#kq1

After talking about them a bit recently, I felt compelled to play through the old KQ fan remakes (1-3 from AGDI and 3 from IA), and I wanted to share my more in depth thoughts for anyone interested in these love letters to the original games.

King's Quest I: Quest for the Crown Remake from AGD Interactive

A lovely update to the original! While clearly the least polished of AGDI's offerings, it's nice to be able to play KQ1 with KQ5-style graphics and voice acting (the original voice of Graham, Josh Mandel, voices him in all four of the games in this post, ftr). There is an option to turn off any chance of softlocking yourself before you even start the game, which is a welcome feature. Puzzle-wise, this one stays the most faithful to the original out of the three from AGDI with a few updates here and there (like that stupid name puzzle! lol). The vocal performances and sound effects can be a bit fuzzy, but I found them enjoyable nonetheless.

Overall a solid fan remake with limited extra bells and whistles!

King's Quest II: Romancing the Stones from AGDI

Easily the most ambitious of the three from AGDI. Pretty much all of the core elements from KQ1 are further polished here - artwork, acting, music, and sound effects. The story and puzzles, however, have been changed enough that the end product is sizably different from the original. In some cases, this is fun and interesting (more lore and character interactions! new and unique puzzles!), but not everyone will enjoy all the changes. I, for example, find the underwater section kind of fun, but the new content around the count... not so much (for reasons I'll avoid due to spoilers, but know they're more mechanical than anything). There's less freedom in when you can do things, the added story making the game far more linear than it originally was. But then I'm sure many would agree that if any KQ game could do with extra content, it'd be 2, so I can't fault them swinging for the fences, even if not every hit was a home run.

All in all, this version of KQ2 doesn't really work if you're simply looking to experience the original game with updated graphics, but it's a fun playthrough nonetheless, and newcomers might enjoy the added lore/story bits. Just be aware that I could probably sum up the original game's story in about two sentences while this one would take far longer. XD

King's Quest III: To Heir is Human Redux from AGDI

If KQ1 wasn't fully polished and KQ2 was a little overworked, then KQ3 is juuuuuust right! (For anyone who knows the game, yes, this is a purposeful pun. XD) The graphics, sounds, music, vocal performances - all are the best yet (though still with some minor hiccups as any fan game is wont to have - the music was sadly cutting out during the climactic sequence for me). It even has a neat little feature where the timer changes color depending on how close you are to being zapped into oblivion that is not only useful but adds a sense of urgency in it's own way (especially if you forgot the item that makes travel a lot easier for like 2 meals I mean what lol). While it does carry over some of the story threads from AGDI's second entry, this game still works well enough on it's own, with the majority of the new content being added in naturally rather than supplanting whole sections of the original. In fact, personally speaking, I think the added content only enhances the game, your encounters with Medusa and the yeti especially getting a nice boost. And the extra lore only helps you feel for the protagonists plight all the more. The ending is a bit drawn out, perhaps, and I may not agree with the order you're supposed to choose the four items in to get the treasure (insert rant here XD), but those are minor nitpicks at best.

This is easily the best of the three, AGDI having perfected their KQ formula at this point. It works as a remake of the original while still adding in a bit of new content that doesn't feel unwelcome. I would highly recommend it to anyone interested in giving the King's Quest series a try.

King's Quest III: To Heir is Human Remake from Infamous Adventures

Look. I know that it's not as impressive as AGDI's version. The time limit is laughably long, the spells are impossible to mess up, and some of the clickable areas can be a bit wonky. But I really like this version, ok?? I like the design and voice of Gwydion, I like the storybook quality that the cutscene art has, I like that it feels lonely when it should. And as much as some of the changes in AGDI's version were really nice, I like that it's basically just the original game without extra stuff added in.

“One of the rarest items in my gaming collection: ‘King's Quest,’ published by IBM for the doomed PCjr in 1984. I found this copy of King's Quest about a year ago when a local friend alerted me that a house near her was being gutted, and that there was a huge dumpster outside literally overflowing with old computer stuff. I spend a deliriously-happy couple hours pulling out all kinds of cool stuff, but when I found this copy of KQ1, I just about lost my mind!