Dreamfall Chapters: The Longest Journey Book 2 Review (PC)

The first book in the returning Dreamfall series reintroduced us to dreamer Zoe Castillo and apostle Kian Alvane. Zoe certainly had the more interesting story to begin with and Kian’s sections was both a bit clunky and generally uninteresting. 

Book 2 starts with Kian in the rebel’s base. From here he must decide whether or not to join them and then proceed to carry out various missions to strengthen their resistance in the capital city on the magical side of the coin. On the futuristic side of that same coin Zoe is about to uncover something huge that will change the course of the future.

It’s almost impossible to go into much more detail without beginning to ruin the twists and turns that happen. This is one of the problems for reviewers with episodic content as the plot develops continually and in story based games giving anything away will completely ruin the experience.

What we can look at is the elements of the game. This time around the game mainly gives you fetch quests to do. Most missions boil down to ‘go to here’ or ‘speak to this person’. Luckily the characters and dialogue are strong enough to keep the story moving without turning the player off. Zoe at least gets a new gadget or two to try and hide the wandering around from point to point.

Thankfully, Kian’s side of the adventure is much stronger this time with new characters and plot twists making him seem a more interesting proposition to play. Zoe’s story stays pretty much rolling along on an average level but her world is always interesting and it certainly gives you a payoff at the end.

The choices are also back and in full effect with some that will really have players thinking and some that have a strict countdown before choices are taken away. Most importantly it still works as a story and the intensity has been nicely ramped up since the first book.

Overall, there is nothing really new here that wasn’t in the first game in terms of mechanics but the story is getting stronger and the new characters and excellent voice work continue to draw you into the world. It’s still a bit rough around the edges in terms of controls and mechanics but Dreamfall Chapters continues to work as a story telling device and an interesting one at that.

Overall 7/10