King’s Quest IV:
The Perils of Rosella
Review
Storyline and
Gameplay
King's Quest
IV: The Perils of Rosella is a revolutionary game in many ways. One
of these is to have a female protagonist. This turned out to be a success
with the public, and a milestone in computer gaming. Rosella is a strong
and independent hero that attracts female gamers without alienating the
male ones. The game has clear goals and a compelling storyline that evolves
as the game goes on. The beautiful graphics and music makes the gameplay
very immersive and breaks new ground in adventure gaming. Being the first
Sierra game to use the new SCI system, gameplay is now easier than ever.
Better menus, support for mouse navigation and the possibility to freeze
the action whenever a command is being typed are all improvments from the
old AGI engine. Even more interesting is that the game action takes place
over a 24 hour period, so almost every area in the game can be visited
both at day and night, and there are differences to them depending on when
you visit them. For instance, a graveyard may be spooky enough at daylight,
but when night falls, zombies creeps up from under the ground and chases
Rosella. This makes Tamir a very interesting place to visit, and it increases
the depth of the game. In the tradition of the earlier games, elements
from legends and fairy tales are woven into the storyline. This time, greek
mythology plays an important part. The game also has humorous elements,
such as a minstrel that plays his lute terribly bad. There are a few arcade-related
elements in the gameplay, but for the most time, you don't have to worry
too much about getting killed all the time. The cinematic introduction
to the game was a novelty in adventure games, and it works perfectly. With
a very emotional touch, it sets up the goals of the game while giving the
player a great desire to finish it.
Graphics
Being the first
SCI adventure by Sierra, graphics is one of the major improvements compared
to the earlier games. The resolution is doubled to 320x200 pixels in 16
colors, witch makes it possible to draw much more detailed and beautiful
graphics than before. The color pattern technique used in the old Hi-Res
games to approximate more colors was brought on to the SCI engine, and
it helps to enhance the graphics even further. Vector graphics is used
for the backgrounds to save memory, just like in the AGI engine, but this
cannot really be noticed in the game. King's Quest IV: The Perils of
Rosella has graphics better than any of its predecessors, and there
are much more animation and motion in the game. The background graphics
and the characters were drawn by different artists, but this is no problem
as they blend together perfectly.
Music and Sound
Effects
The music in King's
Quest IV: The Perils of Rosella doesn't appear that interesting today.
It's mostly short themes played for a few seconds whenever a new character
or an important event occurs. An exception is the eight and a half-minute
long introduction theme. However, when this game was released the music
was considered outstanding. This is the first computer game for the PC
with support for sound cards, and it was also the first time Sierra used
a proffesional musician. William Goldstein manages to capture the athmosphere
in the game with his musical talents and it's unfortunate that he wasn't
given the opportunity to fill out the game with longer pieces of music.
Technical issues
King's Quest
IV: The Perils of Rosella still works very well on a modern computer.
There may be some issues concerning the music though, as modern soundcards
may have problems supporting the card options that the game has. And playing
the game with PC speaker music is not very rewarding.
Final verdict
King's Quest
IV: The Perils of Rosella is a very good adventure game, one of the
best in the series, and it's still entertaining to play today. When it
was released, the technological aspects of it were astounding, and it was
an important factor in the development of sound cards for the PC. Therefore,
this is an important game in a historical sense. Also, it's an important
chapter in the King's Quest saga, where we truly get to know the final
member of the royal family.
Golden Moment
Going back to
Genesta's island with the talisman recovered!
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