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

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.

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.

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.