Wednesday, March 9, 2016

The Legend of Kyrandia (1992): Initial Impressions

The Legend of Kyrandia (or, as the cover would suggest Fables & Fiends The Legend of Kyrandia Book One) has a very special place in my heart.

Growing up, I was a Commodore 64 kid.  I have tons of great memories playing a lot of great games on that machine.  Pool of Radiance, Questron II, and Demon's Winter are just a few examples, though there were plenty of others.  I never saw the C64 as a computer... more like just another video game console that played much more complex games; the RPGs on the C64 were obviously much more complex than anything on the NES for instance.  Even though the C64 was an excellent platform for action games, I eventually settled into a groove of playing action games on the NES and RPGs on the C64.

At some point my mom ended up getting me an IBM PS/2 computer, likely to replace the old unreliable word processor I had been using throughout middle school.  I just saw it as another game machine though, and just kept on using that word processor.

Once I got my hands on a PC the poor C64 went in the closet, and I went shopping for games.  I remember my first few PC games very clearly: The Legend of Kyrandia, Quest for Glory III, and Ultima VII.  Used to simply booting games from the floppy with my C64, I had a LOT to learn...


Kyrandia starts with a beautiful title screen which seamlessly transitions to the introduction story.  The animation in this introduction simply blew my mind.  I was used to stuff like the admittedly impressive cinemas in Ninja Gaiden, and while the C64 version of Ultima VI was a great attempt, nothing until then could even come close to what 13 year old me was seeing here.


This part is particularly impressive.  As he writes the "camera" focuses on his (animated) hand while the rest of the scene is slightly out of focus.  Noticing something is awry, he stops writing, and the "camera" focuses on his face, putting his hand slightly out of focus.  The "camera" then focuses on the window in the back.  Even now this attention to detail is impressive.



After the amazing introduction the game starts proper.  So what is Kyrandia?  It's a pretty typical point-and-click adventure game, where you explore a "3D" screen space, collect items, and solve puzzles that generally come down to using the right item in the right place.  It is very similar to the games Sierra was doing at the time.

In fact Kyrandia is very similar to Sierra's King's Quest in that both games/series feature a somewhat fairy tale-like spin on the fantasy genre.  There are dragons and wizards and jesters, and both series are overall innocent enough to be enjoyed by pretty much anyone.

The first thing you notice is how beautiful this game looks.  The game was developed by Westwood, which was well-known for its extremely detailed and colorful house style of graphics.  There is not a single boring scene in this game.  I went mad with power as I took screenshots and I could post pretty much any shot I took and it would look great.  In fact, the screenshots are definitely what convinced me to buy the game in the first place.


The second thing you notice is how great the music is.  Coming from the C64, which is legendary for the quality of the music it can put out, I have to admit that my SoundBlaster clone at the time was a bit of a let down when it came to music.  Kyrandia though, whether due to its excellent compositions or clever music programming, sounded amazing.  I am playing it now with a Roland CM-500 synthesizer (the game was composed on a Roland synthesizer) and the quality of the music is simply unbelievable for 1992.


So is this game perfect or what?  Although I really like it, there are some things that aren't great.  The main character, Brandon, is pretty boring (though I have to admit that the voice acting in the CD-ROM version for the character helps to make him a lot more likable), for instance.

More importantly, there are some illogical puzzles that end up just being trial and error.  Shortly into the game you need to combine some gems in the correct order, and you are given a clue saying you should start with "summer" then go in order by birthstone.  Since the character made a point of saying "summer" and there are four slots, I figured there would one for each season in order... so, summer, fall, winter, spring.  I looked up birthstones, went through the gems I had collected, and everything I did was wrong.  Turns out you need to find a "sunstone" in a very unfair location and start with that, then just save the game and restore as you work through all your gems.  This made me feel ridiculous for overthinking the problem, but also annoyed that the clue—though very useful—hinged upon finding an item in a pretty unlikely location.


On the other hand I loved the mapping puzzle that came shortly after that.  The Internet hates this part, complaining that it requires trial and error and slows the game down to a halt.  I disagree.  Mapping puzzles have been a tradition in these kinds of games from way back, and as long as you are mapping the game (though the game doesn't really require it except for this part, it's a good habit to keep with these kinds of games anyway) there is no problem at all getting through this part.  Note though that this hardly qualifies as trial and error if you map it—there is one part early on where you need to decide between two choices and the wrong one kills you, but after that the rest is a purely logical mapping puzzle.  This is no different from any other game where death is a possibility... just save before you make your choice.

This is what happens if you make that wrong choice, by the way:



I am cheating a bit with this one, as I finished Kyrandia back around when it was released.  However, it's been 24 years or so and I have forgotten much of it, so here we are.  Kyrandia is a beautiful looking and sounding game, and is a lot of fun to play.  It's not afraid to kill you when you make a mistake, and the limited inventory means you can't just pick everything up without thinking of it.  And the bad guy is a cool villain (moreso in the CD-ROM version thanks to some great voice acting).  I'm really enjoying my second play of this, and will definitely see it to the end.

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