The Beast Within: A Gabriel Knight Mystery

The Good
I think the story pays for most crimes against gamers, the game may commit. The story and the acting, particularly Peter Lucas'(Piotr Andrzejewski) excellent portrayal of main antagonist Friedrich von Glower. A lot of the story concerns German history and of course the story writers have been extremely liberal in building a fiction based on Lugwig II and Richard Wagner, but the game could still be called semi-historical and educational. But I think one of the most striking things about the game is the friendship between Gabriel and Von Glower, which of course develops into a non-friendship. They appear to have such a strong bond. Von Glower clearly has a sexual desire for Gabriel, which Gabriel reciprocates to a point. I thought the climax of their relationship came with Von Glower's romantic letter to Gabriel, which was like a strange, werewolf's marriage proposal.

The Bad
The problem solving isn't always great, but I thought what really hurt the game was the opera at the end, meant to be a long lost Wagner opera. Reading through the program at the start of the opera, you find that it's a very plain romance tale and meant to mirror Gabriel and Von Glower. So it tends to revert them from colourful and multi-faceted into black and white, which for me was a huge let down. I should also note that the door/entrapment puzzle at the end is very hard to solve, harder than it should be in an adventure game, I think.

The Bottom Line
Well it's completely worth playing for its great story and acting, great but imperfect. I wouldn't recommend spending too long trying to solve the problems and puzzles, look up the solution if you have to, so you can move forward with the story.