Difficulty:

Hard

Time Spent:

20 to 40 Hours

The Bottom Line:

"Rocks"

The longest journey is a 1999 point and click adventure which brought after many silent years a new breeze to the adventure genre. The protagonist in an adolescent girl named April who lives in the future in a city called Newport, but who acquires the ability to shift between her world, called Stark, and a magical twin world called Arcadia.

Graphics 10/10
The game as many modern adventure games features 2 types of graphics presentation. Beautiful sceneric environments, which are very varied between the technological metropolis that is Newport (while the place you start called Venice is a district of Newport it, unlike the rest of Newport, doesn't look very futuristic, mainly because it is the artist's district) and between the magical world of Arcadia where you get to live up to your typical fantasy cliches. The second part of the graphics are the character models, which today seem outdated, but in 1999 they were just great to look at. The 10 is mainly not for the graphic itself, which might deserve a slightly lower value, but for the places, the environments you visit, which, to say are interesting, would be a great underestimation.

Sound 9/10
The music is ok, but what really makes the sound great is the voice acting. Thoughout the game you will come into contact with a large variety of different characters, from futuristic hackers to magical sea creatures, and all are voiced accordingly, more over they have something interesting to say most of the time.

Story 10/10
You start off as an arts student in the artist district Venice of the futuristic town called Newport. You will spent the first few hours living in April shoes, getting to know her problems, her friends, her life, her job, her school and her activities. The start is a bit slow, uninteresting and dull, but you get to appreciate it once you live though the moment when you discover Arcadia and your shiftiing ability. From there on it is jumping between worlds, taking care of different problems, meeting wonderful characters on the way, travelling to a space station or deep under the sea to a magical kingdom, while teleporting/shifting out of harms way in the last moment. All in the name of saving these two worlds from a joint threat, the chaos and order. In the end you even get to a place which is most strange and not a part of these two...and the chapter is titled accordingly: "The longest journey"

Gameplay 8/10
A typical point click adventure, you gather items, then use them to achieve a variety of objectives, there are not that many pixel hunts while the game is not being easy either.

Replayability 6/10
A story inspired game is always not very replay able, since you get to know the games best parts in the first playthrough. Still this is a pretty long game and you might forget a thing or two from the story when you get to the end, which might inspire you to go though it again.

I was immensily impressed that this game, which was part of, at that time considered dead gaming genre, was this epic. The characters you meet and the impresive places you visit make this game a true gem among adventures.