Roberta Williams' King's Quest VII: The Princeless Bride
Description official descriptions
Queen Valanice of Daventry has always thought that getting married would be the best course of action for her daughter Rosella. However, the young princess seems to be more interested in adventure, recklessly following a mysterious magical creature into a whirlpool that eventually transfer herself and her mother to another world. The two end up in different parts of a land known as Eldritch, with Rosella being transformed into a troll. They must find each other and eventually defeat an evil sorceress who plots to ruin the land.
Like its predecessors, King's Quest VII is an adventure game primarily based on solving inventory puzzles. It discards the icon-based interface of the two previous installments, and instead features a simplified "smart cursor" used for general interaction with highlighted objects and characters, as well as significantly fewer text descriptions. The game is divided into chapters, alternating between the queen and the princess as protagonists. As opposed to the realistic drawing style of all the preceding game, it has brightly colored visuals reminiscent of Walt Disney cartoons.
Spellings
- King's Quest 7: Невеста тролля - Russian spelling
- מסע המלך VII - הכלה ללא הנסיך - Hebrew spelling
- 國王密使 7 - Traditional Chinese spelling
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Credits (DOS version)
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[ full credits ] |
Reviews
Critics
Average score: 79% (based on 23 ratings)
Players
Average score: 3.5 out of 5 (based on 98 ratings with 8 reviews)
Proof Roberta Williams started taking drugs after King's Quest 6.
The Good
It has the King's Quest name and it cost me less than 20 dollars.
The Bad
First, the graphics are pretty bad. The "Motion picture quality animation" (I'm quoting the box here) is kind of choppy and seems like it's missing several frames when anything moves quickly. Second, the music really gets on your nerves. Next, instead of the look, pick up, talk, and walk buttons, they now just have a "magic wand" for a cursor. Just put it over something, if it sparkles, click. Speaking of the interface, the bottom part of the screen is the inventory menu instead of the full screen action you get in the other King's Quest games. Also, often, when you click on an item that "light's up" the magic wand, you character (who is very slow, even in version 2.0) will stroll over and say, get ready for the deep, profound statement, "amazing!" she will exclaim. Nothing else. Just that. Why they had that item light up the wand in the first place is a mystery. Also, gone is the simple save screen. instead, you have to enter your name, then you "bookmark" a chapter. (more on chapters later) No simple save button. You have to go through a boring menu to save. The game is divided into chapters. You can play any chapter at any time. This eliminates the sense of progression. Why not just skip to the end. ALso, the begining cutscene, unlike in previous King's Quest games, isn't interesting to watch. 50 percent of it is watching a poorly animated Rosella singing some lame song. Then 45 percent is Rosella and her mom talking about how Rosella must be married. WOW! That's original! Then, at the end, she dives into a pool?? and is caught by an arm that pulls her into another dimension as her mom falls downward. No explanation. no reason why she jumped in the pool. She just, did. Then, the puzzles are lame. They fall into three categories.
- Ridiculously easy
- Stupidly obscure
- Ridiculously difficult
No more experimenting with items. Instead, if you put an item over the other, and it doesn't light up, then it won't even let you try. The whole game holds your hand the whole time as if four year olds are playing this game. The talking is boring. There is no lip sync, and practically no body language or expression in their voice.
The Bottom Line
If you are a fan of King's Quest, don't get it. You'll feel bad afterwards.
Windows 3.x · by James Kirk (150) · 2004
The Good
The King 's Quest saga continues, with cartoon-style animation, new worlds to explore, new puzzles to solve and - thankfully - this adventure has two female protagonists.
Adventure games during this area were trying to utilise the CD-ROM format with voice acting (instead of just text), and creating a world that either looked more like a Disney cartoon or Hollywood blockbuster.
I see plenty of creativity and ambition in this game, sadly the execution of this game is horrible, and marked the beginning of the end for a once great adventure game franchise.
The Bad
The cartoon-inspired look of the game and its intermission sequences are actually impressive for 1994. The big problem is that when you develop an adventure game in such a manner, you cannot overlook 'little' things in order to get the game on the shelves by Xmas.
Here the animation is often painfully choppy, with characters moving painfully slow. Had more time been given to development, the world and the characters in it would likely have connected with players more then they do with what was released.
Any emotional investment in the characters or their problems is marred by the clearly rushed nature of the animation. If you want the player to care about the fate of your two heroines, then you have to understand how animation - when done well - can create cartoon actors (actresses) who can be good actors.
The settings may look pretty, but it is supposed to be an adventure game, not an art gallery. If you want to see how cartoon type animation can work well in adventure games, check out Monkey Island 3 or even Full Throttle.
Beyond the rush job/animation problems - which make parts of the story hard to follow - the control scheme has been changed, almost 'dumbbed down' to the point where puzzles are way to easy or way to obscure to be of any fun.
The voice acting is not great, but that is probably (partly) the fault of whoever edited or wrote the script. Good script writing/editing is as key to CD adventure games as is creating animated actors.
It is hard to get too interested in a cheap "Alice In Wonderland" storyline, and many of the side stories that arise are rarely developed enough to matter.
Descriptions of items or characters are often kept to a bare minimum, and one reason why the game allows you skip chapters is because the game has a tendency to crash - at least the original version I had.
I do not object to the 'family friendly' tone of the game or even the 'homages' to legends, myths and other fictitious tales. Such things have served the series well in previous KQ adventure games.
However, the game seems to be a little too eager to ensure that both heroines stay within an uber-feminine box. As if someone looked at 1940s Disney cartoon as how women should behave in an adventure.
Heck, the princess is introduced singing a very, very, very happy tune about how great her life is. It's not a good song and comes off as a wee bit like "Stepford Wives".
True, they are royalty and that means a certain decourm and sense of proprietary. I just found the overall design of the women to be a tad sexist.
The Bottom Line
The game suffers from being rushed to the store shelves, which leaves players with bugs, confusing story, poor character development, choppy animation and cartoon characters that are hard to like or dislike. It is a shame because behind all these faults, rare moments of creativity and adventure game fun can be seen.
Windows · by ETJB (428) · 2013
Say Goodbye to the Days of Yore
The Good
The paper-animation looked pretty, even if it moved extremely slowly. The ability to play as two characters as the story progressed was interesting; however, that alone can't carry a game.
The Bad
Where to begin...
The original release of King's Quest 7 was painfully slow. Sierra actually had to release a King's Quest 7 version 2.0 in which your character would walk faster (why they couldn't program a patch to fix this irksome flaw, I'll never know).
Robert William's introduce the chapter concept with this game. Like Phantasmagoria, the game can be started from any point. The problem is that there is little incentive to finish a chapter when you can just play the next!
The opening musical number indicates exactly how child-like the game seemed. When both KQ 5 and 6 were much darker than the rest of the series, KG 7 did seem like a Disney cartoon -- one that isn't very inventive at that.
The Bottom Line
If you've never played the King's Quest series, do not begin here. The only enjoyment I received from this game was knowing that it was a continuation of what had been my favorite series to date.
Windows 3.x · by Game22 (35) · 2004
Discussion
Subject | By | Date |
---|---|---|
Bugs - the game freezes at an unmentioned point | Nowhere Girl (8680) | Feb 19, 2017 |
Trivia
Bugs
In order to release Roberta Williams' King's Quest VII: The Princeless Bride in time for Christmas '94, Sierra didn't spend much time on beta testing. The game was very buggy and it was literally impossible to finish it without the patches that were released a few months later. Due to the large amount of bugs and a the lousy save interface, they released version 2.0 of the game, which worked faster, was less buggy and had an enhanced save interface, in 1995.
Intro
In the Disney-inspired intro, Rosella sings a song and is depicted having only 3 fingers and a thumb on each hand. Unlike Disney movies, the opening sequence is the only song in the entire story.
King Graham
Roberta Williams' King's Quest VII: The Princeless Bride is the only game in the series not to feature King Graham in any capacity, although he's listed in the voice credits. This may be indicative that the character was originally included, but cut do to time constraints in an effort to push the game out for a Christmas release. However, rhere is a line of dialog recorded by Danny Delk on the game's CD wherein King Graham says "Ladies! I was getting worried! You're 15 minutes late for lunch!"
King's Quest references
Although the packaging assures potential buyers that no previous King's Quest experience is required to play the game, Prince Edgar from King's Quest IV: The Perils of Rosella appears in a pivotal role, but his presence is explained during the game for those players unfamiliar with the previous game.
Title
Two other subtitles that the designers considered for the game were What's Lava Got to Do With It and Rosella Vs. The Volcano.
Information also contributed by Adam Baratz, Daniel Albu
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Hints for KQ7
The puzzles in King's Quest 7 can be tough. These hints will help you solve them! -
Walkthrough on Gamezilla
Step by step, this walkthrough gives everything all at once for solving KQ7.
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Contributors to this Entry
Game added by Andy Roark.
Windows added by Sciere. Macintosh added by Katakis | カタキス.
Additional contributors: Katakis | カタキス, Jeanne, Xoleras, Great Hierophant, Klaster_1, jTrippy, Paulus18950, Cantillon, Ingsoc.
Game added May 25, 1999. Last modified January 23, 2024.