I really enjoyed this game back in the day. Yup, it's a point and click and suffers from the usual problems inherent in that genre, but back then you just went with it

The game has an impressive group of voice actors, some of whom would later in their careers become fairly well known

The game is broken up into chapters which equate to one game day. If you want to progress to the next day you must complete a required set of tasks and the game keeps track for you of what you still need to get done

I enjoyed the story quite a lot, but then again I'm a sucker for supernatural games. Voodoo, satanism, life sacrifice. Pretty mature stuff for a game of this era, but I would be lying if I didn't say that some of it is a bit silly and preposterous, but I didn't mind back then

I'm fairly certain that there was a hint system in the game which is always helpful in point and click adventures.

A gaming critic once suggested it was like playing an interactive movie and I whole heartedly agree

It's fairly dialogue heavy and usually I don't mind that, but it sometimes took away from the tension

You can die in the game and one of the deaths is pretty shocking to be seen in a game from the 90's.

I have no doubt that there is some nostalgia reflective in my review, but I won't apologize for that. This was terrific fun to play

I played the original DOS version on ScummVM. I'm told the remake fixes some things. Maybe it's better, I don't know.

That said, Gabriel Knight is a great reminder of both the best and worst things about old style adventure games.

The writing is often very good. The mystery is compelling and well-thought out. Characters that didn't need to be much more than props get these charming little moments of humanity. Gabriel himself is extremely well realized and his sidekick Grace is a delight, I would die for Grace (I sort of did, several times). And the game struggles manfully to be as respectful as possible about the history of voudoun and the legacy of slavery in New Orleans.

But of course, just as often, the writing is pretty bad. The tone flips from extremely selfserious to zany on a dime. For a game this long there aren't as many characters as you'd expect, New Orleans feels pretty empty even with a dozen or so locations. Gabriel is an insufferable asshole and his "flirty banter" with Grace is literally just a boss sexually harassing an employee. And for as respectful as the writers clearly want to be, this is fundamentally still a 30s style pulp adventure where a white dude fights an evil voodoo murder cult, the black characters have the least character development, and Africa is kind of treated like it's one big country. It's way less racist than it could have been, but like, it's still racist.

The puzzles are a similar case to the writing. Many of them are extremely clever, there were so many moments where I was genuinely excited and proud of myself for having figured something out. But there's a whole lot of puzzzles, and many of them are also complete bullshit. The clunky UI doesn't tell you what's interactable (which the Monkey Island games did, so you can't just blame the time period) and it's not always clear from the overly dense pixel art what exactly you're looking at. Even otherwise good puzzles and solutions are sometimes ruined by just literally not being able to tell what your options are. And some puzzles are straight up poorly clued (the clock and the mime in particular, worse for being so early in the game).

I resorted to a guide for big chunks of the game, and there were times I honestly regretted it. The tomb code puzzle in particular was one where I realized I would have enjoyed figuring out the answer if I'd been a little more patient and looked back through my conversation logs. But when so many puzzles are frustrating for no good reason, it becomes hard to trust that any given part you're stuck on will be worth the effort.

So yeah. If you're interested in the history of adventure games as a genre and you want to see where modern games take their influences from, Gabriel Knight is a must play. If you just want a fun point n click with a cool supernatural mystery, well, Gabriel Knight is not at the top of my recommendations list. Maybe try Kathy Rain and the Chzo Mythos games first.