King's Quest VI: Heir Today, Gone Tomorrow

I fondly remember my parents playing these kinds of point-and-click adventure games when I was a kid. And then I would play them, mainly by memorising what you had to do, using hints and some basic problem-solving.

KQ6 is perhaps the most popular of the King's Quest series and I did enjoy replaying it the past week or so. I think I might actually prefer the style of KQ5 a bit more - it feels more varied, epic and fun. It felt like a more interesting world. But KQ6 seems to be the recognised peak in terms of overall style and gameplay. 5 is broken in terms of puzzles with too much "moon logic" - random solutions and dead-ends which are impossible to guess.

However, 6 has the same flaw, just not to the same extent. It's easy to end up in impossible-to-win situations. And, unless you want to spend hours on trial and error with lots of save states, or can somehow read Roberta Williams' mind, you're going to need some hints. Personally, I needed to check hints many times - maybe 20 times. I worked out plenty of things myself, but in many cases what I'd missed was trivial - like looking at an item in a room when I thought I'd already thoroughly looked everywhere.

That's the part that's annoying. It's badly designed in terms of leading you in the right direction. A game can be challenging without being frustrating. If I'm about to enter an area and there's no escape, the game can simply check that I have all the items I need and then stop me if I don't. Just have the character murmur to himself, "I don't quite feel ready to do this yet. I just have this inkling I should do a few things first.". It's nothing specific, but at least it gives you some feedback.

Also, what's the harm in allowing things to be done later? There's a character (Jollo) you can apparently befriend, but I didn't realise (or I did it on the wrong save state and forgot to do it again). Then he's nowhere to be found later on.

Another issue is the inconsistent tone. I like the overall look, characters, subtle humour and plot, but some elements are a bit too silly or frivolous. They undermine the more serious or heroic parts. A bit of humour is fine, but random stuff is just annoying. I didn't really like the dwarves, the bookworm, the living plants, etc. It was a little like Alice in Wonderland at times, but without the clever social commentary or logical riddles.

There were also too many loose ends. I spent so much time trying to engage with characters, animals or objects which were apparently irrelevant without sufficient hints that I was wasting my time. Hence why I missed obvious things - by getting tired of trying.

Anyway, it is fun in the end. Perhaps worth a replay just to enjoy the story, graphics and multiple endings. Meeting the ruler of the underworld was pretty cool and I didn't need hints for that whole section. The part with the minotaur was also cool, if a little tedious. A few parts were quite hilarious, like the animation of Alexander crossing a hot river.

King's Quest VI is generally considered to be the best entry in the series. It's a jewel amongst point-and-click games.

You play as Prince Alexander, who is trying to reunite with a princess he met in the previous game. You have to explore the Land of the Green Isles to discover where she is and what happened to her. The characters are charming as hell, with great (for the time) portraits and full voice acting. The pixel graphics have aged great, and there are tons of expressive and colorful areas to explore. Sierra finally got their head outta their ass and (almost) got rid of frustrating dead ends. Most of the puzzles are fairly logically, though I did have to look up a few things.

Overall this is one of the best early 90s video games. Sierra has an important place in gaming history, and this was their crowning achievement.