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really awful

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 1 / 5
Date: June 05, 2002
Author: Amazon User

I picked this game up because it was cheap and happened to be one of the few adventure games I didn't already own. It was a waste money. This most awful computer game I've ever played. The storyline is boring and confusing and the graphics and voice acting are terrible. It's an excruciatingly slow game to get through, not because it's hard, but because it takes forever to get from point A to point B and then you have to listen to some awful dialogue for a while. The puzzle I had the most problem with in the game was the one where you had to light torches in a dark tunnel. You can't go on to the next stretch of tunnel until you light the torch in that area, and it's impossible to see anything. I was reduced to searching the screen with my cursor until I could find a spot where the game would allow me to use my matches. It wasn't hard to figure out what I had to do, but actually doing it was another matter. Save youself the frusteration and boredom and buy some other game. Whatever else you might get, it'll probably be better than this game. If it's worse, you have my sympathy.

good game,very creepy and pretty hard

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 1 / 2
Date: September 09, 2002
Author: Amazon User

I enjoyed necronomicon.At times it was hard to hear the dialogue because the people either mumbled or talked to fast or soft.The graphics were good and the puzzles were not easy.The only thing i had to have help with was the correct urn.I just guessed any urn would due.I thought it was funny that in the town other than the fisherman nobody ever answered a door when i knocked.It is creepy like the 2 dracula games i played.Necronomicon is certainly harder than dracula -resurrection and a little bit harder than dracula-the last sanctuary.I thought the documents were complicated.If there is a negative to the game it is the overcomplicated documents.overall a good game.

A great storyline!

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: February 05, 2003
Author: Amazon User

When I first started playing Necronomicon, I wasn't very impressed by the opening enviornment. However, as the game progressed, I was so intriqued by it. I thought the storyline was brilliant and the some of the locations were downright spooky. I found the puzzles to be difficult but not so much that your about to pull your hair out. I really recommend this game to anybody who likes scary situations, and a challenge. The only downside I could find was that it was a little short and the ending wasn't what I had expected, but I still give it two thumbs up!!

Evil

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 3 / 6
Date: August 22, 2002
Author: Amazon User

..., I played and enjoyed this game. The story is cool and the graphics and sound are excellent. If you like the occult, satan and stuff like that, and you are an adventure gamer, I recomend this game.

starts off good

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 3 / 4
Date: September 24, 2001
Author: Amazon User

Well, I liked this game at the beginning, until you get half way through and then you spend more time "dying" then anything else. It got to the point where I no longer wanted to finish the game because of how and why you "died". It was just, quite frankly, too annoying to continue to play.

Necromonicon

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 3 / 4
Date: October 16, 2001
Author: Amazon User

I do not recommend this game for the following reasons: Too complicated to get through without a cheat guideline. Disappointed with many of the scenes. I would have liked to be able to explore the upstairs of the first home, but was unable to do it. I became bored too soon with this game.

Nice story but too dark!!!

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 3 / 3
Date: April 08, 2002
Author: Amazon User

When I mean 'dark' I mean 'dark'! What made this game frustrating was that some scenes were too dark to find anything! Getting around the lab was really tough cuz you got find these switches to light up the room.(yes, I put my brightness all the way up!)

As for the puzzles, some are easy (just keep clicking the symbols if you don't understand the clues) some are hard (just read those books you find) and some are just time consuming (you can get through those mazes eventually!!!).

I think the most "illogical" part comes after you leave the lab. You have to find the right urn and have the charcoal with you.

As for the lip sync, I don't really care about it. It is afterall just a video game with limitations. I don't think the average player is going to notice that.

I think this game could have been better if it had more puzzles and less of picking up stuff. Nice story though.

Unpleasant beyond belief

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 3 / 3
Date: September 06, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Being an H.P.Lovecraft fan I bought this game with high hopes and initially was happy with the excellent pictures. My brief euphoria, however turned to frustration and then anger when I had to turn the brightness up to the max on my monitor and still couldn't see anything during the dungeon part of the game. I could just imagine the game's designers sitting around saying "Let's make it even darker! That would be really fun!" Even with a walkthrough I had a terrible time manuevering around and eventually the boredom took over, and I got rid of this turkey. Save your money or read some H. P. Lovecraft books instead. I will never buy another Dreamcatcher game again.

A dark journey through your mind

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 4 / 4
Date: March 26, 2002
Author: Amazon User

...Since the very beginning of the game, your character meets many different people and through dialogues the story of Necronomicon begins to develop. You explore a dilapidated house, an alchemyst's laboratory, search for books in a large library, summon a spirit. The puzzles are very intersting but extremely complicated. Nevertheless if you sum up all the information you have and take notes, (and through a bit of experimentation) the puzzles are solvable without a walkthrough. There was this moment when I had to make a potion but I haven't got any clue how to do it, and I had to choose two bottles of about 20 available and mix them. However, once you start thinking logically you will realize that the possible combinations are limited, since the variation of the pots is limited (although that is not immediately obvious). The process through which you summon the spirirt from the past provides exciting puzzles, which I rarely have recently encountered in an adventure game. I disagree with the other reviews, which criticize this game for its lack of reasoning. Logic dominates, but if you like the easy-3-hour-gameplay-plus-the-constant-assistance-of-areliable-walkthrough, then this game is not for you. The thrill this game provides is in its making you think deeper and make logical connections in order to solve the puzzles. The game is challenging and patience is a key factor in enjoying the game as a whole. Necronomicon has nice graphics and a dark atmosphere that often thrills you as you walk in dark corridors in search for a lantern (almost a hint :-)). The interface of the game is a point-and-click type, typical of the Dreamcatcher adventure games, and sometimes even provides hints telling you that you should use an item at the particular situation. Well, some people will hate me for this review, but I hope others will make use of it in a more beneficial way. I strongly recommend Necronomicon, even though I have not already finished it.

Good enough that I wish it was better.

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

Necronomicon is set in 1920s Rhode Island. The hero, William Stanton, is charged with sleuthing around to find the connection between Providence, Rhode Island and the World of the Dead. Stanton is an archaeologist by trade, and he is very young, fairly naive, very polite, and very determined. I liked playing from this character's perspective. And the idea that there is a dark underside to such a quaint and seemingly peaceful town is provocative, and appeals to my everpresent suspicion that all is not as it seems.

The first half of the game is preoccupied with unraveling the mystery around Stanton's friend, Edgar Wicherly. Wicherly brings Stanton a pyramid-shaped stone and tells him to give it to no one, "not even me!" This portion of the game is quite riveting---the graphics in the town are quite nice with fairly involved detailing. Stanton's task is to explore what has happened to Wicherly, and what kind of research he has been doing to provoke such odd behavior. The eerieness is well-developed by the odd behavior and taciturnity of the towns folk.

There is a stretch of game where I was literally terrified---I confess to being so absorbed by the storyline and graphics that at times I could not bring myself to press the cursor on the hotspot for fear of what might happen next (at one point I got up from my chair and stood behind it to press the cursor---something about doing this made me break the hold the narrative had over me). Really great work here---the designers have a good sense of what is really terrifying, in a Blair Witch tradition.

There are some moments of broken story logic (it seems to me) having to do with the central scene in the middle of the game. There is an implausible moment in the storyline, which affects my relationship to the main character (I refrain from revealing the details). Nonetheless, the story picks up from that moment and shifts into an entirely different world apart from the dreamy Rhode Island setting. I think I would have remained more engaged had the story stuck to the Rhode Island space a little more, giving a more palpable sense that the other side is much more integrally connected to the world in which all the characters live and breathe. As it is, the game is separated into "The Rhode Island Segment" and "The Other World Segment." It loses some of its efficacy because of this for me.

The game is puzzle-heavy, to an astonishing degree, particularly in the second half. Rather than bog myself down in frustrating solutions, I opted to find a good walkthrough for the puzzles. There are also several mazes, which are slightly less frustrating, and on which I usually did not cop out by going to the walkthrough. There is some interesting alchemical work, as well as some fairly engaging library work (Stanton follows the path of many a researcher in just such a library). It seems to me that the facts and details of the storyline are fairly historically plausible, if not accurate.

I give this game 3 stars because the first half is so engaging--for its narrative development, voice acting (the newspaper man at the Gazette is a memorable delivery), measured eerieness, and logical sleuthing. It gets no more than 3 stars because the second half fails to sustain the enjoyment of the first half--the story loses plausibility and connection to the first half, it is almost all puzzles and mazes with no non-player character interaction, and even though it takes place "on the underside," it is slightly less eery than the disturbed world of Rhode Island.

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