King's Quest IV: The Perils of Rosella

The Good
The story centers on Rosella, daughter of King Graham, who must find a cure for her father as well as stop the evil witch Lolotte from ruling the land. As always a knowledge of fairy tales will help in solving the game's puzzles. The game was the first in Sierra's new SCI engine which was a significant improvement from the old AGI engine. The music finally supports sound cards so another big improvement there. This installment also has a day-night cycle, one of the first games to implement this. There are two possible endings to this adventure. All in all a huge step forward in adventure game design.

The Bad
There are still the Sierra gotcha! instant kills but they are not as bad as previous games. Walking on paths & climbing are still dangerous to you. one wrong move equals death. Good luck climbing that whale's tongue! Also there is a plot critical item that will not be found without a walkthrough (the bridle).

The Bottom Line
The cream of the crop for 80s Sierra games, girls really do get it done in adventure games.

The Good
The release of this game was a big event of its time. The King's Quest series was really the flagship game series for IBM computers. At a time when the venerable Apple II & Commodore 64 and the up and coming Amiga & Atari ST were the dominate home platforms with a larger library of games. This game took full advantage of the new EGA graphics card and the new array of sound cards. Showed that the IBM could have games that looked and sounded just as good as those other systems.

The game was much larger than previous quest games. Not just in hard drive space but in the game world. There was a lot of ground to explore. And the improved graphics really added to the game play. I distinctly remember how creepy that run down house looked.

The game mixed in its regular brew of fairy tale references with its plot development. There were several mini quests that you had to solve that revolved around a certain area of the world. For example the above mentioned house had some ghosts that you had to deal with.

The Bad
While the game looked and sounded good. I felt that the way this game was planned out made for some frustrations in play.

Since the game world was large and mostly open you could wander about collecting items in your usual Sierra fashion without really advancing the story much. While this worked for me in Sierra's original Hero's Quest game, in KQ4 I found myself lost until I found some hints in a magazine to help me along. This being the days before the easy download of walkthrus on the Internet.

This ability to wander also meant that you could slip into night without being ready for it. There were certain puzzles that could only be solved at night. The real time advance of the clock was a nice touch for the game but only if you were ready for it. If you had not done the things to activate the night time quest you'd have to wait until it was nightfall again. This meant that I had to wander around the game world a lot waiting for night to come.

I also found the puzzles being a bit more obtuse that the previous games. Too often I wondered just how the heck I was ever going to use an object. But perhaps to some people they are obvious but not for me. I think that the puzzles in an adventure game while not being easy should have a logical flow to them and I did not feel this was the case here.

The Bottom Line
While I had some problems with how this game played out, I still found myself enjoying the game. Despite the frustrations I had with it, I would still recommend it to players.

The Good
First of all, the game weighed in about a whopping 3 megs and at the time it was one of the largest games ever produced (aside from games that are non-games like Dragon's Lair). With those 3 megs included some of the best sound and graphics ever developed at the time. Both of which helped bring to life this almost Alice In Wonderland meets Snow White kind of adventure game. The game is full of beautifully drawn backgrounds and interesting characters ranging from ordinary people to mythological creatures. The plot basically leaves you open to explore in a very non-linear path. There is a game clock within the game but only advances after certain events are triggered. I just loved the atmosphere Roberta Williams created... I remember my heart racing and was on the edge of my seat while peeping through the key lock in the ogre's house... This is my all-time favorite game ever created and no game stuck with me as strongly as this one.

The Bad
One thing I didn't like is some of the puzzles were too difficult to solve and some objects to difficult to find or know what to do with. It took me so long to know to drop the gold ball to lure the frog over. Other than that, the game is flawless in my opinion.

The Bottom Line
Was an instant classic and should be locked in a time capsule :) Its a wonderfully entertaining fantasy adventure game that set standards in adventure gaming for the years and years that followed. A must play!