Review of Gabriel Knight: The Beast Within by Antrax

The video quality still holds up - videos are blocky but clear and the production values are high. Most actors are good to okay, with the exception of the female cast, who for most part are just awful. I often looked away from the screen when Grace was trying to display emotion because it was just embarrassing.
I particularly enjoyed Komissar Leber, who was obviously enjoying choking and sputtering with rage to a comical degree.

The plot is exceptional, as you’d expect from a Jane Jensen game. This might be a drawback to some, as at some point you have to tour an entire museum (though you can probably just click through it, as a player you don’t HAVE to know all those small details).
The dialogue, however, is often terrible. The plot doesn’t seem to be driven forward by humans. The attempts at emotion are pathetic, in part due to the terrible acting and in part because it looks like character interactions were written by a robot. Character motivations range from completely vague to having one dominant emotion, with one exception.

The plot also seems a bit rushed - at some point the story cuts ahead to “two months later” with nothing to tell the player what happened during those two months. For some reason the player is expected to piece together what the characters should have reasonably known, having come up with their plan themselves. I’m guessing originally there was supposed to be more content there, or at least another movie, but they probably ran over time or budget.
This issue actually occurs several times - you find yourself in a scene with no clear idea of what goals you’re trying to accomplish. Sometimes it’s reasonable (you should be investigating, it’s normal not to sure how to find more leads) but when you’re stuck simply because you the player don’t know what the character should’ve known it feels unfair.

The gameplay is a bit too streamlined. There’s a single cursor for everything, which means you don’t even get to look at hotspots. Moreover, hotspots don’t have titles and at some points you’re expected to find small areas on objects, with the entire object being interactive, which is a new and annoying kind of pixel hunt.
There’s a bit too much backtracking - the largest area in the game isn’t broken down so you often find yourself walking up and down it, and there’s no “double click to exit” shortcut.

There was an attempt made to reduce deaths and dead ends to a minimum. As is common, that results in several contrivances, with objects suddenly appearing only when an unrelated task was complete for no in-game reason. What’s worse, the whole thing is designed at some points to cause you to backtrack, i.e. you have to observe hotspot A in location A to be able to take an action in location B which allows you to finally do what you need to do in location A, with no real world reason for it to be like that.

Puzzles are often poorly clued, though they do make sense. The biggest issue is that you just don’t know when to tackle obstacles. Do I go after this tempting locked door now? Am I finally allowed to pick those flowers? It feels like reverse-engineering the game. Having some signposts, even in a voiceover (“I’m really curious what’s behind this door”) would’ve helped.
The game is also fairly puzzle light, with one or two “true” puzzles in every chapter. However, despite being a puzzly kind of guy, I haven’t felt cheated in that regard - the plot is captivating enough to be reward on its own.

I’ve gone too long about the negatives. In the end this game tells a really good story and does it well. It breaks down a bit in the final act, probably due to budget or time concerns, but by then you really won’t care.