King's Quest V: Absence Makes the Heart Go Yonder!

The Good
King's Quest V boasted beautiful VGA graphics, and was one of the very first games to have voice actors. The cosmetic upgrade really benefited Sierra's graphic adventure genre, but the game was desperately downgraded in my opinion. But this is one of computer gaming's great debates: the switch over from keyboard text parser - driven games to mouse-driven games. Did it help or hinder the genre? I'm of the opinion that the old text parser system was better, smarter, and more interactive.

The Bad
With King's Quest V the level of interaction became so -un-interactive, as you wandered around and were essentially told what to do. There are plenty of puzzles which are extremely simplified compared to puzzles of the previous king's quests. And the first CD version with the voice actors should have been edited better, as every time a voice was played it would sound like a door was opening; this could have been a sound card problem at the time. For me, the King's Quest series ended with this sub-par title because of its low interactivity level. In many ways King's Quest V would be an omen for what was to come a few years later in CD-ROM interactive movies, where players shelled out too much money to watch bad actors and bad scripts complain about their system requirements while they did little to interact with the game aside from buy a better graphics card so the game might look better. It began here, folks, and whether that is good or bad is entirely your own opinion.

The Bottom Line
Don't play King's Quest V as your first King's Quest. the first four are much better an introduction.

The Good
The game has a cute atmosphere and is easy to start playing.

The Bad
Well, I have a great game collection and every once in a while I get the urge to play games from the early days. It was King Quest V this time, and I must tell you some things are better left in the past...

I am not going to say anything about the sound or graphics. No point to compare it to today's standards and all that, I plan to focus only on game play and the storyline. Those two aspects of a game are eternal and are not affected by a faster processor or better graphics..

Game Play: Simply terrible. In the infamous sierra fashion few things stick out:

1) You must do things in a specific order, if you don't you can get stuck 2) You can die easily, what kind of fun is that? 3) You can get to the end of the game just to find out you can not finish it because of something you did/didn't do at the start of the game 4) Illogical puzzles

Storyline: The story does not make sense at all, first you got this annoying owl that does not do anything at all, you have a series of tasks to complete that have an educational value. You get a bunch of stuff from here, some from there and that makes up the story. When you compare KQV to modern adventure games like The Longest Journey, you can understand what I mean. R. Williams is simply a lame writer; I am not sure why she got so much fame.

When you play this game you can sense the roots of the failure of KQ8 in the air. Once games became more sophist aced, lame companies did not have a chance to survive.

The Bottom Line
Go back if you are eager for nostalgia. The only reason I play this game is because I played it 15 years ago and it brought good memories back.

The Good
King's Quest V is Sierra's first major departure from their text parser adventure game interface. The primary new feature is the icon system to allow the player to interact with the world, and it was (and still is) a controversial change.

Backgrounds are no longer computer artwork in KQ5, but nicely scanned oil paintings in 256 colors. They look fantastic and work quite well, furthering the "storybook" theme. However, the sprite animation is similar to previous Sierra games. The music is also very nice and there is support for many sound cards. Sound effects are minimal, but the new multimedia CD-ROM version features voice acting -- another first for Sierra.

The plot is decent, although I don't care for the introduction.

The Bad
The mouse interface had its good and bad points. Although it allowed the game to possibly reach a much wider audience, the icons really did reduce the amount of detail that was put into the setting. Fortunately, the new graphics help to offset this to some degree. Also, some of the icons are rarely needed and just take up space. This was rectified in later games.

While the new interface makes KQ5 easier to play, it does not necessarily make the puzzles much easier. Some are challenging, and I could not get through the game the first time without a couple of hints. Beware, like most "classic" adventure games, it is also possible to make mistakes in a few places such that you can not finish the game!

Furthermore, there isn't much replayability in this title. The puzzles are solved in one way, and although you can travel around a bit, most puzzles are also solved in a linear fashion. Oddly enough, I replayed it a few times; on repeat, it seems like a different game if you have struggled through the first time.

Getting back to the graphics, they are quite good in VGA. I also played the EGA version, and I can say it was UGLY -- much worse than any of Sierra's 16 color games of the era. They simply took the 256 color images and reduced them to 16 colors and the results were terrible. The only thing worse was the console version.

The final complaint is the box size. Sierra left their traditional box size, which was small by industry standards, and blew it up to a thick monstrosity. Most other publishers that hadn't done this this quickly followed suit, and this wasn't brought back under control until the time of this review, 2002.

The Bottom Line
King's Quest V is a classic adventure game that marks a turning point in the genre. Many questioned whether some of the changes were for the better. In any case, it turned out to be a huge hit, and is definitely worth playing through once.