Another example of Steam's rating system being flawed, the world's not just back and white and we need a "maybe recommend".

Anyway, what's good:

Complex, interesting story, many different locations, many characters that really each have a different life and personality. It's a very chill, relaxing game, nowadays it might even be called an interactive novel.

And that's also what could be considered bad, depending on your preferences. 90% of the game is dialog, 8% is walking and 2% is actually pondering over a "puzzles" (majority of puzzles being, combine an inventory item with something - there are 2-2 exceptions though and those puzzles are actually good). Fortunately you can skip dialog by right-clicking and you can make April sprint by double-clicking.

Now the only thing I actually think is bad is the design of a few puzzles. For example to make one character in a completely unrelated location do something you have to give another unrelated item to a character at a completely different location. There's zero hint that of what's expected of you. You need to give the starmap to Flipper before some kid throws aways his pizza - yes, makes a lot of sense. Basically that means a few times you need a walkthrough or randomly try your items on every available character.

Now, looking at this, it seems like the bad outweighs the good, it's got more paragraphs after all. But really, I enjoyed the game. Just don't expect great puzzles, but more of an interactive novel and you're good.

Dreamfall is one of my favorite games of all time. I helped kickstart Chapters. I spent most of my childhood between the adventure games of Lucasarts and Sierra, and regardless of what I write below - The Longest Journey is a seminal classic of the genre... Yet, given all that, it pains me that the Longest Journey is not an easy game to appreciate. Like a giant tome of Russian literature, this game requires a LOT of strain and effort from you to peel back the poor pacing, rough structure, and almost impossible puzzles to get to the great characters, story and world-building sprinkled within. If you are willing to meet the Longest Journey in the middle, there is a lot to love.