Gabriel Knight 3: Blood of the Sacred, Blood of the Damned

The Good
Graphics and sound - what works

Gabriel Knight 3 has solid, well designed graphics in full, ‘real’ 3D. No slow-down whatsoever, the camera roams high and down ahead and back and rotates 360-degree as you wish all the time with no hiccups.

What’s most important, most of the people and things in the game still look cool 15 or more years after release. Takes little to appreciate what hard work went into the good looks of everything, from the characters to buildings and the various landscape.

Music and sound fxs are there doing their job too. Scary when it ought be scary, more emotional or straight fun when ought to be so, music keeps up helping the story’s whole atmosphere the whole of time.

In a nutshell, nice graphics and good sound add up to a game experience likable to the eye and thrilling.

Gameplay - what works

In a 3D world designers could hide secrets and caveats pretty much anywhere, which opens up the game for more quirks and things to do than your average 2D adventure maybe. The game interface works smooth and isn’t gonna bother you.

You control Gabriel Knight some days (chapters), and his female buddy Grace Nakimura the rest of time. She kind of steals the game. Makes the game feel up-to-date with today’s equality ideas and is a nice touch, too bad you have to control Gabe in the final.

High fun factor overall, specially thanks to many of the puzzles are not too hard, so they won’t make any players feel they want to leave the game b4 they finish it. Also, the in-game help feature is a fine touch and in 1999 meant designers where keeping in step with the times.

Plot and replay value - what works

Well, you have a quite long thriller story full of things to do and surprises. Many interesting characters and locales too. It’s at least 20 hours of playing, maybe 30. Replay value is OK, as you’re gonna miss some hidden things in your first playthrough, and the score system provides the grounds for trying again and get everything.

The Bad
Graphics and sound - what doesn’t work

Quite everything is perfectly ok with the graphics and sound, but some of the art sucks, the voices are campy, low-res textures were applied across large areas.
Anyway, you still get into the game.

Gameplay - what doesn’t work

A big issue is the infamous cat mustache puzzle. This puzzle, as other reviewers said, is difficult not because its clever but because your simply left stumped by the idiotic kind of solution. Issues with some puzzles, so tough some of you may quit and leave the game. Even the research material into Grace’s SYDNEY computer can confuse some people. In-game hints are available only sometimes, so maybe go straight to a FAQ whenever you get stuck.

Plot and replay value - what doesn't work

To say it bluntly, nothing’s wrong with the plot and replay value. Anyway you don’t have achievements to collect, and they should be there IMHO.

The Bottom Line
After great experiences with GK1 and GK2, I was quite looking forward to playing the third game and in no way it let me down.

In a nutshell, what you gonna get with Gabriel Knight 3 is around 20 hours of pretty decent, streamlined, fleshed-out adventure gameplay for $6. That’s a fine deal. The game is often on sale, which sure makes it a bargain nobody wants to miss.