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)

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

A Kinder, Gentler Adventure Game

The Good
King's Quest VII (1994) features some impressive, cartoon-inspired animation and voice acting. It is clear that a tremendous amount of effort went into making the game look and sound like a Disney cartoon.

The game switches between two women; Valanice and Rosella as the attempt to escape from a magical kingdom.

It seems that a Troll King wants to marry Rosella, while Valanice finds herself trapped in a desert. As the game progresses, you switch between the two heroines, until finally facing off against the Troll King and an evil witch.

Actually, I think that the witch is a fairy. But in any case, she has been kidnapping royalty.

Generally, this game is shooting for a kinder, gentler, "family-friendly" atmosphere. The cartoon graphics are clearly set up to appeal to the younger audience.

As is the case with other Sierra adventure games, the player must explore his or her surroundings, interact with characters, pick up items and solve the various puzzle.

In comparison to previous games, the point and click interface has been made simpler to use. People new to the adventure game format should have no problem using the controls or figuring out what is going on.

If you have not played the previous Kings Quest games, then this game takes great pains to ensure that you do not need to be familiar with past events.

The Bad
Kings Quest VII feels like a rushed job, and with good reason. Cuts were made to ensure that the game was only on one disc, and the original release of the game was marred with severe glitches that made the game unbeatable.

Most of the glitches were fixed via a patch, but some still remain. Even without the annoying glitches, the game feels like it should have been longer and more epic than the final product.

The game has a few some dark, creepy moments, despite its kiddie, cartoon graphics, and the oversimplified gameplay mechanics take some of the fun out of the adventure gaming genre.

The Bottom Line
King's Quest VII (1994) features breathtaking, cartoon graphics and a large fantasy world to explore. Fans of adventure games, including newbies to the Kings Quest franchise should give this game a try.

Windows · by Edward TJ Brown (118) · 2019

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

[ 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.