Or is Gabriel Knight as full as BS insta-deaths and 'dead man walking' unwinable situations as some of their other offerings - LSL2, I'm looking at you!

I'm giving GK a try, I think. :D

Haven't played the games, so I can't personally help you. But while TVTropes DOES mention Leisure Suit Larry 2 in its Unwinnable by Design Trope, Gabriel Knight is not listed. Plus, I remember Yahtzee decrying all Sierra Adventure games because of their tendency to screw you with the exception of those made by Jane Jensen like Gabriel Knight. So, I think it should be safe.

It's Jane Jansen's school of design - much less frustrating that Williams'. Deaths happen only later in the game and are rather fair for a Sierra game :) Where's that? If you mean the desk guard, there's a workaround - I learned it the hard way :)

I hear Gabriel Knight is WAY more forgiving than other Sierra games and I've never heard any "unwinnable" situations from it.

Cheers, wish I'd made this a question now so I could give you the 5 reps!
(tomimt was obviously very helpful too and posted before you but you would have got it for invoking the name of Mr Crowshaw [/fanboy])

You've been here since 2010 and still don't own GK1, and you started playing Sierra games with, of all possible games, LSL2?

In the cupboard I have, on retail, The Roberta Williams Anthology (Kings Quest and Lara Bow mainly) The Space Quest Collection and the Leisure Suit Larry collection oh and Phantasmagoria 1 and 2 and Shivers - And there is much that is of low quality in that lot!

I'm understandably a bit Sierra'd out - I only called out LSL2 because I remember it being especially BS (although that Rumplestiltskin thing in the first KQ was ridiculous and broken because the code was based on a mis-spelling anyway!)

Oh what about the Quest for Glory games? How BS are they? - I don't have any of those either...

Get them. Adventure/RPG hybrid, you can die in them, but it's usually because you did something stupid (taunting the ogress too much, going into battle with low health etc). Rare is the death because you didn't pick up something in the first screens of the game. Add to it the fact that there are (usually) multiple solutions to the puzzles (even Aziza's riddles in QfG2 has more than one correct set of answers), and you are set.

GK2 and GK3 don't have dead ends IIRC. They're much more forgiving than the Quest games. You should be fine with the Quest for Glory series, as long as you don't anger key people or drop quest items.

I love the Quest for Glory games, but I am an unapologetic Sierra fanboy so I'm probably not the one to ask.

You could try out AGDi's QfG2 remake, see if it's your thing.

OK I bear them in mind next time they're cheap - cheers

I'd recommend that you keep a save at the beginning of the last chapter ("Day 10"). You may find you in an unwinnable situation there (and it makes sense in its context) and you may have to go back to an earlier save. It didn't happen to me the firt time I've played, thankfully, but in the next playthrough I've tried to do things differently and... well, just keep the savegame.

Have fun with the game!

Try Torin's Passage, a charming adventure game with no way to get stuck or die.