SHP Forums

I have recently re-re-noticed the King's Quest remakes by AGDI. I was initially a little hesitant to try them, as my experience of the early KQ is quite limited. Besides, I have completed KQ6 and KQ5 (which, because of the owl and because KQ was not as "adult" as LSL, PQ or QfG) did not really appeal to me as much as the other series.

Regardless, I'd like to give the AGDI remakes a try. Is there anything I need to know about them? I've played KQ1 (but only as far as getting eaten by the crocodiles), and I've tried KQ3 (but constantly fell off the mountains or got fried by Manahahahahan). @ Tawmis

Are the remakes anywhere near as unforgiving as the originals? Or is there a little more "give" this time around?

No they're very forgiving. No dead ends (not initially for KQ1 but they added no dead ends later) and in KQ3 they added a lot of additions to help with Manannan like a colour coded timer which turns green when he first goes on a trip, yellow when he's close to coming back, and red when it's any minute. Lots of things like that which help but don't impede the challenge...at least by my standards.

It's a bit hard to make generalizations about the remakes, since all three have very different approaches:

• KQ1 got a 1:1 remake. The gameplay, text, and screen layouts are the same as the SCI version. The exception to this is that they added an optional no-dead-ends mode.
• KQ2 was made into essentially an entirely new game, using the original as inspiration and as a framework. It still has mostly the same characters and inventory items, but their significance in the story is generally very different.
• KQ3 took an intermediate approach. It's still basically the same story as the original (with only tweaks to make it compatible with the changes made to KQ2), but they took the liberty to change or improve some of the puzzles.

There are things in KQ2 that were very straightforward in the original but much more involved in the remake. For example, in the original you would just find Neptune's trident on the beach, while the remake introduced a whole quest for retrieving it. So I can't categorically say that they're more forgiving.

I will say, however, that the general trend absolutely is towards being more approachable. The removal of dead ends is a huge improvement. And the remake of KQ3 in particular has a lot little quality of life improvements. The games do still feature a lot of deaths, though, and no auto-save feature, so it's still advisable to save early and often.