The Longest Journey is one of the finest adventure games ever created and should not be missed by anyone at all.
The Longest Journey tells the story of April Ryan, a young girl who moved to the city of Newport in hope of finding greener pastures and who studies at an art school. She is being disturbed by weird dreams that are a little too real to be just dreams. The story begins in one of these dreams in which she meets a talking dragon and from then on the story keeps on getting weirder and better as the game progresses and, simply put, is one of the finest stories ever told in a game.
The only major complaint about the game can be leveled at its rather lame and boring opening sequences where you run around the city of Newport completing a few easy tasks such as going to April's school, interacting with her friends etc. before the story really opens up. Though this portion is arguably the only turn-off about the game, it does contribute to the overall game because these portions really help you connect with April as she struggles with her life and her various relationships with her family and friends. This makes some of the later portions of the game more enjoyable because you know exactly what she's been through to get there.
The characters surrounding April in the game are all wonderful and you'll really begin to care for them as much as you care for April and when some fate befalls them, you will actually feel sad for them. Apart from April, the most important character is Cortez who will be your mentor and guide throughout the game's story and is the most complex character of the lot. There is a talking bird who is the game's best and funniest character and who provides a lot of laughs in an otherwise serious game. There is a whole host of interesting characters and even the most minor ones have a say in the story and you will get connected to each of them in one way or the other.
Gameplay-wise, The Longest Journey doesn't break any new ground at all. The early portions of the game contain standard puzzles which can be solved by combining the items in your inventory in logical (and sometimes illogical) ways. As you move on, the puzzles will get really interesting and will actually be connected a great deal more to the story and some of them are actually fairly difficult and will require application of logic to solve. Moving from place to place is a simple matter of clicking on the place where you want to go. The game provides all the details on whether you can interact with a particular object or not as the cursor will change shapes for objects that you can actually interact with. Combat is pretty much absent from the game save for a few minor battles and even then you will just have to use your surroundings and inventory items to good effect to overcome them. Overall, the game is pretty easy and the basic gameplay can be grasped by anyone who has not played adventure games at all. Just don't forget to save a lot because the game features no autosave which means if you forget to save and the PC crashes all your progress will be lost which is really a minor complaint in an otherwise solid game.
The Longest Journey's presentation really helps make the game more immersive and enjoyable. The graphics are really the high point of the game and the designers must be really commended for providing an artistic touch to it. All the worlds in the game are brought to life vividly with great coloring and textures and the whole appearance of the game world is wonderful. The character models are good but not great by any means and some of them will appear really pixelated because the game does play at a low resolution with no means of increasing it to be found anywhere. But taking the game for when it was released in 2000, it is a great looking game and the graphics do the job they are supposed to do which is provide a platform for telling the game's wonderful story.
Music in the game is really moody and wonderful and because it changes with the different worlds you will visit, it never gets repetitive or boring. The voice-overs are all great with the only major complaint being some of them sound the same. In fact, when you look at the credits you will realize the same people have provided voices for a few different characters. Nevertheless, all the voice-overs are pretty good and feel like the actors have lent soul to their voices which helps in selling the illusion that these are real people even though the story is pretty fictional.
The Longest Journey features a great story that is very complex and moving and all the game's characters will remain in your heart long after you are done with the game and the ending will leave you wanting more. Overall, it is one of the finest adventure games ever created and should not be missed by anyone even if their interest lies elsewhere in the gaming world.