I know GK2 has a better reputation compared to GK3, but both remarkably fail as a follow-up to one of the best adventure games of all times. About GK2 in particular:

- I cannot berate enough the horrible, misguided idea of using live action. Good-bye, graphic novel feel. Welcome, soap opera aesthetics. Thank God it was a very short-lived fad for point-and-click adventures.

- The Gabriel actor is, bafflingly, the worst of the cast. I can't believe they moved from Tim Curry (the voice actor for the remake is not terrible, either) to this freaking guy. Gabriel turned from suave Southerner into some ignorant Murican beefcake.

- Other returning characters also behave in unrecognizable ways. Since when are Gracie and Gerde hostile towards each other? Assistant catfight, really?

- The pointer always looks the same, so every time you click on something, you don't know if you're getting a description (there are very few of those, anyway, the world-building is not very nuanced) or you're unwillingly activating a cut-scene.

- Most of the interaction with the story amounts to click through talking points and then sit and watch the actors talk. The actual puzzles are very few.

- The investigation in Munich is pretty boring. Most characters just keep shouting angrily in Gabriel's face. The locales are vastly generic. The werewolf angle is not too fascinating compared to the voodoo angle.

4/10

I thought the sequel is weaker than Sins of the Fathers on all fronts. I am not a fan of FMV P&C games and the casting and acting wasn't great. Storyline was ok. The puzzles were a lot simplier than previous game and the gameplay was overly simplified Some of the puzzles were ok but just look for the icon to change to a sword to know that you had to do something.

Went through the entire game. Was super excited to finally have beaten it and it turns out there is a final chapter glitch that stops your progress at 610 out of 679 clues -_- not only is it a widely known glitch but apparently its been around for forever and nobody has fixed it. The one article I found about it some dingbat posted about loving this game and wanting to take screenshots on it and the whole article went off topic from there. So absolutely no help there. Extremely P.O.'d considering I was streaming this game and now I can't complete it.

TLDR: Overly dramatic, Long winded, and Boring.

General Thoughts/Overview:

It’s been almost 30 years since I last played this. It’s funny, I remember it as a visually stunning masterpiece with an intricate story and an emotional heart that was both beautiful and moving. Man, I wish I’d left the view of The Beast Within to preteen me, I’ve actually kept the 6 cd’s and transported them thousands of miles as I moved around.
An FMV (full motion video – basically using film of actors to play out scenes) point and click adventure, The Beast Within finds Gabriel Knight, now a successful author, on a new quest as the shadow hunter, setting out from his family castle in Germany.

Pros:

• Surprisingly well acted and scored. It is ham fisted, and overly dramatic… but it feels like it’s meant to be. 10 year old me 100% bought in and loved all, 40 year old me not so much. But the characters are consistent, the music is fantastic, and it feels like it was put together exactly as intended.
  
• The puzzles are interesting and mostly logical, with a few exceptions and a single caveat I’ll get to in the cons. They mostly fit the theme and progress the story logically, with only a couple feeling arbitrary to plot progression. Speaking of which…
  
• The story is a fascinating mixture of real life and fiction. I really enjoyed the blending of the tragic tale of the Mad King, it was so easy to slide the mystical details in amongst the truth that I found myself extremely immersed.

Cons:

• The medium by which this tale is delivered is wrong. The massive pauses between clicking and actions as the videos are located, buffered, and played is tedious. The extremely longwinded cut scenes are dull at best, and that every step of every puzzle has one is just a time killer. I truly believe that if all the unnecessary pauses, looking to the camera, and panning shots were killed, the game would be less than half the length. Combine this with the ludicrous speed the idle animations are played at and it kills the tone of the game, very, very, effectively. It’s a real shame. This would have been an interesting story delivered as a film, and a really nice adventure game delivered by animation. Here it got the worst of both worlds.
  
• Things out of order… Out of order, everywhere. The most frustrating part of TBW is that several puzzles will allow you to try a correct combination, only to say mmm nah, and then allow the same combination after a cut scene has played later… even though it changed absolutely nothing. There are also several locations which do nothing except permit a very specific action at a very specific time… And will not do so unless specific criteria are met, despite the logic of it being questionable at best.
  
• Grace is insufferable and Gab is an ♥♥♥♥♥. They really took the characters to the extreme, and it felt wrong. Grace is a know-it-all, but she never felt like an arrogant prick… Here she feels it. Gab was head strong, but he wasn’t a bumbling fool. Here he feels it. I feel very strongly like they assassinated both characters for the sake of drama, and I didn’t enjoy it.
  
• Game crashes a whole bunch. Every 20 minutes or so it just goes bllllllllggggrrrrreeeee and nopes out.

Suggested improvements:

• Auto saving program would help.
  
• Able to skip single lines instead of entire cutscenes would be nice. I ended up getting bored and skipping half of the vast majority of the cutscenes. I then needed to go back to frustratedly and boredly watch the entire things because they held story vital points that were not recapped anywhere.
  
• There is a single point you can dead save yourself if you’ve missed something (or only one that I noticed, at least.) While it allows you to try again, when I hit the try again buttons it crashed. every time. So yeah, fix that. (Actually, and need it be said? FIX THE CRASHING IN GENERAL)

Overall Recommendation:

I wish I hadn’t played this. Not because it’s terrible, it isn’t, but because I remembered it being amazing…. and it isn’t.

This game isn’t for newcomers to PnC, though I doubt any newcomers would be finding themselves here. It isn’t for people who want a well-paced and tight gaming experience, and it isn’t for people who dislike overacting.

TBW is for folks looking for a story rich, immersive, and interesting adventure.

Overall I can’t recommend this game.
While I do entirely recommend this story.

If The Beast Within ever gets remade into something a little slicker, with less long winded cutscenes, and the acting turned down to 7 I’ll be the first in line… Sadly I don’t see that happening, and unfortunately this interesting and lovingly crafted idea will no doubt remain a cult classic.

Very disappointing after GK1.

The story and the characters are uninteresting.
Gabriel is bland.
Grace is insufferable.
The gameplay is rather unpleasant, with some very difficult to notice interaction points or pathways.
There is ridiculous sequence of events. Ex: flower that only blooms after you try to speak with someone specific.
The postal office timeline is seriously in question here.
The audio is often garbled.

Oh Gabriel where did you go wrong? This game is good but is somewhat confusing as most of the story takes place in the germany with german speakers surrounding you. Its fun for a little while but the deeper into the story you go, it starts to loose its joy and you go you start to feel like a tourist who forgot to take a phrase book. Sure you can get by, with the limited english dialogue and translations for key bits of stuff but you feel like your missing alot, On the plus side you will pick up a little German by the end.

The story is a little less believable than the first but entertaining all the same, gameplay is good but bafflling at times due to no explanation (in english!) of what your doing or anyway of reminding yourself at times, so if you forget its walkthrough/trial and error time

Bugs theres a rainforest of them, most are minor but they come thick and fast that you feel you have to check a guide everytime you hit a point and you expect progress but nothing happens.

Overall its an okay game but the bugs and lack of translated subtitles prevent me from recommending this.

I really can't recommend Gabriel Knight 2. The first game blew me away, and I was extremely disappointed by this sequel. The beautiful pixel art from the first game was replaced by choppy FMV, and the amazing soundtrack from the first game replaced by completely generic tracks.

There are the usual problems with FMV games, bad green screen, inconsistent sound and video quality, extremely hard to see hotspots due to being a real picture, massive empty space between each conversation topic, and many more.

Tim curry, who stole the show in the original, is replace by some random dude. The game is well acted, but for some reason they decided to make Gabriel a bumbling fool who just stumbles through his adventure with no rhyme or reason and ignores all help and advice from Grace, even though he was more than capable in the original.

The puzzles and game progression are awful, no doubt hindered by the fact that there's only one button to interact with things, so you can't even look around to get puzzle hints. I'm the kind of person that loves reading every tidbit on information and description I can find in a game, but when I need to follow a thirty-six part walkthrough to make sure I don't miss any of the absolutely crucial random ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ factoids in a museum to progress, I get annoyed.

I've heard this game described as "the best FMV game", and that just shows how low the bar is for these kinds of games. Gabriel Knight 2 might be a good FMV game, but it's really not a good adventure game. If you're interested in good FMV games, check out the Tex Murphy series.

Chapter 4.

Crap. Don't waste your time with this, does not worth it, Clicked every damn thing and still did not get the phone call. There's absolutely zero feedback about what's missing. The story is boring, the writing is sloppy.

♥♥♥♥ this game. if u have friend that send u this game, u obviously have more enemies than friends. story of my life, it seems