King's Quest VI: Heir Today, Gone Tomorrow

The Good
King's Quest 6 plays as a classic fairy tale might. The plot is unusually complex and rich for the series, thanks to contributions by Gabriel Knight writer/designer Jane Jensen, who's design methods complemented Roberta Williams' perfectly in this installment.

The plot itself has been done before, even in the series (Prince Alexander sets out to rescue his love after seeing her trapped in a tower through an enchanted mirror), but the flair and atmosphere with which the game executed is phenomenal. Charmingly quirky at times and dark and mysterious at others, the game provides brain-teasing puzzles set against a vibrant environment that ranges in influence from Arabian Knights to Alice in Wonderland.

Beauty and the Beast's Robbie Benson does a solid job as the protagonist, and its ironically funny to hear him interact with the game's own equivalent of Beast. This was also the first entry in the series to offer multiple solutions to solve the game, one of which permitted you to skip a good 1/3rd of the game (this component was half-heartedly featured in the series' next installment as well).

The Windows version features newly-detailed character portraits that are a nice, if unnecessary, addition.

The Bad
Despite the multiple paths, the game's replayability factor is somewhat limited. Some of the puzzles are unnecessarily frustrating (this is during a time when Sierra cruelly worked anti-piracy techniques into the game's structure, frustrating those who owned legitimate copies), requiring you to save often and reattempt all-too-often. It's also very easy to miss something or make a mistake that will have fantastically bad and unforeseen consequences for the future. One such puzzle involves descending to the underworld to save the love interest's parents, only to discover that if when you get back, you forgot to pick up water from the River Styx, you are stuck without recourse and must load from a previous save. There are several instances like this where even people who have played the game multiple times before (myself included) can easily get stuck.

The Bottom Line
If you're an adventure gamer, you've already played this, and I don't have to say anything. If you're just getting into the series or the genre, this is an essential. A true classic.

The Good
What I like? I like the size of this game - it is much bigger than previous installments thus giving the player much more puzzles too solve. It is also good that the game engine was changed. It serves good for the performance. The game is no longer slow as it might be encountered in case of the previous parts. The gameplay is also non-linear - you may finish it in a few ways watching different endings depending on your achievements.

The Bad
What I don't like? Well, the graphics are as always badly converted in Sierra games. This time instead of dithering mistakes there are colour palette locks making some screen looks not quite nice. The ugliest screen in Amiga's history adventure games is inventory. I guess 8 colours is all we have here and the items are so badly drawn that Revolution should be ashamed of it. Problematic are also cuts made in this version of the game - Amiga version lacks of some puzzles, some screens and some items.

The Bottom Line
Overall "King's Quest VI" is a good adventure game but if they had put attention to small details and avoided obvious bugs and they had got rid of them before the release it could have been a diamond among Amiga adventure games. Right now it is a rough diamond - needs to be polished, it has its value but it is far less than others staying in a competition.

The Good
Finally, a King's Quest game that is less linear than the previous titles. There are multiple ways to solve some of the puzzles, and different paths and endings. It's also one of the last of the great breed of graphic adventures that allows the player to become stuck in dead ends and die in many different ways. In this respect, and because some of the puzzles are quite involved, the gameplay and difficulty are on par with most other challenging Sierra games of the day.

The graphics and sound are top-notch. At times I thought the otherwise beautiful hand painted artwork was too disjointed from location to location, though. I thought the art for the previous title -- King's Quest 5 -- was more suitable.

The opening scene was totally amazing in its day, especially on faster 386 or 486 PCs. Additionally, nicely integrated animations help bring out the artwork that serves as the backgrounds throughout the game. The sound is atmospheric, but sometimes a little too quiet, and carries one fatal flaw...the closing theme!

The Bad
GIRL IN THE TOWER. This has to be one of the most solid examples of a game company overextending that I can think of. (short of the FMV nightmare which came a little bit later). Although there are countless worse examples of music, "Girl In the Tower" was as excruciating for me to listen to then as it is for me to remember now, 8 or 9 years later. Go ahead and have a listen, I dare you.

"Girl in the tower, i'm reaching out, please tell me what to do....." Bad. Very bad indeed.

Aside from than that one song, there is not much that is wrong with KQ6. Unfortunately, it also doesn't stand out as being great. KQ6 is one of those games lost in history that few people, other than King's Quest and Roberta Williams fans, will likely want to go back and play. Put simply, there are many better graphic adventures.

The Bottom Line
King's Quest 6 carries this adventure series' storyline off on another tangent, this time as Alexander in the land of the Green Isles. The uninspired story is along the boring lines of 'rescue the princess' and helps put this game squarely on the "Good Games" pile instead of with the memorable classics.