[millenia]

Originally Posted by rayvio

I much preferred the GK3 control style over the usual WASD (or even worse, cursor keys) for 3D adventures and I'm frankly surprised I've never encountered similar controls in any other game. don't get me wrong, keyboard controls work well for RPGs and action games, but nothing beats a simple mouse for an adventure game

as for the ending, the only bad thing about it is that licensing problems robbed us of a sequel

I agree with rayvio once more.

[ozzie]

I felt that GK3 was an extraordinary game. That's not merely praise since I found both its strengths and weaknesses to be extraordinary.

The puzzle design is the best example of it. Its quality varies hugely. At worst you have the nonsensical like the whole puzzle chain around retrieving the motor bike. Gamers who grew accustomed to the peciualirities of the adventure genre may not find it that bad, but uninitiated critisized it with good reason.
Also bad, but not quite terrible, are those invisible event triggers. You have to perform some action to progress to the next time slot, but you don't know what. This seems to be a recurring problem with Jane Jensesn adventures (consider the Neuschwanstein chapter in GK2 or, as far as I heard, some parts of Gray Matter).
On the other hand, Le Serpent Rouge. I mean, wow. I wasn't smart enough to solve it on my own (and I doubt many were), but nevertheless, I was dazzled by its craftmanship. What a great piece of puzzle design and definitely some of the very best the genre has to offer.
The graphics are ugly - were even when the game came out. While some areas are beautifully textured (like the whole hotel area), others don't fare that well, especially those outdoor areas which lack detail. And sometimes the textures could be very blurry.
While the environments were big, due to frequent loading times every few steps they just felt like many smaller interconnected ones. Maybe this didn't annoy as many gamers as me, since in 2D adventures you just progress the same from screen to screen, one small area to the next, even if they form a bigger one. But here in 3D, I felt the game didn't quite realize its potential to give me the feeling of exploration.

The story, I felt it was strong. Maybe many important aspects weren't as well pronounced as they should've been, it may even lack a certain elegance (whatever that means!), but even then, the game offers the strongest cast of all Gabriel Knight games. The tourists are archetypical, but that isn't a bad thing. This way, you relate to them very early on, but uncover more of their depths and secrets the more you play. And the various relationships are always fun to follow.

Personally, I loathe the control scheme. It was unituitive and made me feel more like a cameraman than the character I was supposed to be controlling, a reason why I made so many screenshots that I could form a whole photo album out of it!

Extraordinary in its strength in weaknesses, ambitious and huge in length and scope, GK3 is, in my opinion, at least an important game.