It will take you three or four hours to reach the end of this long-awaited return to Dreamfall's world, and while the experience achieves equilibrium eventually, it's a wobbly start. In particular, it's disappointing that it ladles on tons of non-interactive dialogue scenes yet never really manages to offer newcomers a way into its brilliant but complex tale. Equally, it doesn't yet feel like a true adventure game, with too few puzzles dotted along the way, and solutions that fail to inspire.
And yet, for all that it staggers a little out of the gate, I'm still excited that Dreamfall is back, and looking better than ever. It picks up the story as if the last game only came out last week, and the writing and voice performances are very much in keeping with the distinctive tone of this sparse but beguiling series.
I'm glad that we no longer give scores to each chapter of an episodic game, because right now Dreamfall Chapters has problems. They are, however, mostly problems of the sort that would barely register in the opening hours of a complete game, and will hopefully disappear over time as the story deepens and the gameplay evolves.