Dracula: The Last Sanctuary is a beautifully haunting game.  It follows in the footsteps of such classic games as The 7th Guest and Zork: Nemesis and is a welcome addition to the horror adventure genre. 

Set in London, Jonathan Harker and his lovely but tortured wife Mina are ready for another bout with the dark lord.  Dracula has returned to London to reclaim his dragon's ring and to finish making Mina his bride.  It is a  sequel to Dracula: Resurrection, however enough of the back story is given in both the intro sequence and the booklet as well as throughout the game to make this game suitable for those who have not played its prequel. 

Installation was no problem though it required me to install DirectX 7.0 as well.  I was horrified to find after playing for a while that I could not save.  When I attempted to, I became locked out of the game and had to shut it down.  I lost all my progress and was suitably annoyed.  A quick trip to Dream catcher games tech support site easily corrected this problem.  It appears that for some reason some files are mistakenly labeled read only by the computer.  Dream Catcher has provided a step-by-step guide on fixing this issue.

The graphics were impressively smooth and offering a 360 degree view of the areas that allows you to be completely submerged in the game environment.  It addition the highly stylized movie sections, while a little outdated technologically, are still a lot of fun to watch and are directed well.  The music matches the graphics perfectly, complementing the dark and decaying feel of this game.  

The puzzles while well designed were not terribly intriguing early on.  However the timed sequences and puzzles that you must solve in order to survive get you involved quickly.  A slight problem I had with the game stems from the size of the locations that you have to click on.  There are often no particularly distinguishing features to and area that you are searching and you may have to rely on intuition alone.  The small locations made searching for areas much more time consuming than it needed to be.  

Dracula: The last Sanctuary is and interesting game.  It appeals to both fans of the vampire mythology, particular Bram Stoker's Dracula and fans of the horror game genre.  Despite a few glitches this is definitely a high end game and well worth purchasing.

Due to the nature of this game it has been rated M for mature content.

Install: Medium
The actual installation was no problem however the game contains a major but easily corrected bug which prevents you from saving.  Information on fixing this problem is #1 in dream catcher's tech support FAQ.

Graphics: 8 
The Intro sequences have a lot of style which makes up for their simplicity when dealing with motion, overlapping and textures.  The ingame graphics are superb.

Sound: 8
Creepy Victorian gothic music like you'd expect from a Dracula game.  Decent spoken dialogue, even if Jonathan sounds like Keanu Reeves. 

Concept: 7 
Full of interesting twists death and mayhem.  Dracula is a concept that refuses to die.

Overall: 7.5
An interesting take on the traditional Dracula story by Bram Stoker.  The game has some disappointing quirks in play but the plot music and graphics come together perfectly.