King's Quest VII: The Princless Bride

Well this look nice!

King's Quest VII is actually the first game in the series I ever played as a kid. We got it for Mac with a CD drive and you know it was gonna be something special when it opens with this intro:

This doesn't look that nice

Story is that one day princess Rosella and her mother Valanice is out walking, talking about marriage since Rosella is getting to that age. She detest the idea and instead focus on something in a small pond and decides to jump into it... I know this is a fairy tale, but what? Valanice follows and sees Rosella being grabbed by something and she ends up in some desert area.

Great, I HATE deserts!

So this game is divided in chapters with chapter 1, 3 and 5 following Valanice and 2, 4 and 6 following Rosella. Valanice is trying to find Rosella and it takes her from this desert to a magical forest where the guardians been transformed by an evil fairy and a town of weird animals. All this is on the borders of the were-beasts forrest and the land of the dead where the lord of land takes Valanice to Etheria where the fairies lives... I don't know why, the story pretty much lost me on chapter 5. All I get is that the evil fairy came from around here and some dream fairy could show her Rosella? It doesn't seem to matter that much since the important story is actually Rosella who was kidnapped by an ogre king and by some strange magic turned into a ogre herself. So first she has to revers the spell, then escape the land of the ogres to the land of the dead in search of the real ogre king that was trapped by the boogy man by the evil fairy who want's to let the volcano the ogres control destroy Etheria as revenge. Rosella finds him and a magical wand, escapes to the weird animal town and a secret passage down back to the land of the ogres where she confront the fake king and as the kings duke it out turn the fraud back to it's true self, Edgar, the prince Rosella saved back in the fourth game. I know, I didn't know who he was either first time getting that far.

What is it with the animation?

Yadda-yadda-yadda, Rosella turns the evil fairy to a baby, she and Edgar hooks up and they travel back home... I think, the ending isn't quite clear on it. And this is if you save Edgar who takes a blast to the face from the evil fairy. 

The heroic act of prince-what's-his-name

I do have nostalgic memories of this game, and sadly most is remembering how impossible it was for me as a child since I couldn't understand what to do since I didn't know english. And the game is probably best just remembering. The animation is best remembered since your mind will fill out the lacking art for you, the music... fine, but the intro song isn't girl in the tower. Voice acting... passable. As you can see, not the best in the series and there's a bit of a problem with it. And it's also the last King's Quest game I played. Well, except for the Silver Lining-games, but i'm still waiting for the final episode and it's been 6 years already. Someday I might play the new King's Quest-game with Cristopher Lloyd, but I just doesn't have the computer for it or the internet to download it. So we shall see... and I won't be playing the 8th game. Although I like the intro music.

King's Quest VI: Heir Today, Gone Tomorrow

I must have made a wrong turn somewhere

King's Quest VI, said to be the best of the series and I gotta agree. It is the most polished of the old Sierra games (one might argue the animated style of VII is better, but that's debatable), the voice acting is the most superb with people like Tony Jay behind it and the story is lovely and the music... is a damn masterpiece. But we don't begin there, instead to the end of the last game. As shown in there prince Alexander of Daventry tried to get it of with princess Casima that helped Graham defeat Mordak. Casima is taken back home to the Green Isles and Alexander waits... and waits. Until a horrendous cutscene with computer generated graphics where the queen comforts her son and suddenly the magical mirror shows Alexander Casima trapped in a tower with a star lit sky behind her. With the stars burnt into his mind he sets out navigating the seas with a loyal crew until they hit a storm and the ship sinks (the game goes out it's way telling the player that every crew member survived in the life boats). Alexander awakes on the shore and sets out to save Casima.

Great, at least not the beaches of Normandy.

That's the set up, and the story is that the lands of the Green Isles are in turmoil. Each island blames the other for some stolen artefacts and the king and queen died before Casima arrived home so the Vizir is ruling for the moment. Of course he is evil and the one that sent Casima to Mordak as well as murder the king and queen. As well as taking the artefacts and blaming the islands so to ensure no one tries to oppose his rule. Since Casima come back the plan have changed, especially with Alexander following, and he gotta marry her in order to keep the throne. And Alexander is about to stop him. First order is to get of the island by getting your hands on a magic map and survive the traps on the different islands, some natural and some imposed by the viziers genie that you recognise by the glowing eyes. The main island of the Crown is middle eastern 1001 Night-style, the island of the beast is basically a Beauty and the Beast island (even more fun that the voice of Alexander played the beast in the Disney animated movie).

Best movie ev... wait, that's the wrong one!

Much better!

There's an Alice in Wonderland-island and an island mainly based on greek mythology with angels and a labyrinth with a minotaur. The last island is the land of the druids which you can't access until later in the game. So you basically goes around and collecting items to solve different puzzles. Most important is getting a spell book and later finding a nightingale that sends message between Alexander and Casima to deepen their love for each other. As the vizier gets desperate he is gonna force a marriage between himself and Casima and then kill her to get the throne so in order to stop this Alexander travels to the lands of the dead where he find Casima's parents and the truth of their deaths. The vizier murdered them... the shocker, I know. He continues down to the underworld and challenge the lord of death to a duel and by showing the magical mirror to the lords face it forces the demon to shed one single tear as he faces his own horrors. It's a fantastic scene. You bring Casima's parents back and as they start a rebellion Alexander infiltrates the castle with the help of the castles clown and finds the artefacts and, like a good story interrupts the wedding and chasing the vizier up the tower where a duel of swords follows. As Casima throws a dagger in the Viziers back Alexander knocks him out with his sword. Alexander and Casima wed each other and the best cheesy love song plays.

Can't stop crying/laughing at the awesomeness!

It is the best King's Quest game by far. No dead ends and a couple of different endings. As stated a beautiful looking and sounding game. I came a long way without a guide until I falled for french manual that stopped most of the King's Quest-games I played, and that was to climb the Cliffs of Logic to find the angels and fight the minotaur. The horrors of the copy-protection. I probably wouldn't have finished the labyrinth since the terror of knowing the monster is out there would have scared me enough.

King's Quest V: Absence Makes The Heart Go Yonder!

The fifth game and the first true modern King's Quest game, with a good interface, decent graphics, good music and a.... good attempt at voice acting. This game is probably the one I got the furthest in and might have been able to finish since I can't recall an instance of copy protection. Being on a CD they might have skipped that for this entry. The reason I didn't finish it as a child was due to not daring to enter the desert after finish everything else I could do. I went into the spooky forest with the attacking witch, but not the desert. Really, some pen and paper and I would have finished that game in no time.

Story is that King Graham is walking about in the woods one day when the evil wizard Mordack appears and conjures his castle and family away. Graham meets the owl Cedric who takes him to this other wizard, Crispin and the adventure is on. Travel  trough, deserts, evil swamps, cross a tall snowy mountain, a dangerous ocean and a dark castle to save your family from Mordack, brother of Mannannan. First real appearance of Josh Mandel as King Graham. Good choice.

King's Quest IV: Perills of Rosella

The fourth game in the series and at the moment the one that really needs a remake. Don't need to be fancy as the AGD Interactive once (although it would be nice with the same care and tying together their vision of the King's Quest sage), but the interface and gameplay need an overhaul. This is the last game that still only works by typing in commands and it is obnoxious. Not only that, but this was the hardest of the original games to get working as a child (now with ScummVM that problem is at least solved) and if you got it working it hit you with the copy protection directly as you started. And not as interesting as the third games magic book was, no no no, here it is page X, paragraph y and word z. Someone save us from this... I want to remind everyone that my manual was in FRENCH.

Story follows directly from the third one, the whole family is reunited and King Graham throws his adventure cap toward them... and suffers a heart attack. The magic mirror calls for Rosella and a magic fairy tell her of a fruit that can heal Graham, but the fairy need help against the evil fairy Loloth and so it's off. All in a days work. If you dwadle to long Graham dies or Ganesta (the good fairy) dies and both means a bad ending for you, either trapped where you are or King Graham dead, unable to save you in the fifth game.

Not much else to say then that the graphics was a step up compared to the original games, but the interface still needed a rework until the glory days of Adventure games.

King's Quest III:To Heir Is Human redux

Gaze Into My Crystal Ball!

See What Lies Behind the Wall!

The third game in the series and the third remake by AGD Interactive. The strongest point for this game is, beyond graphics, voices and music, that you get rid of the damn copy protection and need the damn manual to play. I had all the first 6 games in a collection box and with the manual, but in FRENCH (and I took German in elementary school). So if you were able to get it running you would run into the problem that you couldn't read the damn manual and thus not complete the game, especially when you had to mix spell ingredients and recite spells precisely as it was written in the book, or else it would fail.

Story wise you start as a slave at the wizard Mannannans household, Gwydion is your name, and every day you try to appease your master and cat's fickle minds. One day when he is away you venture down to town and finds a hidden book telling you of your predecessor. Realizing time is short before you are "switched out" you search the land after ingredients to release you of your shackles and find out who you are... *spoilers* he's Prince Alexander of Daventry, the son of King Graham and Valancie. After some complaints they also toned down their own overarching villain and such, but he still pops up. Bad parts of this game is also present in the original. The time constraints. You have a timer that goes up, and the gist is that you recorded every time Mannnannan was away or slept and planned out the best way to go around the area. I don't handle stress that well, and it also shows how short these kind of games really are, took me less than 2 hours to finish the game. No, the real play time is that you are supposed to play it over and over again as you learn how to avoid getting caught. I actually managed pretty well in the original, I even found the secret study, but since I couldn't make spells, I didn't get anywhere. On the other hand it took me far to long to find the magic map and realizing that your inventory hinted at what was allowed to have by Mannannan or not. Then again, I didn't realize you could hide your stuff under the bed, so I began avoiding the ingredients since they killed me. 

Still, this game was the first in the series, with an actual story and characters, although at release you didn't know why it starred Gwydion in this strange land of Lewdorr, it might have been setting up a new kingdom and such, but must have been real nice for players getting to the end and realizing that it looked awfully familiar and then seeing King Graham once again. Here we even get a tear-dripping power ballad and I love it. One bad thing though is that the voice of Alexander can be... a bit grating. It's not the one from KQ 6 (which would probably have broken their budget). It could also be as they play him more in character of his current situation, as he sounds submissive all the time compared to the self assured Prince Alexander of KQ 6. I don't know, a bit of a turn off for me. Also, first time I played it the voice of Mannannan was a bit irritating as well, but it grew on me, apparently the same guy who is the narrator. Sadly they didn't get the guy who played Mordack in King's Quest V like the other fan remake of King Quest III got, they also got Josh Mandel for some reason.

King's Quest II: Romancing the Stones

End me adoration, before I leave your eyes!

World in the mirror mirror, Water of amnesia comes!

Played the second game in the series and this was also by AGD Interactive, and like last time you can get the game for free on their website. If the first game was a 1:1 remake of the original this was almost an actual new game with King's Quest character retelling the second game. Basically the second game wasn't more than the first game, but with new puzzles and a little more pointed out story, find the girl in the tower and rescue her so she will be your queen. Fairy tale wife-finding 101. This is told to you at the beginning making it a bit easier to know the objective. In the original, if you didn't realize that you should enter the castle and talk to King Edward, you didn't get the story. Talking about story, i checked up on some of the story elements and to my surprise some other people felt that the changes they made to the very miniscule story in game changed the tone of the original creators all too much. At first I was kinda struck with how stupid that was, things just happened in the game and had very limited logic behind it, but then I noticed it sound like me and the lord of the ring movies, so maybe I shouldn't see too much into it. The changes they made was creating an overarching villain and tying in the other KQ games with this one more than the names Graham and Valanice. In  my opinions doing a rather good job.

So King Graham is feeling lonely, wants someone special in his life and the magic mirror he got last time shows him this strange land, Kolyima, and a portal to a strange world with a quartz tower which is inhabited by one of the fairest maidens. So at once he heads of telling his first minister to keep the peace. Meaniwhile the Shadow Cloak society, led by the mysterious Father, conspires to destroy him. Arrive just a day later you set off to find three gems of Nature to open this stone gate that will take you to your love. The journey will take to the depths of the ocean, above the clouds and into the fangs of death itself as true love will triumph. This game also show a much more stronger Graham who actually puts up a fight, even bringing the royal sword with him and with it he will fight were-wolfs and chase of evil wizards. Probably more action-oriented than many would have liked, but to me it felt more coherent that the older games allowed you to kill the monster in your way, and therefore allow it here, plus he is much more younger than in his appearance in the fifth game so it makes a bit more sense. he was a knight after all before ascending the throne. Although they put up some notice that he dislike violence while slaying a couple were-wolves.

Like the other the graphics are vastly improved, many puzzles have been recreated or streamlined, going for a more railroading approach since the story has to make more sense here. Musically I can't remember if they just translated it over from the original, but the music is rather nice and I can't help but like the cheesy love ballad they put in reminiscing of KQ 6.

King's Quest 1: Quest fo the Crown

Once again I got to play the first king's quest game, from AGD Interactive and you can download it for free there and it's still rather fun game, although pretty hard at times. The AGD version is by far the better version to play, not only due to grahic upgrade or voices (with Josh Mandel reprising his roll from King's Quest V and VI), but how it's played. I have played the original game and the 1990 remake, they play like a slog. The original had typing commands as it's gameplay, sucks if you ain't a english major, and english wasn't my first languish, wouldn't solved it in Swedish either. The thing is that it still had it's charm as a real adventure exploring this world. Somehow I was able to find the dagger below the rock and get the soup bowl and figure it out without cheating, but more than that was pretty much impossible. Maybe caused by not exploating "look" at every area, but again, I don't think I would understand everything again.

Now, lets discuss some of the reason why the original was hard as hell. Remember, this is before the internet. Lots of dead ends where a mistake makes it impossible to progress, eat the carot or give it a second time to the goat before beating the troll, game over. The dwarf, randomly, pick-pockets you and steal a sacread treasure, game over. Fall down a hole without the shrinking mushroom? You guessed it, game over. AGD gives you a mode without dead ends, thank god. Now, the grand daddy of obscure and hard as nails adventure puzzles, The Rumpelstiltskin puzzle. You all know the tale of the gnome Rumpelstiltskin that wants you to guess its name. Fine and dandy, now lets ignore that it's spelled Rumplestiltskin here, you also needed to realize that a note you found in the Hanzel and Gretzel gingerbread house that tells you to "think backwards" are connected. Answer Nikstlitselpmur? No, the creators of Sierra thought that was to easy, so instead you had to swap the alphabet as well, giving you the answer Ifnkovhgroghprm. If someone solved this in 1984 I'm impressed. At least it gave you three takes. AGD accepts both versions thank god.

The story now, the kingdom of Daventry is fading away as king Edward the Benelovent is dying and the three sacread treasures have disapeard. He sends his bravest knight, sir Graham on a quest to reclaim the treasures and bring hope to Daventry as its new king. You have to destroy the monster holding the realm captive using your cunning, outsmart gnomes and dwarves. Traverse the sky and underworld, all for an all-seeing mirror, a shield which the bearer cannot loose with and a treasure chest of endless gold. Simple and straightforward. This is what started one of the greatest fantasy series in video games.

The Silver Lining

After playing Diablo it was time to play something happier. Coincidentally episode 4 of The Silver Lining came out during the Sunday. Unfortunately my internet seemed to screw up so I had to wait until yesterday to get it. Then I played it until the end. Yes, I finished it in one day... or at least till 2 AM this morning so technically it would be two days. Well, it wasn't that much happier story, people seemed really depressed and who would blame them. There is some serious business going on in that game. And yet for some reason I was able to finish it. I don't know how I was able to finish that game (well, I do since I know what to do now). I ended up having a lot of luck when it came to playing this game. First I just stumbled through the castle in the beginning and just happened to touch items from the earlier parts that I now was able to take. Pure coincidence. Then the game float on like normal and I picked up some small hints here and there and could guess fairly well what they was supposed to do. It might have to be my King's Quest marathon earlier this year so I had trained my brain to recognize those small hints and solutions. One puzzle in particular was the same as in the ADG Interactive King's Quest II: Romancing the Stones. Then I get stuck trying to get an instrument to get the first ingredient, so I just stands near it since I know that it's that thing I need, but I don't know how to get it. So I look in my inventory and look on those things I haven't used (everyone knows that if an item is picked up it gotta be used). I have no clue on what to do, but then my mind turns into a raging torrent, flooded with rivulets of thought cascading into a waterfall of creative alternatives. This is gonna be spoilers so here goes. I needed a horn, it existed in a 3D-picture, but the game wouldn't allow me to take it. I had found a gold baton and some beast hair and my mind just said, "what if we make it look like a horn and switch them around?". You see how ridicules that is? It didn't work, how could it? Although it wasn't completely wrong, the game told me I was missing some thing to glue (subtle is it not?) it together so I went where I knew it was and suddenly I had a painters brush. No idea what that was for, it was actually an answer to another puzzle which I hadn't found yet, so I basically found the answer before I knew what it was for so I figured the puzzles out backwards just by mistake. Wish life would be that easy, having all the solution, you just need to find the problems to solve them.

Either this was a much easier than the earlier episodes or my luck was just fantastic... it ended pretty much with the second to last puzzle. Not because it was hard to figure out what to do (took me 5 seconds), no, because they decided to make the puzzle harder and harder. The puzzle is to solve 12  combinations with 4 spinning wheels with different images that together form one of the zodiacs. After solving the first ones the wheels spin faster, then they blink in and out, then they change places (you start to see the problem?) and after combining 10 they start moving around the screen, still spinning and phasing in and out. This was on the normal difficulty and it was after 1 AM so I decided to chicken (tired as hell with a headache is not the best mood to play a game of patience and memorization) out after an hour so I could finish it before I went to bed so I quit and restored my earlier game. Somehow I glitch it, always present was the spinning wheel of the Pandoras Box and my clue in the Druid's parchment was the Druid himself instead of Shamir the Genie that I was supposed to see at that point. Anyway, I played the puzzle again, but on easy this time (meaning they cut of the changing places and swirling all around the screen) and thus beating it... and the next puzzle following: Magic Duel with the Big Bad of the game. Oh Yeah, it was epic. Unfortunately it will probably be another half year or something before the conclusion is payable. Oh well.