince James is kidnapped, Gabriel pursues the night visitors to Rennes le Chateau, where he begins piecing together a mystery relating to the Holy Grail.

Despite the marketing, this game is not about vampires. Vampires have a token appearance in the game, but never command center stage, as did the voodoo hounfor in "Sins of the Fathers" or the werewolves in "The Beast Within." Gabriel and Grace make no attempt to uncover the true nature of vampires, or to research lore on vampires. Although the vampires do murder three people during the course of the game, their victims are chosen at random and have nothing to do with the main plot.

A large part of the charm of the first two Gabriel Knight installments was in the relationships which Gabriel formed with the villains. Through these relationships, the player could not help but sympathize with the villain, and thus the villain was transformed into more of a human and less of a monster. However, in "Blood of the Sacred," Gabriel's only interaction with the villain is through a single, cheesy interview, which does nothing to endear the villain to the player.

The roles that Gabriel and Grace play in this mystery are fairly futile. Gabriel spends his time snooping into the identities of members of a treasure-hunter tour group staying at his hotel, but what he uncovers amounts to nothing more than a red herring. Grace spends her time researching the mystery of Rennes le Chateau, but all her research is rendered superfluous by the presence of a perplexing ally who has known the answer to this mystery for centuries.

The actions of this perplexing ally and his polar opposite --- the vampire leader --- are insupportable. The ally leaves hints about the mystery of Rennes le Chateau in broad daylight and expects Grace (and not the other treasure hunters from the tour group) to find them. However, he could have revealed the mystery to Grace in its entirety on day 1, instead of putting the kidnapped child at risk for an additional 48 hours. And in the end, he simply tells Grace the mystery in its entirety anyway.

Meanwhile, the vampire leader fails to achieve the goals of centuries of scheming, because he chooses to refrain from action for two days after the kidnapping of the child. The only reason given for his decision to delay action is that he wants to savor his victory.

The game would have been much better had it been purely focussed on the Holy Grail. The kidnapping and vampires should have been omitted, replaced with a race against the Vatican to uncover the mystery of Rennes le Chateau. Since Gabriel is portrayed more than once as reluctantly Catholic, this conflict would have had many opportunities for character development.

All in all, the game was a disappointing installment in the series, despite an improved interface and the return of Tim Curry as the voice of Gabriel Knight.

This series keep on getting better and better

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 5 / 6
Date: November 13, 2000
Author: Amazon User

The Gabriel Knight series continues to impress me. The story lines are always impressive, as is the character development. The puzzles are challenging, but not impossible.

I have been with this series since the beginning and it is great to see it continue to change and grow. We've come along way from 2D images and 16 colors. The Gabriel Knight series is nice because you can tell that a lot of research always goes into the planning of the game and story. In this, the third installment, Gabriel is finally getting the hang of being the shatennjaeger (Shadow hunter). This time he's up against vampires (in previous games it was werewolves and voodoo).

The one complaint I have is that there isn't a lot of freedom of movement within the game. By this I mean that you have to do a certain set of things in pretty much a set order for the game to advance. I sort of wosh that you could take different paths and still have the game work. Maybe this will be an element of the the next Gabriel Knight (of which I really hope there is one).

All I can say is that I look forward to the continued adventures of Gabriel, Grace, and Mosely.

excellent

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 4 / 4
Date: June 05, 2002
Author: Amazon User

I can't say that the graphics are the best I've ever seen - the backgrounds are gorgeous but, with a lot of things, expecially the people, you'd think the game designers had never heard of a curve in their lives. However, the game itself made me forget about all that. Gabriel Knight is his usual chauvanistic self, but, in spite of that, his relationship with Grace is further developed in this game. The puzzles vary in difficulty, but I never felt as if any of them were impossible. It's easy to see that a lot of research went into the story in this game, and, after finishing the game, I was interested enough to read some of the books they got their research from (there's a bibliography in the game's booklet).

Amazingly enough, this game is also replayable - if you do the minimum amount of things necessary to win this game, you still won't have seen everything in the game. There are places you don't have to go, things you don't have to see, and even alternative ways of achieving the same goal, that all create reasons to play this game again. Except those areas of the game where you can die, or get caught by the bad guys, none of that will change how the game ends, but it's still interesting to go back and look for the things you missed - you even get points for the things you do, so you can tell how close you are to seeing everything the game has to show you. And for those of you who, like me, play these kinds of adventure games because you don't like getting killed or having to kill things, don't worry, most of that happens at the end of the game.

A little weak compared to the others

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 7 / 11
Date: March 19, 2000
Author: Amazon User

I enjoy the Gabriel Knight series and still play the other two games, even if they're a little outdated. The storyline is excellent, and you really get to know the characters. Unfortunately, that's not the case in the third installment of the series. Some of the characters are as "wooden" as Queen Amalia from the "Stars Wars: The Phantom Menace" movie. You hardly get to know them at all. Plus, the storyline is a bit weaker than the other GK series. I spent a lot of time scratching my head trying to make sense of what happened a minute ago. When I finished the game, I was STILL stratching my head, but this time because of the ending! In addition to that, the graphics are totally unlike that which you would see in a game like this. I also like the King's Quest series, but since they "polygonified" the eight one, my interest has been waning. "Sierra games," as I call any game where you walk around and have multiple icons that you click on different things to get responses (text or oral), SHOULD NOT have graphics like this. I would recommend this game to fans of the series (obviously), but for everyone else, wait for the price to drop before you make the purchase, and while you're waiting, play the first two GKs. I highly recommend those!

On the whole, I enjoyed playing GK3

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 6 / 9
Date: February 25, 2000
Author: Amazon User

I immediately purchased GK3 when it reached the stores since I had so much fun playing the first two games in the series. I thoroughly enjoyed this game with one notable exception, the character of Gabriel. His dialog was obnoxious and Tim Curry's voice acting was nothing short of terrible. But, as per usual with the GK series, the story was compelling, the characters were interesting, the game play time was long enough and the puzzles made sense. I liked the addition of the 3D engine and didn't mind them going back to animated characters. I sincerely hope there will be a GK4 as I would definitely buy it. My only wish is that they do NOT hire Tim Curry to play Gabriel again and might also consider toning down Gabriel's rude comments.

Big disappointment after GK2

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 5 / 7
Date: February 06, 2000
Author: Amazon User

This game is beautifully rendered graphically but the content leaves much to be desired. The object of this type of video game or any other game is to be as entertaining as possible while presenting a stimulating challenge to the gamer. While this game is aimed at a mature audience the puzzle content is in many instances sophomoric, silly, and so obtuse as to be annoying. Kudos to the graphics department, a big boo to the puzzle and story people.

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