The Legend of Kyrandia (Book One)

It's an ok point and click adventure with nice graphics if you fiddle a bit with your SCUMMVM settings. It had already full speech at a time when most other adventures still were text only. What i absolutely dislike though, there are some things you need to do you don't get any hints for and are not neccessary plausible so you would only stumble upon the solition by endless trial. And the main gripe i have, there are some situations where you move on without turning back and if you don't have the right items in your inventory (and you don't get any hints that you will need those items) your f*ed up and have to start over.

I will say this game is charming. They do a good job of creating an environment that takes you away to a magical place. But that's about where my praise ends. I love adventure games, and think most people who complain about "moon logic" just aren't willing to sit and think about the puzzles. Not here. This is single handedly the most frustrating adventure game I have ever played, dethroning the original King's Quest 3 in my experience. Among my complaints is that there is basically never any plot to drive you to puzzle solutions. The entire game centers around "Try things just because you can, and maybe something will happen." You never have any direction of what your short-term goals are, you're just randomly trying items to see if they work, and reloading your save if it backfires, over and over again. What's more-- the game is specifically DESIGNED to get you stuck. It's not like some King's Quest complaints, where if you forgot to do something obvious, or did something clearly wrong, you can get stuck. The game is intentionally oriented around trying to trick you into unwinnable situations. (Added that flower to your inventory already? Well you better pick it again or you'll be stuck forever! Hmwahahaha.) And then 80% of the game is walking through either empty woods back and forth, or dungeon mazes. It's like this game was developed as a satire of everything people dislike about adventure games, and then published. Not entertaining.

This game is not enjoyable for long stretches. Some cite the dark cave maze as the worst offender, but that one is actually alright, for one reason: You have some idea what you are supposed to do! You can draw a map which I had my wife do while I clicked around. Many puzzles are simply trial-and-error and many puzzles are just not logical and don't have any kind of hint. We gave up at around 2/3 of the game because we were not inclined to do any more trial-and-error, backtracking or getting stuck in an unbeatable game state. We watched a let's play real quick instead. The humor, by the way, is not great and very stiff. Not the stupid puns though because stupid puns are always great. This game gets two stars for the neat animations and the okay music.

terrible maze puzzle

Thank you for allowing me to replay this classic adventure title - one of my all time favorites. Hope Kyrandia II will follow shortly. Trivia - the voice of Brandon is that of Westwood employee Joe Kucan who later played the live-actor role of Kane in the Command & Conquer series. =)