Rating: 
Summary: Boring!
Review: The puzzles didn't seem to mean anything with respect to the alleged story line and some of them solved themselves if you happened to stumble to the right place. There wasn't really anything to solve if you wandered around enough.The interface was lame, no compass of any kind so you could't tell which direction you were facing. I didn't even bother to finish the game
Rating: 
Summary: Beautiful graphics, not the best fun score
Review: The very fist place that I started out in was a temple, and Istar(the goddess)explaining to me why I was there. I think that this is the first problem in the game. Not only does Istar explain this to me with just her voice, but the temple itself is your fist puzzle in the game. When I was listening to Istar, I didn't get much of a feeling for what was going on. It would have been much easier to understand if there were some pictures, or voice changes in Istar's dialogue. Going onto the temple, I was still confused about Istar's instructions. Where do I go? What do I do? I was lost in the temple the fist day I played the game. The 360 degree view was amazing though. I could even have a close look at the ceiling or floor, as if I was Adrian (the guy you are controling). Back to what I was saying, I finally found a way out, and three colorful characters began to converse with me. I knew that what they were saying was a bit humorous, and very important. I just couldn't make out what they were saying! Without the dialogue box, I would have been lost. The characters are so busy developing an accent, or swing to their character, that they forget about speaking clearly. I wont go into too much detail about the game, but if you are an adventure game expert, this game might be a little too easy for you. If you are just beginning, you might want to try another game because there are so many puzzles, and most are quite tricky (If you have a walkthrough close at hand, then I see no point in not buying the game because it is too hard). The game features beautiful graphics, like all Dreamcatcher/cryo games, but the 360 degree screen is annoying at first. You have to catch on, and then you feel as if you don't know what you would do without it.
Rating: 
Summary: Not the greatest game but okay if you're bored
Review: Totally interested in the story of Pompeii, I bought this game with high expectations. I had an easy time installing it and an easy time running it but from then on, things got a little confusing.
The plot of the game revolves around Adrian, a British archaeologist cursed by the goddess Ishtar (we know her best as Aphrodite) and sent back to Pompeii and given four days to find his love, Sophia, and leave the city. Yep, you've got four days to make Sophia fall in love with you and leave with you before Mt. Vesuvius goes kaphooey. (Is it really possible to fall in love with someone in just four days? No wonder divorce rate is so high!)
The plot sounds interesting at first, but in actuality this game is a bit tedious. The puzzles aren't hard but some are timed, and death can come instantly. (So save often) And you can easily get lost in Pompeii (which is so vaccant in this game you'd think everybody already fled) because the streets and buildings look so much alike. There is a pop-up map, but it doesn't have a compass.
Another quirk in this game deals with the characters. Their lips don't move when they talk. (I guess the Pompeiians were great ventrilloquists) And almost all the characters speak with thick British accents. Oddly, the only characters who ARE British (Adrian and Sophia) have American accents!...
But the CD has one great feature that makes it worth buying: it contains an encyclopedia about life in Pompeii in the days of the ancient Roman Empire. But, then again, you probably won't need that unless you're working on a paper about the Romans for history class.
All in all, this game could have been a lot better. The order in which some of the puzzles and events are done in makes no sense at times, but if you've got the patience and have nothing else to do give this game a go.
Rating:
Summary: Okay, not Great
Review: _Journey to Pompeii_ is a fairly interesting game but not one of the best. The premise is that you, an archaeologist, have managed to offend the Goddess, Ishtar, so she has kidnapped both you and your fiancee and transported you back to the city of Pompeii, three days before the famous eruption of Mount Vesuvius. You have a limited time to discover the whereabouts of your sweetheart and get out of the city with her.JTP offers the usual first person point of view interspersed with third person cut scenes. The graphics are a mixed bag. While the settings are beautifully rendered (and based on actual excavations), the characters are not so well done, but look and move like Gumbies. Voice acting verges on the annoying and sometimes the dialog is incomprehensible, so it's a good idea to keep the subtitles on. As for the puzzles, they are mostly the "find and apply inventory" variety, with some timed activities. None is too challenging, although hotspots can be hard to find. This means that you can fail at the timed puzzles even when you know what to do, because you haven't clicked the exact right pixel. Failure inevitably means death, so save often. There is a lot of running back and forth in this game and it's easy to get stuck because sometimes you have to find the exact right inventory item or have a particular conversation before the game will let you go farther. The game is divided into time blocks (like Gabriel Knight 3) and unless you've done every little thing the days won't end. I found this pretty frustrating, as often the progression of events didn't follow any kind of logic, so I found myself randomly visiting site after site hoping something would change. Also, sometimes you could suddenly go to places you couldn't go to before, and it got hard to keep track of what was accessible and what wasn't. I was always wondering if there were some new place to explore. The encylopaedia of Pompeii was really interesting, and the culture and history were well presented. I was disappointed in the ending. It seemed like Ishtar and the time travel set up got forgotten somewhere along the way; I would have liked to have seen more resolution of that. All in all, JTP was pretty good but not great: worth playing if you don't expect too much and you have a high tolerance for frustration.
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