First: I am rating these on my own CD ROMs. I have not purchased from GOG. These games mark a sore spot for me. They denote the fall of possibly the greatest game series of all time, signalling the demise of the adventure genre, dooming gaming to a decade of FPS junk. KQ7 I'd rate 3 stars. It's an okay game in its own right, but a huge step down from the high bars set by 5 and 6. The art quality took a major step down from beauty to cartoon foolishness. The voice actors all come across as whiny and unrelatable, basically doing character assassination from previous entires. The story is pretty slow and unengaging. Plusses include fantastic background music, interesting locations, and some appreciated tie-ins to earlier parts of the series. I wouldn't recommend it to the average gamer, but it's interesting enough if you want to know how the King's Quest series unfolds. KQ8 is a measly 2 stars. The entire game is "Running around the game and click your mouse to attack things." For endless, endless hours. There's like... 3 puzzles in the entire game, and a few more annoying platformer tasks. The entire game is dark [visually], and there's no real reward for finishing, the game just ends. I don't give it a 1 star, because for a 90's 3-d platformer... it has really good controls. Gameplay is actually kind of intuitive, and for its time, the ability to run around and explore things was pretty cool for a little bit. But that's about it. This game destroyed King's Quest, and destroyed adventure games. Boo. Hiss. In Summary, these games are all right if you want a nostalgia trip, or wonder "What ever happened to that amazing King's Quest series?" But other than that can't really recommend for the new adventurer.
First, full disclosure: I've not played the version provided by GOG. My review is based on my C.D. ROMS I still have sitting around. For all the love that King's Quest VI gets as the pinnacle of the series, my own belief is the King's Quest V is the best game I have ever played. It is definitely the most influential game in my life. It's the game that made me decide to be a software developer by profession. I can't say how much I love this game. So, with that having been said, let's break out the individual reviews. KQIV: This one was a little before my time. I wasn't familiar with 80's adventure games, so I can't give it a fair review on its own merits. It's a bit dated for my taste, and doesn't exactly make me excited to replay it. I've worked my way through it with a walk through a couple times, and it made for an all right story, but nothing too exciting for the modern player. KQV: As I said, greatest game I've ever played. I've literally played this game through at least 30 times. My friends and I used to have time trials to see who could beat it the fastest. I just love it. This game gets endless amount of flack because you can get stuck halfway through the game if you ate your pie. I say to you adventurer, why are you destroying an inventory item without any benefit and then saving your game? That's not the game's fault. The game has amazing graphics for a 1990 release. I remember playing in 1995 and still thinking they were impressive. The entire world is immersive-- the backgrounds, the music, the storytelling-- it just takes you to another world. The in-house voice acting often gets ribbed, but I found it endearing and added to the atmosphere of the game. I could go on... its great. Cons are the odd slowmotion of cutscenes (Hurray 1990), and a couple moonlogic puzzles that can mostly be summarized as elves and bedrooms. KQVI: Everything has already been said about this game. It was the last great King's Quest. A must-play.
Let me open by saying-- I did not like the first Gabriel Knight game. I don't really understand the high regard it holds in the memories of my fellow adventurers. And yet I bought it together with this sequel, so I figured I may as well play it if I have it. Good thing too. This game was great! Gabriel was a much more relatable character in this game (while still having his flaws). In fact, most of the characters in this game were either likeable, or intriguing, a sharp contrast from the first game. The one exception is Grace, who suddenly became annoyingly snooty this game. The FMV took some getting used to. But once I did, it was used very effectively in this game. I can see why this gaming approach was quickly abandoned, but at the same time, it works well here. The story had some pros and cons. The main con being that it was rather predictable, and it was really frustrating watching Gabriel not figuring out things that were obvious 3 chapters ago. This comes to a head about 2/3rds of the way through the game, when everyone and their dog (literally) is telling you to shoot the bad guy, and the game/Gabriel won't let you. The biggest pro was the immersion this game gives you in Bavarian history. I thought I was researching a bunch of fictional people and stories during the game, but it turns out, about 90% of everything you learn in this game is actual real history, which I thought was fantastic. The game has a handful of Sierra head-scratchers, but nothing that made me think, "OMG, that's ridiculous." Overall, a very well done game that I enjoyed playing with an exciting story and mostly good puzzles. If I had played this game in 1995 when it was released, I may have given it a resounding 5 stars, but the FMV approach kind of threw off my ability to judge the game based on its release year, instead of comparing it to more modern technology/offerings.
Not much to add at this point, the other reviews generally nail it. The good: -A true adventure game. The adventure genre is so rare to come by in modern gaming anymore, and this game was completely faithful to that. It was very refreshing. -High production values. It's clear a lot of effort was put into doing this game well. As others have said, the visuals are beautiful, the music is well done. The game just shows that its developers cared. The bad: -Voice acting. Oh my goodness, this really is what ruined the game. I found myself wondering, if I turned off voice acting, and just read text blurbs like the old games, maybe I would have liked this game a lot better? It just sounded like the two main characters were phoning in all their lines and didn't care about them. And it really just breaks the entire atmosphere of the game, and ruins any attachment you may have formed with the characters. -Story. This may have been just from the bad voice acting making me care less about the game, but for as much effort as was put into this game, something about the story just wasn't engaging. I never really was invested to find out what happens next. -Buggy. I can't tell you how many times the game crashed on my computer. I had to go through this song and dance of updating video card drivers, and setting my game settings perfectly to even finish the game. Rather frustrating. Overall: I enjoyed playing the game for how hard it tried to do well by its genre, but do to flawed characters/acting, wasn't a very good game.
There are so many things wrong with this game. It's super buggy. Many of the "puzzles" in this game relate to, "how can I get past this scene without the game crashing on me?" The game doesn't have a very friendly start, where you have to invest a few hours before you really start caring about characters, and understand what is going on. Many of the puzzles aren't the greatest, including a handful of, "Figure something out without any explanation because hey, its here!" And I still have to give this game 5 stars. It's just that good. I took a few days after completing the game to review it, to see how my opinion would change. It only got better. I guess there's two kinds of adventure gamers in the world: "The plot should drive the puzzles" folks and "The puzzles should drive the plot." If you're a puzzle person, you might find this game a bit overrated. If you're a story person, you'll fall in love with this game. I sure did.
I've just finished the game for the first time, and I'm sitting here, shocked, at just how disappointingly dull of a game this is. I'm an adventure game fanatic. I loved working my way through King's Quest, Simon the Sorcerer, and Zork games as a kid. I've loved discovering other classics on GOG and playing them for the first time as an adult. And yet one game always alluded me. That game that every top 10 list, every history of adventure games almost religiously puts at the top as the greatest Adventure game of all time-- Day of the Tentacle. So finally, it went on sale, and I snatched it, installed it, and played it. And it was the first adventure game, in so, so long... that totally bored me. At first I thought, "Maybe this game just takes a while to get into. Maybe if I get further the plot will unfold more..." Nope. Upon finishing the game, the biggest thing I felt was relief that I could move on to a better game now. So onto specifics-- What in particular about this game was bad? --Plot. So little plot to this game. The entire goal is laid out for you in the first 5 minutes, and there's never any development beyond that. You just go on doing things because "you can", as opposed to any storyline leading you to the next thing to focus on. --Humor. Or lack thereof. The entire game was like sitting around listening to 2nd graders tell booger jokes. Every attempt at humor was sophomoric, and it was exhausting. --Characters. Everyone in this game is unlikable. They're just all annoying, unrelatable people. Except maybe the Tentacles. --Puzzles. The entire game is the same puzzle: Walk up the stairs. Use the thing. Get told you need another thing. Walk down the stairs to the toilet. Get other thing from toilet. Walk back up stairs. Rinse, repeat. Over. and over. Furthermore, many of them are pretty high on the scale of most-obtuse solutions I've encountered in adventure games. I've kind of had a childhood idol destroyed here. Weak game. Can't recommend.
After having played the first Broken Sword and having LOVED it, I excitedly jumped right into this sequel. Boy, was I disappointed. In addition to the few flaws of the original (lack of background music, slow controls, lack of any substantial conclusion), this game throws everything out the window that made the first one great. First and foremost, the characters are mere shadows of their previous selves. Once developed individuals with realistic, unfolding motivations, now even the main characters are shallow, unlikeable folks who go through the game doing things just because they can. The plot really isn't very engaging, where after the opening act, the only reason why you do things is because the puzzles requires this of me to move on. Who cares what laws we break or people we harm along the way! The gameplay introduces a new dynamic [if you played the original version of the first game], where you swap between the two main characters-- which is highly disruptive to the game. Just as you're starting to finally get invested in what your character is doing, you swap back over to something you don't care about again. I rated this game 3 stars, because on its own merit, its a serviceable point and click if you want to solve some adventure puzzles within a somewhat coherent story. But a classic, this game is not. Probably won't be buying any further in the series after this.
Based on other reviews, I downloaded and played the original version of the game, not the remaster. This review is based on that. I'll start with the negatives: 1. Music. This game makes poor use of background music. As in, every once and a while, a scene will have some background music. Otherwise you're walking around the majority of this game in relative quiet. They lost an opportunity for increasing the immersiveness of this game here. 2. Speed. The game just takes forever to move around places. Your character is about the slowest walker on the planet, with no way to speed him up... and he has to walk around EVERYWHERE. Its a bit frustrating. 3. Graphics. I wasn't a fan of the Disney/Cartoony Graphics. I prefer attempts at more realisim. Just my personal taste here. 4. Ending. It doesn't really have any concluding scenes. The game just kind of ends suddenly on you. And... that's it. After those four points, this game was perfect. The entire world was just very immersive and pulls you in. The story line was engaging and continually leaves you wanting to know what happens next. The characters were thoroughly developed, allowing you to connect with them. The world unfolded in a very well-planned manner, where there was always something new to explore, but you never felt overwhelmed by everything at once. The puzzles were challenging but manageable, and only once required exhaustive clicking. No, it wasn't the infamous goat puzzle, which I found greatly exaggerated in difficulty [solved in about 10 minutes]. The harder puzzle was what to do with a dirty bar of soap. I don't know what more I can say... I loved this game. I'm picky what ever gets 5 stars, and this got it. Highly recommend.
This game is famous for being "groundbreaking," "the pinnacle of Sierra Adventure Games," "Enthralling story,"etc. I really wanted to agree and like this game. But I was disappointed. Story. The high point of this game is the story. It is very well written, and thoughtfully detailed. Once the game gets up and going, that's what drives this game. As another reviewer said, the first day of the game is a bit of a drag, being a lot of "click everywhere on everything for no particular reason." But after that first hump, the story is great. From there, things go downhill. Characters. Oh, how they were so close, and yet so far on this. It's clear a lot of effort was put into developing characters. The voice acting was superb. And yet, in the end it falls flat, because almost all the characters in this game are just crappy people. You don't like them, you don't want to root for them, and for gosh sake, you don't like walking around the entirety of this game hanging out with them. There's a little development/redemption by the end, but its so grating to get to that point, it ruins the entire game. Also, a note on voice acting. Whereas overall it's great, there were some aspects that really spoiled things. The accent Tim Curry gives Gabriel is so inauthentic, it breaks the suspension of disbelief every time he talks. And having a Monkey Island-like voodoo lady as the narrator makes it difficult to take the game seriously. Puzzles My favorite game of all time is King's Quest 5, so I'm not afraid of the occasional Sierra puzzle head-scratcher. But this game has some that are just over-the-top ridiculous. [SPOILER] There's literally a field where looking at the grass basically says, "nothing to see here", unless you look at the exact right blade of grass. And of course seeing a picture of a 3-headed dragon means all clocks you find should be set to 3:00 p.m. [/SPOILER] After that, things get more enjoyable. A good-enough game, but just that.
This game had a lot of reasons why I would have never played it-- Never heard of it. Not in anyone's top 10. Not a product of the big names Sierra, Lucas Arts, or even Revolution. And yet there I was, in the mood for another old-school point and click that I didn't have to pay for. So I downloaded the game... and I'm very glad I did. This game was just simply fun. It doesn't do anything *great*, but I was impressed with how much this game dots its i's and crossed its t's to make sure every aspect of a good adventure game was addressed: puzzles, story, character development, UI controls, audio. It just came together very well and was entertaining to play. In Depth: -Graphics. This is the biggest weakness of this game. Its a 1995 game with 1992 graphics. Compare it to screen shots from any other '95 adventure game, and you'll see a big drop in quality. -Characters. My west-coast bias makes me dislike a lot of the characters because they they all have this brash Bronxiness about them. That having been said-- there was enough character development for me to have that opinion in the first place. I got to know people in this game. It was nice. Some of the female characters are a bit... weak... but otherwise, you can tell there was effort here. -Story. This game has story from the get go. No complaints here. I particularly like how it had multiple parts. There were a couple times I thought I was almost at the end of the game, to find, no, there's a whole lot more to go. I liked that for a game so relatively large, it was broken down into manageable chunks. -Puzzles. Very well done. Nothing terribly illogical that stands out in my mind, but a few that really made me sit and think for a bit. In summary-- nothing in this game is really done perfectly. But everything is given some care and development. Makes for a game I was surprised to enjoy as much as I did.
