Hello! Long time lurker here, first time poster. Talk a fair bit when i do post, so probably won't shut up now I've started; hope it's ok to jump onboard the thread
Boring intro bit
First impressions of
The Last Express: interesting, but a bit daunting. It's an AG I've intended to play for a long time, so the playthrough was well-timed for me. I even started this briefly about a year ago (friend's copy - thanks
) and after some silly dead body-related mistakes I got pretty much to the first stopping point here before getting sidetracked playing other stuff. Shockingly, this is the first time I've been back on it since. Plus at some point I must have uninstalled it
When I started TLE before I felt like I was missing too much of the plot and one-off opportunities to do things, which I suspected might cause problems later. It seemed as though you needed to have played through the game already in order to know what to do, or make the best choices. With hindsight I think for me it would have helped to just have the first section with either no timer, or to be a bit more forgiving and slower than it seems to be, then make the timer kick in properly once you've got used to the game's own style a little more. And as a game it does feel unique, which is a good thing; just takes a bit of adjusting when things don't work quite as you'd expect them to.
Second time around at starting this and I'm finding it easier to deal with. It's no problem orientating myself around the train, whereas before I wasted chunks of time doing this. And that clock really goes fast! That's still putting me off, as I'd much prefer to explore things at my own pace, but I don't mind it so much. I've got a copy of the strategy guide and used it just to check up on the broad goals that I needed to do in this section then, after getting to Epernay, to review what I'd done and what I'd missed. But I don't want to end up using it as a walkthrough so might stop doing that soon.
Animation style is cool, though it took a couple of minutes to get into. I'm finding it works fine in the game and during automatic conversations but looked strange in the opening cutscene; much of that felt like it was missing movement. The characterisation so far is brilliant and walking past independant 'real' conversations is great fun, and (after playing a *lot* of AGs) again feels unique; I'd guess this is where the real-time aspect comes through the best, and is a good enough reason for using it. It still feels like I'm being hit with 100 things to do at once, though I quite like that! So long as I can go back to the important/ fun things I've missed later without massive backtracking... Will find out as the game progresses, which I am looking forward to after a great first section
I'm still finding out what's going on and working out what I should be doing - there's a lot unanswered at the moment, but that's as you'd expect. Be a bit disappointing if everything was obvious already, so is not a problem for me! One downside so far is that I think time passes even as you're reading in-game documents, newspapers etc, which puts me off trying to as I get the nagging feeling I'm missing out on something more important elsewhere if I use time to read through everything as I'd like. It feels like the game's going pretty quickly, and I'm surprised how soon I'd got to the end of the first playthrough section. Or maybe just embarrassed at how little I'd done the first time round, seeing as I'd stopped at the same point I'm now at
Spoilery gameplay-specific stuff, I've
Spoiler:disposed of Tyler's body through the window already, so am expecting the police to board at the start of the next section. Seems a bit odd that you can understand spoken Russian, but not written Russian and have to ask Alexei to read the scroll. I also found the fight with Milos at the end quite awkward, took a few attempts and I felt I'd won a bit randomly. Strategy guide says keep stepping back from the lunges and when it appears, use the arm grab icon as he sideswipes you; this wouldn't work for me and the time I eventually managed to disarm Milos, I'd never knowingly clicked the grab icon and was a bit bemused. I do play a lot of action/ FPS etc, though oddly don't much care for action sequences when I play AGs (to be fair, when they happen they're normally crap!); anyway, was maybe me just having an off day 
. FWIW I hadn't guessed that Cath was involved with the shooting in the newspaper clipping, only know cos the strategy guide mentioned it!
Anyway. Is cool to take part in the playthrough, and I'll probably see you some time in other threads
