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Conquests of Camelot: The Search for the Grail

aka: Conquests of Camelot I: The Search for the Grail, Conquests of Camelot: King Arthur - The Search for the Grail, King Arthur and the Search for the Grail
Moby ID: 1408

DOS version

By far one of the most beautiful adventure games I've ever played...

The Good
Everything from the music to the graphics (though limited to 16 colors, the game had real artistic talent behind the sprites and the animations) was fantastic.

The game features a lovely mix of action and adventure. The action elements aren't a main focus in the game and aren't too involved (think Space Quest), so people who love adventure games shouldn't be turned off.

The puzzles in the game can be challenging but I managed to get through the whole game without being really stuck more than once. The only time I got stuck was a part that involved yelling, which was an action you didn't have to do at any other point in the game.

The game also has multiple endings based on some of the decisions you make, just like with Conquest of the Longbow (another exquisite adventure game).

Someone mentioned the riddles in the game as a bad part. For me, they were some of the most interesting puzzles in the game. The riddles are masterfully written in a way that anyone should be able to solve them given enough time and thought. I first played the game when I was 13 and managed to solve every riddle I encountered, and I played the riddles section multiple times to see every riddle. Anyway, some people might be turned off and may want to immediately progress to the next section. For those people, the riddles might have been pretty frustrating.

The Bad
I didn't like the part in the game where I got stuck. Like I mentioned earlier, it involved yelling which was something you didn't have to do throughout the whole game up until then, so I never even thought to try it. I imagine lots of people got stuck on the same part for the same reason.

Every single puzzle is still very logical. Unlike too many games, there's no brute force strategy to figuring out what to do where you run into parts where you have to just try every single action you can think of with no sense of direction. Looking around each environment gives clues as to what you do, and just about everything should be obvious. If not, you'll probably hit yourself on the head when you figure it out because the game really does a great job of filling you in.

The copy protection puzzles are probably the most annoying thing. I didn't even think to look in the manual when I first played the game with the riddle of the flowers.

The Bottom Line
I would say this is one of the greatest adventure games ever made, not just for aesthetic reasons (though it certainly is among the best in this department as well), but for the straight-forward adventure gameplay with some entertaining action moments.

To me, Quest for Glory, Conquest of Camelot, and Conquest of the Longbow offer the best Sierra has to offer when it comes to the adventure department because they offer some of the most straight-forward (but not necessarily easy) puzzles, often with multiple approaches.

by John Lucas (12) on January 19, 2005

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