Gabriel Knight Mysteries: Limited Edition

Accessories:

PC Gamer (1-year)

Customer Reviews:

Classic Third Person Adventure [Posted on 2002-03-28]
What can I say? The Gabriel Knight series is to traditional 3rd person adventure what the MYST series is to atmospheric 1st person adventure: the best of its kind. Briefly put, they follow the adventures and experiences of author and bookstore owner, Gabriel Knight, as he unravels various occult mysteries and at the same time explores his odd heritage.

The stories are incredibly engaging and well developed; the author, Jane Jensen, put a remarkable amount of research into the subject matter. The characters are likable and believable, and the voice acting -- and in GK2, the acting -- is some of the best. Everything about these games is excellently done.

For the collector, the GK series is a little history of the adventure genre. GK1 is made with the 2D animation typical of the early 90s, while GK2 explores the FMV trend popular in the middle of the decade. In both the main action consists of finding and applying inventory items and gathering information by talking to a wide range of characters, with a spattering of arcade type puzzles and brain teasers to keep things interesting. One feature that I liked was that you are awarded points for completing puzzles, but you don't have to complete every puzzle to complete the game. This makes the games highly replayable as you can play through once for the bones of the story and then play again to go back and pick up what you might have missed the first time. There are also a lot of fun easter eggs that you can stumble on by chance.

Though the subject matter is sometimes grim, dealing with murders, conspiracies, and such occult subjects as voodoo and werewolves, there is a levening of humour in the character interactions that keeps the darkness at bay.

I found these games totally absorbing; it was not unusual to play for 7 - 10 hours at a stretch without even realising it. They are also very long -- a plus as far as I'm concerned -- taking a week to ten days to complete. You can be killed, but it happens rarely and when it does you are given the option to try again from a point right before you made your fatal mistake, so if you haven't saved recently it isn't such a big deal.

Die Hard fans of first person, MYST-like adventures may have a hard time relating to the Gabriel Knight series because it's so different, and players of shooters or pure action games will probably not like GK at all. If you like games like _The Longest Journey_, however, you will like these.

The collectors edition pack contains a lot of extras -- books, soundtracks, and the like. That's a plus and well worth having, because I was so sorry when the games were over that I wanted to keep reliving the experience again and again. I'd pay twice the price just to have one of these games. They truly are the best.

doesn't work for windows xp [Posted on 2003-06-17]
The Gabriel knight I game will not install into windows xp because you can't make 256 color, but the gabriel kight II game will so if you want to buy it for only the one game the second one will work.

Gabriel Knight 1 will work on XP [Posted on 2004-01-17]
Gabriel Knight 1 runs under DOS, and will play under XP if you run it under DOSBox, (http://dosbox.sourceforge.net), an open-source DOS emulator. I've tried it and it works, with sound and everything. You need to press Ctrl-F12 a couple of times to increase the speed though. One reviewer mentioned something about having to set the display 256 colors in XP... this is not necessary as Gabriel is not a Windows program.

Overall, Gabriel Knight 1 is a great game, and it really immerses you into the New Orleans milieu. This game made me want to visit New Orleans, even though I live in Montreal, and it's far more French here than in any other city in North America.

The best you can get [Posted on 2006-10-16]
These games are amazing. It's so enjoyable getting to know these characters and solving the mysteries with them. The storylines are brilliant, full of factual history and what makes the games so enjoyable are the characters and the humor, especially Gabriel. These are old games, so don't go expecting 2006 type graphics.

You can run both games on Windows XP. Go to the following site to download the relevant patches. These games will work 100% with no freezing whatsoever:

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Gabriel Knight 2: One of my top games ever! [Posted on 2007-01-05]
Just a quick word on the Gabriel Knight Series. Although its been a few years since i last played GK2, i can honestly say it has been my favorite adventure game of all time. I literally had dreams about it for a week. Great plot and great European setting. Also look into Siberia and Siberia II.

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