Game 155: Quest For Glory IV: Shadows of Darkness (1993) - Introduction

Written by Andy Panthro

No number, just dripping with gothic design (and dripping with blood)

The Quest For Glory series has a special place in my heart, the blend of adventure gaming and RPG has always been a favourite of mine. I have fond memories of this particular entry, from the Lovecraftian elements and Slavic mythology, to the links back to prior entries in the series. Apologies for everyone waiting so patiently for me to get around to this, but I feel like, with Halloween just behind us, I really need to get the ball rolling on this! (or the pumpkin rolling perhaps?)

A new Sierra logo for the CD era

It has been often reported that this was supposed to be the third entry in the series, but for various reasons it was instead decided that another game should take that place. I am grateful for that, as Wages of War is a great addition, and I enjoyed my time in Tarna and beyond. This gave the player character time to grow also, and become a hero of sufficient stature to take on this particular task.

At the end of Wages of War, our hero has defeated the demons that were trying to invade, helped mend the relationships between warring peoples, and should really be due a bit of rest. However, a strange magic takes hold of him, and despite the best attempts of his friends, including the wizard Erasmus, he is instead teleported away to a new and strange land.

We join our hero in a dark cavern, with the voice of John Rhys-Davies to guide us in our new adventure.

I vaguely recall that when I first played this game, it was the disk version and I didn’t have the voices. Certainly the audio quality is not quite to a modern standard, but I enjoy it all the same. I also thought that you had to make a choice between voices and the text, but perhaps I’m thinking of another game, as both are present at the same time here this far.

As with all these games, there are a few notable differences depending on your choice of character. My brother would often choose Thief, and I would usually pick Magic User, but we played so often that we probably played all the options over time.

I had originally wanted to play through this three (or four) times, to be able to show those changes for each section, but given I’m already a year late on this, perhaps that wouldn’t be wise! I would like to know if anyone has a strong preference, I believe the CRPG addict chose Paladin, and that class certainly has a lot of extra stuff to do, unlike the Fighter which gets maybe one small bonus quest.

A bat casts a shadow over this choice

Side note: during my minimal research for this I did find that the composer for this game, Aubrey Hodges, released a remastered version of the soundtrack! You can find this on his Bandcamp page and probably elsewhere: https://aubreyhodges.bandcamp.com/album/quest-for-glory-shadows-of-darkness-official-soundtrack

And with that I will leave you to make your guesses for the score, bearing in mind that the version I am playing is the patched CD-ROM version available via GOG.com, so won’t have the same bugs and issues that the original floppy version had (I hope!).