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Quest for Glory 1: So you want to be a hero?

Started by Dracos, November 23, 2005, 10:50:12 PM

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Dracos

In the era of adventure, Sierra provided a bevy of massive adventure games, the King's Quests, The Space Quest's...  The Hero's Quest.  Or at least until Hero's Quest the board game sued and requested that Sierra name it something different, resulting in Quest for Glory.  The brainchild of the Coles, Quest for Glory was the start of a four game series, intended to follow the growth of a hero's quest for glory.  Built in the days of DOS, it introduced general combat and experience into the point based mechanics of the adventure games of the time.

   Recently I replayed the VGA remake.  Let's get this out of the way: You want to play the VGA.  The difference between playing with the mouse and with the keyboard is huge.  I'm not going to touch the graphics and sound beside saying that they aren't annoying because if you're playing this, you know you're playing something old.  It's still pretty in its own way, but it is old and it looks it.

   Anyone who has ever played an old style adventure game knows basically what you're dealing with if you pick up quest for glory.  You've got your single hero, your set of odds and ends you've picked up, your score count that goes up as you do little puzzles, your pretty world to explore and navigate complete with deadly hazards and a theoretically never enter unable to complete game state.

   What does Quest for Glory add to it?  Well aside from a sometimes corny sense of humor that really adds a sense of personality to the whole affair, Quest for Glory is more like playing a solo Dungeons and Dragons adventure.  You fight monsters, get stronger, have weapons and stuff like that.  I found the mixture myself of adventure mechanics with classic RPG charm rather delightful.  The first version of the game set the groundwork in this, though it also, naturally is pretty primitive.

   The battle system, sadly is probably the weakest part of the experience.  It really feels like what it is: a system designed and built in the 80s with 80s considerations.  The battle with the swordsmaster is just a click fest.  Most enemies are best assailed via clickfesting on stab.  There's simply not much room for strategy.  Technically, there is supposed to be a variety of slash, stab, dodge, and shield, as well as magic for the mage, but it doesn't really materialize all that well in the system.  It is often most effective simply stabbing with the rare shield and using the plentiful heal items between battles.

   The puzzles of the game can be a little annoying, but the game benefited in this regard from a relatively simple map.  Like most adventure games of that era, it could've benefited further from an automap system, but at least it wasn't gigantic to explore.

   The real heart of it, I felt was the wit of the writers, lots of charm in each interaction and a fair amount of dialogue and prose behind each character, sort of like an extremely primitive infinity engine deal.  That combined with a not repeated outside the series mixture of an adventure focus with a sort of hero's quest type theme made it pretty unique in that regard.

   Truthfully, it's an interesting thing to pick up in a sort of anachronistic fashion.  It's a neat look at one of the better games of old with just enough more modern control scheme to make it bareable.  It's got the type of tongue in cheek humor you don't see too often in games combined with a reasonably decent bit of writing.  I certainly enjoyed a trip to the past to play it again.
Well, Goodbye.