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Quest for Glory: Shadows of Darkness - MS-DOS / Windows PC (1993)
In some ways, Quest for Glory IV is a throwback to the first game. There's a single town, along with an expansive labrythine forest to explore. Your primary task, as you eventually learn, is to hunt down seven rituals, contained in seven scrolls across the land. During your adventures, you'll also encounter Baba Yaga, who has since fled from the land of Spielburg, and work to reunite a young vampire child with her family. Erana also features more heavily into the plot of this game too - if you sleep in any of her gardens, you'll have nightmares that clue you in her fate. You'll also come across the mysterious (and wacky) Antwerps again, which haven't truly been seen since the first game. The quests for each of the classes are much more fleshed out than in the previous game too. At one point, you'll meet the Rusalka, a beautiful naked woman in the middle of the lake. Of course, if you run into your arms, she'll drown you. If you give her some flowers, you can become friends with her and chat about her woes. But only the Paladin can undertake the quest to free her. There's also a fairly expansive subquest regarding the ghost of the Paladin Piotyr, who seeks to restore his unrightfully sullied name. There's also a new skill, the Acrobatics stat, in addition to a new Jump command to go along with it.
Perhaps in order to capitalize off the popularity of Street Fighter II and other similar arcade games, the battle perspective has switched to a side viewpoint, complete with gigantic sprites. Despite the graphics, however, it plays nothing like any typical fighting game. Using the mouse, you can click around the area to advance, retreat, jump or swipe your melee weapons. This system is much more advatangeous for wizard and thiefs, since they can use their ranged spells or daggers without putting themselves during in the line of combat. Ultimately though, it still tends to devolve into button mashing, although it's not nearly as sloppy as the original games. When there are actual sound effects when taking damage, and you can visibly see the enemies dodging your blows, instead of your sword simply passing through them. If you're too aggravated by these segments, you can also set it to auto-battle, and adjust the levels of aggression used by the AI.
There are a lot more logic puzzles to complete during the game. Some are simple color matching exercises, used when disarming traps as the thief, but others require a bit of thinking, mostly requiring that you spell out a name in the correct order, using either letters or colors. Perhaps the most maddening are the colored bells, requiring you to play a game of Simon Says before you're allowed entry. Each time you enter, it just gets longer and longer and longer.
There's more of the usual Quest for Glory humor too, including Monty Python-style killer rabbits that inhabit the forest. Dr. Cranium, the mad scientist based off of Dr. Brain character based off of the Sierra's edutainment series, requests that you give him formulas for various potions. (This is the game's method of copy protection. Unlike most other games, it was not removed for the CD version, so you'll still need a manual.) In addition to the usual earth, fire, wind and water elements, he insists that there's a fifth element based on pizza. (This resulted in the developers of the QFGII remake adding a hidden Pizza Elemental to fight.) Much of the humor shines through the voice acting on the CD version. Several characters are parodies of famous actors - other than Boris Karloff, the thief guild leader looks like Peter Lorre, and the townspeople all have voices and speech patterns based off Rodney Dangerfield and Jack Nicholson. The narrator's voice is provided by John Rhys Davis - famous for his role as Sallah in the Indiana Jones movies, and Ghimli in the Lord of the Rings films - and while he has some fun with certain lines, it's a bit on the dry side.
The music in the Quest for Glory games has usually been pretty decent, but there's been little outside of the title themes or battle songs that really stood out. In contrast, Shadow of Darkness' soundtrack is particularly spectacular, especially with its battle themes and beautiful rock ballads. Although it could've benefitted from real guitar instrumentation, the MIDI music - even on the weak Adlib synth - is pretty damn good, and easily up next to Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers, as the best Sierra soundtrack.
The graphics have seen some subtle improvements too. The trees in the forest actually cast shadows over your character as he walks beneath them, which is pretty cool. But now all of the major characters have full screen portraits as you talk to them. Their dialogue isn't lip synched like some other Sierra games, but it still lends a ton of personality to the inhabitants of Mordavia.
Quest for Glory IV is undoubtedly one of the best games in the series, having taken the template of the first game, and improved on practically every aspect, while keeping down some of the aggravating issues from its other sequels. Lori Cole even admitted in interviews that it's one of her favorites. The only real bummer is how buggy it is. The Quest for Glory games have always had QA issues, but it's particularly bad here, especially in the original disk release. Even with the fan made patches, some areas can become impossible to conquer, or require strange workarounds in order to advance.
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Intro
Quest for Glory IV
Quest for Glory IV
Quest for Glory IV
Quest for Glory IV
Quest for Glory IV
Quest for Glory IV
Quest for Glory IV
Quest for Glory IV
Quest for Glory V: Dragon Fire - Windows PC / Macintosh (1998)
American Cover
Quest for Glory V
Quest for Glory V
The land of Silmaria is essentially much like ancient Greece, and the land consists of an expansive (with a gigantic crater in the middle) and several smaller islands. They're in the middle of a rather dire crisis, with their king having been recently assassinated. You, along with several other contestants, must take part in seven trials to determine who will become the next ruler of the country. Things get even more complicated when several of your opponents are murdered, and longtime pals like Rakeesh and Erasmus end up poisoned at the hands of the wicked assailant.
The interface has been simplified quite a bit. There's the standard pointer, which allows your hero to move, use, talk, or otherwise interact with the world. If you right click, you'll change into "look" mode, allowing you to examine the scenery. Conversing works much the same as before, but the character portraits have been shrunk to postage stamp size windows on the right side of the screen, a huge step down from the huge portraits in Quest for Glory IV. They're computer rendered and look a bit on the ugly side, although at least the voice acting is still quality. For some reason, the narrator isn't voiced at all, with all of the usual descriptions reduced to a text window at the top of the screen. There's also a new "swimming" skill, since there's a few portions of the game that take place underwater.
The graphics are a mixture of bitmap backgrounds and polygonal modeled characters. The scenery pans around as you move left or right, giving them a panoramic feel, and the camera slightly zooms in and out on the hero in certain areas. While this causes some light distortion on the backgrounds, it does lend a bit of extra depth to the graphics. While the high res, computer generated bitmaps don't quite have the quaint appeal of the pixel art or the hand drawn artwork of the previous games. they still look pretty decent. The polygonal characters don't fare quite as well, but it's hard to notice their boxiness most of the time, since the camera is usually pretty zoomed out. This is the only game in the series where your equipment actually affects how your character looks, which is a nice touch. Overall, the visuals haven't aged quite as well as the older games, but it's not bad considering the usual standard for prerendered graphics in the mid-to-late 90s. It's still a lot better than the third Gabriel Knight game, which used both 3D characters and environments, with rather disastrous results.
Much like Quest for Glory III, exploration is handled via an overhead map, although important locations are marked with little emblems. Through your adventures, you'll find the usual mythical creatures, being charged with raiding a Pegasus nest, fighting the three headed Hydra, exploring the city of Atlantis, and entering the underworld of Hades. At one point, you get to reconstruct a set of Icarus Wings to fly over the landscape, but that obviously doesn't last too long. Later on you can build yourself an airship, which makes traveling a bit less of a hassle.
There's more emphasis on combat in Quest for Glory V, with the battle system being completely changed up. There are no longer any combat transitions, and all fighting happens on the same screen. It's pretty simple - all you need to do is click on an enemy to attack. You can also use the keyboard to execute other types of attack, or to defend, but this is a pretty clunky way of handling things. Additionally, you'll often need to fight several foes at once, and trying to target a specific opponent can get confusing, often resulting in your hero jerking back and forth while being assailed from both sides. You can run past most encounters, at least, but make sure to stock up on tons of healing and stamina potions. There are also more weapons and armor to equip, making trading a slightly more important part of the game. You can also use healing items at any time, whereas previous games required you to run away before rejuvenating yourself. The autosave is gone, but there's now a Restore option which will automatically restart you at the beginning of the screen.
The other major annoyance is with the pacing. In the older Quest for Glory games, you could simply ramp up the speed to the highest setting and dash all over the land, even on really old computers. Not here - the hero casually saunters from place to place. For instance, you could explore the entirety of Mordavia in about ten seconds, in maximum. Here, it takes at least a few minutes to make the rounds in Silmaria. You can double click to run, which makes things a bit faster, but in turn, drains your stamina. This isn't a big deal when you're just exploring the town, when you can just rest any time you want, but it does make combat pretty frustrating. Given how much you'll need to fight, level up, trade in weapons, rest, and buy more healing stuff, it ends up feeling more tedious than the other games, at least in the initial stages. Thankfully, there is an item that will transport you directly back to your bedroom at the inn, which reduces some travel time.
If nothing else, Quest for Glory V pays out huge amounts of fan service, collecting a number of major and minor characters from the previous games. You finally visit the Famous Adventurer's Correspondence School, our hero's alma mater, where you finally meet the mysterious F.E., the author of the magazines included with each copy of the previous games. Erasmus, Fenrus, and Rakeesh all appear in the early stages of the game, having recommended our hero for the contest in Silmaria. Sam the beggar, from way back in the first game, is now Silmaria's banker. Bruno, the nasty informant also from the first game, also plays a pivotal role. Signor Ferrari and his informant Ugarte have somehow escaped from Raseir in Quest for Glory II and have set up a new Blue Parrot Inn. Salim, the hippie pharmacist from Quest for Glory III, ended up marrying Julanar, the tree lady from Quest for Glory II, moved to Silmaria to set up an apothecary.
One of the contestants is none other than Elsa von Spielburg, the princess from the first game. What's more, you can choose to marry her, if you'd like. There are a total of four potential brides, including Nawar, one of the harem girls from Quest for Glory II, that you only met if you were a thief; Katrina, your friend from Quest for Glory IV; and the famed elf heroine Erana. It's a really cool idea to bring forth all of the major female characters from the series, but there's not much of a payoff. There's no real wedding scene and it only slightly affects the ending.
The music is very cinematic, using high quality orchestral style music that changes with the action on screen, composed by Emmy winning Chance Thomas.It's a big change from other Sierra games, and it's sad that it doesn't reuse any of the classic themes, but it also greatly adds to the sense of drama and adventure.
Quest for Glory V ends up focusing a bit too much on the tedious RPG elements, and not quite enough on the adventuring. Still, there are plenty of cool sights to see, and most of the humor is still intact. (One exception: death scenes just don't feel like death scenes when there's no music or goofy animation to accompany them.) Bringing all of the old characters together is a brilliant reward for longtime fans who followed it throughout the decade, although it won't quite mean as much if you haven't played all of the previous games. So in spite of its quirks and occasional tedium, it's a fine send off to one of the best series of Western RPGs ever made.
Like many of the other Quest for Glory games, Dragon Fire is a bit on the buggy side. You need to install one of the patches in order to complete parts of the game, and an additional fan made patch is required if you want to play in Windows XP. Before it was released, Sierra promised that the game would include multiplayer functionality (they even put out a demo with this) and the ability to play as two of the other contestants, Elsa von Spielburg and Magnum Opus. Alas, these features, along with the ability to use a bow and arrow (you can still pick up arrows, but only to sell) were cut from the game. Rumors initially spread that another patch would enable some of these, but the entire staff at Yosemite Entertainment, the branch that developed this title, was laid off shortly after it was published, so these plans never came into fruition.
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Quest for Glory Overture
Quest for Glory V
Quest for Glory V
Quest for Glory V
Quest for Glory V
Quest for Glory V
Quest for Glory V
Quest for Glory V
Quest for Glory V
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