I agree but I still think in GK1 these puzzles are logical. The dragon on the lock had to either be at the three or at the 12 (at the top).
And you're right: Just because you can solve this puzzle on the first day you don't have to. And on the fourth day you get so many clues about that it should be clear. It was to me and I was 14 at the time of the game release and didn't need a walkthrough.
The same is true with the salt.
GK1's puzzles are logical.

I had no problem figuring out the salt.
Age is irrelevant imo. It has to do with how your brain is constructed. Some people just can't do games like this. For me the most appealing thing about these kinds of games is the story and GK 1 had a good one.

Aye, the only problem I had back in the day, was with writing 'DJ Bring Sekey Madoule' on the coffin wall. Though the budget release (Which is what I picked up (Actually, it was a pack of three, Gabriel Knight, some game I can't remember and the game I wanted - Betrayal at Krondor) actually contained a single bit of paper that explicitly told you what to do at that one point, so the publishers must have got fed up with the countless people phoning the hintline for that one puzzle.
As for the salt, its been a while, but don't you stick it in the water - salt water - sea water.

Just finished the game. Fantastic story. I did get really stuck a few times though. It is hard to judge how "fair" a puzzle is objectively. Some things I probably should have been able to figure out:
- Opening the clock. I tried something similar to the actual solution, but similar is not good enough. To me it wasn't obvious it contained something I needed to end the day.
- Translating the drum code (Reading TFM would have helped me there).
- Getting the "tattoo" from Grace (I was sure I had shown her that sketch with nothing happening. Blah).
Prouder moments:
- Figuring out the point of the mime.
- Writing the right message on the wall.
Potentially disastrous moment:
- Finding and waking up Grace without having a certain person as backup. Better have a usable save...

FFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUU-
I just spent the last two days talking to everyone about everything AGAIN, just to make sure I didn't miss anything, checking for items I might have overlooked, showing everything to everyone...
I narrowed it down to two possibilities - either placing the second tracker SOMEWHERE triggers them bringing stuff (including the coffin) OR I need to write SOMETHING on the tomb wall.
Cue me trying to compose various messages, including (but not limited to): "mg bring coffin to ritual", "mg bring sekey madoule to swamp", "dj take sekey madoule to conclave", "dj bring sekey madoule to conclave"... I tried VERY hard to avoid using any kind of walkthroughs and made it to this point, with the right idea... and you tell me I was simply meant to ditch the destination ? FFS - it was SO obvious to me that you bring something SOMEWHERE... Not to mention that "sekey madoulé" is written with an accent and the amount of space on the wall was HUGE in comparison to the final message...
UGH >_<.
Sensing that his post isn't quite right, Vestin deletes it in frustration.

I'd say the hardest puzzles for me was the Sekey Madoule crypt puzzle, and the rada drum ones. Fantastic game but for the life of me I struggled on those without walkthroughs, so badly. :P

The first wall message is what you need to imitate - "DJ conclave tonight bring fwet kash", replacing fwet kash with sekey madoule of course. It also works, and the result (after you stand back to admire your work) is a message that takes up the whole available area.

Also, the two parts of the puzzle are explicitly linked by an in-game hint that activates whenever you complete one part of that puzzle. So, for example, if you put the tracker chip in the coffin, the message says "Now Gabriel has to make sure the coffin is brought to the conclave" or something like that.

The hardest part for me was to trust the game not to screw me over, to understand there are no arbitrary puzzles and I'm (probably) not hopelessly stuck because of something I did (or didn't) on Day 1.

The poem, when viewed as a clue, feels arbitrary, since it's attributed to a Ritter guy who Gabriel doesn't know is his relative until the clock puzzle is solved. Of course, if the player knows even a little German, or has played a sequel, the connection is obvious. The picture, on the other hand, is spot on.

But really, the take-home point is that clicking everything on everything is not a way to solve problems in this game (too much stuff to click on), thinking is. The castle sequence can be viewed as a sort of homage to that annoying old style, but the available area is too small to make it really annoying, and hopefully enough trust is established that the player wouldn't worry about being in a dead end due to not clicking a random object back in New Orleans.

Also: the intro for Day 10 is one of the best videogame moments.

Except that it doesn't make sense, since Gabriel KNOWS that DJ knows that MG knows that DJ already knows that there is conclave that night.

I knew I was supposed to achieve that; I figured out HOW I was supposed to achieve that; I TRIED to achieve that... I failed to use the proper wording -_-".

You don't have to know German - Gabriel can casually peruse the dictionary and find exactly the words you need.

Well duh, DJ probably knew there's going to be a conclave the first time around. Following that line of thinking may leave us wondering why at all a rich and reclusive socialite would write coded messages in a place presumably full of tourists on better days.

I meant the connection between the book by some German dude (which is in Gabriel's rare books store - maybe someone sold it to the store, after all, it's not like Gabriel is selling off his personal library) and the clock, which is in his grandma's house and used to belong to his grandfather. "Ritter" isn't translated.

Also: there's a huge goof in the game. Remember the tape recorder? It's not used in GK 1 except as a means to recall things. Now, Gabriel falls asleep during the fwetkash/sekey lecture at Tulane... it should record the rest of the lecture, or at least until the tape runs out, right? No, it recorded Gabriel's dream.

Now, real life story: I attended a lecture on cloud computing and fell asleep (literally) under the chair. When I woke two hours later (the lecture was still going on), I thought, well, at least my dictation machine recorded everything. Tough luck - it broke. ((

Inductive reasoning. Even though you can't see the connection with certainty at this point, reading "three dragons" enough times will probably make you think "three" when you see the dragon...

It recorded Gabriel's SLEEP - he was snoring SO loud it muffled the lecture in the background.
But, yeah - I thought that for once the recorder would be essential to gain information :\...

You don't need to open the clock on the first day. Once you need the contents Gabriel already knows about the connection with the Ritters.


About the recording: Gabriel was snoring and speaking in his sleep. Besides, it is a very vital clue about the sekey madoule puzzle.

I somehow managed to complete Gabriel Knight 1 without referring to any hints or walkthroughs when I first played it, but this has a lot to do with the fact that this was in the 90's, and I had no internet.

I suppose there is a logic to all of the puzzles, and there're overall fair, though extremely difficult at times. The one major issues I had was with the message on the tomb, not with what to write, but with how to SPELL 'sekey madoule'. I had been playing the game in the default mode (voices, no subtitles), and as such I had absolutely no idea how to spell it. Eventually I realized I could listen to the lecture again with the subtitles on. I see this as a fundamental flaw in the design.

-the first one is connected to the poem about three dragons which gabriel's grandfather wrote
-i think this one is kinda bugged and cops leaving for the hotdog cart don't help much
-this one is hard but it's quite logical as most of the other puzzles in the series are.
Gabriel Knight was never about forcing players to think of nonsensical use of objects and such, people just have to think hard detective style about the puzzles.

Here is all of the information that you can learn about the three dragons puzzle before you solve it (and what you need to do to get that information):

-The clock is probably of German origin. (Look at the clock.)
-The clock has a drawer and a key. (Operate the clock.)
-The chest under the clock contains some of Grandfather's old German books and lederhosen. (Move the clock, open the chest, and take its contents.)
-More of Grandfather's old German books are at the bookstore, including the "Drei Drachen" book. (Look at/take the upper left section of the tall bookshelf.)
-"Drei Drachen" was written by Heinz Ritter. (Take the upper left bookshelf section.)
-A man named Wolfgang Ritter claims to be a relative of Gabriel's. (Ask Grace about Messages on day 3.)

Leaps of logic that the game expects you to take:
-If Wolfgang Ritter claims to be a relative, maybe Heinz Ritter is too.
-The clock is noted as being probably of German origin and is on top of a chest containing items that are definitely of German origin, so the clue of how to open the clock might also be of German origin.
-Since so many of Grandfather's possessions come from Germany, he himself probably came from Germany.
-"Drei drachen" means "three dragons."
-(This one is pretty far out there.) Grace mentions that old legends about dragons are based on snakes, and one of the most prominent pictures in the notebook is of three snakes. And the nightmare before Day 3 shows a dagger turning into three snakes.

In other words, it's definitely a Moon Logic puzzle, but I wouldn't call it a Guide Dang It puzzle.