It’s always pleasing when a technological advance lines up neatly with a decade, and sure enough, computer games took a huge step forward in 1990. The latter three King’s Quest games feature 256-color raster graphics, point-and-click interfaces, and CD releases with full voice acting. But a game is more than its technical achievements. Were they any good? Let’s have a look at King’s Quest V-VII. You can read my take on King’s Quest I-IV here.
King’s Quest V: Absence Makes the Heart Go Yonder
King Graham is back in the lead role in this installment. With its major technical advances, King’s Quest V made a big splash. Unfortunately, it didn’t take advantage of the expanded storytelling opportunities allowed by the new medium. It has the simplest story since the first two games. Did we really need a 10-minute intro to tell us “An evil wizard made the castle disappear and you need to get it back?”
King’s Quest V has lots of potential, but rarely lives up to it. You can talk to animals, but most of the animals in the game (the cat, the dog, the ox) won’t say anything to you, not even a throwaway joke. Cedric the cute-annoying owl follows you around for the whole game, but for the vast majority of it, he doesn’t say or do anything useful, either. And until the end, the magic wand only comes into play in occasional copy-protection events.
The threadbare parts of the franchise are starting to show at this point. King’s Quest V takes place in Serenia, ostensibly a different place than Daventry, but they both look like generic medieval Europe. There’s a big, empty desert area with that will have even the most dedicated players looking up a walkthrough. And while voice acting was a great novelty at the time, this voice acting, unfortunately, was all done by Sierra employees (listen for Roberta Williams herself, voicing the rat and the harpies).
The game finally hits its stride in the last act, when you get to the evil wizard’s castle. There are some clever puzzles, including a bizarre machine that recharges the magic wand, culminating in an easy but highly entertaining boss fight that I won’t spoil for you.
King’s Quest V isn’t a bad game by any means; it’s perfectly entertaining and fondly remembered. It’s just a rather ordinary game that doesn’t measure up to the level of excellence set by the best installments in the series.
King’s Quest VI: Absence Makes the Heart Go Yonder
We can’t talk about King’s Quest VI without mentioning another juggernaut of 90’s family entertainment: Disney. 1992 was the height of the Disney Renaissance and the release year of Disney’s Aladdin. In that same year, Sierra released a game with an Arabian Nights-inspired setting including a genie and an evil vizier who wants to marry the princess. If you’re ready for a shameless knockoff, you’re in for a surprise: King’s Quest VI is the most creative and original game in the entire series.
Prince Alexander (Gwydion got a name change) heads to the land of the Green Isles to find Princess Cassima, introduced in the previous game. But when he gets there, he finds the princess locked up and the islands on the brink of war. He must defeat the vizier and his genie sidekick in order to free the princess and restore peace to the Green Isles.
The fact that it takes more than a sentence to summarize the plot shows how substantial the game is compared to its predecessors. It’s a search for a princess, like King’s Quest II, but instead of overcoming a series of arbitrary obstacles to find a generic princess, Alexander already knows the princess (okay, he’s met her once, but that counts as backstory in adventure-game terms), and he must learn about the islands’ history and culture in order to figure out what happened and how to fix it. The characters are drawn with care, so that even roles like the obstructive castle guards have plausible motivations.
The rest of King’s Quest VI demonstrates the same care. The puzzles are clever and unusual, including a Hole in the Wall that allows you to look into adjacent rooms and an entire fabulous plotline that involves going to the underworld. There are multiple solutions to several puzzles, leading to a wide range of possible variant endings. The writing is tight and lively (don’t miss the shelf in the pawn shop stocked with plot items from previous games). There are real voice actors this time, thankfully. The scenery is lush and visually interesting, ranging from the whimsical Isle of Wonders to the gruesome underworld. For once, a game that takes place in a different country actually looks like a whole different place.
The flaws are few. Death by falling is still way too easy, and there are some 3D cutscenes that haven’t aged well. Cassima is a pretty egregious damsel, though King’s Quest II and III were both worse offenders. King’s Quest VI is the best game in the series by a solid margin. If you’re new to the King’s Quest franchise and wondering where to jump in, this is the place.
King’s Quest VII: The Princeless Bride
Oh boy, this is a contentious one. King’s Quest VII embraced the Disney princess trend with open arms, from its cartoony graphics to the intro featuring an actual I Want song. Fans were not pleased at the drastic departure from the series’ established tone and aesthetic. Some of the other King’s Quest games are lackluster, but this is the only one with an actual hatedom. But let’s look past that and consider it on its own merits. It was advertised as a “heartwarmingly humorous cinematic adventure.” How well does it succeed?
It’s a mixed bag. Let’s look at the positives first. It’s refreshing to see female characters back in the lead role, and the neglected Queen Valanice finally gets some well-deserved screen time. And it’s a mother-daughter story, vanishingly rare not just in games, but in all media. The scenery is cartoony, but detailed and distinctive. In particular, Valanice’s opening scene is great: it takes place in a desert resembling the American southwest, a setting rarely seen outside post-apocalyptic games, and it includes some very interesting puzzles. And throughout the game, there’s a lot of fun humor. Who doesn’t like the mockingbird?
King’s Quest VII found an interesting way to incorporate 3D: When you examine objects, instead of a written description, you get a 3D view that you can rotate to reveal hidden details. This function is underutilized, but it’s a clever idea. I think accusations that the interface is too simplistic are unfounded.
Alas, there are some serious downsides. The lighter aesthetic leads to some tonal dissonance; it can feel like misplaced priorities to be on trial for moon theft in Falderal when the world is in imminent danger of being wiped out by a volcano.
And then there’s the plot. The evil sorceress Malicia tried to take over Etheria except Oberon and Titania stopped her, and now she’s kidnapped Edgar from King’s Quest IV, who turns out to be the son of Oberon and Titania, and she turned him into the troll king and mind controlled him so he could take the place of the real troll king, who she imprisoned, so he can use the trolls’ volcano to blow up Etheria, but while she was kidnapping him he grabbed Rosella and accidentally turned her into a troll too and took her with him and Valanice goes after her but ends up in the desert instead, and Edgar wants to marry Rosella but she doesn’t realize it’s him, so she has to turn herself back into a human and find Valanice and free the real troll king so he can stop the volcano from erupting and turn Edgar back and free him from mind control and find out what happened to Oberon and Titania and defeat Malicia.
And how many different families torn apart by magic do you end up reuniting?
Even taken for what it is, King’s Quest VII is a deeply uneven experience. Whether you enjoy it or not mainly depends on your personal preferences.
The King’s Quest series isn’t just a bit of nostalgia for 90s kids. They’re well-designed, high-quality games that still offer a rewarding gameplay experience for anyone willing to step back and give them a try. Here’s to hoping that the new series sparks a renewed interest in the franchise so that the legacy of Roberta Williams will live on.
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IIRC, the princess in VI was “Cassima.” (We… might have replayed it relatively recently. <.< )
I personally thought the hatedom for VII was a little overboard. The "simplistic" interface in my opinion is way more similar to games now, where there's simply a button for 'interact.' The styling is cutesy, but in my opinion, VIII was WAY worse, as far as "this isn't a King's Quest game!" goes.
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Oops, you’re right. Fixed.
I agree with you about VII; it has its weaknesses but a lot of people hate on it just because it’s cartoony, which is stupid. And frankly I prefer that interface to the one where you have to constantly right-click to switch between move/talk/examine/interact.
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Yeah. Like, as fun as it is clicking ALL THE THINGS just to hear/see what the game will say, I have to admit that KQ’s VII’s interface is a lot more practical. The point-and-click adventure games I see from more recently use a similar interface–Fran Bow, for instance. (Which, if you’re interested, I highly recommend! You play a severely mentally ill little girl in the 40s using her medication to swap realities. We want to buy it.)
I wonder if part of the hate for KQ VII was because it was more “for girls.” Especially after KQ VI, which had some much darker elements visually and in tone. (Though VII has its moments–Ooga Booga gave us the CREEPS as children, particularly the sobbing woman, and even as adults, sneaking into the big bad’s house was stressful.)
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