Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3237 in Computer & Video Games
• Brand: Empire
• Released on: 2006-05-26
• Platform: Windows XP

Manufacturer's Description

Zoë Castillo is haunted by visions: A black house, a little girl and a desperate plea for help. Is it a dream or a message? When her best friend vanishes without a trace, Zoë must risk everything to find him and to unravel the mystery. Her journey will take her across continents, over vast oceans, through strange cities, and to the Winter â€" where secrets are revealed.

Exciting and diverse Action Adventure game play
Choose your path. Every situation has alternate solutions
Combat. Hand-to-hand, or with sword and quarterstaff
Thrilling set-pieces. Real-time cinematic sequences
Stealth action. Sneak past or distract enemies
Travel between worlds, play mini-games, dig into the storyline

Customer Reviews

Captivating
I have just finished this game and thoroughly enjoyed myself. It had all the depth of a complex novel, with characters I grew to really like, and beautiful, highly detailed settings. The story begins with the main character, university drop-out Zoe Castillo, helping out her ex-boyfriend by collecting a mysterious package. What initially seems like a corporate espionage thriller set in the future turns into a multi-layered set of interlocking stories as the balance between two parallel worlds - the magical (or fantasy) world of Arcadia, and the futuristic (or SF)world of Stark - becomes disturbed due to the meddlings of the ominpresent WatiCorp company. During the course of the game, the action transfers between the perspective of Zoe, that of the Aracdian freedom-fighter April, and that of Kian, a sort of religious assassin. As the action progresses, the characters' stories begin to converge as WatiCorp's true intentions emerge.

This game is not perfect. Sometimes there are just too many movie sequences and conversations between characters, leaving my fingers itching to take control and be moving. And it was occasionally frustrating to have to change character. But all in all it's been a most worthwhile experience. I notice that Dreamfall is marketed as "a game for everyone" (i.e. "girls should like this"). Much as I hate to conform to stereotypes, I feel that it probably is a game which will appeal to women. I certainly enjoy playing female characters who aren't Lara Croft-like in their proportions and who have genuine personalities.

Simple words / No spoilers
The goods and the bads all together:

a) beautiful graphics
b) outstanding voice acting
c) endless cut-scenes (actually Dreamfall feels more like a movie rather than a game)

d) awful, I mean AWFUL controls and camera mode (it took me days to get partly used to them)

e) very rich storyline , but...
f) not all questions are answered at the end , though...
g) beautiful, long ending (do not skip the credits, one more videoclip is there for you!)

h) very poor "adventure-game" factor meaning that
* very few puzzles
* most of them extremely easy
(which makes Dreamfall the appropriate adventure game for beginners)

i) AWFUL combat mode! I hate the action part in action-adventure games and Dreamfall is not an exception

Overall I liked parts of the game and I would recommend it to someone but still I hated some core parts of it (combats, controls, awfully linear game play and extremely easy puzzles).

Unfortunately, there is a new adventure-games-era coming on, meaning easy games, action parts embodied everywhere and more 3d graphics that will attract young gamers for sure. I used to hate 3d graphics, now (having no choice) I'm getting used to them. I still love pre-rendered (just compare Riven to ANY other game out there)!

I liked the first one (TLJ) much better...

Unconventional and absorbing
OK - there were a few things that weren't to my taste:

* The controls were too console-centric
* The game was too short (although that's because I wanted it to go on forever)
* At times I felt a little constrained and wanted to do things that I couldn't (but hey, it's a computer game, not a tabletop rpg)
* Copy protection Sad It takes more than 30 seconds to verify before starting the game on any given run which is annoying to say the least...

OK - that's it! I wanted to show how little there was of the game that I could nit-pick about... now on to the plus points:

It's new!
That's a bold claim in these days of fomulaic engine-revamps but it's true. Never have I played a game that's quite so close to an interactive story - more on this soon... Smile

Little things...
That's what cutscenes usually are - 2 second rewards for 20 hours of frustrating gameplay trying to work out that you need to combine the chicken with the crowbar... In Dreamfall you truly feel that the scenes are worth watching, have been put together by a master story-teller and are well scripted and acted.

The story is king!
How many times have you played a game where the story feels like it's a bolt-on to try and justify the somewhat haggard FPS engine being rolled out yet again? This game feels like there is a grand epic story which you happen to be a part of. The story is all pervasive and the action supports it rather than the other way around.

The quality, oh the quality!
The characterisation, the writing, the scripting, the acting, the scenary, the... well it goes on and on into every aspect of the game (I excuse the controls as console necessities [barely])! Even the coding seems pretty damn good.. I played it from start to finish without any noticeable bugs Smile

The emotional attachment
This is really a consequence of many things but I've never felt emotional attachment to the characters and storyline of a game like this before. I've barely felt it at all in any other game with a few exceptions (TLJ, Planescape Torment, Syberia etc are a few exceptions). This game actually made me cry in places - that is priceless Smile

Taking no prisoners
I really hate the Disney-esque pandering in games to the concept of easy storylines, simplistic alegory and stupidly happy endings. Dreamfall had none of this - complex storyline, paralells where they naturally existed without heavy-handed alegorical shoe-horning and an ending that left me craving more...

*sigh* I really feel that this is an exceptional game and more than worthy as a sequal to TLJ