Some thoughts on King's Quest 5

[tassieboy]

So, I've just finished playing King's Quest 5 for the first time and thought I'd give a few thoughts on it. This is the first KQ game that I never got around to as a child (although I have screenshots from it all over my school books which I cut out of Sierra catalogues.)

Graphics
The scenes in this game were beautiful - no denying that, although at the low 320x200 resolution they didn't look as impressive as they seemed in the catalogue (or my memory). Still - no complaints, it brought back wonderful memories of playing SQ4 and Conquest of Longbow to see this style.

Music
The music in KQ5 wasn't bad as such but just didn't seem to live up to the score from KQ4 which was written by a holywood composer.

Cedric
I've heard many people complain about Credic, that he was so annoying that he almost made the game un-playable. While I'll admit that the pitch of his voice was a bit irritating, he just didn't get to me that much. I will say that his character seemed to add very little to the game. He followed me around but the game would have been no different if he were absent. The idea of a companion is a good one - but it was not used to its potential.

The Story and Puzzles.
I had decided that as an adult, I would try to play the entire game without hints. I didn't make use of a walkthrough although I did have to keep some help from the UHS site at times. I actually found this a rather difficult game compared to the others of the series. The reason - the puzzles didn't seem to fit my mental expectation of a King's Quest puzzle. For example, the dessert sequence (Which was fantastic) was not obvious. I walked into the desert and thought "Okay, this is Roberta's way of providing boundaries to the game world. Whenever you see an ocean or a desert it usually just goes on forever and there's nothing to find. In the end I decided to explore it 'just in case' and was rewarded but I nearly ignored it.

There seemed to be a lot of items that could be used for multiple uses, and multiple objects that could serve the same purpose - but not necessarily the correct purpose. I found myself often going back because although I had seemed to find "the use" of an object - I wasn't sure I'd done the right thing. This isn't necessarily a bad thing - it leant some real-world believablility to the game, but it wasn't what I expected.

The worst part was the bloomin' cat and mouse. It only appears once, and it all happens so fast that you've suddenly lost your opportunity to win the game, without even realising it. The first few times I saw it I thought (ah, this is a little cut scene. I guess the cat and mouse will become important later). I had to re-play a significant portion of the game from the beginning when I realised I could save the mouse.

The other puzzle element that really bothered me was the laberynth under Mordack's castle.

This sequence broke the un-changing rule of Sierra games, it altered the camera angle as you walked off the edge of the screen. I found it virtually impossible to understand where I was, or where I had come from. Even with the map off the UHS site it took significant concentration to understand which way Graham should walk.

Some other puzzles just seemed a little convoluted. Cheese in the 'power transfer machine???'

Anyway, dispite those few things that bugged me I enjoyed the game and found it satisfying to finally fill in one of the holes in my King's Quest experience.

Next up, King's Quest 6.

What do other people think of this game?

[JasefWisener]

I'm not going to lie, KQ5 is probably one of my least favorite of Sierra's vga games.

[envisge0ne]

Very good review. I played it for the 1st time when I was a kid. So I'll be looking at it from a different perspective. When I played the game, it was the 1st VGA game that Sierra released. So it was quite an amazing thing to see. The graphics looked so beautiful. The backgrounds were amazing. I loved the music. I had (and still have) a Roland MT-32. So the music sounded amazing. I still, to this day, love going back to the game just to look at the backgrounds and listen to the music. Brings back a lot of nostalgic feelings.

I didn't find the game to be as frustrating as you did. Maybe from a kid's point of view that played every Sierra On-Line game that had come out, I felt I kinda got used to what to expect from them. I agree with the machine at the end of the game to re-charge your wand. That just didn't make much sense and puzzles like that do irritate me. I also hate mazes, but I thought the one in this game was fairly simple. To me, it didn't seem to have a lot of rooms where you could really get lost. I agree with you about Cedric. Whenever you heard him talk, you just wanted to say "Ok, shudup!!", but it didn't make me like or dislike the game anymore for it. And I agree he was a worthless character. I remember thinking that even as a kid when the game ended. "Why was Cedric in the game so much? Why didn't Crispin just kill him a long time ago??"

Personally, I rate this as one of my fave King's Quest games. Even preferring it over KQ4. I think you're gonna love KQ6. The puzzles are even more challenging, but at least they make sense. Keep the manual close by while you play it. You're gonna need it to solve some of the puzzles!

[MusicallyInspired]

I agree with most everything except the music. The music is spectacular and really captures the atmospheres of the areas of the game very well. Just because a hollywood composer composed KQ4 doesn't mean it's automatically better. And I wouldn't use it as a case against KQ5. Mark Seibert is a classically trained acoustic guitar player and therefore as well as, I'm sure, an educated student of music theory. More than that the music he writes is incredibly soulful. A lot more soulful in my opinion than anything Goldstein writes, not that his work is bad by any means.

Of course, I'm not trying to sway your opinion, just to give Mark, Ken, and co. some credit here.

[Collector]

I played the games out of order, and as such played 6 before 5. In this order 5 was a real letdown after 6, which is justifiably most people's favorite.

Graphics
The scenes in this game were beautiful - no denying that, although at the low 320x200 resolution they didn't look as impressive as they seemed in the catalogue (or my memory). Still - no complaints, it brought back wonderful memories of playing SQ4 and Conquest of Longbow to see this style.

Just remember the state of computer graphics at the time. It was one of the first ever VGA games. Look at the level of graphics in its predecessor, KQ4 and you will see what a huge step forward the graphics were.

I think that you probably didn't give the music a fair chance. If you want to hear what the music sounded like as intended, see The Sierra Soundtrack Collection page and hear what it was meant to sound like.

Anyway, I envy you for being able to play KQ6 for the first time. Others may hold different games as their favorite, 6 is almost universally considered one of the very best games that Sierra produced. It was written by my favorite game designer, Jane Jensen of Gabriel Knight fame. It is a wonderful tale by itself and as a game thoroughly enjoyable. The puzzles are fun and mostly logical, with few, if any, that will leave you going "Oh come on!" And best of all, it has multiple paths that have different endings of varying degrees successful outcomes. You will be able to replay it, taking the other main path, as if it were a different game.

[tassieboy]

Ok, given some of your comments I'll give the music another chance.

I think the thing I noticed about the music in KQ5 was there wasn't a 'theme' as such, as there was in KQ4, plus the KQ4 music has special emotional resonance for me because I had an audio cassette with MT-32 and Adlib versions of some of Sierra's musical pieces when I was a kid. It was a marketing thing, back when nobody had ever heard of a soundcard - but I used to listen to it over and over and over again.

I'm looking forward to KQ6. I am somewhat familiar with the locations, having played The Silver Lining, and have heard that many report it as the best game of all.