Favorite King's Quest game and why? (And yes, I will even...

[Fender_178]

Kq6 is my favorite because of the Story plot and the "Girl in the tower" track at the end of the game what a way to end a great game imo.

[Tawmis]

Of course many said the same sorts of things about the move from the text parser interface to the icon based. Frankly the KQ6 interface is what I prefer, myself. I can see the parser argument, but hate being hung up when I know what I need to do, but I have to also play a guessing game of what the game designer decided to call verb or a noun. Who wouldn't eventually get irritated with "I don't know how to ___" or "You can't do that, now" over and over and over? That doesn't add to the game play, it is just an impediment.

I preferred typing. Because it got too easy to just click the hand icon all over the screen until you heard "Pling!" and you picked something up without even giving it much thought... just an insane amount of clicking all over the screen.

[AndreaDraco]

KQ5. I loved Cedric! <ducks, runs>

Poor Cedric. Don't make fun of him! He has such a cute outfit! He even has a monocle, you brutes!
Jokes aside, I liked him!

I preferred typing. Because it got too easy to just click the hand icon all over the screen until you heard "Pling!" and you picked something up without even giving it much thought... just an insane amount of clicking all over the screen.

I prefer the icon-driven interface. The parser was really good, especially in KQ4, but it can be also extremely frustrating if (A) you're not a English native or (b) it isn't developed to contain a fair amount of synonymous, so I'll say that the perfect interface was really the one seen in King's Quest VI

[Fender_178]

I like both the parser and the point and click. What I like about the parser is that you can type funny stuff and get funny results.

[Tawmis]

I prefer the icon-driven interface. The parser was really good, especially in KQ4, but it can be also extremely frustrating if (A) you're not a English native or (b) it isn't developed to contain a fair amount of synonymous, so I'll say that the perfect interface was really the one seen in King's Quest VI

That is a most excellent point - for those where English isn't their native tongue. And I think that it's great that Sierra came up with the icon-driven interface so that the games were more easily played around the world.

I like both the parser and the point and click. What I like about the parser is that you can type funny stuff and get funny results.

What's funny is I remember playing I believe it was King's Quest V - and seeing the icons. I actually wrote Sierra a letter and said I'd never purchase another Sierra game if they go with icon-driven interface for the rest of their games. I went on to explain that Sierra games are what taught me to type, spell, the whole 9 yards.

I never held up my end of the threat of course...

[AndreaDraco]

I actually wrote Sierra a letter and said I'd never purchase another Sierra game if they go with icon-driven interface for the rest of their games. I went on to explain that Sierra games are what taught me to type, spell, the whole 9 yards.

I never held up my end of the threat of course...

You little subversive!

[JasefWisener]

I prefer the icon-driven interface. The parser was really good, especially in KQ4, but it can be also extremely frustrating if (A) you're not a English native or (b) it isn't developed to contain a fair amount of synonymous, so I'll say that the perfect interface was really the one seen in King's Quest VI

That's intense.

That is a most excellent point - for those where English isn't their native tongue. And I think that it's great that Sierra came up with the icon-driven interface so that the games were more easily played around the world.

I like both the parser and the point and click. What I like about the parser is that you can type funny stuff and get funny results.

What's funny is I remember playing I believe it was King's Quest V - and seeing the icons. I actually wrote Sierra a letter and said I'd never purchase another Sierra game if they go with icon-driven interface for the rest of their games. I went on to explain that Sierra games are what taught me to type, spell, the whole 9 yards.

I never held up my end of the threat of course...

[Tawmis]

I actually wrote Sierra a letter and said I'd never purchase another Sierra game if they go with icon-driven interface for the rest of their games. I went on to explain that Sierra games are what taught me to type, spell, the whole 9 yards.
I never held up my end of the threat of course...

You little subversive!

Well I knew my threat wouldn't work... as I was probably the only one in the world who wanted it.

I was afraid that an end of an era was at hand.

[AndreaDraco]

I was afraid that an end of an era was at hand.

I wonder what you thought when you saw the streamlined interface of KQ7...

[Taryn]

I prefer the point-and-click interface...I was a slow typist as a kid (even though I used computers a lot), and I would get frustrated when the computer would reject my wording and I couldn't think of how to type something.

Still, as a kid I thought the parser was stricter than it actually was...I remember carefully typing out "Rose Petal Essence" complete with capitalization in KQ3, because I didn't know that the program would also accept, say, just "essence".

Anyway, my favourite KQ games are KQ4 and KQ6. I really wanted KQ4 as a kid, but we couldn't find it (this was like 1994), so we got KQ5 and KQ6 instead...I didn't even get KQ4 until we got a King's Quest Collection years later. That's also when I finally got KQ1 and KQ2.

[Tawmis]

I was afraid that an end of an era was at hand.

I wonder what you thought when you saw the streamlined interface of KQ7...

By the time KQ7 had come out, I was already surrendered to the idea of the point and click interface - so any changes they made after that didn't even seem like a big deal to me... just evolution and ease of the point and click interface is how I saw it.

Anyway, my favourite KQ games are KQ4 and KQ6. I really wanted KQ4 as a kid, but we couldn't find it (this was like 1994), so we got KQ5 and KQ6 instead...I didn't even get KQ4 until we got a King's Quest Collection years later. That's also when I finally got KQ1 and KQ2.

I am glad to see I am not alone in my KQ4 love.

[ThePudd]

Definitely has to be King's Quest VI. One of the first PC games I ever played, and one of the most complete in a whole bunch of ways. I still remember getting incredibly excited after first figuring out how to get the magic map. (omigosh, there's more islands!1!)
I also enjoyed IV quite a bit, but VI is in a class by itself.

[AndreaDraco]

Yesterday night I finished my second play-through of King's Quest VII and I pretty much confirm what previously said: a good, entertaining game but without the charisma of VI or, in my opinion, III and IV. Too cartoon-y and too flat in characters (I really like only Lord Attis and Lady Ceres) and even in some locations (for a wonderful Etheria, I have an uninteresting desert and, above all, the city of Falderal, which I hated whole-heartedly). Moreover, Italian voice-work was dreadful and this tampered severely my experience with the game. A fair 6 out of 10, in my opinion.

Then, I installed MoE and I'm re-playing also this title (I have to admit, in "God Mode": I don't care a tiny bit about fighting monsters, given also that I've already done that one time around). I'll let you know

[Fender_178]

Ya I used godmode a tad when I completed MOE but I used the give cheat and gave myself 200 of crystals and scared water and elixir of life.

[Dark Jaguar]

Wow, seems it's a pretty popular opinion on KQ6. I share it! That game had pretty much everything. It had it's serious parts but wasn't so caught up in there that it forgot it's roots, including places like the Isle of Wonder. As I've said, I prefer the Windows version basically due to the gorgeous high resolution portraits (when the narrator describes Captain Saladin, only the SVGA portraits actually do that description justice). I also loved the Guidebook to the Land of the Green Isles. IT was actually fun copyright protection! Further, the clues you had to look up in the book weren't just direct answers (well some of them were), some were actually riddles in themselves! If they did a modern remake though, they'd have to let you view that book in-game whenever you wanted, perhaps being able to pick up a copy at the library early on. The only bad thing I could possibly say might be that there's still dead end paths possible in the game, but it's far less pronounced than in earlier titles.

After KQ6, I guess I'd say KQ4 (whale tongue and totally random monsters in the ocean and cave aside). I learned the word uvula from that game . Then, I'd say either KQ3 or KQ7. Yes, I know the single cursor was rather simplistic, but it had a lot going for it. For one, it was the first KQ game to finally eliminate dead end paths completely from the game. That's a huge plus right there, and sorta defeats any need one might have in making multiple save points (though I agree that the bookmark system in this and Phantasmagoria really were too clunky). Further, this went on to deaths. Sierra didn't want to eliminate dying from their games like a Lucasarts game (and I agree with that, there's a certain thrill in knowing your life is possibly at stake, though Lucasart's style has something to be said for it too), but at the same time, reloading an old save, perhaps even one too close to the death, can get annoying. They fixed that easily by just allowing you to continue any time you died, and that continue point would usually be however far from the death you needed to be to be able to survive that time around.

After that, I'd say KQ5 and KQ1 kinda tie for me (I prefer the SCI remake of 1 actually), then KQ2 (which I think is guilty of the most illogical puzzles in any KQ game, seriously, why would I ever think to toss a bridle on a snake?).

If it counts, I'd put KQ Mask of Eternity last on the list. It's not like I absolutely hate the game. It had it's good moments actually, and it wasn't a terrible game, but it doesn't really add up. I always get the impression that this was a game made by marketting more than Roberta. First of all, the mood of the game was way off. Nothing felt like a charming fairy tale in the game at all, and cutting up ogres to a bloody pulp? Sure there's been blood in some deaths in other KQ games, but not to this ridiculous extent. It doesn't fit the mood of KQ at all. Why so serious? Heck and I actually LIKE Connor and the basic idea of the Mask of Eternity story!

Oh, and the combat... Aside from levelling, it's really more of a straight action game than RPG. The problem is, this sort of game, an action/adventure/puzzle game in a fantasy setting, had already been done, better, before this game came out, and it was called Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. It's hard to fault Roberta here, she was out of her element working with a company already on a downward spiral competing against Miyamoto (without even really knowing it I suppose), a guy who had already figured out how to mix fighting with puzzle solving with the Zelda series and knew how to make the controls fluid and intuitive. I mean I played all of Mask of Eternity just hacking and slashing my way around, and if there was a horde, I literally could just sit back and fire with a crossbow while strafing very slow ranged attacks. That's compared to a series where you had to figure out to use a grappling hook to pull a cloud of eyes off something to weaken it before being able to attack the core, or use a boomerang to sever connecting tubes to bring something to the ground. If people at Sierra had taken the time to look at the Zelda series and delayed Mask a bit to develop their own ideas on how to mix puzzles and fighting, I think it could have been a far better game.