Before I get into the nostalgia, I would like to address my title. Quest for Glory 4 never got the treatment it deserved. It was the forgotten stepchild of Sierra's other "quest" games at that point, and it was released a buggy mess. But today it remains one of the most gloriously moody, hilariously weird, and supremely satisfying gaming experiences in my life. This is in no small part a result of things that most games overlook: 1. The story is genuinely creepy. A demonic force pulls you a thousand miles and drops you into a cave that looks like the belly of a giant hell-beast. A small town hides in fear of the spirit-creatures roaming the wilderness and the prince who never leaves his otherwise empty castle. And yet somehow there is as much humor as creepiness in everything. It's an atmosphere I haven't seen anywhere else. 2. The voice acting is not only second to none, they actually seem to have encouraged the voice actors to go off-script, resulting in a number of awesome ad libs (and a hilarious anecdote relating why there are no elephants in Mordavia anymore). 3. The visuals were something I had never seen in a game, and something that games today seem to eschew completely in favor of either a cinematic or a comic-book look. This game, by contrast, is sort of like a really dark children's storybook. Which I think is part of how they pull off the creepy-but-funny vibe. Quest for Glory 4 is still one of the paragons of gaming for me, despite its rampant bugs. Now, on to the caveat. QFG5, while it had a great concept, ended up being kind of cumbersome in its gameplay. I think, in general, they tried to make too many changes to the gameplay when compared to previous games in the series. And they diverged from the most enjoyable qualities of QFG4--one major disappointment being the voice acting, which was far too conventional. I'm not sure I would go as far as advising people to end their Quest for Glory after the fourth game, but if you love it as much as I did, and don't want to feel the series fall flat on its face at the end, then you might make that choice. And you might be wise to do so. Now for the nostalgia. One of my seminal childhood experiences was with Quest for Glory 1 (the remake), which I bought at Electronics Boutique in a big box with several 3.5" floppies. I played through the game with every class, but my favorite was always the thief--both because of the playing style and because some of the silliest moments in the game are associated with the thief class. It actually inspired a lot of play with my friends and my tendency to play stealthy in games even today.
I've never been crazy about the "amnesia" plot device, but setting that aside for the moment, this game is just incredible. There's much to be said for the way decision-making impacts the storyline. Like others have said, you are almost never making clear "good or evil" choices. Your choices almost always limit your future options, and you frequently have to make choices without knowing how it will impact the story further along. Going out and killing monsters never feels like grinding, it feels like role-playing a mercenary. Fights never get boring because enemies that are weak on their own can still easily kill you in groups. And you're not constantly leveling up your weapons to do a hundred times the damage your first weapon did--instead, you're adding tactical abilities and chain attacks that require an evolution of your playing style. Potions and poisons aren't a last-minute stop-gap, they're an essential part of planning your strategy. And I love the alchemy system for its systematic approach--rather than having to collect specific ingredients in certain proportions, you're given a set of primary and secondary substances that appear in different combinations in each ingredient, and then are allowed to combine them however you want (or can) in order to make your potion. There are more aspects that make this game fun and unique. (Drunkenness is really well-handled, for example.) But in the end, it just comes down to one of the highest recommendations I can give for a game.
