[gillyruless]

Love all three but my favorite is GK1. It's the best adventure game ever in my opinion. Great puzzles, great story , and a horror game that was actually scary, what can beat that?

GK3 is the least favorite. I dug the story but no suspense at all in that game. Felt like reading the Sunday Times on a lazy Summer afternoon. Good experience but not very exciting. I didn't like the move to 3D either. The load time between the screens was very painful. The story was still fascinating enough for me to play through it twice though.

GK2 had the best story of the three. I didn't even mind the FMV. GK1 had better puzzles and was a superior game IMO.

[RLacey]

The Beast Within easily has the best story of the three. In fact, I'd happily argue that GK2 is one of the best adventures ever.

That's not to say that the others are bad, though .

Oh, but I will grant this. The opera basement puzzle in GK2 is horrible...

[D.C.]

Bird: Get the other two GK games or atleast GK3. They're well worth it.

[oerhört]

Originally Posted by Simo Sakari Aaltonen

I love GK2 to bits, but GK3 is the better game, I feel. There's more freedom in every sense, there's more replayability (more non-essential as well as essential stuff to do), an infinite amount of camera angles, infinitely improved, fully dynamic sound world... And one heck of an impressive overall game design. To me, it's just the most immersive of the three games.

OK, three things that messed up Gabriel Knight 3: Blood of the Sacred, Blood of the Damned:

1. The jump to 3D was made too early, or at least handled poorly. I didn't believe in the characters nearly as much as I did with The Beast Within. Many of them were cartoon characters, not real people. The animation and the models didn't quite help. Outdoor scenes looked fake.
2. The flow of the game is worse than in The Beast Within. There is always a need in an adventure game that every action is a logical continuation of the flow in the story, and parts of GK3 was not like that.
3. It wasn't neither as scary nor as fascinating as The Beast Within. The vampire bit, which I find could be really creepy, was not at all exploited to its full potential.

Of course, I loved GK3, but it had major problems. I prefer to look at it as the best Sierra was able to do at the time, as a swan song, so to speak.

But the music is still irresistibly beautiful.

[Cellardoor]

Originally Posted by oerhört

...The vampire bit, which I find could be really creepy, was not at all exploited to its full potential.

GK3 is my personal favorite adventure game of all time. I do think I agree with you on this, however. The vampires were just there... They didn't really add anything scary or important.

However, I doubt it would have been necessary to make them scary or to add a horror element to the game. I find GK3 to be perfect for what it is... I never really felt the need for a horror game.

That said, it's only fair to say the werewolves in GK2 weren't scary at all either. It could never really impress me. The fact that the wolves were computer animations in a FMV world didn't help much.

[dave_minall]

My choice has to be GK1 because it started the series, was the most tense and even after about 100 times it still doesnt get old. especially the bookshop theme music. oh it warms my heart.

[Wormsie]

I voted for GK3. GK1 is inconsistent and has horrible music, GK2 has horrible music and awful acting. GK3 has very good music, an excellent atmosphere, a real-world feeling, etcetera.

[DomStLeger]

Originally Posted by oerhört

OK, three things that messed up Gabriel Knight 3: Blood of the Sacred, Blood of the Damned:

1. The jump to 3D was made too early, or at least handled poorly. I didn't believe in the characters nearly as much as I did with The Beast Within. Many of them were cartoon characters, not real people. The animation and the models didn't quite help. Outdoor scenes looked fake.

While I agree the artwork was lacking, I thought the 3d Point and click interface was very good. I think that if Ags were just being released on PCs that would be the way to go; to develope that interface and engine. It's 5 yrs old but I still think its got the best interface of all the 3D games we've seen so far, though I personally think BS3 came very close to getting direct control right.

Originally Posted by oerhört

3. It wasn't neither as scary nor as fascinating as The Beast Within. The vampire bit, which I find could be really creepy, was not at all exploited to its full potential.

Yeah there were a few superb scary bits in GK2, like that forest scene. I agree they didn't completely fulfil the potential of the vampire characters in GK3, but I don't think that detracted from the overall experience.

I've noticed that there tends to be some polarisation on opinions of GK2 and 3. If someone loved 2, they seem less likely to love 3 and if they loved 3 the opposite is true. Maybe they're both such good but different games that GK3 can be disappointing if you want more of the same from 2 or refreshing if the acting or something else doesn't do it for you in 2?

[ollie]

I like all three Gabriel Knight games, but the third installment of the series is surely my favourite.
I think Blood Of The Sacred, Blood Of The Damned is the best adventure game I ever played. It has an excellent story (which other adventure game has a deep and controversial story like this?), a great atmosphere (always tempered with humour) and a superb soundtrack!
Only a couple of things were below the par in my opinion. The first one is the famous "I-have-to-look-like-Mosely" puzzle; the second one is the voice acting of Tim Curry, who looks a little over the top (I almost preferred the interpretation of Dean Erickson in The Beast Within). Well, I guess the perfect adventure game hasn't been released yet...
Nevertheless GK3 is absolutely fantastic, so it won my vote.

[Simo Sakari Aaltonen]

The vampires were just there? On the contrary, they were absolutely central to the entire plot. I don't want to spoil anyone lucky enough to still have all the joys of GK3 ahead of them, so I can't be too specific. But if you've played the whole game through and think about the story, you'll realize it would completely unravel if you removed the vampires and their influence from the fabric of the story.

Incidentally, I'm glad Jane did not copy Anne Rice's or Bram Stoker's or anyone else's conception of vampires - Jane's vampires were eerily believable. Many of the traditional trappings (can't be more specific, again for fear of spoiling) are given an entirely new spin, which I loved.

Regarding the flow of the story: I found GK3 gave an infinitely greater sense of freedom than the second game. I could immerse myself in exploring the physical game world as well as the story, but in GK2, due to the limitations of the FMV technique, it was mainly about exploring the story.

I completely lived and breathed GK2 for a long, long time after it came out, and I still love it, but GK3 simply offers more replayablility, freedom of exploration, and a more profound sense of immersion. Sorry for repeating myself.

And yes, I also love GK1. In fact, I feel the great differences in style and execution from one title to the next is one of the great qualities of the series. How many other adventure game trilogies feature a traditional 2D point-and-click first instalment, an FMV sequel, and a fully 3D third part? I love them all.

[Erwin_Br]

I like GK1, but the other two titles couldn't keep me interested long enough to get into the story. I hear so many good things about the writing, but the bad acting in GK2 keeps putting me off every time. The same goes for the ugly texturing, low res 3D models and stiff chararter movement and facial expressions in GK3.

I really want to try and look behind that so I can enjoy their stories, though. Maybe I'll try again when I have some time to spare.

--Erwin

[Simo Sakari Aaltonen]

Erwin_Br, it finally occurred to me to ask: do you have a 3D card for playing GK3? And what resolution are you using? If you've been playing without hardware acceleration and using a low resolution, it's no wonder the textures are ugly and the 3D models less-than-ideal looking.

I really recommend having a 3D card and playing with a resolution of 1024x768, with all the effects set to full. It really makes all the difference. Played the way it was meant to be played (with the settings just mentioned), it is an absolutely beautiful game.

I wonder how many people have been put off GK3 just because they didn't have the right hardware and/or settings? (And I don't know if this is true of you, Erwin_Br. I'm just speculating, and please correct me if I'm wrong. )

[DFish]

My favorite is 1, then 2, then 3, but I love them all.

[Jony]

As rediculous as it may sound, I haven't played any Gabriel Knight games yet...I started Gabriel Knight 1, but gave up after only 5 minutes because I wanted to find the speech version. I also played the demo of Blood of the Damned.

[Erwin_Br]

Originally Posted by Simo Sakari Aaltonen

Erwin_Br, it finally occurred to me to ask: do you have a 3D card for playing GK3? And what resolution are you using? If you've been playing without hardware acceleration and using a low resolution, it's no wonder the textures are ugly and the 3D models less-than-ideal looking.

I really recommend having a 3D card and playing with a resolution of 1024x768, with all the effects set to full. It really makes all the difference. Played the way it was meant to be played (with the settings just mentioned), it is an absolutely beautiful game.

I wonder how many people have been put off GK3 just because they didn't have the right hardware and/or settings? (And I don't know if this is true of you, Erwin_Br. I'm just speculating, and please correct me if I'm wrong. )

When I first played it, I had a brand new 3DFX VooDoo3 3000 card. Currently I have an nVidia GeForce 4 440, which I'm about to replace before Half Life 2 comes out

So no, I never played the game in software mode.

To further explain the texture problem: Look at how they're wrapped around the buildigs, for example. (mis-alignments, bad tangents, etc.) And how fake some of them look. Even Half-Life, which is about a year OLDER than GK3, had better texturing. (The character models in GK3 are better then HL's, though)

--Erwin

[CrimsonBlue]

I loved all of them almost equally. I was originally introduced to Gabriel Knight by playing The Beast Within many years after it's original release. I was introduced to PC gaming only recently, maybe 1999 or something. I bought my first PC before Escape From Monkey Island came out. I was purely amiga-fanatic up to that time.

Then I ventured out to get hold of all the great adventuregames that I missed on the Amiga, particularly Leisure Suit Larry 6 and 7. I had already played Curse of Monkey Island and a few other games though, on other peoples computers or at school. I came over Gabriel Knight: The Beast Within once, and bought it. Before that I didn't even realize it WAS an adventure game.

But I played GK2 pretty far, but it froze on a certain point. I hadn't installed the patch, and when I installed it, all my savegames were useless. I didn't want to start again.

But then I went and got myself both GK1 and GK3, so that I could play them in order.

GK1 had bad graphics. I never really liked the whole pixelized style of PC games compared to the Amiga games. And I really hate MIDI music. Still, it was a very good game with nice puzzles and a good story. The graphics would probably be less of a hazzle for me if I played the game when it was new.
GK2 was excellent, but today it just hurts my eyes when looking at the game. It had fantastic atmosphere, and music was top notch. Music and soundeffects really enhance gaming experience to a different level, if it's good enough. The story was great too. I didn't mind the bad actors, they did an okay job. The fact that it's FMV is it's downfall though, but then again I'm not a huge fan of FMV games. This is probably the only one I've liked.
GK3 had the best story and atmosphere, but the worst interface. I know a lot of people praise it's interface, but I didn't like it. Plus, I got slowdowns on my computer, which is more then perhaps 10 times faster than the recommended specs. Perhaps something to do with the AMD processor, as it seems Sea Dogs has slowdowns because of me using AMD.
I also don't like FPS and first person games in general, and basically, GK3 felt like a first person game by the way it was controlled. It gave me that claustrophobic feeling I always get by only having first person view. I'm not comfortable when playing like this.

But in the end, I just voted GK3... 'cause that's the game I liked the most overall. I think. Aaaaaaargh... so hard to choose!

[Knight]

GK3 is my personal favorite game of all time.

[UPtimist]

Yeah, its GK3. I haven't played 2, but from what I've heard and seen, it's kinda weird, and GK1 is a little bit too, I don't know, maybe widely spreaded? (I really don't know...) And it's got that woman telling what Gabriel thinks and does... Sometimes she drives me crazy

[D.C.]

Even though it's not my favourite, you should still check out GK2.

[Simo Sakari Aaltonen]

Just make sure you select "Small Movie" from the control panel - the movies will be displayed at a smaller size - but it's far preferable to the terrible scanlines if you choose "Big Movie". At least I think so. (Quality over quantity, or size in this case.)