Roberta Williams' King's Quest VII: The Princeless Bride

aka: KQ7, King's Quest VII: Die prinzlose Braut, King's Quest: The Prince-less Bride
Moby ID: 135
DOS Specs
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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)

40 People (33 developers, 7 thanks) · View all

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 79% (based on 23 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.5 out of 5 (based on 98 ratings with 8 reviews)

If it wasn't for the King's Quest name...

The Good
I found kind of innovative the progression bar, but nothing more...

The Bad
The intro sucks, a very low quality video with some of the silliest scenes i have seen ( what's the point in Rosella jumping into the lake?) then the Disney-like song is awful... And then in the game, we found some of the worse expresibility ever given to characters from a videogame, then the descriptions of the objects (a key element in a adventure game) are just ridiculous, and well, definitely that's a child's game.

The Bottom Line
Nothing to do with King's Quest 6, KQ7 represents the agony of King's Quest...

Windows 3.x · by Depth Lord (934) · 2004

A light-hearted journey in a classic series

The Good
King's Quest 7 takes the series to even more accessible and charming levels, eliminating the most frustrating aspects of other adventure games and focusing instead on a Disney-esque style elements that truly live up to the lofty comparison. The character animation and background detail are gorgeous for what they are, and the voice-acting is top notch. The two-character dynamic, a first for the series, is pulled off very creatively, and there's always a sense of urgency as Valanice and her daughter Rosella criss-cross paths attempting to find one another and protect the quirky and diverse realm from annihilation at the hands of an evil sorceress. This game is all about fun for everybody, from the novice to series veterans.

The Bad
As an entry in the King's Quest series, the Princeless Bride provides little more than a vague connection, forsaking series veterans for genre novices, and crushing the momentum the franchise had built up with the fifth and sixth entries. What it provides in Disney charm it lacks in challenge -- anyone with a moderate knowledge of the genre will find it a breeze to complete. The KQ series references were left out of the game in large, developers claim, to make the game accessible to all; an argument that falls crucially flat on its back when a character from an early entry materializes out of no where as a vital plot element.

The Bottom Line
Serious gamers and fans of the franchise may have to suppress a chuckle at the Princeless Bride's opening musical number, but if you can forgo your pride and overcome the pervading atmosphere of Disney cheese (or even learn to appreciate its outright charm), you may find that this is one of the most fun entries in the series, and great game in its own right.

Windows · by jTrippy (58) · 2008

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

[ View all 8 player reviews ]

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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Related Sites +

  • 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.

Identifiers +

  • MobyGames ID: 135
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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.