Laura Bow 2: The
Dagger of Amon Ra is a sequel (not too surprisingly)
to Laura Bow: The Colonel’s Bequest. In Colonel’s
Bequest, young
Laura Bow solved a string of murders on a remote Southern estate.
In Dagger of Amon Ra, Laura has just finished her journalism studies
and moved to New York. She’s had the good luck of securing a job
as a reporter at the New York Daily Register News Tribune, aka the
Trib. Her first assignment is to cover a burglary at the famous Leyendecker
museum in New York. The missing item is the legendary Dagger of Amon
Ra, only recently arrived to New York from Egypt over the protests
of certain prominent
Egyptians.

The entire game is divided into several acts. The first act is taking
place in New York city and is something of an overture to the real
story of the stolen dagger. Laura can visit several locations around
the town, acquaint herself with the joys and perils of the big city,
meet one or two important characters, and collect a few useful items
that will be very helpful later in the game. This is perhaps a good
time for a piece of valuable advice: If you’re playing The
Dagger of Amon Ra, do not rush through the game. Take the time to carefully
explore the surroundings and pick up everything that isn’t nailed
down (always a good thing to do). The game is somewhat unforgiving
and if you fail to find certain items, you will either miss important
events and clues later on, or won’t be able to finish the game at
all and will have to go back to an earlier saved game (you do save
often, right?).

The second act is where the real fun starts, with Laura arriving
at a fundraiser event at the Leyendecker museum. She starts mingling
with all the important guests and museum staff, and isn’t afraid
to eavesdrop whenever an opportunity presents itself. There’s just
one problem – nearly everyone has a possible motive for the crime,
and hardly anyone is decent enough to have a solid alibi, or even
any alibi at all. Laura spends most of her time interrogating the
guests and trying to piece together who’s working with who and against
whom.

Laura can also start exploring the fascinating Leyendecker museum
which is filled to the brim with an extraordinary number of exciting
and exotic exhibits. This is where the game shines, because every
item has a nice textual description, sometimes informative, sometimes
funny, sometimes educational, sometimes detailed almost to the point
of absurdity, and all of them worth reading.

As it tends to happen in detective mysteries, Laura Bow discovers
that not everything is as it seems, and there is a lot of shady deals
going on behind the scenes. Almost everyone seems to be hiding a
secret, and some of those are very dark. As if that wasn’t bad enough,
Laura soon finds the first dead body, and it’s very, very far from
the last one.

The pacing of The
Dagger of Amon Ra is excellent and the events
are slowly gathering speed until the final crescendo where things
get very hot indeed. The closing act of the game, and the shortest,
is the coroner’s inquest. Laura has to present her theories about
who committed all the crimes, and present any evidence she’s been
able to gather. If you paid good attention to detail during the game,
you should have a very good idea about the culprit (or culprits?).
If you didn’t… poor Laura could be in serious trouble!

The Dagger of
Amon Ra was released in 1992 and as far as the technology
is concerned, it is a vast improvement over Colonel’s Bequest. It
employs 256 color VGA graphics which does look grainy on today’s
computers but was top notch when the game was published over a decade
ago. The graphics are in the style of hand drawn cartoon, colorful
and detailed. When you speak to another character, there is a close-up
of their face, and many items in the game also feature close-up shots.

The music adds a lot to the game’s atmosphere. It matches the game’s
period setting (1926) very well and many of the tunes are just nice
to listen to. The game was available in two versions, floppy and
CD-ROM. I unfortunately only played the floppy version, hence I can’t
comment on the quality of the voice acting.

The interface is classic point and click, with graphical menu at
the top of screen, just like in so many other Sierra games released
in the early to mid-1990s. The distinguishing characteristic of The
Dagger of Amon Ra is that the icons look like Egyptian hieroglyphs.
Stylish and appropriate, since Egyptology plays an important role
in the game.

One more technology related note: Due to the age of this game, The
Dagger of Amon Ra may require special software (such as DOSBox) to
play properly on newer computers.

The story of The
Dagger of Amon Ra is rich and complex, and aimed
at adult audiences. That’s not to say it’s an R-rated game, just
that younger players might not necessarily understand all the nuances
of the plot. The game lets you gradually discover the complex relationships
between characters and discover the dirt behind the sparkling clean
facade of the Leyendecker museum – if you’re not afraid to poke your
nose where it doesn’t belong, and don’t mind the smell. The writing
is very good, with lots of little jokes and a number of obscure references
to other Sierra games, although overall the game is quite serious
and not at all farcical (unlike so many other Sierra games). There’s
also a fair amount of dialogue, but not too much, at least in my
opinion. At first it’s not entirely easy to keep track of all the
characters (aka suspects), but their number isn’t excessive, and
a few murders here and there will whittle down their ranks anyway.

The puzzles are very well integrated into the game, which means
that many of them don’t look like puzzles. As I mentioned earlier,
thorough exploration of the environment is crucial in solving the
game. Lack of attention to detail is sometimes punished with dead
ends, although fortunately in most cases it is quite obvious that
you must have missed something important. As in most Sierra games,
the hero (or rather heroine in this case) can die many interesting,
highly inventive, and even spectacular deaths, usually in situations
that are obviously dangerous, yet sometimes abruptly and unexpectedly.
Save early, save often, that’s the drill we love to hate.

I consider Laura
Bow 2: The Dagger of Amon Ra to be one of the best
Sierra games. It has a well developed plot with very good gradation.
The tone is serious but not overly dry. The artwork was top notch
when the game was released, and in my opinion holds up pretty well
after all those years, and it’s been a while since the game’s release.
On the downside, the dead ends make The Dagger of Amon Ra relatively
difficult – which is not necessarily bad – and may be frustrating.
For every fan of detective mysteries, The Dagger of Amon
Ra is a
must play. My overall grade for this game is an A-.

Final Grade: A-
(find out more about our
grading system)