Game 5: King's Quest III - Final Rating

I really don’t know what sort of rating King’s Quest III will end up with. On the one hand, it does try to take the series somewhere fresh, with new characters and elements, but on the other hand, the interface and technology behind it all are pretty much identical. There’s no point pondering any longer, let’s see what happens...

Puzzles and Solvability
Hmmm...I think the game should be punished in this area, for the simple reason that quite a few puzzles are really only solved through mere chance. They may seem logical after the fact, but the thought processes required to solve them the first time round just don’t have much of a place in adventure games for good reason. Only seeing the key on the cabinet if you’re standing far enough away from it, reaching Daventry by ship only by waiting fifteen minutes doing nothing, and teleporting past the Abominable Snowman through random chance, are the types of puzzles that require luck (or unnatural perseverance) to solve. Adding a real time element to the game was certainly brave, but I think the fact this feature wasn’t used again speaks volumes. As for the rest, well the majority of puzzles are solved through the use of spells, so the major part of the game revolves around collecting ingredients and following the manual rather than doing any sort of real thinking. All things considered, I’m giving it a 5.

70 of the 210 points are gained by simply entering the recipes directly from the manual.

Interface and Inventory

Both the interface and inventory are almost identical to the way they were in King’s Quest II. There are not many places where the horrible stair climbing nightmares take effect. The stairs in Manannan’s house do unfortunately suffer from this however, which can be torture when you’re trying to get back to your room to hide items under your bed and the wizard is due back any second. The biggest change comes from an item rather than the interface itself, with the magic map allowing you travel quickly around Llewdor to anywhere you’ve been previously. Many fans criticised this for making this part of the game too easy, but given how difficult it is to find the map in the first place, I think its ok. The only real noticeable change for the negative is that the “look” command doesn’t give you very much detail this time round. After the progress made between games I and II, it’s disappointing that the game moved backwards, making you look at things very specifically to get any useful details about your surroundings. Wouldn’t it have been nice to go into Manannan’s bedroom, type “look” and be told that there’s something shiny on the top of the closet. It was 5 for part II, so it’s 5 here.

Forcing the player to use the keyboard to navigate this path multiple times is nasty!

Story and Setting

I guess Roberta Williams deserves some credit for changing things up for King’s Quest III. Instead of merely following the next adventures of King Graham of Daventry, the player finds themselves in the shoes of the enslaved Gwydion, in a land called Llewdor. Early reviews criticised this move, suggesting the game felt separate to the series its name suggested it belonged to, but I guess these critics would have had egg on their faces, as they clearly didn’t play through very much of the game. It turned out Roberta had a plan all along, and things come together quite nicely in the end. That being said, Llewdor doesn’t really feel all that different to Daventry, which isn’t surprising given the colours and illustration techniques are unchanged. There isn’t as much of the fairy tale storytelling found in part III, with the three bears being the most obvious inclusion, and with foes such as Medusa and the Abominable Snowman making an appearance, the game has a slightly darker tone all up. I kind of prefer that, so I’m giving the game a 6 in this category.

Daventry has been invaded by a three headed dragon and you give me a small stone!?

Sound and Graphics

Sound effects are unchanged from the previous two games, so there’s not much to say about that. Moving Al Lowe away from music into a designer role had a negative effect when it comes to the tunes in the game. King’s Quest II had a bunch of easily recognisable tunes showing up at appropriate times whereas King’s Quest III has none of these. I believe its Al’s wife handling the music after his promotion and while she doesn’t disgrace herself, I can’t say any of its particularly memorable. The graphics and animation use exactly the same techniques as the previous games and while Manannan’s house has some nice details, once you move out into Llewdor, the world looks extremely familiar. If I weigh up the increased graphical detail with the lower musical standard, I’m forced to give part III the same as part II, which is once again a 5.

The dragon looks heaps better than the one in part I. I'd say on par with Skyrim!

Environment and Atmosphere

As with King’s Quest II, the third game in the series wraps around from north to south, but the west and east have boundaries (more specifically the desert to the west and the ocean to the east). Given the magic map allows you to travel anywhere you’ve been previously by clicking on that location on the map, I think Roberta and co. missed an opportunity to remove the wraparound effect altogether. It certainly makes Llewdor feel small (particularly as it’s made up of only twenty screens outside Manannan’s house) and doesn’t give any suggestion that Gwydion is exploring only a small portion of a larger unseen land. As previously mentioned, the tone of King’s Quest III is slightly darker than the earlier games, but it’s still kid friendly despite the fact the main villain kidnaps young boys and kills them on their eighteenth birthday. Nothing much has really changed, so 6 it is.

Many criticised the magic map but I thought it was a nice addition.

Dialogue and Acting
I know I’m sounding like a broken record here, but the fact is King’s Quest III does very little to evolve the adventure genre (if you ignore the time element which was considered a failed experiment). As with the first two games, there are very few occasions where NPCs actually talk to Gwydion and a lot of the “dialogue” is narrative or overheard conversations. It is all done in a very similar style to the previous games, which means very basic descriptions and twee use of language. I can’t say anything stands out in particular, so I’ll cut to the chase and give this a 4.

It’s a 52 for King’s Quest III, which is not as high as I was expecting prior to playing. The general feeling in reviews around the net suggest this entry to series was groundbreaking and one of the best, but I can’t ignore the frustration caused by bad design and deviant (if not illogical) solutions to puzzles. Perhaps my scores are a bit skewed by the fact I’ve played these games before and it’s possible I would have a completely different outlook if I was experiencing them for the first time. I guess we’ll never know! Onto Space Quest we go...

Game 5: King's Quest III - Won!

Gwydion Journal Entry 2: “So much has happened since I last wrote! I’ve travelled further than I ever thought possible, and I’ve made sure that nasty Manannan will never abduct young boys ever again. After learning a bunch of spells from his laboratory, I managed to turn him into a cat, giving me the time I needed to really explore this land. I found an Oracle in a cave who told me about my parents in Daventry, who just happen to be the King and Queen! Unfortunately, she also told me that Daventry has been invaded by a three-headed dragon, and that each year this monster demands the sacrifice of a young maiden. This year that maiden was to be my very own sister Rosella! Obviously I couldn’t let that happen, so I took a ship to Daventry, journeyed through the perilous mountains (that abominable snowman will forever give me nightmares!) and eventually used my new fandangle spells to defeat the dragon. I saved my sister in the process and met my mum and dad in their castle, making this unquestionably the best day of my life!”

I’ve completed King’s Quest III as expected, but there were a couple of difficult challenges that kept me at it for much longer than I anticipated. As I mentioned in my last post, I’d already collected the vast majority of items needed to cast all the spells found in the manual, so I set about casting as many as I could while Manannan was sleeping. Remembering that the way to defeat Manannan was to turn him into a cat, the first thing I did was create the Transforming Another Into a Cat cookie, crumbled it into the porridge I stole from the three bears’ house, and gave it to him when he woke up demanding food. With him out of the way, I kind of figured completing the rest of the game would be fairly straight forward. Not so! From here on in the game is really quite challenging, and not really in a good way I’m afraid.

And good riddance you cranky old bastard!

After meeting the Oracle, and therefore gaining my true quest and getting the final ingredient I needed to cast the last spell, I convinced the captain of a ship that had very conveniently made port at Llewdor to take me to Daventry. Of course, as is the way in stories like this one, these sailors turned out to be pirates, and I soon found myself held captive below deck. Getting above deck wasn’t an issue, and I gained plenty of information by spending time with the rats on the ship, due to having cast the Understanding the Language of Creatures spell. I could even make all the pirates fall asleep using my Causing a Deep Sleep spell, but this resulted in a Game Over message, as there was no-one left to steer the ship to Daventry. I must have spent around an hour and a half trying different things on that ship, but I couldn’t find any way to get off, or any items that might be useful. Obviously I’d figured it out previously as I’d finished the game years ago, but my memory wasn’t giving me anything useful. I was downright stuck!

So I take it the rats have used the same Language spell I have?

The solution is going to sound ridiculously obvious! I simply had to wait (literally) for the ship to travel all the way to Daventry before making the crew fall asleep. This would have happened much earlier, had I not been killed several times through desperate experimentation, but since I’d been reloading over and over again, the fifteen or so minutes that needed to go by for us to arrive at the destination simply never occurred. It was mere chance that I walked away from the game for a few minutes in frustration and then came back to find a "Land ho, Captain" message on the screen. I can’t think of another adventure game that makes you simply do nothing for fifteen minutes as a solution to a problem, and I have to wonder how many players have torn their hair out in frustration, seemingly having nowhere to go and nothing to do. I’m sure that the feedback that Sierra got for these time based puzzles (not knowing that Manannan is ever going to leave the house at the start of the game can create a similar reloading scenario) made them decide not to run any future games in real time.

Ninety minutes of frustration could have been avoided by doing...nothing!

Further challenges awaited me both prior to getting off the ship (you have to jump!) and then in the mountain range that separated the ocean from Daventry castle. Without going into great detail, King’s Quest III went from seeming pretty straight foward to being frustratingly illogical half way through, a sentiment proved very nicely once the you find yourself confronted by the abominable snowman. On entering a particular screen in the mountains, the snowman charged at me and killed me. When I reloaded and entered the screen numerous times, eventually he just wasn’t there (a stupid technique I’ve been forced to use in all three King’s Quest games), but then he reappears with the same result on the very next screen! Finally I reached a screen where no matter how many times I entered it the snowman would kill me within seconds. I decided to try my Teleportation spell, only to find myself teleported way back to first mountain screen.

For a creature seen by few, the Abominable Snowman sure shows up a lot when I'm around!

It would have been very easy to assume that teleportation therefore wasn’t the solution to the problem, but as it turns out, the teleportation effect is random. On my second attempt, I was teleported to a screen I’d never been to before, with a message congratulating me on evading the snowman. This sort of puzzle can be extremely difficult to solve if you’re unfortunate enough to randomly teleport backwards multiple times. I wouldn’t blame anyone for giving up on that idea at that point, even though it’s the only way to progress in the game. Anyway, these frustrations aside, defeating the three headed dragon turned out to be pretty simple (use the spells I haven’t yet found a use for), and the game ending manages to be reasonably satisfying (tying part III to the first two games nicely) while being ambiguous (the game simply stops with King Graham’s feather hat being thrown in the direction of Gwydion and Rosella). The title of King’s Quest IV (The Perils of Rosella) gives me a good idea who catches the hat, and despite the flaws found in part III, I’m very much looking forward to playing a King’s Quest game I haven’t played through before. I’ll need to get through a few other games first though, not to mention apply the PISSED rating to this one.

205 out of 210. I've got no idea where the missing five points are this time.



Game 5: King's Quest III - Adventure Line of Sight

Gwydion Journal Entry 1: "That’s it! I’ve had it with this evil wizard Mannannanan...Manannaaana...oh I can never spell his name! I feel like I’m destined for greater things than being an errand boy for an unappreciative bastard. I completed all of my chores today so as not to gain his suspicion, and as soon as he went on one of his “journeys”, I started snooping around this joint to see what I could find. I’m pretty sure he’d come after me if I just walked off into Llewdor, so I need to find some way to make sure you-know-who can’t ever find me again. During the twenty minutes he was away, I’ve managed to find all sorts items, most of which seem completely useless. At least they did before I discovered the wizard’s laboratory, including a book of spells that happen to require pretty much everything I’ve picked up. I found even more of the necessary items on my first brave venture outside and I have to say, this magic map will certainly come in handy when travelling around. Anyway, he’ll be back any second, so I better go hide all this stuff under my bed..."

After an hour and a half of playing King’s Quest III, I’ve pretty much completed the therapeutic treasure hunting that kicks off all the classic Sierra adventure games. I’ve got around 70 points out of 210 in the process, and have collected almost all the ingredients needed to cast the numerous spells found in the manual. If this rundown makes it sound like I’m breezing through the game due to my past experience with it, well I guess that’s certainly true. It has however become very clear to me that this initial part of the game would be pretty darn challenging for first time players, as it would have been for me all those years ago. There were a couple of items that I had a lot of trouble locating, even though I was pretty sure I knew exactly where they were, in particular the magic map and the key to Manannan’s cabinet.

I'm feeling quite good actually, thanks for asking!

(I try not to give too many direct spoilers in this blog, but to explain the issue here I really need to go into detail. Skip this paragraph and the next if you plan on playing the game some time.) Both of these items are found in Manannan’s bedroom, but the text parser makes finding them more challenging than it might have been. “Open the closet” and type “look in closet” and you get the response “You see voluminous velvet robes, satin slippers, peaked hats, and soft linen gowns.” Trying to retrieve any of these items results in “It’s of no use”, which it’s safe to say would send many an adventurer off looking elsewhere for required items. The solution is to “move the robes” which reveals the magic map, but given this item is not required to complete the game, I guess the developers can be forgiven for the difficulty here.

Right, well I guess there's absolutely nothing on the closet.

The brass key is a different matter however, as the game simply can’t be finished without it. I was pretty certain the key was on the top of the closet, but every time I entered “look on closet” I was met with “The closet is fashioned of ornately carved mahogany” and nothing more. Understandably I began to doubt myself and after trying various different ways to locate the key on the closet, I gave up and spent around twenty minutes scouring every other part of the house trying to find it. When that failed I went back to the bedroom and typed the command again, only to get the response “The closet is fashioned of ornately carved mahogany. There may be something metallic on its top.” It turns out you have to be standing a fair distance away from the closet when you type “look on closet”, otherwise you won’t see anything. That’s just not cool and I have to wonder how many players have simply failed to find the key, particularly given I had so much trouble despite knowing exactly where it was.

Since when did physics become so important in King's Quest?!

Anyway, after complaining about the harsh time limit that made Déjà Vu more challenging than it should have been, I’ve moved straight onto another adventure game where time plays a role. Thankfully it’s not so much a time limit this time around (although I assume you do actually need to get rid of Manannan before running out of food to give him when he’s hungry) and acts more as a timekeeper to help you keep track of how much time you have to cause mischief while Manannan is away or sleeping. If he catches you being away from the house or with any spell related items on your person he will kill you immediately, so the timer tells you when you need to get back to the house and hide your items. Of course, you’re never informed of exactly how long you have, so trial and error is the only way to figure things out. It gives King’s Quest III a unique component and after the initial confusion that it causes, works pretty well.

Let's hope that bloody cat doesn't have a way of communicating.

Otherwise it’s business as usual! The game looks and feels just like the first two, has the same positives (addictive mystery, charming fantasy setting and humorous trimmings) and negatives (climbing stairs is still a nightmare and I can’t believe that once again you have to go in and out of a particular house continuously until the occupant is either not there or asleep to progress), and as expected I’m enjoying it despite all the flaws. There’s just something so compelling and light-hearted about the King’s Quest series that makes you want to forgive it for all the pain it causes you. Well, I’m ready to head down into Manannan’s laboratory and start casting spells. I can’t really remember exactly where I’m supposed to use them all or what happens at the end of the game, but I assume I should be able to get there within another hour or two. I’ll meet you back at Daventry! If I’m not there tomorrow, just wait longer!

Many hours of my youth were wasted in this lab, trying to cast spells without the manual.

Game 5: King's Quest III - Introduction

It's 3 out of 5 games for Sierra and I have a feeling the ratio is only going to increase in the shortterm.

Déjà Vu was a challenging and fresh experience for me, but the fifth game on the list takes me back to the nostalgic and familiar King’s Quest series. This time it’s the third game in the series, King’s Quest III: To Heir is Human, which was released in 1986. It’s the last King’s Quest game that I’ve played (and completed) previously, with around a decade passing between first playing the game as a young boy and completing it as an adult. The holdup wasn’t due to it being extraordinarily difficult, although it is quite a challenging adventure game. Instead, it was caused by Sierra’s sneaky copy protection scheme, which in hindsight caused me to waste many hours of my childhood trying to achieve the impossible. You see King’s Quest III was the first Sierra game that required information that was only available in the manual, and since I was playing a pirated copy (The Adventure Gamer does not encourage pirating games, but let’s just say I played just about every Amiga game ever made as a kid), I didn’t have this available to me. After purchasing the game many years later I was eventually able to make sense of my original failure.

I really could have used this information when I was about 11!

After the success of King’s Quest I and II, Roberta Williams understandably got a very similar team of developers together to produce the third game in the series. One notable change was that Al Lowe stepped up from only handling music on King’s Quest II to a Lead Programmer on King’s Quest III. The experience he gained on this project undoubtedly gave him the knowledge and confidence to produce the Leisure Suit Larry series a year later, but that’s another story. Speaking of stories, the game moves away from Daventry and the exploits of King Graham and instead takes place in the land of Llewdor. A nasty wizard named Manannan has been kidnapping young males from surrounding areas to become his slaves. He gets these boys to do his bidding, but as soon as they show any sort of reluctance or signs of rebellion, he simply kills them. He soon realised that all of his captives would dream of freedom by the time they reached manhood and so any that made it to their eighteenth birthday would be turned to ash regardless. Manannan’s latest slave goes by the name Gwydion, a seventeen year old from Daventry, and it’s the players task to escape from the wizard and find a way home.

Manannan do dooo do do do, Manannan do do do do...

Interestingly, the apparent departure from Daventry and absence of King Graham led many critics and fans of the series to immediately criticise Roberta for ignoring the series’ history. How those fans must have wanted to swallow their words if they ever played the game through to completion, as there’s actually a very strong connection. There’s no doubt though that the shift would be off-putting for anyone coming in with expectations based on the story and characters of the first two games. Once again I’ll be playing through the original game, albeit the slightly improved version that uses the AGI V3 engine that was released in 1987, and not either of the unofficial fan remakes that are out there. If my recent experiences with King’s Quest I and II are anything to go by, I imagine a lot of the part III is still holding residence in my brain along with the theme song for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and the names of all the streets of Monopoly. I recall the first part of the game being based in real time and having to do things at certain times, so we’ll see how much my foggy memories can help me out with that. It’s time to kick some wizard butt!

The original box artwork for King's Quest III