The Last Express Gold Edition

This game is not a mystery game that I was expecting. It was boring, full of politics talks, and lots of small talks after small talks. I was expecting a game more focused on the murder, the evidence gathering, and the solution, but instead, the game forces you to do certain actions during certain times, even though it gives the illusion of freedom and autonomy. The character you control can go anywhere he wanted, listening on or missed certain conversations, but it wasn't clear what the objective of the character at any given points. Lack of English subtitles doesn't do it justice either. Spoiler alert! [spoiler] Even though the game seemingly giving you autonomy to explore the train, the choice presented to you is limited. The main character itself has its own agenda and personality, and the player has to follow what the character wants instead of choosing their own choices. For example, in the beginning of the game, a friend of the character was found dead. I wanted to report to the authority, to start the investagion immediately. What happens is, because your character *somehow* breaks into the train illegally and was on run from doing some other things the week prior, your character cannot afford to report the murder to anyone else, lest getting caught and an instant game over. So the player has to strap his friend on the underside of the sofa, then throw him away during the night. [/spoiler] [spoiler] So, I tried to not throwing the corpse away during the night. The game wouldn't let me sleep. I insisted and let the game run without doing anything, since nothing is preventing me from doing absolutely nothing. Except, in the morning around 4 or 5 a.m., suddenly the train crew found the corpse, despite that train crew was still sleeping when I checked, the door to my room was locked, and there's nothing that I can do to block or halt the train crew because he wasn't even walking before the game abruptly gives a game over. Really, it's buggy and giving the illusion of free choice. [/spoiler] [spoiler] Or during the musical performance day. I had gotten the Firebird and exchanged it for the gold. I wanted to give it to Schmidt to honor our promise. Yet again, the game won't actually let you give the gold to him, despite showing it to him moments earlier. And after a while, guess what happened? The game decided that your character wanted to run away with all the gold! It didn't even cross my mind to run away. Somehow, the character chose to run away, without any prompts, no hints, no foreshadowings. It wasn't even my choice. The illusion of free choice. [/spoiler] At this point, I'm not sure if I want to continue this game. I would update this review if I ever play it again in the future.

This is a good game and one that any adventure game player will enjoy. It's an interesting and intriguing story with lots of context and content based on the geo-political situation of Europe in the summer of 1914. I had heard so many good things about this game and I was very excited to play it. It does have a few issues in my mind. First the controls are a bit frustrating to use at first and it probably took me an hour to get used to clicking my way through the environment without unintended about-turns and mis-clicks. My other criticism is that whilst the story is great, there isn't much indication or help given to you as what you actually need to do any time or what it is that the protagonist is setting out to achieve, save the overall goal of finding out who the killer of your character's friend is. This was only a minor frustration for me because the player is left to explore the small environment of the Orient Express that you can traverse and meet and speak with the many interesting characters in the game. You will soon get a rough idea of what to do next, even if you still don't understand what the ultimate goal of any chapter is, and ultimately I didn't find any part of the game a challenge, aside for a few tricky quick-time events. Visually the game seems quite dated but I enjoyed the art style and felt it still help up, mostly due to it's uniqueness in it's design. Some of the animations are a bit slow, and more like a slide show (At first I checked a Youtube video to make sure it wasn't just my machine) but I think you can get used to this very quickly and enjoy it for what it is. I think it's also worth noting that in my view the acting and voice work is of a very high standard and does a lot to carry the interesting story. Overall, despite a few quibbles, I think anyone who likes adventure games or has an interest in the origins of WWI will have an enjoyable few hours playing this game.

I was very pleasantly surprised at this game! I avoided it for awhile because of the choppy animation style; but I’m glad I finally played it. This game is surprisingly immersive. You really DO feel like you are an actual passenger on a train. And I was surprised that the game is in REAL TIME. So all the passengers have schedules and do things independently of you. This can sometimes be stressful, but it really solidifies the atmosphere of the game. I was very happy with the mystery too! It really DOES have you guessing right up to the end on who the true culprit is; which is great! SO MANY MYSTERY GAMES/Shows(especially modern ones) don’t include enough suspects in their cases. Which makes it easy to immediately guess whodunnit- sometimes even as far as the first chapter. This game however, has several people with TONS of reasons why they would’ve killed the victim Tyler Whitney. There are mixed feelings on the true culprit with some players(and I get it) but this game truly DOES constantly make you suspect everyone right until you are made to know the truth. And I liked that. What this game also does right is atmosphere. You are SURROUNDED by suspects in a claustrophobic space, with no information to go on. And Tyler’s belongings are stolen: belongings he had dangerous buyers for(and many eyes on). And you don’t even know what they were or why he had these dealings in the first place. You are just confronted with a dead body, smack dab in the middle of the cabin. The tension is immediate and intense. You HAVE to hide/get rid of Tyler’s body before one of several people find it or you with it. And things just snowball from there. Many life or death moments, so you never feel safe on the train. It’s a shame to hear that this game was a commercial failure. If it was remade with better graphics(and some more audio guidance from the main character himself on where to go); this game would’ve had a bigger following than it currently does. It’s sad to hear a prequel was in the works and canceled as well. Would’ve liked to have seen more.

Quite impressed by the game but I really needed a walkthrough to fully appreciate the plot. The key pain point was that the directional arrows get quite confusing when it's not consistent, e.g. between sleeping cars and restaurant cars, so that hindered speed walking and getting around. There's a surprisingly thick plot and it was very well-implemented with the multiple endings.

Absolutely love this game. Nothing has ever been made since even remotely like it.

One of my favorite games of all time. A classic murder mystery set in the week leading up to World War One. You must solve the clues to unravel the mystery.

I had a lot of fun playing this. The writing is very good, (especially the dialogues) the characters are interesting, and the visuals are so charming! I liked that the game happens "in real time", it makes us feel like the train is alive, things are always happening and someone is always doing something. Sure, the game design is old (my god, the combat is annoying, but thankfully it’s minimal) and I encountered a few bugs, but nothing that messed up my game. It's a shame that we never had a sequel. Anyway, if you like mysteries, political intrigues, with a little touch of Indiana Jones vibes I recommend this game.

норм

I had a blast for first 3 hours. I knew I would love this game and I did but this "gold version" softlocked me multiple times, making me retrace my steps. It supposed to finish around 4 hours yet I was able to get to %75 in 7 hours because of bugs. DON'T RECOMMEND THIS VERSION. Needs an actual remaster, then it would be amazing.

A rotoscoped adventure game that takes place in semi real-time. It's quite an achievement, but it means you can only be at one place at a time, while so much is going on at the same time. I really disliked this, so I just took the easy way and used the Broderbund's Official Strategy Guide. But even with the strategy guide, you still can't do everything. You're just bound to miss things, which I don't like. I guess it increases replayability, but still. Even though this is a remaster, or at least a modern porn, there's still bugs. I've had my right arrow (to go to your right) change to a corpse. Many, many times I only wanted to go forward once and the character just sprints to the other end of the train. Still, the game is worth a shot. Maybe your fomo won't be triggered as much. 15/15 achievements.