the longest journey game review

The Longest Journey Review

The Longest Journey is one of the best adventure games in years.

By Ron Dulin on June 26, 2000 at 5:41PM PDT

The Longest Journey is one of the best adventure games in years. Like a hybrid of classic Sierra and LucasArts games, it tells a great fairy tale filled with characters that you'll remember long after the game is over.

The Longest Journey is about a young woman named April Ryan, a visual-arts student who lives at a boarding house in a small, bohemian area in the city of Newport called Venice. While these locations suggest Southern California, the geographical setting of The Longest Journey is never stated; it's just a large city of the future. And while The Longest Journey's setting may be the stuff of science-fiction clichés, the game never resorts to the typical dystopian predictions. In fact, Newport seems very much like a modern metropolis, only with flying cars.

April has some problems. She's a runaway who has left home because of her father, though the exact reasons she left are never stated. She has a huge art project due, and she can't seem to get started. The guy who lives across the hall is a crude, arrogant jackass who won't leave her alone. And most importantly, she's being plagued by strange dreams that seem a little too real.

The game begins in one of these dreams. April is standing high on a cliff, overlooking a strange land. On this cliff, she meets a dragon and a talking tree, and she is visited by a strange, malevolent mass that sends her careening over the edge - and back into her bed.

When she awakes, you begin to learn about her life. If there's one problem with The Longest Journey, it's that the opening is a bit slow. It's loaded with expository dialogue about April, her friends, and the city. While this isn't a problem in and of itself, it seems strange that there is so much exposition right off the bat, when you've yet to meet any of the characters or visit the places mentioned. These conversations would have been much more interesting had they come a bit later in the game, once you've actually familiarized yourself with the places and characters you learn about.

During the first chapters of the game, you explore April's life. You meet her friends, you go to her school and to her job at a local coffee house. It seems like boring stuff, but it accomplishes an important task - as you take part in her routine, you begin to really care about her and her comrades. Her friends all have the hallmark concerns of people making the transition to adulthood - school problems, turbulent love lives, and bad jobs.

The game gets more interesting once the truth behind April's dreams becomes more apparent. You learn that there are two different worlds: Stark is devoted to science and technology, while the other, Arcadia, is devoted to magic. April has the rare ability to "shift," to move between these two worlds. These worlds, which were once one but came to be two, are fascinating, and you'll be eager to learn more about both their history and their future. April's dreams and some strange occurrences in both worlds are taking place because the division between the worlds is being eroded. And April is the one who must restore the balance.

Once the truth is revealed, the game begins to take place in both worlds. April cannot control her shifting, so moving from one world to the next takes place at times both opportune and otherwise. In both places, April meets a fascinating range of characters. In Arcadia there's Abnaxus, a representative of the Venar, who live in all times at once. He's a copy editor's nightmare, as he shifts tenses midsentence and often midword. Then there's Burns Flipper, the foul-mouthed hacker who rides around in a little hovercar. Even the most minor character is interesting in The Longest Journey, and you'll find yourself concerned with all of their fates.

It's a testament to designer Ragnar Tornquist's storytelling ability that you become so attached to everyone you meet. His game follows the blueprint laid by the classics of the fantasy epic, even as April's eccentric mentor begins teaching the reluctant savior. But it's also an original story that's filled with interesting settings and people. The Longest Journey is sometimes sad, sometimes funny, and sometimes scary. At times, it's all of these things at once.

The worlds are brought to life with rich, detailed graphics. The character models may not be extremely detailed, but they are good-looking and diverse. The background scenery is colorful and varied, and no two locations look the same. The sound is even better, because of the nonintrusive ambient music and excellent character voices. It's commendable that Funcom took the time to create a great English translation of the game, especially considering that it may not ever be published in the States (the translation was done for the U.K. version, which was published in April).

The puzzles in The Longest Journey are fairly standard, though they get better as the game goes on. In the beginning, you'll have to use some of your inventory items in illogical ways. But later in the game, the puzzles become more intuitive and fit better into the story.

The Longest Journey's complex and interesting story is what's most important. It deepens as you get further into it, and once it's over you'll still be thinking about all the subplots and how they tied together. And the conclusion is bittersweet - it's uplifting and rewarding, but there's a strange sense of sadness to it as well. The only criticism that can be leveled at the ending is that the epilogue does little to wrap everything up, so it'll leave you wondering what happened to many of the characters after April's task was completed.

But the end does allude to a sequel, and anyone who plays the game will be more than happy at the prospect of one. It's not that The Longest Journey leaves you unsatisfied - it's that it leaves you wanting even more.

Leave Blank

About the Author

More GameSpot Reviews

Use your keyboard!

The Longest Journey

The story and characters are among the deepest and most involved I've encountered in a video game.

Review Platform:

Developer(s), publisher(s).

The Longest Journey is a graphic adventure game for the PC. Like recent console RPGs, it features a complex story with many twists and turns. Unlike a console RPG, however, The Longest Journey focuses more on character interaction and puzzle solving rather than combat, and as we all know, console RPGs tend to be very combat intensive. How refreshing it was to me to play a story-intensive game where fighting did not take center stage.

The story’s protagonist is April Ryan. April is an average 18 year-old girl who studies art at VAVA (Venice Academy of Visual Arts) in the Venice district of Newport City – a very modern 23rd century city. Because of the art school, Venice has a reputation of being a liberal, youthful, happening area not unlike New York City’s Greenwich Village. Having escaped from a turbulent household, April has found happiness in Venice. She enjoys studying at VAVA, and has made some very close friends who care for her like a family.

However, April’s idyllic existence is shattered by the strange dreams she has been having of this lush green fantasy world filled with magical beings like dragons and talking trees. April’s dreams are frighteningly real and she is unsure if they are dreams at all. Through Cortez, and eccentric old man, April discovers that there are two worlds- Stark and Arcadia. Stark is the land of science not unlike our own world. Arcadia is the land of magic. April is a shifter who can travel between these two worlds, and is the only hope the two worlds have against the forces of evil that have reared their ugly heads. The story takes many twists and turns and always keeps you wondering, “What happens next?”

What makes the story so compelling to me is that April is no warrior or mage or anything like that. She’s just an ordinary girl thrust into extraordinary circumstances. She’s as human a protagonist as you will ever meet. Her mixture of skepticism, fear, curiosity, fortitude, resourcefulness, wide-eyed astonishment, a strong will, a great sense of humor, and a stubborn streak thrown in for good measure makes her a very easy character to relate to.

As the wonderfully written instruction manual says “by the time you’re cast into a completely different world – one that’s alien to both you, the player, and to April herself- it will be that much more difficult to adjust” (p.6). If you, the player, feel a bit out of sorts in a strange place, chances are April does too. This makes for a wonderfully immersive feel that few other games truly have.

Admittedly, the story does start out slowly. The first chapter (out of 13) is mostly a series of lengthy conversations between April and all the important people in her life, from the lesbian landlady Fiona, to her best friends Emma and Charlie, to Zack – the biggest jerk one could ever have as a neighbor.

While all this exposition at the very beginning is a bit much to wade through at first, it helps the player care more about April and all her friends. Her world becomes your world. Venice takes on those warm characteristics of home.

But April does not stay in Venice for too long. She explores quite a bit; from the sleazy, crime-ridden areas of Newport City, to the various natural wonders of Arcadia, her travels become yours. As you explore new places, you feel April’s various emotions from apprehension of new surroundings to utter awe at the world around you. You and April meet many colorful characters on your journey, some good and some evil. All are quite memorable and integral to the story. My only complaint with the story is that the last few chapters (chapters 10-13) felt a little rushed. But the story was awesome, nonetheless.

What truly makes The Longest Journey’s story come alive are the voices. All the dialogue is fully voiced and contains some of the best English voice acting I’ve heard in a video game. The voices fit the characters’ appearances perfectly and the actors deliver their lines convincingly. However, there are instances where one voice actor plays multiple roles. Only in two instances is it really noticeable that pairs of characters share a voice. I found Sarah Hamilton a wonderful choice for April’s role. She really brought April to life and I certainly hope to hear more of her work in future games and/or animation.

Of course, the best voices cannot save a game or movie if the scripting is bad. Thankfully, The Longest Journey is wonderfully scripted. The dialogue flows very well, conversationally, and has very few spelling errors in the subtitles. There are grammatical errors, but all are intentional to portray a character’s dialect or manner of speaking. The realistic dialogue adds another layer of immersion to the story. I give much credit to the writers for the wonderful job they did. However, there is a LOT of swearing in the script, as well as sexual innuendo. This game does not have an “M” rating for nothing. I love it, but gamers more sensitive to these things may want to pass.

While the voices are the best part of the game’s overall sound, one cannot overlook the sound effects and music. Music is rarely played in the game, but when it is, it’s great. Usually it’s played during FMV scenes or non-interactive scenes, and it’s of the orchestrated/ classical fare with a lot of brass. What little music exists is well composed and fits the intended scene. However, the melodies are not catchy and you won’t be humming this music in the shower.

As for sound effects, they’re realistic. When something is dropped in the water, it makes a convincing splash sound. When a cabinet falls, it sounds like a cabinet falling. I tended to keep the music and sound effect volume low and the voice volume high when I played. Sometimes, the characters in their realism would speak at low volumes.

So how does all this look? Generally pretty good. The pre-rendered backdrops are a sight to behold. The art and architecture of the various places never ceased to take my breath away. However, I felt that the artists’ efforts were more evident in the magical fantasy backgrounds of Arcadia rather than the dark futuristic world of Stark. I think this was intentional because the player spends more time in Arcadia, and it makes Stark look, well…stark.

The polygon models of the characters are another matter altogether. They don’t look exceptionally good. They are of a higher resolution than, say, Final Fantasy 8, and have some nice facial detailing (such as moving mouths), but have noticeable blockiness and seams during close-ups. Also, when the camera pans really far away, there is a lot of break-up in April’s polygon model. Far away, she becomes an almost invisible blob with a couple of really small polygons to show that she’s there. If there’s anything that could have used some more work, it’s the polygon character models. (If anyone wants to know, I played this game on a 500 Mhz Pentium 3 with a 40x CD-ROM, which is well beyond the recommended system requirements).

There are a few CG FMV scenes scattered throughout the game. These have no voices attached to them. While they have wonderful clarity with no graininess, they are certainly not on par with Squaresoft’s work. The backdrops look stunning but the characters look awful. The character movements in the FMV scenes are quite jerky and almost robotic. And April’s FMV portrait looks drastically different from her in-game model. In-game model April has full curves (best polygon booty I’ve seen on a video game heroine), olive-tinted skin, dark hair, and a cute face. FMV April looks absolutely horrid! She’s scrawny, pale, has light brown hair, and a very anorexic, sickly face. I groaned every time I had to see that sickly looking ‘thing’ that was supposed to be the lovely April Ryan.

Lest I forget that The Longest Journey is a game, I must comment on the gameplay. There’s not much to it. If you’ve played a graphic adventure before, you know the drill. It’s all just point-and-click. Different colored arrows signify different things. A broken arrow signifies a segment where you can’t click anything. A dark blue arrow with a grey border means you can move. A red arrow with a grey border signifies an exit. Click once to walk, double click to run. Either way, April moves slowly, so check off the ‘enable frame skip’ option in the game settings and you can press ESC to skip frames and move April along at a speedier pace.

A light blue arrow that looks like a sword means you can interact with that object. In that case, a bar pops up with an eye and/or hand and/or mouth icon. You can look, talk to, or handle the object/ person. On every screen, it is imperative to keep a watch for these light blue ‘sword’ arrows as those may indicate items you can keep in your inventory.

I love how your greatest tool and weapon in this game is your brain. Progress does not depend on what level you are or what weapons and armor you have. It depends on the player’s logical thinking and how well he/she uses the inventory and/or the environment to his/her advantage. There are a couple of monster battles, yes, but these battles are very scripted. Being the RPG nut that I am, I’d have liked there to be more interactivity in the battles, but the game is great as it stands. After all, the emphasis on the game is not on combat or conflict, but rather using one’s wits.

As with any adventure game, your inventory is your best friend. What may seem like a useless object may turn out to be infinitely useful in a situation you encounter. Sometimes an object is useless by itself, but is useful with other objects in the inventory or useful with something in the environment. Since April cannot die, experimentation is highly encouraged. Click on the chest icon on the top left corner of the screen to access the inventory. Click on an object therein. Then that object becomes the pointer. Drag it over another object in your inventory, or with something in the environment. If it flashes, that means you can use it there. For those like me who are new to adventure games, the ‘flash’ feature and the ‘April can’t die’ feature were a great help to me in figuring out how to get out of the pickles I found myself in.

Another cool icon is on the top right hand corner of the screen. It is the diary icon. When it flashes, April has written something new in her diary. Clicking on that icon will give you the menu screen. In that you can save/load games, change the game settings, view previous FMVs, read April’s diary, or check the conversation log. The diary to keeps tabs on what you’ve accomplished and April’s thoughts on the matter. Oftentimes, a helpful hint may be stored therein. It’s always amusing to read the diary, and I encourage players to do so. The conversation log keeps track of all the conversations you’ve had with people. If you scrolled through a conversation quickly, or forgot what someone said, you can go to the conversation log and re-read what that person said. Again, if you’re stuck, a hint may lie therein. These features are a wonderful asset to the game and I’d like to see features like that applied in more console RPGs.

The only downsides to the gameplay are ease and linearity. I’m new to the adventure genre, and I did not find The Longest Journey all that difficult. The puzzles were integrated very smoothly into the story, but were never abnormally difficult. A few did stump me though, but some trial and error saw me through. Also, I was surprised that the more difficult puzzles were near the beginning of the game, whereas the end chapters had noticeably easier puzzles. Veterans of the genre will find this game a cakewalk.

The game is also very linear. It follows a set path, and you cannot deviate from it much. Sure there are a few instances here and there where you have dialogue choices, but ultimately, the end result is the same. But the story is so immersive and involving that you won’t even notice that the puzzles are fairly simple and that the game is linear.

But after all is said and done, I thoroughly enjoyed this game and highly recommend it. The story and characters are among the deepest and most involved I’ve encountered in a video game. For 25-30 hours, you will be treated to a fantastic journey through the realms of magic, science, and the human spirit. You will be up past your bedtime on many nights to see April’s journey through. This will be an unforgettable journey, so grab your mouse and start clicking.

RPGFan is a gaming website focused on roleplaying games and related genres such as graphic adventures, visual novels, and roguelikes. We cover franchises, creators, fandom, and everything inbetween.

Advertise on this site.

Privacy Overview

Long read: The beauty and drama of video games and their clouds

"It's a little bit hard to work out without knowing the altitude of that dragon..."

The Longest Journey

3D adventure game reviewed

Saving April Ryan

Every now and then a game comes along that sucks you into its world so completely that you vanish into it for days at a time, surfacing only for food and sleep when you just physically can't play any longer. Last year we had Outcast to rob us of sleep and social life, and this year we have The Longest Journey.

Produced somewhere in the depths of Scandinavia, and only reaching our God forsaken shores some months after it had been released across most of the rest of Europe, The Longest Journey is quite simply one of the slickest and most involving adventure games I've ever had the joy of playing.

You take on the role of April Ryan, an art student in 23rd century America who finds herself caught up in an epic struggle of good and evil that spans two worlds - her own scientific world of Stark, and the magical realm of Arcadia.

April has the ability to "shift" between these two worlds, and before long you find yourself travelling backwards and forwards between them as you try to solve the puzzle of who and what you are, while at the same time trying to save the world from imminent destruction at the hands of a pseudo-religious group known as the Vanguard.

The plot is told through a mixture of in-game conversations and beautiful rendered cinematics that are amongst the best I've seen. Although at times the info-dumping can get a bit much, and the conversations are occasionally a little long winded, the strong characters and excellent story drag you on through the game's four CDs.

Sound And Vision

The first thing to strike you on starting the game is just how beautiful it is. The pre-rendered backdrops are simply stunning, ranging from the city-scape and slums of Stark to the forests, islands and medieval cities of Arcadia.

In total there are over 150 locations to explore, and 50 characters to speak to, from cops and engineers to talking birds and eccentric alchemists. The characters are real-time 3D models, and most of them are nicely detailed and well animated.

Unfortunately the game is locked into a low resolution of just 640x480, which can make the characters look rather blocky at times against the stunning backgrounds, and causes some nasty "jaggies". If you have a Voodoo 5 or GeForce 2 graphics card you are in for a treat though - full-scene anti-aliasing really does give this game a whole new lease of life.

The sound is equally good, with some excellent voice acting and atmospheric music that suits the game and its mood perfectly. The script manages to keep you involved in the game and its characters, as well as injecting a welcome dose of humour, although some people may find the frequent swearing from some of the characters a little over the top. Make no mistake, this is not a kid's game...

Of course, one of the most important elements of any good adventure game is its puzzles, and luckily The Longest Journey scores well here as well.

The puzzles are fairly challenging at times, but most of them are logical enough if you stop to think things through. There are a few bizarre puzzles which had me scrambling for the walkthrough though, and it's not always entirely obvious what you should be doing.

Luckily the game includes April's Diary, which is invaluable when you get stuck. This includes entries about many of the key events that take place during the game, which give you a further insight into April's character and, on a more practical level, can often give you a pointer as to what to do next.

You also have access to a log of all her conversations throughout the game, and trawling through the transcripts of her recent conversations sometimes turns up clues that you missed when listening to them the first time round.

Interfacing

Controlling the game is achieved with your mouse, using a very simple left and right click interface that allows you to move around, examine or pick-up items, talk to characters, and combine items in your inventory, all within a couple of mouse clicks.

Talking to another character brings up a series of options at the bottom of your screen, although as with most adventure games, at the end of the day you usually end up going through most or all of the options anyway in one order or another.

You can also access April's Diary by moving the mouse to the top of the screen and clicking on the little diary icon that appears. This gives you access to save and load game options, game settings, conversation logs, and the diary itself of course.

It's all very intuitive and easy to use, and is very unobtrusive, leaving you to concentrate on April and the world she is exploring.

The Longest Journey is not without its flaws. The humour may not appeal to everyone, the conversations can be rather long and meandering at times, and the labyrinthine plot is occasionally hard to follow.

Also the 3D characters don't look as good as they should do because of the low resolution, and although the game still looks gorgeous and runs silky smooth even on my old RivaTNT, you will really need a graphics card with support for full-scene anti-aliasing to make the most of the game's visuals.

At the end of the day though, The Longest Journey is an engrossing and highly entertaining adventure game with characters that you can care about, an involving storyline to keep you hooked, and settings and characters that are both beautiful and bizarre. What more could you want from an adventure game?

Eye Candy

Buy The Longest Journey

SPECIAL PROMOTION! Offer ends 11 April

Packages that include this game

Buy the longest journey + dreamfall.

Includes 2 items: Dreamfall: The Longest Journey, The Longest Journey

WEEKEND DEAL! Offer ends in

Buy The Longest Journey Bundle BUNDLE (?)

Includes 3 items: Dreamfall: The Longest Journey , The Longest Journey , Dreamfall Chapters: The Final Cut Edition

"The Longest Journey is not only the best adventure games in recent years, it's one of the best games ever" - GamesDomain

About This Game

Over 150 locations spanning two distinct and detailed worlds
More than 70 speaking characters
40+ hours of gameplay
20+ minutes of high-resolution pre-rendered video footage
Cinematic musical score

System Requirements

More like this, what curators say, customer reviews.

You can use this widget-maker to generate a bit of HTML that can be embedded in your website to easily allow customers to purchase this game on Steam.

There is more than one way to buy this game. Please select a specific package to create a widget for:

Enter up to 375 characters to add a description to your widget:

Copy and paste the HTML below into your website to make the above widget appear

Popular user-defined tags for this product: (?)

Dreamfall: The Longest Journey review

Clumsy combat and adventure games just don't mix.

GamesRadar+ Verdict

The engaging storyline

Jack Angel's voice acting as Wonkers

The plausible puzzles

The half-hearted combat

No plot resolution

Waiting for a sequel

Why you can trust GamesRadar+ Our experts review games, movies and tech over countless hours, so you can choose the best for you. Find out more about our reviews policy.

Imagine a majestic bald eagle soaring through the sky, not a care in the world except for where its next furry meat-snack is coming from. Now imagine that same eagle trying to flap its wings with a brick tied to its talons. That's pretty much how we'd sum up Dreamfall: The Longest Journey - a high-flying adventure that's been weighed down with several unnecessary and awkward fighting sequences.

Dreamfall is a sequel to The Longest Journey , a highly regarded PC adventure game from 2000 that was big with the "point-and-click" crowd of adventure purists. To make Dreamfall more accessible, the sequel travels the action/adventure route in this follow-up.

Well, kinda. Heroine Zoe Castillo can wander her fully 3D surroundings freely, but any interactions with the environment - climbing, chatting, picking up items, even walking up stairs - are triggered only when an on-screen icon says you can do so. It's an interesting departure from the traditional, "3D person walking around a 2D background" system that this genre grew up using.

Dreamfall 's adventure roots are also apparent in your character's Focus Field, a mode that puts your attention on a particular object or person in the form of a big blue beam of light. Its use is only required a few times during the entire game, though; you may forget the mode even exists until you get stuck.

Current page: Page 1

After making $2 billion in 10 years, The Elder Scrolls Online's director wants you to know that the MMO is definitely "one of the successful live service games"

How one developer tapped the Internet's past to tell a timeless story of human connection

CD Projekt exec pokes fun at Ubisoft's "AAAA" game Skull and Bones, says the studio will now make "AAAAA" games

Most Popular

By Phil Hayton 28 March 2024

By Rachel Watts 27 March 2024

By Molly Edwards 27 March 2024

By Tabitha Baker 26 March 2024

By Kate Stables 26 March 2024

By Phil Hayton 26 March 2024

By Jamie Graham 26 March 2024

By Kate Stables 25 March 2024

By Jon Bailes 22 March 2024

By Neil Smith 21 March 2024

By Joe Donnelly 21 March 2024

The Longest Journey - A Retrospective

A game that almost vanished.

My earlier post about story reminds me of a piece I wrote for PC Gamer a few years back, looking at The Longest Journey, and its lasting effect on me. There was never room for my full thoughts then, and the full length 'director's cut' version has sat on my hard drive since. Clearly Dreamfall has been released since, telling us more about April Ryan, and another retrospective is due for that. Meanwhile, here's the full-length version of the original piece.

“Mystery is important. To know everything, to know the whole truth, is dull. There is no magic in that. Magic is not knowing, magic is wondering about what and how and where.”

The Longest Journey almost vanished away unnoticed, another obscurity ranted about by a few, but never reaching any acclaim. In the mire of pre-millennial adventure gaming, it could so easily have been drowned by the density of its peers, ignored by pessimism, never given the chance it so strongly deserved. How it was joyously liberated from this fate is mysterious. And in mystery, there is magic. In The Longest Journey, there is magic.

As a point and click adventure, The Longest Journey already defied conventions, ignoring the genre’s desperately floundering attempts at “catching up”. Developer and writer Ragnar Tørnquist and his team at Funcom understood that “catching up” was meaningless – they had a story to tell, and a world in which it needed to be told, and so this was the game they made. The natural instinct to say how it recaptured the adventure’s previous glory is strong, but this just simply isn’t true. Adventure gaming had never been as glorious as The Longest Journey – it hadn’t ever even come close.

Eighteen year old art student April Ryan provides the most perfect eyes through which to witness this tale. Sceptical, sarcastic and sassy, she tight-rope walks the same line as Buffy, mouthing off but never quite tumbling into the irritating. And yet still somehow gets away with normally grating late 90s Ameriteenisms such as, “That’s SO not appropriate.” You forgive her, because you realise, as do the games’ twin worlds of Stark and Arcadia, that she’s important .

A friend was recently explaining to me how Silent Hill 4 manages to spook so effectively by blurring the two worlds of the normal, and the horrific. When an element of one leaks into the other, stability in the known is shaken, and fear drip, drip, drips in. In April Ryan’s life, it is the fantastic that begins to disturb the normality of her existence, the world of dreams invading her world of rational and science. And where a good horror story shows you fear in the every day, The Longest Journey shows you magic. Set 200 years in the future, April’s world is enough like our own to allow us to identify, but distant enough to allow it status as a metaphor.

The meta-narrative tells of how, long ago, the united Earth was divided into two: Science and Magic, Stark and Arcadia. The Bladerunner-inspired future version of our known world allows the effects of this severance to have been demonstrated even more, well, starkly than they are now. Wars have increased the degree of global apartheid, Capitalism’s punishments are more prevalent, authority rules over democracy, and people simply get on with being people as it happens around them. It is unavoidably our future.

In contrast, Arcadia refers back to so many fantasy lands, simplicity bolstered by magic, thus creating seismic instability and inevitable fracture. But Arcadia at least possesses hope. Stark’s worldview is blind, eyes gouged out by its people’s own hands. It allows the coming destruction of Chaos without even the consciousness to question. And so it is through April’s dreams, through her powerful imagination, that she is drawn to ‘shift’ out of that world, and to learn her part in the shaping of the future.

I was unaware of how much I’ve been influenced by The Longest Journey, until returning to its tale for this piece. I’ve been writing a children’s story, on and off, for a couple of years, never getting very far with it, but always driven to persist by its unstoppable urge to leave my head. I’m now wondering how much I have to remove because I’ve simply plagiarised it from my subconscious. The ideology of this game is lodged deeply inside me, partly because I so strongly identified with the message I took from it, and partly because that message is so powerfully told. It is always a point and click adventure. There are always daft clicking the rubber duck on the clamp and tying it to the string puzzles. But it works with these elements, not despite them. Nearly every voice is perfectly cast, and the recording supervised by the game’s creator and writer, Ragnar Tørnquist. Yes, there is swearing, but there is swearing where real people swear. And wow, are the conversations long. But they are telling you a story like no other.

April is not a simple character, a template onto which we may impose ourselves to experience a world. She has issues with her father, trouble letting people get too close, and a propensity to run away rather than face difficulty. She is a complex and broken human being, thrown into a situation too big to understand, and arguably destroyed by it. She’s a person.

The opening quote, said to April by her mentor when she is persisting with him for answers, speaks for the whole game. The Longest Journey is epic and magnificent, but completion makes you aware that this is only a tiny fraction of a created world. Indeed, these are only weeks in the whole of April Ryan’s lifetime. So much remains unknown. But to know the whole truth is dull. Magic is in not knowing, magic is wondering about what and how and when.

The Sunday Papers

What are we all playing this weekend?

Conquering Total War: Warhammer 3 as a pirate with a pathological aversion to ever touching grass

Supporters only: Enjoy/endure real serfdom in wonky but loveable Under the Yoke

The best Steam Deck docks

Supporters only: My obsession with a singular board game makes me fear the unchill passage of time

Elder Scrolls Online's new Gold Road expansion might just make me an MMO convert

The Crush House is a saucy 90s reality TV show simulator from the developers of Reigns

The Longest Journey

Dual world setting creates an interesting setting and puzzle dynamic that significantly enhances your adventure in breadth of variety and locations
Main character development and voice acting provides a wealth of content
Lack of concrete ending can leave players without sufficient closure and answers to their questions
Some of the puzzle and environmental actions players need to make have zero context almost necessitating a walkthrough

The Longest Journey offers an interesting array of characters to build a connection with in this well received adventure game from 2000. Utilising point and click adventure game mechanics that popularised the genre during the decade of adventure gaming peak The Longest Journey holds an impressive low 90s score on Metacritic. The Longest Journey doesn’t just offer impressive characters though it also has a multi layered and complex story to really get your brain thinking and keep you mesmerised in the game world that the developer has worked so hard to develop.

The Longest Journey is set in a number of parallel universes known as Arcadia which is dominated by magical users and Stark which is dominated by industry which creates conflicts between the two worlds. The main character of this adventure an controlled by the player is April Ryan who is a simple student living in Stark with the magical ability to shift between the two very different worlds.

Players join the story soon after April makes her first shift accidently into Arcadia while being asleep. Here she meets the White Dragon who tells her of the part she has to play in the coming adventure with the fates of the two worlds closely tied to her story. Soon after this meeting April is attacked and shifts back into Stark believing the whole thing to be some strange nightmare although can’t shake the feeling of her magical abilities and a greater purpose. From here the story of the two worlds evolves in The Longest Journey and April’s ability starts to unravel as it grows in strength, eventually taking the player to a massive number of uniquely diverse locations (over 150).

Gameplay adheres to the point and click adventure game formula with players interacting with objects as April around the game world and using them to solve a variety of puzzles to move forward through the game’s story. The Longest Journey also makes use of long dialogue sequences to expand on the story and setting which add a lot to the game world compared to other games and part of the reason you’ll feel so immersed and tied to the story of April.

Of note is that this dialogue is predominately voice acted, an expensive investment at the time of original release and a key feature in separating The Longest Journey from other adventure games . To balance this for players that aren’t as heavily invested in game lore usually much of this can be skipped without impact to story progression or ending.

Another consistent mechanic (similar to other adventure titles) is the recurring use of items which players need to obtain from the game world and then use in another location to move the story along. The Longest Journey has hundreds of items in this regard that range from magical and alchemy ingredients to your everyday apple, coin, fishing line, flute, jewels, rope and screwdriver.

the-longest-journey-gameplay-cinema-choice

With a huge number of locations, wealth of items to collect and use in your environmental based puzzles pairing with the impressive character development and unique setting The Longest Journey is the definition of adventure game from the 2000 era and definitely not a game to be missed from that time by adventure fans.

Great character and world development from start to finish that will engage players.
A complex story of two parallel worlds that are starkly different.
Find, collect and use hundreds of different everyday objects to solve puzzles.
Classic point and click adventure gameplay mechanics.
Large amount of voice acted dialogue to draw you into the adventure.
Buy The Longest Journey (GOG)
Buy The Longest Journey (Humble Store)

Review Platform: PC

This review was first published on September 13, 2014 . Read our update policy to learn more.

Comment (All comments are approved before publishing)

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

The Longest Journey

Images & screenshots.

The Longest Journey News

51 Things That Made 1999 Totally Awesome

Free online and mobile games

Point-and-Click
Walkthroughs
Game Ratings
Category Icons
Submit a Game
Games for your website
Full Support
Latest Comments

The Longest Journey

Currently 4.8/5

Platform: Windows

Categories: adventure , affiliate , classic , download , fantasy , funcom , game , gog , narrative , pointandclick , rating-o , retro , windows.

The game is played with your mouse, clicking on people or objects to interact with them. The game will occasionally display several icons (hand, mouth, and eye) to let you choose how you with to interact. Click on an area to move there, or double-click to make April run to it. When speaking to people, you can hit [ESC] to skip through the current line of dialogue if you've heard it before. Right-Clicking opens April's inventory, and since so much of the game centers around item combination and puzzle solving (more on that later), you'll quickly become used to examining and using everything around you. Since April has the strange but helpful tendency to vocalise her every thought, you should investigate everything you can for clues and information. You can save your game at any time by opening the menu (clicking on the diary icon at the top of the screen), and you should definitely take advantage of this as dangerous situations can arise.

If you've played a point-and-click adventure game before, you're probably used to abstract logic. In fact, when I first saw the game on GOG, I thought, "Oh hey, that's the game with the inflatable duck and the sewer candy". The game's puzzles are memorable in part because they're just so bizarre . Most of them simply center around using the right item or combination of items in the right place at the right time, but figuring out what's required of you can be mind-boggling. The logic behind a lot of them is obscure enough in a few places to drive you to a walkthrough, and unfortunately, there's a lot of backtracking, which makes things more frustrating than they need to be. Mess around with them long enough and you'll eventually figure out the solution, but they're definitely more than a little out there in most cases.

The story behind the game takes a while to really get rolling, but The Longest Journey does such a good job of immersing you in your surroundings that it's easy to forgive. Since it isn't exactly an action packed title and you spend so much time talking to people, it's a good thing that what they have to say is usually interesting and frequently amusing. The writing is relaxed and natural so that conversations sound real, and the people you meet have a tremendous amount of personality. As the protagonist, April is feisty, cheerful, and instantly likeable, making an excellent guide through the high-fantasy story.

It's true what they say; they really don't make 'em like this anymore. Or at least, not frequently enough for my tastes. The Longest Journey isn't quite perfect, but it gets more things right than not, and offers up a long, engrossing adventure. Don't expect to finish this one in a day, or to forget it the day after you finish it. A quality game with a lot to offer, The Longest Journey already has a lot of fans; give it a chance and it just may make one of you, too.

13 Comments

You know, I did like this game back in - holy smokes, 1999?! I am old. Anyway...

I liked it because the story was nice, and the character development was just really, really great. I thought they really did a good job making April a real character and making you empathize with her like any good movie or game or story should.

I did, however, feel that it had a lot of that tortured logic adventure game syndrome going on, where eventually you'd give up and just start trying to USE everything WITH everything else until two things combined or worked. I can't remember them too well from a decade ago, but one that comes to mind early is

an inflatable rubber duckie and like forceps or something to retrieve something (keys?) from the subway tracks.

But overall I thought it was a good overall experience. It just seems like it would have made a better movie than a game.

Badly, GOG asks too much info to pay: they want all personal info including SSN. JIG should not, ever, recommend giving out so much personal info.

[Any personal information requested for the transaction will be from your card issuer, not GOG. For example, I had to prove to Visa that I was the cardholder, through the GOG payment interface. I had previously set up a password with Visa for my online transactions, such as this, and the Visa window that popped up asked me for that info. It was not GOG asking for the info (they couldn't have known what to ask me for). The connection is encrypted (evidenced by the https:// in the address bar) and I trust the people at GOG. The payment interface works well, and I have tested it myself with an actual purchase. -Jay]

I love adventure games.

This isn't just a good adventure game or a great adventure game, but it is (in my opinion) the best adventure game ever created.

The voice acting, the story, and the storytelling are all the very best the genre has ever offered.

GOG does NOT request any personal info from you beyond a credit card or Pay Pal. As Jay points out, Visa is taking certain security members and requiring you to prove to THEM (not to GOG) that you are the cardholder. GOG does not receive this information.

This was one of my favorite adventure games. It really made an impression at the time.

I tried playing the 'sequel' - Dreamfall - the longest journey 2 (though its really its own game) and it didn't capture me as much. Still quite well done.

Another great adventure favorite of my in this vein is 'Beyond Good and Evil'. Loved it.

Wow... I remember this. I'm only 15 years old,but I remember this game being handed together with a gaming magazine I'm still buying. Back then I couldn't even get past the first chapter. Played it a few months ago, though. I got further this time, but still didn't have the time/patience to finish it. Seriously, people. GET IT. If you don't, you're missing one of the most beautiful adventure games ever made.

The Longest Journey is one of the best P&C adventure titles I've ever played, up there with MYST and Gabriel Knight.

I remember playing this game way back when. It was pretty much amazing. The sequel Dreamfall was also good.. but I think I liked this one more. A 3rd game was set up, but I haven't heard anything on it's production..

I played the sequel to this with my house mate and really liked it, even though it starts of a bit slow and ends a bit abruptly (trequel anyone?). I've been itching to try the first installment.

Thoroughly enjoying this... just wanted that due to a lot of back-tracking, double-clicking a destination or an action will make the progression less painful :)

Just curious: What is it about the game that earned it the M rating?

Hi Tesh! The Longest Journey gets an M rating because there's a fair amount of "casual" profanity (a few of the characters can be more than a little potty-mouthed if you choose certain dialogue options), some innuendo (some subtle and some not), and a bit of violence. I'd say about 70% of the game, if not more, could be safely rated Y (one step above G), but I wanted to err on the side of caution. You're not going to have people swearing at you and coming on to you every five minutes, but I didn't want to surprise anyone either.

^ Scroll Up | Homepage >

also on Jayisgames

Monkey go happy roundup 66 - retro, monkey go happy roundup 65, weekday escape n°376, mobile monday n°340.

HELP Jayisgames.com

Game of the week

Your Favorite Games edit

Monthly archives, legal notice.

All games mentioned or hosted and images appearing on JayIsGames are Copyright their respective owner(s).

To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video

JayIsGames offers a free online experience with the best free online games. You can read our daily honest reviews and walkthroughs, play games, discuss about them. JayIsGames.com is a leading Flash and Online game review site. Since 2003, we review every day only the best, including casual games, flash games, arcade games, indie games, download games, shooting games, escape games, RPG games, puzzle games, mobile games and much more. Submit a Game: Don't just read reviews or play games on JayIsGames.com, submit them! Submit your game now and we might release it in homepage. Use our game submission form . Check us back often! We add new games every day and only the best games!

The Long Game

In 1955, five young Mexican-American caddies, out of the love for the game, were determined to learn how to play, so they created their own golf course in the middle of the South Texas deser... Read all In 1955, five young Mexican-American caddies, out of the love for the game, were determined to learn how to play, so they created their own golf course in the middle of the South Texas desert. In 1955, five young Mexican-American caddies, out of the love for the game, were determined to learn how to play, so they created their own golf course in the middle of the South Texas desert.

Julio Quintana
Paco Farias
Humberto G. Garcia
Dennis Quaid
Jay Hernandez
Gillian Vigman
2 User reviews
6 Critic reviews

Frank Mitchell

Gayle Baker

Joe Trevino

Daniela Torres

Alice Glenn

Gene Vasquez

Eugene Patterson

Mario Lomas
All cast & crew
Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

More like this

Did you know

Trivia In March of 1921, the Twelfth Calvary Regiment voted to form a country club which became the San Felipe Country Club. The San Felipe Country Club included a nine-hole golf course that is located on the San Felipe Springs. This was the first course built by John Bredemus who went on to design many notable courses such as the Colonial in Fort Worth, TX. In 2016, the City of Del Rio took over the golf course and renamed it to the San Felipe Springs Golf Course.
How long will The Long Game be? Powered by Alexa
April 12, 2024 (United States)
United States
Colombia (on location)
Endeavor Content
Fifth Season
See more company credits at IMDbPro