Posted on: October 5, 2025
VladXXXX
Verified ownerGames: 13 Reviews: 1
Weird but beautiful
1994 was a weird time for computer games. The shift to first person shooters and 3D plus mesmerizing technology progress meant that a year made a huge difference in terms of what was possible and what was in demand. Legend of Kyrandia 3 was one of the last point and click adventures. Developers Westwood Studios switched to Command and Conquer - a spiritual RTS follow-up to a ground breaking Dune II. 3D craze meant that all teams were pushed to embrace it even when arguably it was not the best tech to be used for point and click (at least at that stage of development). Westwood Studios created loads of classic goodies, their games were well known for their quality and story. Legend of Kyrandia is no exception. The story is good and fun, I would say at par with LucasArts. There were two philosophies of adventure games - Sierra On-Line, that made their games notoriously difficult and unforgiving, with puzzles usually tedious and not making a lot of sense and arcade parts that everyone hated. Once you finished a Sierra game, you would breathe a sigh of relief. Usually you would get stuck, give up and use a printed walkthrough guide, stoically typing in everything the guide shows you. That was the late 80s early 90s adventure experience before LucasArts. LucasArts changed all that, especially with the Monkey Island series. Their puzzles made a lot more sense, there were no awful arcade-style inserts - their games did not try to artificially enlengthen the gameplay just so that you (or your parents) won't be disappointed in finishing an expensive game in a matter of hours. Length of play and replayability were really important in the 90s. A buyer expected to enjoy the game for months, if not years. Come to think of it, adventure games were never a good match for that philosophy. An adventure game was played for a story, and yes, you can use tricks to artificially increase the gameplay time or add some replayability, but those tricks never worked much and were considered a necessary evil by fans. Westwood took a middle ground between the LucasArts and Sierra philosophies. It was more forgiving than Sierra, but saving was still your friend. Kyrandia 3 thus has its share of painful labyrinths that needed painstaking pen and paper mapping, repeated sequences - like having to complete a task in prison 10 times, unless you know a trick to get out that is impossible to know in advance, plus three or four equally annoying puzzles. Once you understand that all of this was done just to add length to the game, it becomes less frustrating, but you sort of wish that those parts could be skipped. If you get rid of those unpleasant parts, what is left is a great game with a lot of innovation. The game's first chapter is actually the best by far. It's amazingly designed, with four different solutions, each is well thought out and believable. Once you finish the first chapter, it goes quite a bit downhill - either the game was rushed or there was some demotivation going on, given that a lot was happening during that time and this was the last adventure game for Westwood. Yes, basic 3D is painful on the eyes, but it's designed well - you never engage in pixel hunting, even though you don't always understand what you're clicking on. The voice acting is top notch, the writing is good and there are several genuinely funny moments. It took me definitely more than 4 hours to finish - close to 6 or even 7, given that I was trying not to use a walkthrough for the first half of the game. It's still pretty difficult to finish without a walkthrough and the last hour of so was really tedious. But overall it was a good experience and a must play for anyone interested in point and click and retro games.
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