The Legend of Kyrandia

Comedy is Not Pretty

A Review of The Legend of Kyrandia

The Legend of Kyrandia, Book 3: Malcolm’s Revenge takes the player yet

again into the magical world of Kyrandia. This time your playing the,

supposedly evil jester, Malcolm. You have been accused of killing the King

and Queen of Kyrandia (see Legend of Kyrandia, Book 1) and your job is to

clear your name and prove yourself innocent.

This will be no easy task, as everyone in Kyrandia remembers who you are,

and has their very negative opinion of you. The adventure take you through

five separate areas, and back again to three of those areas, for a total of

traversing eight sections.

Game play is very simple. You simply point to something you see on the

screen and your character will ‘touch’ it or go there with the simple click

of the button. K3 has made a few modifications over their old Kyrandia

engine. They have improved the inventory / options screen so that it shrinks

down to just a bar when not in use giving, you about 20more graphics than

before. They upgraded their graphics, which are still VGA, but dazzlingly

rendered. The characters now all speak with real voices instead of text. The

music is the same higher than normal quality for all Westwood Studios games.

These are all great improvements from previous games.

However they have also made some changes which are bad. They have changed

the linear plot to a slightly flexible one. While this makes everyone’s game

slightly different it is also a double edged sword. Every key sequence seem

to have two puzzles attached, only one of which you have to do. This is not

told to you at the beginning of the game and if you do not figure this out on

your own you may wander around for hours trying to figure out a puzzle you do

not even have to do.

The improved graphics are great. They are still the same old VGA graphics,

however they have greatly upgraded the look and amount of colors they are

using. Each scene is absolutely breathtaking. However again this can also be

a double edged sword. Some of the pictures are not obvious that you can click

there, or that the black thing in the corner is actually a tunnel somewhere

else. I myself became stuck for four days moving between two locations

because what I thought was a black spout, was indeed a tunnel. They do still

have the mouse pointer which changes to an arrow to travel to a different

scene, but with the new engine it does not always do this in some parts. This

can easily trick the player into thinking they are stuck and can not progress

in the game.

The voices and music are great, no complaints about these, accept that the

first few songs you hear are very Leisure Suit Larry like in nature. Some of

the voices are so amusing you find yourself reciting the lines with the

characters. Yes, some things you will hear far too many times, and some far

to few.

The sectional game play is still the same. They have also added an

improvement to your characters deaths. If you die and haven’t saved your game

for a while its OK, you can hit the “second chance” button and return to just

before you died. However they have also set several critical junctures in the

game which can permanently trap you. I highly suggest when you play this game

you save at the beginning of each section of the game before you touch or do

anything else. I also suggest you have at least two slots you periodically

save during the sections. This will help prevent you from saving too much or

too little, and being stuck and having to start your game completely over

again.

In summary: K3 is a great game if you can actually do all the right

things and not get stuck. I think that most people will however, become stuck

or do the wrong thing, and eventually just get sick of the game. Some parts

are way too hard, and some puzzles while having two ways to be solved often

becomes a choice of an easy or hard way. And lets hope you chose the easy way

because if you didn’t the hard way more often than not be your only choice. I

highly suggest when purchasing this game you keep your receipt and

registration. I feel the puzzles are too easy, and the game play too

repetitive or hard, for most people to like the game.

If I were not reviewing this game I would have never bothered to complete

it. I am a great fan of Westwood Studios work and look forward to their

future projects, but in my opinion save your money for another game. If your

looking for a good Kyrandia game then buy Kyrandia 2, in my opinion it is

just a much better game, and far more enjoyable.

n/a