King's Quest IV: The Perils of Rosella

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File:King's Quest IV - DOS - USA.jpg
North American box art.

King's Quest IV: The Perils of Rosella is an adventure game by Sierra Online, originally released in 1988 for DOS, but later ported to several other platforms. Like many Sierra games, the game is a pioneer, in this case, of high-fidelity audio.

Status

I own a digital release of the game through Steam. I have beaten it with a full score.

Review

  • Overall: 6/10
  • Best Version: DOS

Good

  • The graphics, for an EGA game, are amazing. The artwork is good, there is a lot of animation, indoor rooms have a "carved out" view port, and outside objects have nice fore-ground objects, and the display makes a good use of blending to create the illusion of more than 16 colors.
  • The soundtrack is professionally scored with leitmotifs, themes, and even an overture.
  • Most of the puzzles are fairly intuitive.
  • I think this is one of the first adventure games that uses a fully re-drawn character set for close-up screens.
  • Having a real-time day and night transition was a pretty creative idea, and redrawing the backgrounds for night time was very impressive.
  • Some of the puns for when you die, and on the tombstones are really good.
  • The reflection of Rosella in the mirror in the mansion was impressive.

Bad

  • Some of the puzzles are pretty abstract.
  • I don't maneuvering puzzles where the character stupidly walks off a cliff face. There aren't a lot, but enough to be annoying.
  • There are several walking-dead scenarios which I don't like in adventure games.
  • The real-time day and night transition, while creative, isn't implemented very well. I've never known anyone to actually play for the several hours it takes to make it to night time, without first solving the puzzles. This is good since it causes several walking-dead scenarios if you do take too long.
  • To alleviate a specific walking dead scenario, the designers made it so the poor fisherman won't accept the gold ball, which is ridiculous.
  • I don't like how the map wraps around on itself. It implies that Tamir is Torus shaped, and also that the region is only inhabited by about five humans!
  • The random appearance of the shark and whale is kind of annoying.
  • All four of the ghost puzzles are all solved in the same way, which is kind of dull.
  • Some of the game is repeated from earlier King's Quest games. Giving a gift to the poor couple in a shack and getting a gift from them was used in KQ1, the design of the Haunted House dining room and kitchen is the same as KQ3, etc.
  • The mummy should have had an actual puzzle behind it.

Ugly

  • Nothing.

Box Art

Documentation

Maps

Links