This review originally
appeared in the December 2002 issue of The
Inventory
and is reprinted here with the permission of its author, Dimitris
Manos. The Inventory is an online magazine
devoted to the adventure genre. A new issue is available every month
from the front page of Just Adventure and previous issues are always
available at this
link.

King’s Quest is a series of adventure games created by Sierra
on-line and it has won a lot of devoted fans. A lot of people began
playing adventures with a King’s Quest game. The official King’s
Quest series has 8 parts so far and each part is very different than
the others. Sierra has abandoned the series with its last and worst
part of all King’s Quest 8. It seems though as their fans did
not agree with this move.

Tierra a new company made
up of old Sierra adventure fans have decided to re-introduce people
to the great games of the past by remaking
the old ones with enhanced graphics, music and interface and in this
case even with enhanced plot. The remake of King’s Quest 1
became a total success and Tierra became known as the best fan-based
adventure developer. Their second remake, King’s Quest 2 was
eagerly awaited by their devoted fans for many months now. The game
was released on the 3rd of December 2002 and as the first one this
one was also available to download for free. Was it worth the wait?

Story: I have not played
the original King’s Quest 2 so I
don’t know what are the differences of the remake with the
original. What I do know is that the remake has definitely an interesting
and magical story line. It will remind you of many fairy tales and
myths you have probably read or heard when you were young.

You take the role of
Graham the legendary king of Daventry. The game begins with Graham
sitting on his throne in the castle. The leader
of his army comes in the throne room to inform Graham of the latest
news in Daventry, but Graham seems not so interested and the loneliness
of a king’s life has made him think a lot about some companionship.
Suddenly the magic mirror lights up and Graham looks inside the mirror.
He sees a land not so far away from his land.

The land is called Kolyma
and then (through a beautiful 3D sequence) Graham sees a beautiful
young woman sitting sadly on the porch of
a tower. He knows that this woman is trapped there and he ventures
in a quest to save her (apparently he fell in love with at first
sight). This is the end of the beautiful and long introduction of
King’s Quest 2 remake.

From that point you take control of Graham and you have to find
Valanice (that is the name of the girl in the mirror) and rescue
her from her captors. But the plot does not only revolve around the
location of the girl. The political situation in Kolyma with the
conflicts between the Count and the church, the dark forces that
are trying to take the control of the kingdom of Daventry and the
conflicts of power in the realm of the Mer-people are also sub-plots
that tie in with the main plot in a nice way.

In his quest for his queen, king Graham will have to find the three
gems of nature and put them in the door of destiny. This is not going
to be an easy task, and to accomplish it he will have to travel on
earth, in water and on air. During his venturing he will come across
many mythical and memorable characters like Poseidon (or Neptune
as his Latin name is) god of the sea, a mermaid, a flying horse,
a talking pumpkin, vampires, an enchanter, a creature in the haystack
(that nobody knows what or who it is), monks, sharks, a girl with
a red cap (hmmm familiar?) and a lot more fabulous creatures.

Graphics: The graphics of the game are not the next big thing in
games or computer graphics. It’s not your quake 5 3D graphics
with anti-alising and fabulous lighting effects. Is that bad? No,
definitely not. The graphics are sweet… sweet like chocolate
(or candy, in case you don’t like chocolate). It is the closest
thing you will find to the graphics of the Sierra adventures of
the early 90’s. The game is played from the 3rd person perspective
and uses 2D sprites on 2D backgrounds.

They are colourful during
the search for the first two gems and quite dark in the search
for the last gem. All the hotspots are very
clearly depicted and distinguished from the rest of the backgrounds.
The only flaw I could find with the graphics would be that some of
the close-ups are not so nicely drawn as others (for example I didn’t
like the merchant’s close up drawing in the town). But overall
a great job especially for a fan made project.

The graphics will definitely bring nostalgia to the older ones that
had the luck to experience the great adventures of Sierra in the
past.

Sound: The sound of the
game is also phenomenal for a fan based game. The soundtrack of
the game exceeds 2 hours of music, and when
you bear in mind that Syberia’s soundtrack was about half an
hour long it makes you understand that these people really love what
they are doing.

This time they did not
produce a voice pack because according to Tierra due the excessive
dialogues of King’s Quest 2, it would
take a considerable amount of time to produce a voice pack. Actually
sometimes if the people that are doing the voice-overs are not professional
it is maybe preferred to not have voices at all. But the truth is
that those used to the new games will find the game quite ‘silent’ because
of the absence of voices. It is uncertain however whether they are
going to produce a voice-pack in the future for the game or not.

The sound effects were
also great and actually I even jumped from my chair at one point
because of a sudden sound effect (and I’m
not a person that jumps from his chair, I have never done it during
a movie). In the end credits there is even a real song and it is
also quite well performed.

The soundtrack of the game is also available for download for free
from the site:
http://www.queststudios.com/quest/kq2rts/kq2music/kq2music.html

Gameplay: The interface
is the classic point and click interface of the older Sierra games.
You have 5 different cursors for walk,
look, action, talk and inventory item. The cool new feature in
KQ2 is that for the players who own a mouse with a roller have
the possibility
of scrolling through the different cursors with the roller, which
I found very helpful and user friendly.

The puzzles are quite hard but logical. The downside of the gameplay
is that there are a lot of limited time sequences and it happens
that king Graham dies quite often. The fact that you cannot skip
the death sequences makes it even worse. For example (*spoilers*)
when you have to find the right fairy tales I got really tired of
seeing the maws eating king Graham. It was quite funny in the beginning
but after 2,3 times it just seemed like a waist of time especially
when I had to use trial and error to solve this puzzle (*end of spoilers*).

There are five or six puzzles that are going to keep you stuck for
some time, but a little logical thinking and some trial and error
should do the trick. The puzzles themselves are quite smart and there
are a lot of puzzles based on riddles, which really suits the theme
of the game. One more bad thing about the gameplay is that Graham
has to take care of where he is walking in a couple of occasions,
otherwise he is going to fall and die or touch something deadly and
die again. This could have been avoided by the programmers, at least
the falling part.

Maps: To help you find your way around KQ2 The Inventory made maps
for the land of Kolyma and the realm of the Sharkees.

The Land of Kolyma

The Realm Of Sharkees

General info: The game is available for download from Tierra’s
site for free. The version I played contained a couple of bugs but
Tierra has already produced a patch that will hopefully solve the
remaining technical problems.

The game is full of easter
eggs. The funniest I saw was the batmobil from the batman comics,
coming out of Hagatha’s cave. I have
no idea how I triggered this easter egg, but I did and it was very
funny to watch. Another easter egg is the reference to other Sierra’s
(and Tierra’s) games. In one part the hero from Quest for Glory
makes a guest appearance but doesn’t say a lot. In other occasions
the game is mentioning even The Longest Journey and the Star Wars
movies. These are only few of the easter eggs that are spread throughout
the game.

In a
few words…Definitely the best fan-made project made so
far. I guess everybody that played KQ1 the remake had high expectations
for the second one, but Tierra made a good job to surpass all of
them. It is a shame that these people are not getting paid for their
work. Let’s hope that glory will suffice and glory they shall
have. My favourite King’s Quest before I played this one was
KQ6. But not anymore. Tierra’s KQ2 took its place. Sierra is
dead as an adventure games company, but usually along with a death
of something old, comes the birth of a new hope, and in this case
the new hope is Tierra. If you haven’t played this game yet,
then make yourselves a favour and download it from their site.

Final Grade: A

System Requirements:

• Windows 95/98/Me/2000/XP
• Pentium 233/500 MHZ
• 32 MB RAM
• 95MB FREE HARD DISK
• DIRECT SOUND SOUNDCARD
• SVGA GRAPHICS CARD
• DIRECT X 5