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A fair decent title, but not for impatient types!

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 6 / 6
Date: May 27, 2004
Author: Amazon User

This was my first so-called "adventure" game. I bought a used copy based on Amazon customers' hype ("This is THE game!"). Most reviews were 4 or 5 stars. Personally, I find it not what it's cracked up to be. Good points include pretty graphics, a standout soundtrack, and good voice acting, among other things. And some of it is just downright hilarious! I should mention that the game does have a rather feminist bent ("We must protect the men and children from the snapjaw"). The thing about TLJ is that there is an excessive amount of info and dialogue. Many times you have to sit thru minutes-on-end of tiring conversations to both get clues and choose among 1-to-several lines to continue with the game. Be prepared, there's a creature who looks like Jabba the Hutt's two-legged ancestor and sounds like 1970's sportscaster Howard Cosell with a major grammar problem that at one point you have to listen talk for 20 minutes! And he talks slooooooowly. And while I'm at it, there's this dude who floats around in a wheelchair-esque "hoverchair" who's got the coolest tech rig you've ever seen. He can crack government codes and stuff. He also has the trashiest mouth, however, which gives the game a language rating. Be patient, and enjoy!

P.S.: You may want to get a good sound card and/or speakers. The music's a little too quiet.

An excellent adventure game

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 6 / 6
Date: September 14, 2004
Author: Amazon User

As many have already said, this is a great adventure game because of the story. The characters are well-developed, so much so that by the end of the game you will find yourself with an emotional investment in them. This is a true rarity for any pc game, not just an adventure game. I was reminded of the feeling I get after finishing a well-written novel. You feel as though you know the characters and, in a way, you don't want the story to end.

Admittedly, some portions of the game feature long sequences of dialogue, but they are worth the investment of your time. The story and the characters will get under your skin. The game is worth twice the discounted price it now sells for.

Terrific Game, terrific story

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 6 / 6
Date: April 10, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I had played this game when it was first released 6 years ago (can you believe it's been 6 years for a sequel to come out?) and remembered enjoying it immensely. With the sequel finally coming out next week, I couldn't remember most of the story and decided to sit down with it again. Doing so reminded me just how terrific the game is, even if it hasn't aged very well.

There are two main components for point and click adventure games from the beginning of the genre, story and puzzles. The story in The Longest Journey is absolutely terrific. Penned by Ragnar Tornquist, it is a sci-fi and fantasy story all rolled into one, set 300 years in the future and with a female art student as the protagonist, The Longest Journey is a roller-coaster of a story. To really talk about the story would ruin it, but I will say that it succeeds in being self-referential and serious at the same time.

What makes this work is terrific voice-acting and dialogue. April is a semi-typical resistant hero who just wants to focus on her drawing and other 19 year desires and has instead been thrust into a situation she doesn't--and can't--understand. The way she deals with this situation is terrific and carries some of the more weird things that happen. The game is dark and humorous. For every instance involving an exploding pop can to distract a guard, there is a cannibalistic ghoul waiting to eat you.

I am not a huge fan of adventure games. I suck at them usually and end up resorting to a walkthrough because I couldn't figure out how a piece of moldy cheese, a tack and a piece of lint would form together to get me out of a room. The Longest Journey uses similar puzzles but the majority of them make sense. You might have to sit there, go through your inventory and think about your options for a little bit but they are all solvable and *logically* (well...as logical as using a toy monkey's eye to replace with that police officer's synthetic eye to get into the police archives...but I digress).

Weighing in at 13 chapters, spread across two worlds and with a cast of 50 characters, The Longest Journey lives up to its name. At the time, it was considered close to the top of its game graphical wise (and for the adventure genre). Unfortunately, it hasn't aged too well. It's presented only in 640 x 480 resolution and the character models are very pixellated and aliasing is all over the place. The backgrounds are generally beautiful pre-rendered paintings that have some movement in them to give them depth.

My biggest complaint then and now is the wait times. Characters never really feel like they are in a hurry. When a storm besets you, and you cry for the captain, he slowly trods up the stairs as if the darkening storm clouds were a minor issue. And you have to wait. There's one instance where you have to wait for three characters to walk off screen. You can't do anything during that time. Add to that the slowly trudging nature of the characters and there's a lot of downtime. It can be frustrating when you want to continue with the gameplay/story but can't because of characters out on a Sunday stroll.

The dialogue is, at times, meandering. Most, if not all, of it is important, but those impatient will probably be put off by it. However, such is the way with adventure games and with a story this rich in characters and backstory, its necessary.

However, none of these technical issues stop me from recommending this game full-heartedly. In fact, I recommend it to gamers and non-gamers at the same time. It has a terrific, moving and climatic story that flows very well. It's probably one of the best story-centered games I have played and ranks in my top 10 of all game storylines. Really, there's no reason why not to pick it up right now. At $10 and with the sequel, Dreamfall: The Longest Journey 2 just around the corner, you can't get a better time to pick up this gem.

very good game with way too much dialogue

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 7 / 8
Date: April 24, 2003
Author: Amazon User

This is an excellent game, which contrary to another reviewers comments, runs very well on Win XP, but does require a video card with 3D ability. The graphics were excellent, the story interesting and it was very long so you get a lot for your money. The only problem was the neverending blah, blah, blah from every character you meet. I like interaction in a game, but this was way too yacky. Overall, if you like adventure games you will like this game a lot but just prepare for many long discussions with assorted characters about things you don't care about.

5 years later... and I'm still playing!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 7 / 8
Date: March 17, 2005
Author: Amazon User

First off, this game is a amazing. I bought it five or so years ago, when it first came out, and played it through it three days straight. Immediately after completing the game, I played it through all over again. I've been playing it at least two or three times a year since then, probably more, and I still find something new that I hadn't ever noticed before.

Now, I have a bone to pick with people who say that the dialouge is so lengthy and overdone. Guess what? The great thing about this game is that a lot of the dialouge you don't have to go through. A least half, probably more, of the dialouge is for people like myself who grow to love these characters and want to know as much about them as is possible. So, for the people who say the dialouge is too long, most of the time you can just get straight to the point, without any lengthy conversations to get in the way.

The background graphics are still beautiful, even to this day, and some of the detail in some of them still blow me away. The story is so good that I can't help myself, I keep coming back, over and over again. This is, in my opinion, THE adventure game. It has everything that in today's world adventure games lack: characters you sincerely care about, the ability to go more into the story only if you want to, incredible and imagine characters and backgrounds, graphics that are still holding up in the year 2005, but most importantly, a story that blows you away and holds you captivated to the very end.

And therein lies my only problem with the game: the end. It seems to me that there should be so much more to it than that, especially with the prophecy. I feel as if I got to read the first half of a book that was incredible... and then had it taken away before I could finish the second half. However, with the new sequel, Dreamfall, coming out, that shouldn't be a problem.

I've been playing this game for five or more years and I still enjoy it, perhaps even more than the first time. And, in my opinion, any game that can hold *my* interest that long, deserves some credit.

This was the Adventure Game of the Year for good reason

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 7 / 8
Date: April 17, 2005
Author: Amazon User

"Between science and magic, between order and chaos, between Stark and Arcadia, there is an ancient balance."

In "The Longest Journey" from FunCom eighteen-year old college art student April Ryan (voiced by Sarah Hamilton) learns that she has a destiny that has been foretold in a hundred tales. For thousands of years the Guardian of the Balance has preserved the Divide between the twin worlds of Stark and Arcadia, but now the Guardian has abandoned his tower, the armies of Chaos are advancing, and it is up to April to save not one world but two. Stark is a 23rd-century world, although the technology does not seem so greatly advanced that it could not be around the corner in our own time, while Arcadia is a world of magic. April has the power to pass between worlds and finds her self going on the trip from one place to other places of greatest duration in her young life.

The main piece of advice for anybody who plays "The Longest Journey" is to make sure they have enabled their "ESC" button. This is not only so that you can help April Ryan move across the screen more quickly but also so you can help move the dialogue along (which means you have to turn on the subtitles as well, which is a disservice to the fine vocal talent but necessary to speed the game along). This is important because creator Ragnar Tornquist has included a lot of conversations in this adventure game. These are not just those conversations with other characters where you have to pick options to try and get the right information that allows you to know where to go and what to do next, but rather lengthy sections where you just have to sit back and watch the two characters talk. In this game if you ask a character to tell you a story, sit back, because they are going to tell you an entire story. But be careful, because sometimes you need to pick up a key detail for a test or something.

Of course, once you have played one adventure game on the computer you have in a sense played them all because there are basic rules. You go around and collect everything there is to collect even if it does not make any sense (the Christmas ornament in "Phantasmagoria" taught me that valuable lesson). You take object and click on people to see if that will help you out but you also learn that sometimes you need to click objects on each other to make new objects. By the time you get to "The Longest Journey" you should be familiar with these basic strategies and accept the fact that sometimes you do things that do not make any sense because that is the way these games are played.

What will surprise you is that in this game there are some options as to what April can choose to do. This will have you scrambling to save your game and worried that April is about to face some horrible death and you are going to have to rethink what is going on. But while there are indeed characters who die during the course of the story you can actually make different choices and still get to the end of the chapter (similarly when you are choosing options on the conversations and you get to the right part it will just flow into the last option without forcing you to go back and click on it).

What matters then is are the characters, the story, the puzzles, and the graphics (not necessarily in that order). There are over fifty characters for April to interact with, of which your favorite is probably going to be Crow, simply because he provides much needed comic relief. One of the strengths is that there is an effort to justify April's growth as a character based on what actually happens as opposed to the general idea that is what is supposed to happen. The personal growth is not as important as saving the world(s), but they are appropriately entwined throughout the adventure. The story spans two worlds and thirteen chapters for about 30 hours of game play in which April is sent to the bottom of the seas in one world and into outer space in another. There are both mythological and science fiction elements and while I am not sure how it really all fits together in the end (and I was hopping for much more with the Kin than what we got). The graphics are certainly good enough in this story told in wide-screen, although I do not find them as gorgeous as what I say in the "Syberia" series.

A year ago FunCom was awarded a grant from the Norwegian Film Fund to help finance the development of "Dreamfall," which will be the next chapter in "The Longest Journey" saga. Given what happens in the first one the adventure will have to be somewhat different in the sequel even if the locations remain the same (I assume April will be bouncing back and forth between Stark and Arcadia again). So this is not "Syberia," where you get to the end of the game and you are only halfway through the journey and you can play this computer game without worrying you have to buy another one to complete the experience, although you should enjoy "The Longest Journey" enough to want to try "Dreamfall" when it comes out as well.

I loved it!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 7 / 8
Date: May 26, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I thought this game was really nicely done. The graphics are beautiful and didn't crash my machine (like heavy graphics sometimes do...even though it's a good machine). And I really liked the storyline better than I thought I was going to. (originally, I held off on buying it cause I wasn't all that peaked by the story.) I will say that I did have a hang up when I couldn't figure out what to do for awhile, but (thank goodness) someone wrote a walk-through for it and I used it to get past my lull. This was definitely worth the buy and I'm glad I got it!

Lots of talk...

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 8 / 10
Date: June 23, 2006
Author: Amazon User

This is summer of 2006 but I liked Syberia so I thought I'd give this highly touted game, albeit from years ago, a shot.

My goal in games is to enter a different world, and enjoy it. I'm not into developing level 100 warriors. I want to walk around, solve some quests or adventures, experience some beauty, have a few laughs. Grim Fandango, also an old game, was a 10 out of 10, for me. (Psychonauts was my favorite game of all time.)

I only played this game for an hour. The graphics were very nice, though even with my ATI Radio 9800 PRO, the characters had a lot of jaggies. But the scenes were gorgeously painted.

But otherwise, the game made me crazy with endless dialogue. I'm not talking about a few sentences per person. I'm talking about characters speaking nine or ten long paragraphs apiece to each other, and you have almost no control over it. I don't get all the other reviews. Well acted? The main character is almost condescendingly rendered as a wise-acre feminist whose reactions are all too predictable. Good puzzles? It's the typical "try everything in your inventory on everything else even when it makes no sense" kind of game.

I'd recommend this to someone who basically wants to watch a novel with a lot of taking, and do some inventory clicking. But if you lack patience, as I do, this is not the game to get.

An Adventuring Treat

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 5 / 5
Date: May 14, 2005
Author: Amazon User

The Longest Journey far surpassed my expectations. This is a highly immersive game that will draw you in and leave you wanting more! The animation is very good, excellent artwork, the music and especially the voice acting were truly superb. Like all adventure games there will be times when you will probably need to consult a FAQ as there are a couple of puzzles that are abstract if you don't get the backround on them before attemtping to solve them. All in all a very enjoyable game and I am looking forward to the upcoming sequal "Dreamfall".

Beautiful graphics, but too much talking!

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 7 / 9
Date: February 04, 2003
Author: Amazon User

The longest journey is a game filled with beautiful graphics and an amazing amount of different scenes, interesting and/or beautiful characters and storylines. The female character April Ryan, an art student, is taken through a journey to basically save the earth and what's beyond, but it is also a story of coming of age, growing as a person. The puzzles are mostly about taking objects and applying them later-my favorites-, and are not difficult to figure out.
But there seems to be more talking than puzzles to keep the game going. And although the conversations are often enjoyable in the way they show a sense a humour, it gets to be quite annoying due to length of the conversation and the old fashioned way it is incoorperated, namely by choice of lines. Which line you choose often does not matter, the conversation will contain the same information in the end.
Shortcutting the sometimes endless conversations -I read the subtitles much faster than the conversation goes- cannot be done by clicking the mouse, but needs to be done by pressing escape at every sentence.
This is one of the examples which made me conclude that the operation of the game -such as mouse control- is inefficient. I would advice the makers to check out Atlantis III before finalising any sequel! And some scenes seem to be `underused', being just pretty worlds to walk through. But overall, a very impressive adventure game!
Some technical issues:
I played the game (Xplosive/FunCom version, ordered through Amazon UK) in XP and encountered only two problems. One is that the game launcher did not work, but the game provides another file ("game") to start the game. Another problem iwas that the game did not fill the full screen, but I have not figured out whether that is system or game related. Still waiting on a message from the support desk on that!

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