Seven classic games in one collection. Celebrate the golden age of adventure games all over again with the return of King's Quest. The bravest knight in all of Daventry, Sir Graham, is appointed by the dying king to embark on a Quest for the Crown. The classic AGI version of the first game in the series is absent from this collection and instead includes the 1990 SCI remake in its place.
Reviews View More
1: honestly played mostly as a curiosity but it was such a short game i think i could've tried to play without a guide? so i'm gonna try as much of 2 as i can without a guide, although i SUSPECT the text-command nature of it is gonna stump me... anyway, after playing the police quests four, this was a breath of fresh air! funny, still punishing but somehow less annoying because it's funny, etc
2: i did not last long without a guide! probably for the best as i didn't find this game as much fun, for whatever reason, although it was sitll fine enough i suppose, but felt less jokey and light hearted? onward to 3!
3: yo this game has a timer? what. um anyway i... did not finish this one, because i had to dig up a treasure but i couldn't get it to dig up the treasure and i know you need the treasure to win cause the guide says so and i mean... whatever, y'know, even if sierra didn't design these games to be balls-ass hard, this one's just... bad? so much waiting around, and having to be in specific locations at specific times without any real indication what those times are suuucks. i don't feel bad not beating this one
4: wow this game has shading in its art, a wonder what more colors can do! ...there are times while playing through these that i manage to trick myself into thinking "actually i could've figured this out given enough time", but then i come across an instruction in the guide as simple as "take board" and i'm in this room and i'm like... what board?? and i stare at it for a bit and eventually see a line of brown pixels that could be considered a wooden board and sure enough that's it! my... brain does not work for whatever these games are trying to communicate, and that's fine... anyway onto 5 i go!
5: first one of the bunch i'd played before, and beaten as a kid (almost certainly with a guide then, too). i remembered enough to make some progress on my own sometimes, but i also remembered enough to know i would need help. these games are hard and i just don't have the patience to figure shit out on my own! anyway, the voice acting was bad lol, which i'd had subtitles so i could skip, but this is before that became standard. otherwise, a much more pleasant experience, if only because the art was, well, good!
6: i guess i played this once before... baaaarely remember it but hey you know, i did! probably with guide in hand the whole time like i did this time lol, anyway, vast improvement over 5 in every way except that the main character is kind of unbearably a "good guy", but lacks the charm of, say, the modern day's himbo, yeah, i'll say it, i wish he was more of a fuckin idiot, would've made him more likeable! anyway that power love ballad in the credits sure was somethin'
7: aha! here we are at last to the one i should remember best! the one with the prickly pear that i thought was unbeatable if you didn't pick it up in chapter one but it turns out you can just go... get it later if you need it... the first king's quest without an unwinnable state! how does it hold up? well... that style shift! in some ways it's the obvious step, as esp 5 and 6 seemed to get more... cutesy, but in others it's kind of a shame because the things i liked about the rest of the games up til now were the darker fairy tale aspects treated as comedy, not the disney-esque plot lines! still, i remember loving it at the time as a kid, so i expected to like it more than i did this time around. guess i'm too old now, and also it being old the flaws sure do shine through a lot more!
to anybody for whatever reason reading this wondering why i'd bother going through all these games like a psychopath, guide in hand, well, i dunno, i just am, and there's some charm to the writing that i get ot enjoy without suffering, and i just ain't a small child in the 90s with infinite free time anymore!! police quest was... mostly unbearable, but a curiosity, but at least with king's quest the jokes can be pretty fun and/or funny, and there's value in that to me
quick ranking, gut feeling, very little thought, will not reconsider, is now fact: 5 > 6 > 1 > 7 > 2 > 4 > 3
2: i did not last long without a guide! probably for the best as i didn't find this game as much fun, for whatever reason, although it was sitll fine enough i suppose, but felt less jokey and light hearted? onward to 3!
3: yo this game has a timer? what. um anyway i... did not finish this one, because i had to dig up a treasure but i couldn't get it to dig up the treasure and i know you need the treasure to win cause the guide says so and i mean... whatever, y'know, even if sierra didn't design these games to be balls-ass hard, this one's just... bad? so much waiting around, and having to be in specific locations at specific times without any real indication what those times are suuucks. i don't feel bad not beating this one
4: wow this game has shading in its art, a wonder what more colors can do! ...there are times while playing through these that i manage to trick myself into thinking "actually i could've figured this out given enough time", but then i come across an instruction in the guide as simple as "take board" and i'm in this room and i'm like... what board?? and i stare at it for a bit and eventually see a line of brown pixels that could be considered a wooden board and sure enough that's it! my... brain does not work for whatever these games are trying to communicate, and that's fine... anyway onto 5 i go!
5: first one of the bunch i'd played before, and beaten as a kid (almost certainly with a guide then, too). i remembered enough to make some progress on my own sometimes, but i also remembered enough to know i would need help. these games are hard and i just don't have the patience to figure shit out on my own! anyway, the voice acting was bad lol, which i'd had subtitles so i could skip, but this is before that became standard. otherwise, a much more pleasant experience, if only because the art was, well, good!
6: i guess i played this once before... baaaarely remember it but hey you know, i did! probably with guide in hand the whole time like i did this time lol, anyway, vast improvement over 5 in every way except that the main character is kind of unbearably a "good guy", but lacks the charm of, say, the modern day's himbo, yeah, i'll say it, i wish he was more of a fuckin idiot, would've made him more likeable! anyway that power love ballad in the credits sure was somethin'
7: aha! here we are at last to the one i should remember best! the one with the prickly pear that i thought was unbeatable if you didn't pick it up in chapter one but it turns out you can just go... get it later if you need it... the first king's quest without an unwinnable state! how does it hold up? well... that style shift! in some ways it's the obvious step, as esp 5 and 6 seemed to get more... cutesy, but in others it's kind of a shame because the things i liked about the rest of the games up til now were the darker fairy tale aspects treated as comedy, not the disney-esque plot lines! still, i remember loving it at the time as a kid, so i expected to like it more than i did this time around. guess i'm too old now, and also it being old the flaws sure do shine through a lot more!
to anybody for whatever reason reading this wondering why i'd bother going through all these games like a psychopath, guide in hand, well, i dunno, i just am, and there's some charm to the writing that i get ot enjoy without suffering, and i just ain't a small child in the 90s with infinite free time anymore!! police quest was... mostly unbearable, but a curiosity, but at least with king's quest the jokes can be pretty fun and/or funny, and there's value in that to me
quick ranking, gut feeling, very little thought, will not reconsider, is now fact: 5 > 6 > 1 > 7 > 2 > 4 > 3
Pretty solid collection of the first seven King's Quest games. The emulation leaves a little to be desired, but is still perfectly playable. The standout is obviously King's Quest VI: Heir Today, Gone Tomorrow. Would've been nice to have Mask of Eternity to finish the collection, despite its very different approach to the series.