Damn, I was all prepared with my (uh, actually original) review last night when the game came out. Unfortunately I wrote the review and it never showed up, and now GOG won't let me write a new one. I've contacted GOG support ... I'm pretty sure I'm the only person in the world who cannot submit a review for Zork Nemesis. :(

Anyway, until they fix it, here is my review, entitled "Atmospheric, well-written, terrible ending":

This game has little to do with the Zork series, known for its quirky humour and colourful characters. Zork Nemesis can be (and probably should be) enjoyed more as a stand-alone game. Aside from a few references to creatures and places in Zork games, this game has little to do with Zork, but is enjoyable nonetheless.

The player starts in a deserted temple, and soon finds only the ghosts of four alchemists to talk to. From there, you must travel to four worlds, one owned by each alchemist. Sounds like Myst? The temple features some fairly basic puzzles, but the game really gets going when you visit the other places, and uncover the secrets of the Forbidden Lands.

It is extremely atmospheric. The visuals are excellent for their time, and the art style is moody and superb. The same goes for the music. The game's greatest strength is its story. It's not crucial to understand the plot to solve the game, but you will get the most out of it if you do. I played it as a child (which I don't recommend, by the way: this game has a lot of adult material), and didn't get it. I re-played as an adult and found it a much richer experience. Read everything you can find. Many items in the game trigger a full-motion video flashback, which collectively help you piece together the story.

The puzzles vary in difficulty and silliness. The difficulty really ramps up once you complete the temple section, and the game also stops giving you hints. They are mostly very logical, but hard.

Ultimately, the ending is a total let-down. The complex and rich story is compressed into a simple "good guys vs bad guys" and ends abruptly. It's sad, because the character development really worked for me right up until then. Ignoring that, it is a masterful game.

There is quite a lot of content in the game inappropriate for children. Themes relating to death, torture, suicide, rape, human sacrifice, and so on. Most of it is implicit or written. Aside from a lot of gore, the only very explicit scene is the one where, as you mentioned, you have to decapitate a dead body. Pretty heavy stuff for a Zork game.

Ah, I see. Thanks for replying. I hadn't really planned on getting the game-- it isn't really my kind of game. I was just curious because I had heard the others were humorous and it seemed odd that one of the games in this series would be 18+.

I was looking out for thewishingwell but then sadly cost of living expenses drives me to go to work where they unkindly block gog.com :(

Do they also block proxies?

They try to, I don't have a lot of time to try various proxies. I could probably find a way around it or another internal proxy but I haven't had the time to investigate further. I'm kept pretty busy. Ironically the company deals with finance and lots of money (sadly I don't see that much of it :)

I played a little bit of it last night to try and get a feel for the game and I have to say I'm very impressed with the sound design. While I didn't really try to get far in it, I did have a sense of dread wandering around because of how well the sound design gets into you. For some reason the painting of the woman that provided hints really creeped me out (her reflection in the mirror namely). I'm hoping I feel alright after work today because I'd really like to sit down and give the game some proper time.

I spent all those years wanting Grand Inquisitor because I loved the title and was under the impression that it was the darker Zork. Turns out I was quite wrong and that title goes to Nemesis. Thanks again GOG, really enjoying this release so far. :3

i think they have removed the poisoned review but unfortunately tons of such fake reviews and ratings exist i think gog should introduce a better system like at least allowing only those people to add an review and rating to the game only if they have purchased it

Sounds good on paper but then you miss out on people who have played this years ago and know more about it than say someone who has just played it for the first time.

true,if that was followed i myself would be guilty of writing a review of my fav game mob rule without buying it here.I guess we will have to depend on good scouts like bazilisek to hunt down the fakes and overrated ones
nice job again bazilisek

missed again

So, is there no way of adding subtitles to the DOS version? And does someone know what other differences are there exactly with the windows version?

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I'd love to buy the game but with all this chatter about the DOS vs Windows version, it would be nice if somebody could list the differences, pros / cons etc? Maybe a GOG team member perhaps?

From what I can remember and did research, there is no big difference:
-there is no official subtitle patch for the DOS version.
-saving and loading has to be done via key-combinations instead of an animated dropdown menu

I simply misremembered when I first said the DOS version looks worse than the Windows version. I retracted that statement after playing for a while. Hope that helps.