One of the most beautiful and well-written games I've played in my life. Genuine tears were streaming down my face when I finished the epilogue. I haven't played many point-and-click adventure games: only the ones by Humongous Entertainment and Sam & Max, so randomly picking up this game that was super cheap during the steam sale and having it be one of the best pieces of media I've experienced in my life was an insanely pleasant surprise.
The Longest Journey, without going into too many spoilers, is a story about April Ryan, and her connection between the two worlds: Stark (the world of science and law) and Arcadia (the world of magic and chaos). Throughout the story, through April, you travel and experience the struggles of abuse, political censorship, and if war can ever truly be "just". You meet strange people, animals, and mystical creatures that help you along your journey to help reconnect the seperated worlds. Every character is so well thought-out and truly personal, it feels like you're properly meeting someone who has gone through so much in life, their skin moist with the sweat of real fears and missed dreams. Something personal to me that I really enjoyed was the crazy amount of strongly written female characters, ranging from our relatable but brave girl protag, to the realistic and openly accepted lesbian couple, to the old women whose tales we must trust more than our own self. I appreciate that the serious times of the game are allowed their moments, while also having many silly moments that know when to be separate. I went in expecting to hate Crow, as an example, but you don't see him too often for him to become annoying, and when you do see him, it feels like a breath of fresh air to hear his dumb, silly banter. The story is set up perfectly, and clearly had a lot of time and love put into it, with it being absolutely perfectly paced, and one of the better examples of using the Chekhov's Gun trope that I can think of.
My compliants are small, and just involve stuff that old point-and-clicks almost always do, such as having a couple confusing puzzles or actions to continue the story, but for a point-and-click as long and complicated as The Longest Journey I was pretty shocked how few "dead-ends" I ran into. The game also crashed a bit, but I guess it's to be expected when running an older PC game on a modern computer, and I mostly only really had issues with crashes when it didn't mix well with OBS.
The Longest Journey is $3 during the Steam sale - I've already bought and gifted it to 5 of my friends, begging them to put time aside and play this game. It's not going to be a game that touches everyone as emotionally as it touched me, but if you have $3 lying around and 25+ hours to spend, please please give it a chance...
This is the story of the Longest Journey, and I told it in my own words, as told to me by my teacher. As we will continue to tell for many, many years.
5/5
The Longest Journey, without going into too many spoilers, is a story about April Ryan, and her connection between the two worlds: Stark (the world of science and law) and Arcadia (the world of magic and chaos). Throughout the story, through April, you travel and experience the struggles of abuse, political censorship, and if war can ever truly be "just". You meet strange people, animals, and mystical creatures that help you along your journey to help reconnect the seperated worlds. Every character is so well thought-out and truly personal, it feels like you're properly meeting someone who has gone through so much in life, their skin moist with the sweat of real fears and missed dreams. Something personal to me that I really enjoyed was the crazy amount of strongly written female characters, ranging from our relatable but brave girl protag, to the realistic and openly accepted lesbian couple, to the old women whose tales we must trust more than our own self. I appreciate that the serious times of the game are allowed their moments, while also having many silly moments that know when to be separate. I went in expecting to hate Crow, as an example, but you don't see him too often for him to become annoying, and when you do see him, it feels like a breath of fresh air to hear his dumb, silly banter. The story is set up perfectly, and clearly had a lot of time and love put into it, with it being absolutely perfectly paced, and one of the better examples of using the Chekhov's Gun trope that I can think of.
My compliants are small, and just involve stuff that old point-and-clicks almost always do, such as having a couple confusing puzzles or actions to continue the story, but for a point-and-click as long and complicated as The Longest Journey I was pretty shocked how few "dead-ends" I ran into. The game also crashed a bit, but I guess it's to be expected when running an older PC game on a modern computer, and I mostly only really had issues with crashes when it didn't mix well with OBS.
The Longest Journey is $3 during the Steam sale - I've already bought and gifted it to 5 of my friends, begging them to put time aside and play this game. It's not going to be a game that touches everyone as emotionally as it touched me, but if you have $3 lying around and 25+ hours to spend, please please give it a chance...
This is the story of the Longest Journey, and I told it in my own words, as told to me by my teacher. As we will continue to tell for many, many years.
5/5
FranKle
1 month ago