Awake. Alive. Amnesiac. Výtečně napsané (charaktery tu spolu mluví jako lidé a nikoli jako videoherní postavičky, témata jsou dospělá, analogie promyšlené, politika i světy fungující, postavy nečernobílé), převážně skvostně nadabované, ještě lépe „ohudebněné“ a legendární úroveň kvality hlavní dějové linie/postav nastavená předchozími díly byla ve všech směrech udržena.

V čem je tedy problém? To co by mohlo fungovat jako několika málo hodinový interaktivní film, nefunguje jako plnohodnotná rozsáhlá do kapitol rozdělená hra. Důvodů je celá řada. Adventurní pasáže jsou do počtu a tak jednoduché, že jsou až vyloženě směšné, nepropracované, nedomyšlené a působí vyloženě násilně naroubované „protože se od nás čeká, že tam nějaké ty puzzly prostě budou“. Jaký to úpadek oproti dodnes v tomto ohledu legendární jedničce. Tolik ke gameplayi; žádné jiné herní prvky v tom nejsou.

Dalo by se však ještě přejít, že to nefunguje jako pravověrná klasická adventura, kdyby to aspoň fungovalo ve stylu dvojky jako krátký, úderný a na ději i postavách stavící interaktivní film spíše než hra. Jenže ani tak to neobstojí. Na vině je absence jakéhokoli tempa hraní/vyprávění. Telltale a podobní to řeší filmově; tedy střihem mezi jednotlivými scénami „kdy se něco děje“. Tady je obsaženo i to „vystřižené“; tedy sáhodlouhé, neustálé a v důsledku toho záhy otravné přesouvání z místa na místo. On je dobrý důvod, proč obvykle nevidíme postavy jedoucí několik hodin z místa A na místo B či jak si na hodinu odskočí na oběd. Tím důvodem je tempo vyprávění. A tady žádné není.

Nejvíce času (krom přesunů) zaberou dialogy, které jsou alfou i omegou a každý zabere dlouhé minuty. A ty dialogy jsou skvostně napsané. Což je dobře. A nemáte během nich co dělat ani na co koukat. Což je špatně a to tak že hodně. V době, kdy je zvykem dialogy (a speciálně pak takto časté a dlouhé) podávat filmově střižené, dynamické, interaktivní, plné filmových záběrů, které střídají postavy, úhly snímání, nebojí se zaměřit na nějaký detail v podobě tiku či tváře projevující emoci, tak zde máte dvě ztuhlé postavy proti sobě a dlouhé (jakože opravdu d-l-o-u-h-é) minuty můžete tak akorát točit analogovou páčkou kolem hlavy protagonistů a jednou za čas zvolit další téma hovoru či učinit nějaké rozhodnutí (která zpravidla mají důsledky, to je třeba uznat). Čímž se zbytečně devalvuje to dobré, co na dialozích po scenáristické stránce nesporně je. Na papíře chyba není, ta je v realizaci a chybějící režii.

Když k tomu všemu přičtete, že čtvrtá epizoda působí do značné míry jako nastavovaná kaše před finále a první zase postrádá „vtahující“ efekt a skončí dříve než se rozjede, tak se nelze ubránit ambivalentnímu pocitu, že jakkoli je uzavření trilogie více než důstojné po dějové stránce a je radost vidět, jak to s charaktery a světy po těch letech čekání dopadne, tak je ostudně nedůstojné po té herní.

The fact that this game exists at all is a miniature miracle; I never though we'd ever get anything else in this franchise after the first Dreamfall game

What a game it is, too! Just like its predecessors, you have a wonderful, lived in world and some fantastic characters, with honestly some of the best implementation of the whole Telltale Games style you're going to find; it's not quite as good as the first game (very few things are), but I'd definitely put it in front of Dreamfall: Longest Journey

It absolutely kills me that we're never going to see the end of this/The Longest Journey home, but hey, I suppose I'll just be glad that this exists at all

The Dreamfall series followed very much the same trajectory as Shenmue. The first two games are masterpieces. The third game that exists mainly through crowdfunding? A damp squib.

I did not have a good time with this at all. It was janky as hell and performed like shit on the PS4. And its lack of budget was very showing. Expect a lot of backtracking, aimless wandering and stilted animation.

Such an unfortunate finale for an otherwise excellent saga.

The Longest Journey is actually one of my favorite games of all time. It was one of the first PC games I played as well and what pushed me to get into PC gaming. Adventure games were something that console players couldn’t really get. The rich stories, great voice acting, and detailed characters were something only a PC could really do. The Longest Journey impressed me with all of this and I remember it to this day. It was followed up by Dreamfall that pushed the game into a new generation with 3D models and backgrounds and brought the game to consoles for the first time as well and it was also just as memorable. We now get the final chapters of this story and I have to say I walked away quite satisfied.

You play once again as Zoe Castillo. A woman who is a Dreamer and able to go between the dream world Arcadia and the real world, Stark. You also play as Kian who is in Arcadia. The ex-leader of a racist and fascist human country trying to exterminate all magical creatures. Both characters are strong, likable, and I really got attached to them through their journey. The many characters throughout Dreamfall are great actually and it was a joy to listen to their great voice acting and find out more about them. However, the game does have some pacing issues and I’ll get into that later. There is a lot of politics in the game that reflects real-world issues (more so now more than ever) and the subjects get a bit touchy and might rub some people the wrong way, but I’m glad a game story is actually challenging these issues.


The biggest draw to Dreamfall is the choices you make during key events in each book. These will pause time and you get a limited amount of time to choose a path. The consequences will occur usually later on somewhere and these events are shown with a logo in the top right corner of the screen. This symbol means that current action or event is from a choice you made earlier, but it’s never clear what choices lead to which events, and this is where I will state the choice system is flawed. Later on in the game, the choices kind of a blur and become unclear and seem less impactful. The first two books do a great job of making sure your choices are felt but later on I couldn’t tell anymore.

When it comes to actually playing the game, well, there isn’t much of one. You run around various areas finding objects to use on other objects and talking to people. That’s literally it with very few puzzles. The puzzles are stupidly easy or frustratingly obtuse. My biggest complaint about the entire game would be the areas you explore are static and lifeless. Sure, they seem like they’re full of life the first couple of time you walk through them, but I spent so much time looking at maps to find the next area to go to just wandering by the same group of people, the same icon that lets you hear the character’s inner thoughts about that item and nothing ever changes. I spent the first two books inside the same hub areas for each character it became a drag just to get to the next scene. I would have liked to see more organic changes, more things to looks at and more inner dialog written as you spend a third of the game in these hub areas.


Most of the game is talking and cut scenes, however, and that’s what adventure games are all about. The voice acting is superb, the characters are fun to listen to and learn about, and I felt sucked into this magical world, especially being a fan of the series. However, that’s what this game is made for: fans of the series. If you haven’t played previous games you will most likely be lost and the story won’t mean as much to you. There are constant references to characters meeting in previous games and previous events and they are never explained. The backstory from the main menu is pretty much pointless as well. The world just feels magical and wonderful and it was a good time while I was in it.


The visuals are also pretty good of an adventure game, clearly last-gen, but this did come out in 2014. The facial animations are stiff, but overall it looks nice with great lighting effects and lots of detail everywhere. The game doesn’t seem well optimized though as certain lights will tank the FPS even on high-end hardware, so the engine needs a lot of work. The ending was also not as expected. It was good as in it made sense, but there was no crazy plot twist or anything like that. It came to a slow stop instead of full-speed and making your head spin as a good ending would. But, overall, Dreamfall Chapters is satisfying enough and completes a long-beloved series that will probably never get another game again.

Like a dream, I had little control and felt that I had to sit back and watch it unravel. I remember only parts and much is nonsensical. I remember running from guards with my heart pounding and some people died and I had to stop and wonder if any choices that I made would have dramatically changed anything.

But I don't think I can be bothered lying back down to dream this again to see if it will resolve differently...

I may go back and actually play The Longest Journey and Dreamfall at a later stage... to kind of give myself an idea about wether or not this one is a good game, but not today.

So I continue to play through this series. This one was good enough that I kept going through to the fourth book straight away. This one's story is much stronger, though it almost feels like the puzzles are an after thought.

I think it was Book Three where there was just too much fog and darkness for my graphics card... but I struggle through this.

Edit: Though I've come to accept that choices that I make are just choices that I make, I found it a bit annoying that there was a choice I made without realising I made a choice. And yes, that's pretty much on me, but still...

Firstly I don’t know how this was given such positive reviews. The game is painfully slow with some dialogue being unskippable on top of slow drawn out scenes and voice acting. Going into this as a new player without playing prior game makes the story vague, messy and downright confusing. The performances from the cast are down right offensive with no passion behind any line. Poor graphics and gameplay segments make it a slog. Yes the game started off interesting but as the story progresses it’s just hogswash.

Ending a trilogy is never easy. Heck, ending a story is never easy. Both gaming and cinema have had a long and messy history of not being able to stick the landing with the final act. However, despite certain reservations I'd had going in, I'm happy to report that Dreamfall Chapters brings everything to a wonderful close, giving closure to nearly every lingering plot thread or absent character from the previous two entries.

I can very easily see why many find the end result of this finale convoluted and messy; however, when you play each entry in quick succession, as I just did this past week, it's truly impressive to see just how much series creator Ragnar Tørnquist and the team at Red Thread Games manage to address and wrap up in just under 20 hours.

It's not all sunshine and roses, though; there are a few key underlying problems with Dreamfall Chapters.

For one, it takes quite a while to pick up steam narratively, especially compared to its predecessors. The first couple of episodes (or "books," as they're called here) aren't quite as interesting as the last three. It gradually gets better with each episode. Don't get me wrong, it starts off fairly solid and ends very strong; however, it could have used some edits to the pacing from both a narrative and gameplay perspective in a lot of the first half.

The story also handles a key character's sexuality in a messy and confusing way, not really knowing what to definitively do with them half the time. While I fully acknowledge that one's sexuality, and especially finding it to begin with, is not always a resolute thing, it's clear here that the developers were having trouble with this particular character's identity, more so than the character themselves were. That being said, it does improve as it goes on, so efforts were definitely made to correct any errors before.

Gameplay-wise, it's essentially Dreamfall: The Longest Journey's systems, sans the unnecessary parts like combat and stealth. Mixed into it this time, though, are Telltale-esque choices. While I understand that the choices here are largely cosmetic and don't change the overarching story in many, if any, significant ways, I've played so many Telltale-adjacent games that it's just something I'm used to at this point. Still, a little more active shaping of the narrative from player choices would have been appreciated.

All in all, though, Dreamfall Chapters provides a daring, emotional, and incredibly satisfying conclusion to the trilogy. While there are minor and moderate bumps and hurdles along the way, it ends strong while still managing to keep certain threads open enough for the story to potentially continue somehow.

The Longest Journey might still be my preferred entry, but Ragnar and the rest of Red Thread should be immensely proud that, for me and I'm sure many others, they created an entry that comes so close to the greatness of the original that calling it the best one is a statement that would be hard to argue against.

8.5/10

What an epic and breathtaking journey. Like Final Fantasy XIII, the epic length combined with a still densely woven story really does make it feel like a journey. The sheer variety of characters, places and themes is almost overwhelming. The characters are funny and charming without it becoming overbearing, and they work well together once the two worlds start fusing. All while this happens, it does not shy away from heavier topics which I'm thankful for. An absolute recommendation for general adventure fans.

So having not played The Longest Journey or Dreamfall, this has been an interesting experience. The game starts with what I presume is a spoiler for the second of those two games, but it really didn't matter much for me.

The first book has focussed on Zoe, who luckily forgets a whole lot (and there's a section early on where she gets to do a recap). So I guess I'll find out more about her when she remembers

There are some clunky parts to the game, but the dialog system works well, the characters tell you what they think about each choice. The "Balance has changed" isn't as subtle as Telltale's "so and so will remember that", but it does seem like they make the changes affect the story and they tell you that things are happening because of your choices.

There's less for the other playable characters to do in this book. Kian's story in this book is brief and didn't really explain much about who he is or why he's doing anything (except I get the impression he doesn't like to talk very much)... and I didn't really care for or understand the Interlude very much.

I'm a little way into the second book a the time of writing and it seems to focus on Kian more, so maybe I'll get to find out about his back story.

The story gets better and the puzzles get less so. And I'm quite over these Interludes with the finding of things, but hoping that this is at an end as we head into the finale. The world building and the lore has become a bit more interesting and am curious to see it come together.

And my graphical woes continue. In this book I had a touching scene between two characters where almost everything was the same shade of blue. Very odd...

And now I'm caught up I have to actually wait for the finale. Let's see where my choices will take me.

Soooo.... I'm realising that I probably need a new graphics card. I've been fiddling with the options but still am getting a lot of black shapes and loss of textures. I've pushed the gamma up a fair bit and that seems to help, but... eh...

Anyway, most of this one is with Kian and making some tough choices that change the Balance. And I'm kind of becoming cool with gut instincting them. The Kian parts are good.

I was somewhat less satisfied with the Zoe stuff. I find it hard enough getting around town as is without the game making it harder for me. And then making me find certain points using the radar... hmm...

And then the interlude was just urgh... I mean there were some cute moments in there, but that's such a painful fetch quest which ends in the game smacking me for not playing the earlier games.

Dunno, maybe I need to take a break from this series... or perhaps the next one will trend towards less of what I dislike and more what I like about the game.