King’s Quest III:
To Heir is Human
Review
Storyline and
Gameplay
King's Quest
III: To Heir is Human goes a step beyond the previous two King's Quest
games by having a much more involving plot and characters with actual personalities.
For the first time in the series, the main protagonist isn't Sir/King Graham.
Instead, you're in control of the ill-fated slave boy Gwydion who dreams
of freedom from his master, the evil wizard Manannan, and wants to learn
his true personality. The subtitle To Heir is Human is a clever
hint to the fate of the slave boy. Still, you're not realizing that there's
a connection to Daventry and its king and queen at the start of the game
witch is very interesting. Manannan is one of the most sinister and evil
antagonists to ever appear in a Sierra On-Line adventure game. You truly
get to hate him in the game, and the feeling of relief when you finally
get rid of him is a good reason alone for playing it.
The time-based
system with the clock displayed on the top of the screen is an interesting
element in the game, although it only serves a purpose in the first half
of the game. It makes the game a lot harder and more challenging, and it
greatly increases the threat of Manannan. The automapping system used in
the game was not well received by many experienced players who thought
it made the game too easy. But it's a great relief to have the map when
you need to return back to Manannan's house in a hurry, so I didn't find
it annoying. Still, the automapping idea wasn't brought on to later King's
Quest games because of this critique. (Note: There are seemingly similar
map functions in King's Quest VI and King's Quest: MOE as well, but they
serve different purposes.)
Another interesting
feature of King's Quest III is the spell casting. You'll have to collect
a lot of stuff as ingredients to different magical spells and then combine
these together in elaborate ways to make the spells work. If Manannan catches
you working on a spell or even carrying stuff that can be used for making
spells, he'll kill you. So you have to be very careful. Also, incorrect
use of magic is an almost sure way of getting killed, so it's quite a challenge
to work these things out. The spell recipes can be found in the game manual,
thus making it work like a sort of copy protection for the game. You don't
need to use all the spells to finish the game, but some of them are necessary.
It immediately becomes apparent that this is a much bigger and more complex
game than its predecessors. Your freedom to manipulate objects and explore
your surroundings is much bigger than in the previous games. You can play
it several times and still find a lot of new things to try out, and you
can solve several puzzles in multiple ways. It's very impressive for an
AGI game.
I didn't find
it very much fun to have the threat of Manannan looming above you all the
time in the beginning of the game, but once you get rid of him it all changes.
You can explore Llewdor without hurry. The later part of the game is a
long and dangerous journey home that is very linear. But it's still fun
because of the high pace. Finally you get to a very climactic (and happy)
ending that paves the way for King's Quest IV: The Perils of Rosella.
King's
Quest III: To Heir is Human is a very hard game to finish so it might
scare off a novice adventure gamer, but it's also one of the most interesting
King's Quest games to play. It can sometimes be a bit frustrating that
almost every little mistake you make in this game leads to your immediate
death, so you'll have to do a lot of saving and restoring before you finish
the game. Still, it's also a bit entertaining to see all the gruesome deaths
that Roberta has come up with so you might get something out of that as
well...
Graphics
Like its predecessors,
King's
Quest III: To Heir is Human is programmed in the AGI system with a
160x200 resolution in 16 colors. There are clear limitations to what a
graphics artist can achieve in this resolution. Still, Doug MacNeill and
Mark Crowe managed to make even better graphics than they did in King's
Quest II. It's clearly more detailed, realistic-looking and beautiful this
time. This is just about how good it can be in an AGI game, and it's truly
amazing that it's all drawn with vector graphics! Two especially good examples
of the graphic qualities in this game is the pirate ship and the mountain
path in the later part of the game.
There's an
amusing story from the development of this game that demonstrates just
how big a challenge it could be to draw graphics in this resolution with
only 16 colors: In a part of the game, a big blue spider is dropped into
the ocean. But as the spider and the ocean water was drawn in the same
blue color, the spider became "invisible" when displayed over the water.
A meeting was held to resolve the spider problem. The natural solution
was to change the color of the spider, but it turned out that no matter
what other color was chosen, the spider still went invisible at some point
because all the other colors were used at other parts of the screen where
the spider was located at other times. Roberta finally decided to keep
the blue color of the spider and instead enhance the splash animation displayed
when it fell into the water...
Music and Sound
Effects
As with the previous
King's Quest games, music and sound effects are not a very important part
of the game experience. Unlike the two previous games, this game has an
original theme that is pretty nice, and both the beginning and the end
of the game features longer music pieces than in any of the two previous
games, but altogether there's not really a bigger amount of music or sound
effects in this game than in King's Quest II: Romancing the Throne.
Technical issues
I've never encountered
any problems running this game on any computer. It once was considered
a huge game, but now it easily fits on one single floppy disk (and barely
no one even uses them anymore) and even leaves a lot of space left on it.
If only modern games would be this nice to you...
Final verdict
King's Quest
III: To Heir is Human has one of the most interesting plots of any
King's Quest game. It's also probably the hardest one to finish. Even though
it looks very similar to the first two King's Quest games, it's a very
different experience to play it. The type of design innovations demonstrated
in this game is a typical trademark of the King's Quest series. Even with
the same underlying technology, Roberta has been devoted to improve and
experiment with the game design as much as possible, thus keeping the series
alive and fresh.
Golden Moment
Turning Manannan's
magic against him and finally getting rid of the man that has pestered
you through your entire childhood!
Back
to King’s Quest III: To Heir is Human - Main page
Back
to The King's Quest games - Main page
Back
to The King's Quest Chronicles - Main page