Rating: 
Summary: The Longest Journey - worth it
Review: The Longest Journey is awesome. There really isnt more that needs to be said. It is a trip through the eyes of April Ryan and it never ever gets boring. Have fun and live life through April for a little while, its completely worth it!
Rating:
Summary: The best adventure/fantasy game I have ever seen
Review: "The Longest Journey" is immensely satisfying on a variety of levels: visually, aurally and its ability to tell a most incredible tale. The writing is better than any other game, book, or movie that I have played, seen or read. Ragnar Tornquist's story makes you care about *every* character, from the protagonist April Ryan to the most minor characters, both human and, well, alien.+ Visuals are impressive both in quality and imagination. Panoramic vistas of sea, twisted fantasy landscapes, sleazy future metropolis Newport, bohemian Venice, and medieval Arcadia shine. Cutscenes are movie quality, although playback from my hard drive was choppy at times. + Sound was excellent, both music and ambient sounds. Background noises were excellent, including nature sounds and the sounds of traffic and city noise. Not much in the way of music but the music matched the moods of the scenes. + Controls were easy to learn, inventory system was simple and effective + Cast of characters was large and extremely memorable. Some of my favourites include April, Crow, Charlie, Fiona, Cortez, Captain Nebevay and Burns Flipper (the *extremely* foul-mouthed hacker). - There are no patches available for the US version. I did a full install (over 2 GB) and only encountered one fatal glitch (outside the Newport Police Station) that caused my computer to lock up every time -/+ Full install is over 2 GB but does not require CDs after installation - Objectionable langauge (the two worst offenders are Zack (foul-mouthed mysogynistic border) and Burns Flipper (superfluously foul-mouthed hacker who utters several f-words every sentence) - Game can be wordy in spots (everyone has something to say...a lot of something to say actually) but it is possible to skip dialogue/animations by pressing the esc key + Good ending, although there are several obvious hints and setups for a sequel. Ragnar Tornquist promises that one day "The Longest Journey" will continue. This is the best adventure game ever in terms of creativity, interest, settings (subways, ships, undersea, outer space), writing, characters and playability. Long live "The Longest Journey" !
Rating:
Summary: Longest Journey was Great!
Review: This was one of the best adventure/role playing games I ever played. You actually care about your main character and the story is engrossing, the graphics beautiful and the game is just a lot of fun! I played every day until I finished!
Rating: 
Summary: No Journey
Review: Will only half way install. 2 nd copy received as a gift and still does not play.load or anything. Save yourself the frustration and take a pass
Rating: 
Summary: Very good!
Review: This was a very good. The second best adventure game Ive ever played. Its good, but not as good as the Gabriel Knight series. The Knight games have a more intelligent story, with real mysteries, real places, many real people and many real historical facts. You solve the mysteries in a more realistic way. The fantasy and sci-fi setting in The Longest Journey isnt that compelling. But the graphics and athmosphere is wonderful, and it has a fun and good written story. Great places, nice characters, good dialogue(alot of dialogue) and much offensive language. I loved that, made it so much real. If the future of the world lies in your hands, who wouldnt swear? To summon up; The game lacks the plot and mystery of the Gabriel Knight games, but what makes it enjoyable is the nice graphics, great puzzles and a good detailed written story, in a sci-fi setting. Buy it!
Rating:
Summary: Hard to get out of your mind
Review: Plot: Player searches two worlds (post-apocalyptic Earth and an alternate universe with magic) for parts of a magical device that will keep the two Earths in balance.
Brain vs. Reflexes: Brains 10, reflexes 0
Optimal Age Level: 17-25, due to huge amounts of profanity and the strongly teen-oriented story, plus a back story of a teen running away from a semi-abusive family
Difficulty: Average-Hard
Average Time Expenditure: Average (1-5 days) When this game first came out I played it once, shrugged, and gave it away. Six months later I still couldn't get it out of my head and had to buy it again. The characters are realistic and gripping, the graphics are gorgeous, the interactions natural (well ... mostly), and the puzzles just hard enough. (And no stupid chess problems either.) Acting and writing are excellent. Lots and lots of human interaction; no violence or time-limited puzzles. Just the way I like it. Good news: Funcom is going to make a sequel! Glad to see someone's got it right.
Rating:
Summary: Fun. original, but not perfect
Review: The Longest Journey is an amazing game, in more than one way. First of all, its storyline is nothing short of epic. Changing from the middle ages to the future or a fantasy-surrounding, from innercity squares to outlandish dockyards, it is sure a long journey. The makers have put a lot of thought in writing this script, and it shows. Its story is compelling and original. The graphics are quite beautiful, I would say you can't get them much better. And heroine April Ryan makes for a nice change in action hero - she's charming and fresh. So far the strong points. There are some weaker points too. Navigation within the screen is somewhat slow and cumbersome. This can get worse if your computer is not the very latest. TLJ is very choosy when it comes to computerconfiguration. With an up to date 3D- and soundcard and its latest drivers, it should be no problem however. As the story evolves, so doe the inventory of things you pick up on the way. It can be quite confusing what item to use, and for what purpose. The actions you're suppose to perform, can be farfetched or downright stupid, to say the least - Imagine buying a can of coke, having to put it in a paintshaker, so that later on it will explode in someones face.... I suppose TLJ biggest drawback is the enormous amount of dialogue, which you cannot skip properly. You have to sit back and listen to long, very, very long dialogues, some just for fun or so. It can be very tedious and a test for your patience. There's quite a lot of unneccesary swearing too. Having said that, I would surely recommend TLJ, for its an original and beautiful game - April Ryan will surely enter the gallery of great videogame characters - even if the voiceacting is in fact below standard.
Rating:
Summary: Deep story. Great game
Review: Even though it will not qualify as a challenging game, I beleive it is one the best ever adventure games. Tha story plot is so deep and rich that it's very hard to quit playing once you have started. Most (propably all) of the challenges are LOGICAL and in harmony with the enviroment, the characters and/or the particular situations in wich you get involved. That makes also most of them easy, I concede that, but I still remember frustration piled up while playing the so called adventure games were you have to figure out the most stupid and silly puzzles you could imagine. I beleive this was the reason this genre went down in the last years.
Just to give the reader a reference, for my taste, the jewels of the adventure games have been: The Monkey Islands (the four of them), Grim Fandango (The most original ever), The Tex Murphy Series (Is there any one come out or Microsoft have already Killed him) and, now, The Longest Journey.
So, if you feel at home trying to figure out how to place 8 queens in a chessboard when nobody is playing and for no purpose, look somewere else, but, if your up for a beautifull and amazing graphic adventure, do not hesitate a second and run to get this game.
I hope for the continuation as it's implied in the epilogue!!
Rating: 
Summary: The Most Frustrating Journey
Review: Pros:
1. I like the imaginative settings and graphics.
2. I like the music and some of the speakers/actors.
3. I like the diversity of characters. Cons:
1. Very, very buggy! Several times I have almost quit becuase there are so many bugs - perhaps it's basically incompatible with Windows ME which is what I have.
2. There is something insidiuosly immoral about April's behavior, which bothers me. She gives a detective who hasn't done anything wrong poisoned candy just to get rid of him. She is the cause of a shipwreck and loss of life of those on board because she wants to get her own way. She does this all without so much as an iota of regret or tremor of guilt. I suppose the idea here is that the end justifies the means and since she's saving the world it doesn't matter how many people get sick or drown along the way. I know it's just a game, but I believe games are a reflection of our culture and do influence young minds.
3. April's inverted ice cream cone breasts are laughably unrealistic.
4. There is a lot of dialogue, sometimes tedious.
Rating:
Summary: Wants to be too much and ends up short.
Review: I'm an avid adventure game lover, and I hooked my wife. She's gone through Myst and sequels, and we try to never look at the walkthroughs. We've been disappointed at the Forgotten as too simple an unfinished. The Crystal Key was also disappointing (technically, it crashed our Mac so we couldn't finish it..) The Legend of Lotus Spring on the other hand, was a very nice game if not too difficult. Our favorite so far in that genre are Riven and Beyond Atlantis for the stories and puzzles, and SafeCracker for the puzzles only. I personally love the games that try to set up an atmosphere and make the intrigue interesting, and I feel that TLJ scores well on that point: the intrigue starts VERY WELL. But the ending is, so.. disappointing. They could have done something much better (Beyond Atlantis wins way high on that point!) By the end I was skipping the dialogues (just read subtitles), and cut the chase to the core. It boiled down on using one of the ten items left at the end to move on. Too simple and not rewarding enough. Another flaw of the game is its linearity: you can only do what will advance in the game... a chicken could run the game by haphazardly pecking at the mouse until something happens. There isn't too much thinking involved and April gives away many clues. I guess the intention is that anyone (even kids) can play, but then why the offensive language? There are five or six a little more involved puzzles in there, all of them have a rather debatable logic to it. In any case, they don't really build up like in Riven where the pieces would add up until the last (formidable) puzzle. The last three puzzles (in the Guardian's Realm) are a joke, and that was the biggest disappointment for what should have been the culmination of the game. On the good side, the story is very engaging, and at least in the first four chapters, it felt like we were there. For that, I recommend the game highly. It would be very worthwhile to have the same engine (a 3D character walking in a scene) and a Buy this game if you like a good story and want to live a nice adventure (the depiction and level of detail of the Balance, Arcadia, is nice and has a mythologic ring not unlike the best games of the genre). But you're likely to be disappointed if you like challenging puzzles and rewarding endings.
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