Quest for Glory: Shadows of Darkness

The Good
I've always found the Quest for Glory series to be my all-time favorite series of adventure games, and much better than any other RPG. However, the incredible atmosphere of this fourth QFG, well-titled "Shadows of Darkness", put it ahead of all other adventure games, with the possible exception of Grim Fandango. Why?...

It's in the Russian/Transsilvanian atmosphere, that adds SO much to the game. All of the Quest for Glory's take place in different settings, such as the Medieval or the African Desert, but the setting of QFG 4 stand out triumphantly from the others...it's dark and tragic, but doesn't lose its classic sense of humor. The graphics, 2d as they are, capture this feeling perfectly, better than 3d graphics could have ever done for it.

But the game stands out in more ways than that. The professional voice-acting adds a new layer, and it's unfortunate that QFG 5 didn't come close to measuring up in that area. The new, very arcade-y combat system is much simpler to use than that of the previous games. And even besides that, get ready meet and talk to Dr. Brain's ancestor...Dr. Cranium!...and you "reunite" with Baba Yaga, the witch from the first Quest for Glory.

Before this space ends, I'll mention that this game, while its ending remotely resembles that of QFG 3 with your hero being teleported to a new land, it isn't nearly as much of a quickie ending...

The Bad
In a very annoying way, there is a point very near to the game's beginning where if you don't do something there, you have effectively lost the game as you will not be able to complete it later...

The Bottom Line
The all-time BEST Quest for Glory ever, and in a series like this one, full of awesome games, THAT's saying a lot...

The Good
I really think QG4 had the chance to be the best in the series. There are lots of things to love about it. I find Mordavia to be a very cool setting. There's quite a bit to discover in this game (especially if you're a Paladin), and the character design is good. Mordavia's citizens are fun to interact with, and you can watch their attitudes toward you change as you begin to make a name for yourself in the town. The fighting system was totally redesigned for QG4 (as it was for every game in the series). In this game, instead of seeing the action from behind your hero, all of the action happens in a side-view. This gives the fights a more arcade-like feel. You can also fight in a "strategy mode", but I doubt that many people use it since the fights are so easy. QG4 has very nice graphics. The beautiful portraits of the game's characters are also a nice touch. There's also a great soundtrack; probably the best in the series up to that point. Those of you with wavetable soundcards will be especially pleased - this game was one of the first which treated the gamer without a Roland MT-32 to high quality MIDI. The voice acting is pretty well done. You'll probably recognize the voice of John Rhys-Davies (Raiders of the Lost Ark, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade) as the narrator. Everything is fairly solid, and mostly recorded well. There's one scene which I found especially funny; you'll have to play the game to find out, but let's just say that the townsfolk in the Inn at night take some pretty huge liberties with the script. :) So. In the good points, I've mentioned the story, the characters, the fighting system, the graphics, the music, and the acting. Sounds like a game you should just rush out and buy, right? Well...

The Bad
You may have heard that the game has a few bugs. Well, let's put it this way: I've bought the game twice, and tried three times to win it since 1993. In fact, the most recent time was just a few weeks ago (with the game's most recent version), and I still haven't beaten it. THAT'S buggy. I'll explain...

First of all, version 1.0 of the game had literally hundreds of bugs. This was, of course, back when Sierra made adventure games, and new games found their way to my house almost right away. I played as far as I could, before the bugs stopped me in my tracks. By then a patch had been released, so once it arrived in the mail (this is how we got our patches in the old days, unless we wanted to spend a couple of hours calling long-distance on our 2400 baud modems :) ), I installed it. I was now playing version 1.1, I believe. I was, ahem, thrilled to find out that I now had to restart the game because my saved games were no longer compatible with the new interpreter. I played the game again, but I was again stopped by the bugs. My patience had run out by then, so the disks got thrown back in the box.

Fast forward to 1999. I've just purchased the Quest for Glory Collection Series, looking forward to playing the CD-ROM version of QG4 for the first time - and finally finishing it. Unfortunately, rather than finally fixing the bugs in QG4 (and the few that hamper gameplay in QG3), Sierra decided to leave it as-is, and provide pages and pages of absolutely pathetic walkarounds for the many bugs that they didn't feel the need to fix. As you can probably tell, this doesn't make Sierra look too great in my eyes. It's actually BUGGIER in 1999 than it was in 1995 (I believe) when the CD-ROM version first came out. The reason is that the speed of many events in the game is dependant on the speed of your CPU. I can't understand why Sierra would do this. Their AGI and 16-color SCI games were coded so well, that they run at exactly the same speed on my Pentium as they would on an XT or AT. That's solid. You'd think that by QG4, Sierra would know that faster computers would come along, and that many people would still be playing their older games. Or, you'd think that they'd at least alter the programming of QG4 slightly, realizing that most people aren't running 486's anymore.

Don't try a software slowdown utility to get around the speed-based bugs. It won't work. If you're running a Pentium/75 mhz or faster, you'll probably need to go into your BIOS setup and disable your internal cache. If you don't know how to do that, I'm afraid it's not likely that the game will run on your computer.

So you've disabled the cache, and played the game happily since then. And you've saved your game every five minutes (because it can still crash without warning, due to problems with the 32-bit DOS extender). You're now on the game's day 40, and nothing new has happened in forever! Why could this be?

Ah, you've discovered my next big problem with QG4. It suffers from a little something known as the 'Dead End Fallacy'. You have to meet a certain someone, in a certain location, on Day 5 or 6. Not before, or after. And if you don't, you can't win the game and you won't figure that out until later. You're led down the long path to a dead-end, and you'll have to restart the game.

I have other, smaller, problems with QG4. But these are the main things. They make the game very difficult to enjoy.

The Bottom Line
I want to love this game. I want to reccommend it to everybody. It had all the potential to be a really great adventure game, but it failed.

If you're willing to perform all kinds of tricks to make QG4 run, and you understand the fact that you'll have to read some of the hints before you even start playing (if you don't want to risk the dead-end), then pick this one up, by all means. If you're the more impatient type and flawed execution bugs you a lot, move on.

The Good
Wow,what is there not to like?? This was the first PC game I ever bought, mainly because of the great box design: graves, tentacled monsters, witches and skulls, when I saw it I fell in love. Added to this all the booklets, full of gothic puns and spooky stories I thought it couldn't get better.

This game is mostly an adventure game combined with RPG elements which make it really decision-open. You can go anything you like, click at everything and read something clever, talk to anyone and actually do anything you can think of, almost.

The graphics were superb for 1994 with very nicely drawn surroundings and some of the most distinctive faces ever made for a game (ahh... Rusalka...). The sound effects and music add very much to the eerie atmosphere and a cozy feeling of old horror stories featuring ghosts and curses in little towns were the townsfolk bolt their houses at night (for example the inn features a midi sample of Grieg's Annitra's Dance, magnificent!).

The gameplay is a bit on the easy side, with most adventuring riddles being solved with a combination of using the right item on the right place, conversing with everyone and advancing the right skills to overcome obstacles. There is so much to be done though, and the feeling of adventuring is always there so its not so much of a hindrance that the various objectives are mainly easy. There is also a bit of fighting which adds an extra flavor, although it was very badly implemented in this game .

In the end the best aspect of this game is its concept, imagery and spooky feeling. It is a combination of all the classical horror themes (vampires, werewolves, mad scientists, ghosts, graveyards, Slavic mythology along with a Poeish and Lovecraftian touch). The master aspect of all these is that they never feel out of place or disjointed like in other horror games of that time (waxworks etc), but completed each side of the story of one of the best RPG adventures ever made.

The Bad
Well there were some bugs, but I didn't care at the time.

The really hideous part of the game is one that was advertised on the box.. combat. It was badly programmed and not entertaining. There was even an option that the character's fighting was carried out by the PC on autopilot which was very awkward at first, but really logical after the first few lame battles. Also the sound effects after a victorious battle were so kitsch and out of place.. a common feature of all Sierra games. Sierra could never really criticize their games effectively and cut some stupid art or effects out of them, but hey they had just come out of the 80's eh?

The game these days can be seen as a little retro. It hasn't aged very well as most of Sierra's games unfortunately. A bit childish in some aspects too.

The Bottom Line
This is the perfect blend of a mixture of gothic horror and comedy in a PC game adventure/RPG. You have to try it out if you like graveyards, superstitious folk, vampires, bloodthirsty bunnies and early 90's gaming. Actually there hasn't been one single game to be compared to it since then.

My dream one day, is not to see the wars end and earth be a better place, but some gaming company make another game that could compete this one in gothic horror feeling , mixing traditional spookiness and a bit of comic humor and make an equally open actioned game with more clever puzzles. Is it so hard???

My only hope right now for something a bit close to this, is "A vampyre's tale" an adventure made by Autumn moon entertainment, although its more on the cute graphics , leaving a bit of horror aside.. but since its supposed to be made from the creators of the perfect Monkey Island 3 its ok I guess.

So still Shadows of darkness is as close as it gets to the perfect gothic horror themed RPG/adventure. There is always Ghost 'n Goblins of course and Castlevania but these are arcade platformers and another story.

FIN.