YMMV / Gabriel Knight

• Awesome Music: The Whole Soundtrack: Among Sierra's best, including an entire libretto written for The Beast Within.
• Base-Breaking Character: Grace in GK2 can be this. While many fans find her gameplay more interesting, there are others who can't stand her attitude.
• Best Level Ever: Le Serpent Rouge in Gabriel Knight 3 is regarded as one of the greatest puzzles in the genre.
• Complete Monster:
  • Sins of the Fathers: Dr. John is the fanatical madman so obsessed with Voodoo culture that he becomes the second-in-command to Malia Gedde of the demonic spirit Tetelo. Fully organizing the Gedde cult of Voodoo worshippers, John began perpetrating the "Voodoo Murders", a series of vicious killings where the victims' hearts would be ripped out. Along with regularly having anyone who could oust him assassinated, John bathes in the blood of his kills, and it is seen that he has numerous other victims in his lair, with piles of skulls, dismembered limbs, and body-less faces abounding. When titular Gabriel Knight begins investigating him, he sics his pet python on Gabriel (contrary to Malia's orders not to harm Gabriel), and later kidnaps the man's assistant, Grace, and plans to use her as the latest sacrifice to Tetelo and the gods of death they worship, with John never showing any form of remorse for his victims or care for Tetelo; just raving fanaticism toward the Voodoo gods of destruction.
  • The Beast Within: Baron Garr von Zell was, from the start, a rude, unlikable Jerkass with nothing but malice toward his fellow man. However once his true nature is discovered, he quickly becomes one of the most wicked villains in the franchise. Turned into a werewolf by Friedrich von Glower, von Zell became addicted to the thrill of killing, and quickly began murdering innocents, not for food like all other werewolves, but just For the Evulz. In these "mutilation killings", von Zell ravenously shreds more than half a dozen innocents to pieces, one of whom was a little girl, and he plans to continue his spree after framing a pair of wolves for the killings, later murdering a man who tries to blackmail him with the fact that he is the true killer. While Gabriel and von Glower, disgusted by von Zell's wanton sadism, manage to stop him before he kills too many more, von Zell makes sure to turn Gabriel himself into a werewolf before his death to screw with him one final time. A psychopath with nothing driving him but base impulses of hate and cruelty, Garr von Zell was without a doubt the most evil werewolf Gabriel encountered.
  • Blood of the Sacred, Blood of the Damned: Excelsior Montreaux, real name Sanae, was once an adamant follower of Jesus Christ, but after growing jealous of his master, attempted to drain him of his blood to gain his godly powers. Though driven off by other followers of Christ, Montreaux began hunting down Christ's descendants then draining them of their blood as they slept, leaving them deathly sick for weeks to pass before repeating the process over and over again, which inevitably lead to his victims' deaths. Feasting on the blood of these descendants, sparking the legend of the vampire in the process, Montreaux has kept himself and his followers alive for over 2,000 years, and, alongside executing any who get to close to the truth of his Satanic cult, Montreaux plans to murder the latest descendant of Christ, the infant Charlie, drink his blood, then use the power it will give him to lead his cult in taking over the world. The final, and perhaps most evil, villain Gabriel faced, Montreaux truly cared for no one or no thing but himself and his immortality.
• Contested Sequel: Gabriel Knight 3
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Grace is arguably more popular than the titular character. The character used to have her own page on The Other Wiki while Gabriel doesn't, is Promoted to Playable in the sequels, and people generally find her parts of GK2 and 3 to be more interesting than Gabriel's.
  • Friedrich von Glower is fairly popular with the fans, to the point where he appears in Temptation comic.
• First Installment Wins: Whilst opinion is divided as to whether GK 2 or 3 was the worse sequel, it is agreed neither hold a candle to the original.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • In Sins of the Fathers, it's possible to have a conversation with the gravedigger where he outlines in graphic detail what would happen to the bodies buried in New Orleans if there was a flood, twelve years before Hurricane Katrina.
  • An in-universe example, probably deliberately played up in the 20th anniversary remake, where it's far more pronounced. If Gabriel continues to bug Grace for his messages after she's read them all for him, she'll exclaim in mock melodramatic exasperation "I've given you everything I have!" Funny enough, but if you've played the whole original trilogy and know how their relationship ends up taking its toll on Grace, it's an uncomfortable bit of Foreshadowing on her part.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: In GK3, Larry Chester is writing a manuscript he hopes will introduce the fact Jesus has descendents to mainstream society. He tells Gabe it'll come to light in the next decade. Out of universe, about four years after the game, The Da Vinci Code, a book featuring the same pseudo-history, became a best seller.
• Ho Yay:
  • Plenty in The Beast Within. Specifically, von Glower's past lovers include Ludwig and von Zell, and he's clearly interested in Gabriel as well.
  • It's pretty strongly hinted that Lily and Estelle in Blood of the Sacred... are more than just "companions".
    • More than strongly hinted. The suspect list in Sidney describes Estelle as "Lover and assistant to Lady Howard [...] the "butch" of the two [...]"
• Most Wonderful Sound: In the first game, a small piano tune appears whenever you pick some items or solve puzzles.
• Memetic Mutation: The cat hair mustache puzzle in Gabriel Knight 3
• Nightmare Fuel: In the first game,Wolfgang tears his own heart out so Gabriel can get the Schattenjäger amulet. It also doubles as a Tear Jerker moment.
• Never Live It Down. The cat mustache puzzle in GK3. To this day, many adventure game-related articles such as the infamous rant from Old Man Murray tend to use that puzzle as one of the main examples why the adventure genre died.
• Narm Charm: The voice acting is fairly good (For the time it was in), but it's not always good. When it fails, it's an Epic Fail but that's what adds to the charm.
  • Curry repeatedly pronounces "New Orleans" as "New Orleens", which is obviously something a true New Orleanian (or someone who's watched Treme) would never do. One of the few directorial changes to voice acting in the 20th anniversary remake is to have Gabriel pronounce it "N'Awlins"
  • The German accents throughout The Beast Within are generally pretty good — until Grace talks to the workman installing the chandelier in the game's final act. He says "ja" a couple of times, and says the rest of his lines in a normal American accent.
• Once Original, Now Common: Similar to King's Quest VI: Heir Today, Gone Tomorrow, Sins of the Father used Hollywood voice talent - and this was one of the game's major draws. Of course, it's not without its foibles such as Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping and Not Even Bothering with the Accent.
• Paranoia Fuel: In Sins of the Fathers once you find out about the Rada Codes. Then you notice the drummers stationed all over the city. You know, the ones you've probably been ignoring because they just sit there all day and drum. They're not only watching you, they're broadcasting your moves to the creepy voodoo cartel that's already left a number of messy corpses all over the city. And of course, the creepy looking guy who just stands outside the shop for two days and stares in the window.
  • If you listen in on the drummer on the day after you crash the St. John's Eve conclave, the only word you can make out is "Warn." YMMV, of course, on whether it makes the Paranoia Fuel better or worse that the frightful Voodoo cult is just as frightened of you.
• Questionable Casting: Tim Curry as the New Orleans native Gabriel Knight. It's not even a case of voice actor availability (as the game is an American production), which makes it all the more confusing.
• Rewatch Bonus: Plenty of minor incidents in GK3 after you learn that Emilio is an immortal.
• Series Hiatus: Despite the story for the fourth installment being written in time for teasers to be included in Blood of the Sacred, poor sales and a lukewarm reception led to a lack of funding that meant there hasn't been a new Gabriel Knight game since 1999. However, Jane Jensen has never stopped expressing her interest in continuing the series when and if she's able to, and with the series' increasing Cult Classic status and the moderate surge in interest generated by the 20th anniversary in 2013-14, there's hope yet.
• Slow-Paced Beginning: The series suffers from this for those not interested in backstory, historical minutiae, and/or drawn-out interview processes, especially when controlling Grace. Each of the three games takes about half the game for the action to pick up, which is good when it does, but until then it's jarring.
• So Bad, It's Good: The French dub is infamous for its poor quality, yet the same problems make it an unextinguishable well of memes for French YTP. The English narrator as well - some think she's really annoying but some think she's so annoying it's funny.
• So OK, It's Average: Tends to be the response to the 20th Anniversary Edition of Sins of the Fathers from players who didn't outright hate the remake. (See They Changed It, Now It Sucks!, below.) Most seem to agree that it's a serviceable remake with, at the very least, some beautiful environment art, but otherwise it's full of missed opportunities to do something bigger and better with the source material. The fact that the 1993 original's pixel art style and MIDI musical score came back into fashion in the 2010s makes the remake feel extra unnecessary, since it's not like interested players can't still grab the original just as easily on Steam or GOG.
• Special Effect Failure: The Beast Within, when it comes to the Werewolves. They are completely computer generated and looked awful(but not in the intended way) when the game was released. The fact that the Normal wolves are depicted via video footage of actual wolves makes the werewolves look even worse by comparison. The damage is limited by the fact the wolf-form werewolves get relatively little screen time until the end.
• Tear Jerker: Wolfgang's Heroic Sacrifice in the first game.
• That One Puzzle:
  • In the first game, translating and writing a message in the cemetery certainly does a mention.
  • Deducing the correct combination to the old clock found in Grandma's attic, while essentially logical, is arguably one of the hardest puzzles in the entire series, due to the fact that the hints provided by the game will most likely seem to most gamers as totally unrelated. There is, however, an effective, albeit tedious and boring way to solve it without consulting a game guide, namely to try out every single of the 1728 possibilities. The game designers seem to have thought about such an approach, which is probably why the correct symbol to match the hands of the clock to is located immediately to the left from the default symbol, thus causing most gamers, naturally prone to going through the puzzle the way a normal clock hand would move, to waste hours on end of their gameplay, finally getting the right combination at the very end of their torment. It doesn't help that every time you move the hands of the clock, the cursor will automatically teleport to the very fringe of the screen and possibly make you accidentally turn off the puzzle, forcing you to go through the annoying icon-changing sequences every five minutes or so.
  • The cat mustache puzzle, as stated above. It involves multiple steps needed to be taken in order to impersonate someone with a motorcycle license. The least logical of which is affixing tape to a cat in order to construct a fake mustache, which the person whose identity you're stealing does not have. You not only need to create a fake mustache, but then draw one on the license, which many players found baffling.
  • Some players have trouble with the audio splicing puzzle early in the second game. This is mitigated a little in that, unlike the voodoo message puzzle in the first game, once Gabe gets a word correct, you're unable to remove it from the splice.
  • The mime in the first game. Not only is not clear that he's anything but part of the background and that you need him to get to the motorcycle, unless you know to stick to the path, when you pass by other NPC's he'll start following them until they read him the riot act and he goes back to his original spot. You could be just near the bike and be forced to start all over again. For the hundredth time.
  • The remake added a new puzzle with at the Moon residence where you have to work out a cipher machine so that the Voodienne will consider you a friend. By triggering switches and pedals till it spells out friend. It's considered obtuse and the fact that it was made by Jane herself doesn't make many people warm up to it either.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: Many fans aren't happy with the results in the first game's remake. The fact that its middling sales and critical performance seems to have killed off any hope of a GK4 doesn't exactly endear it to its detractors, either.

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