[ragnar]

The Longest Journey by Ragnar Ouchterlony

Introduction
After many people telling me what a good adventure game The Longest
Journey is I finally got around to buy the game and play it. Playing
as April Ryan, the young female heroine, you walk around in two fictitious
worlds, one futuristic and one medieval. You start the game with a dream
and curious as you are you begin to investigate it and the story
evolves. The rest is up to you (if you play it, that is).

Gameplay
The interface of The Longest Journey is very simple and quite
similar to that of Curse of Monkey Island, that is you can take
three different actions: eye, mouth and hand. In some places I think there
are a mouse-click or two too much though. A nice thing introduced in
TLJ is dialog logging, which in my opinion is a very good thing so
that you can go back and see what different people said to you.

Another thing implemented is the diary where the heroine writes her
comments of the events that she encounters. This has some good and bad
sides, it gives some nice views of what April Ryan thinks of what she
encounters. On the other hand new diary entries showed up at strange
times, for example when you are in the middle of a fight with an evil
monster making you think when she had the time to write all this. It also
disrupts the game flow quite a bit. A nice solution to this would be to
read the diary after you have finished the game as some sort of
resume. But if you choose the right time to read it, it will be a minor
problem.

The plot
The Longest Journey isn't the most original game I've played and
the game creators are obviously aware of this as they make some jokes
about it in the game. Apart form that it is a very good story that will
take you to many interesting places and creatures. The overall story is
one of these "save the worlds" and it actually makes you feel concerned
with the worlds you shall save. It would be nice though to get some
adventure games that doesn't involve saving the world/girlfriend. It has
been a lot of that in adventure games.

Puzzles
Sometimes when you play you wonder if really is a game or if it really is
a movie with some interrupts for you to move the mouse. There are a lot of
dialog and there are not that many puzzles, but must of the puzzles in the
game are very good. They are not tough, rather on the edge to be easy, but
they are really well-made and you do most of the puzzles without thinking
that they are puzzles.

Script
The dialog and texts of The Longest Journey is of varied
quality. Sometimes it is very good and sometimes it below the quality mark
making you feel that soap operas are literary milestones in
comparison. This is a major concern in my opinion. Adventure games has to
have the same quality in the scripts as movies and theaters to be spread
as wide as they should.

Acting
The voice acting is generally pretty average. It is not bad (except one or
two actors in my Swedish translation) nor is it very good. Sometimes they
seem to have been in a hurry when recording and sometimes it is rather
good. Monologues seem to have higher quality than dialogs for some reason.

Acting consists, as you know, not only of the voice but of the body
movements too. Why is it so hard for the animators to make the characters
act for real, not just wavering their arms and walk around and why is
everyone so stiff it seems like they are made of wood. When they finally
do act a little they seem to do it in slow motion. This together with the
dialog has to be vastly improve to come up to the standards of movies and
books.

Music and graphics
Backgrounds and movie clips look really good and there are many memorable
places to visit. What I didn't like was that I didn't think April looked
alike in the movie clips and in the normal game play. The first movie clip
I didn't recognize that it was April at all. I discovered that in the next
clip.

The music of the game is good, it does what it is made for and that is to
help create the mood of the scenes, helping the player to get into the
game.

Conclusion
Though it would be much better with good acting and an improved script, it
is one of the best games I've played. That says more about where the
gaming industry is today than of the game itself. The gaming industry
is young compared to other media such as film, TV and literature. It takes
time to find the good game concepts and that area doesn't follow Moore's
Law together with the technical aspects of the games (faster processor,
bigger hard disks etc.).

Here is finally my rating of the game (in a scale between 1 and 10 where 10 is
best):

Originality: 5 / 10
Plot: 7 / 10
Puzzles: 8 / 10
Graphics: 7 / 10
Music: 8 / 10
Script: 4 / 10
Voice acting: 6 / 10
Body acting: 2 / 10

The low figures here isn't because TLJ is a bad game, I have
rather compared it to what it could have been. In most of the categories I
have very few or no games that are better than TLJ.

Concluding the conclusion: Buy The Longest Journey if you want to
play a long and fine adventure game.

[Dylan_Dog]

What is your final score on the game? If I was judging it according to your system, I would put the voices, script and music much higher, ending up with a score of about 8.5 or 9/10. This game almost has it all.

[ragnar]

You must remember that this was the first review I ever wrote and it was a couple of years since I wrote it. Also worth of noting is that I was in a rather critizing mode when writing it.

However, I still feel there are a number of problems with TLJ. Mainly it is rather unfocused and don't know what is the point of the game. In the beginning it concentrates rather much on April's relation with her friends. Later in the game they are almost completely forgotten and she just goes around meeting new people without really getting to know them. Also the game is a tad too long. It really hasn't got that much to tell you to justify it's length.

[Tyler Durden]

Originally Posted by ragnar

You must remember that this was the first review I ever wrote and it was a couple of years since I wrote it. Also worth of noting is that I was in a rather critizing mode when writing it.

However, I still feel there are a number of problems with TLJ. Mainly it is rather unfocused and don't know what is the point of the game. In the beginning it concentrates rather much on April's relation with her friends. Later in the game they are almost completely forgotten and she just goes around meeting new people without really getting to know them. Also the game is a tad too long. It really hasn't got that much to tell you to justify it's length.

Ragnar, no offence but you totally buried a masterpiece!

[Zanthia]

Nice for a first try, also I think originality deserves more .

[twifkak]

Originally Posted by ragnar

Mainly it is rather unfocused and don't know what is the point of the game. In the beginning it concentrates rather much on April's relation with her friends. Later in the game they are almost completely forgotten and she just goes around meeting new people without really getting to know them.

I think this is a fair complaint, and I agree.

[scabb]

Me too. The Longest Journey isn't all that I expected it to be. It was just too big - in terms of both length and location. Some of the locations were ridiculously far apart, I hated having to walk through several screens to go talk to Burns Flipper. The whole game just seems empty, dead (realistic?) - I prefer my games to be vibrant and directly in my face.

[Tyler Durden]

Originally Posted by scabb

Me too. The Longest Journey isn't all that I expected it to be. It was just too big - in terms of both length and location. Some of the locations were ridiculously far apart, I hated having to walk through several screens to go talk to Burns Flipper. The whole game just seems empty, dead (realistic?) - I prefer my games to be vibrant and directly in my face.

Realistic? Most certainly!

[pleto4_ryan]

well the review isn't as bad as UK Pcgamer was.. (actually you had some things to sit on) but still i found those opinions far too ...

[Dylan_Dog]

Okay. First of all, to those people complaining about the length of the game, for crying out loud, the game is called The LONGEST Journey. If they were to make the length on par with other games, they would leave the "longest" part out. Secondly, people talking about inconsistencies, and game being unrealistic. Well, you obviously don't read enough, or perhaps you have played too many "mathematically-structured", boring shitty games. TLJ is a technical, artistic, and literal piece of art. It is obvious that the game is written with passion and by a person with incredible imagination and creativity (PURE TALENT). It is a fantasy fairy tale, but it adds a sense of realism with its sleek portrayal of a diminished future, and the game is polished with metaphors and anictodes, and in order to completely absorb the story, you have to think of it as a book, and I do mean THINK. In terms of originality, although this concept of dimensional travel has been explored before (i.e. Half Life, Darkseed to name a few), I have never played a game that deals with "balance" and metaphorically speaking, a struggle between light and darkness that is portrayed the same way.
On the final note, no game will ever be perfect, and this sense of "perfection" is purely a subjective matter, and varies from one person to the next. There will always be a glitch somewhere along the line. But when it comes down to The Longest Journey, this balance between creativity, technical oblivion, ingenuinality and inperfection, it is these things that make this game a true masterpiece. Not just to all those "adventure gamers" out there but to the whole gaming community as well.

[pleto4_ryan]

Originally Posted by Dylan_Dog

TLJ is a technical, artistic, and literal piece of art. It is obvious that the game is written with passion and by a person with incredible imagination and creativity (PURE TALENT). It is a fantasy fairy tale, but it adds a sense of realism with its sleek portrayal of a diminished future, and the game is polished with metaphors and anictodes, and in order to completely absorb the story, you have to think of it as a book,

I start liking you much

-----------------------------------

First of all, to those people complaining about the length of the game

I would want it to be far more long ...I thought you were gonna find the last discs with a huge journey (or better i wanted that to happen)

[ragnar]

Originally Posted by Dylan_Dog

Okay. First of all, to those people complaining about the length of the game, for crying out loud, the game is called The LONGEST Journey. If they were to make the length on par with other games, they would leave the "longest" part out.

It is called the longest journey, yes. It would have been nice if they filled it with the same amount of interesting content as well as making it long. A game being too long is rather relative, even the longest game can be too short. However, here the longest game was too long.

Originally Posted by Dylan_Dog

Secondly, people talking about inconsistencies, and game being unrealistic. Well, you obviously don't read enough, or perhaps you have played too many "mathematically-structured", boring shitty games.

If you read what I wrote in this post you would have noticed that I didn't say anything about it being unrealistic or inconsistent. It is an interesting game world with lots of interesting concepts. And remember that even a fantasy world with it's own universe must be realistic within it's own universe or it will only be incmprehensible. And flinging accusations around is not a good way to be argumenting.

Originally Posted by Dylan_Dog

TLJ is a technical, artistic, and literal piece of art. It is obvious that the game is written with passion and by a person with incredible imagination and creativity (PURE TALENT).

If you take of your rose-coloured glasses you might be able to analyse the game more objectively.

Originally Posted by Dylan_Dog

It is a fantasy fairy tale, but it adds a sense of realism with its sleek portrayal of a diminished future, and the game is polished with metaphors and anictodes, and in order to completely absorb the story, you have to think of it as a book, and I do mean THINK. In terms of originality, although this concept of dimensional travel has been explored before (i.e. Half Life, Darkseed to name a few), I have never played a game that deals with "balance" and metaphorically speaking, a struggle between light and darkness that is portrayed the same way.
On the final note, no game will ever be perfect, and this sense of "perfection" is purely a subjective matter, and varies from one person to the next. There will always be a glitch somewhere along the line. But when it comes down to The Longest Journey, this balance between creativity, technical oblivion, ingenuinality and inperfection, it is these things that make this game a true masterpiece. Not just to all those "adventure gamers" out there but to the whole gaming community as well.

Of course no game will ever be perfect. Firstly it would be impossible to define the properties of a perfect game. You should judge the game of what it is, but that doesn't make it immune to critisism.

And you seem to think that it is wrong to point out problems and things I don't like about the game. It is rather strange.

[scabb]

Yes, nobody said the game was "unrealistic". I mentioned how realistic it was - instead of each location being instantly accessible, you have to walk or run there. The "strange" things that happen are explained and not particularly comical. The character models were lifelike, and the characters could easily belong to our society. Some people may like that kind of thing - I prefer caricatures with large personality flaws who constantly wear lime green shellsuits.

As for it being a work of art? More like a book? I agree, it certainly has a great deal of narrative, plot and general conversation - however, not all art is brilliant. Not all books read well. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed The Longest Journey, but it was by no means a "masterpiece". The fantasy element didn't blow me away; it seemed a little uninspired and I didn't much like Arcadia. Stark was a lot more interesting for me.

[Dylan_Dog]

You didn't like Arcadia because a dark gritty world is probably more appealing to you.
Okay, reviews are there for outlining good AND bad points, and you have done both. However, there is a difference between criticism and (as someone already pointed out), digging it into mud. Perhaps you can explain to me why TLJ has received almost perfect scores on more than 100 reviews and big gaming sites (gamespy, adventuregamers, gamespot, etc.)? Simple, because the game is ALMOST PERFECT. And as we all seem to agree, no game will ever be perfect.

[ragnar]

You have gotten your point through that TLJ is the closest thing to your heart and that even the lightest critisism you will take as an insult directed at you personally.

I have not, nor anyone else in this thread that I have seen, dragged TLJ in mud as you say. If you only want to read reviews and opinions that uncritically praise TLJ, then do so, but you won't find that review in this thread.

[Tyler Durden]

Dylan, I can't agree more with you. You covered me completely. It is amazing how this game touched so many people. Personally, before the Longest Journey I have kinda lost interest in adventure games but after this MASTERPIECE I came back to my first 'love'. I don't want to urge if the game was excellent or not cause I don't intend to persuade anyone. In fact, I enjoy being the 'only one' to love a game! It is a real strange feeling.
Now I want to cover another aspect that I have never seen. In order to enjoy the game you must play it at a certain time of your life, at a certain time of the year and generally be prepared to 'feel' it. If you play it while you are in love or while you go out with your friends then the magic is all gone! That's the exact reason you didn't like it. I played it when it was winter, it was snowing..I couldn't go out, the house was all warm, the windows were shut and I played it in a couple of days which means more than ten hours a day. I couldn't relize that I was actually playing! It was REAL!!!! It moved me deeply!!!! Perfect!!! I am not the guy who uses his emotions much but this was something different, it pushed me to edge of myself....I changed! Life was never the same after this game! Most certainly the best game I have ever played in my life...closely followed by Grim!!!!!!

PS I played the game when it was first released (I think 1999) and I vowed to myself to play it again when the winter of 2005 comes....I think that I am going to keep that HOLY promise.........

[nordic_guy]

The Longest Journey was one of the first adventuregames I played. Maybe that's why I haven't found anything like it since. I can't really say that any game has "touched my heart", I just don't think that games can do that, but the atmosphere of the game truly surrounded me while I was playing, and it's one of the few games I have managed to play through without using a walkthrough.
Also, it's probably worth noting that I played this game in my own language (norwegian) which is kind of rare, and that probably enhanced the experience for me. ...Of course we all know this game is norwegian, right
I suppose it has it flaws, but I'm no reviewer and I can easily forget minor flaws while playing a game. I don't expect anything to be perfect as long as I can enjoy the game. That's why I rank TLJ as one of the best adventures out there.

Sadly, I managed to break disc 1, so I can't play it anymore.
I have plans on finding it somewhere, though.

[remixor]

Dylan, I think you're being perhaps a bit hard on ragnar's review. It's great that you're so devoted to the game, but ragnar has stated that he thought it was a very good game, and was just voicing some of his complaints.


Ragnar: That being said, I do think that you were perhaps overly hard on the game in many respects. It seemed to me that many of your numerical scores did not equate very well to your written review. I would be interested to see what you'd give this game as a composite score.

[ragnar]

Originally Posted by remixor

Ragnar: That being said, I do think that you were perhaps overly hard on the game in many respects. It seemed to me that many of your numerical scores did not equate very well to your written review. I would be interested to see what you'd give this game as a composite score.

Well, this has convinced me that scores are evil. I will not use any scores at all in my further reviews. Peoples attention are too much drawn to the scores rather than the actual review unfortunately.

That said I would today give TLJ a score of 7/10 I think.

[Dylan_Dog]

I don't know what you people are talking about TLJ being close to my heart or TLJ touching u or......The game is not that emotional and it means nothing to me, I just thought that ragnar was unfair with bits and pieces of his review and his ratings so I thought I should speak up on behalf of Funcom. Then I further responded when he blantly said that I was obsessed....
Anyway, not to be on the wrong note ragnar, at least you did write a review, and to some extent it is a nice review it's just that when i first read it and looked at the ratings, i kind of thought that you were one of those people who played the game half way, got sick of it and decided to write what he thaught of it thus far. But since you gave it 7/10 which isn't too far from my rating about 8 or 9/10, we seem to have similar thoughts only with slight variations.
I really don't know how a game can touch you or get you emotional. I think thats a sign that you are spending too much time in front of the computer or maybe there is something hollow in your life and you really need to think things over. Or see a doctor or something.