Review — King’s Quest: The Good Knight

King's Quest: The Good Knight

We sit down and review King’s Quest: The Good Knight. This is the fifth episode of The Odd Gentlemen’s reboot to the famed franchise from Sierra Entertainment. Here’s our review of King’s Quest: The Good Knight

It seems like it took forever to get to, but we are finally here and we have the final episode of King’s Quest and the epic conclusion to the story we’ve slowly been living out over the last year. That is one of the huge issues with episodic titles but The Odd Gentlemen made it to the end and we can all see how they did with the reboot to Sierra Entertainment‘s huge franchise. Also to see if it should be on your list of games to give a try now that you can experience King’s Quest all in one solid sitting. Here’s our review on just how the team and game did at the end of the day.

Story

King Graham’s condition has made it to what looks like the end of his days but he still has one more story to tell. One more disjointed story given that his ailment is old age and his memory has begun to slip and not everything is matching up anymore. But Gods be damned; he will tell his story and leave his legacy behind for his family to enjoy and hopefully keep telling through the ages. He does save the day and the kingdom after all or we wouldn’t have been sitting through all of this from the very first episode. Maybe…

Hated

For the most part King’s Quest has had a pretty solid story and adventure going on over the course of the season. That is why it seems odd that The Odd Gentlemen would pretty much make it all moot at the end of the day and also forget some of the other parts from earlier in the story. I won’t go in to spoil everything but the story here has always been about King Graham and how he made it to where he is and the legacy he is passing on. All of that gets thrown right out with the last part of the story and how it is all completed. Why would you do that as it made little to no sense. Not to mention the fact that the “choices” from episode one that were stated to have a lasting effect never came back around in the final story. Seems odd to end it all like this.

Another thing that will be both here and in my loved section would have to be the puzzles for this episode. The first part of the story goes over some of the puzzles we’ve already completed in King’s Quest which was a nice call back but they were set up with poor coloring and information that those who haven’t been playing from the start, or chose to play out of order as was claimed available from the start, would be totally lost and have no way to press on. It was like it needed to be filler content as the episode would have been no more than a few minutes long without placing in these callbacks and puzzles again. Just a poor choice in my eyes, but still manageable.

Loved

As I mentioned before, the puzzles did have a few rough spots in this episode of King’s Quest but I do have to say that the final six did pose some new challenges and teasers to the brain. This was where it all shined in this episode, and really the whole season, and it seems odd that we would need to wait until now to get it. I am glad we did and I can understand why it was in this episode that we did. I even became stumped at one point during the final puzzle that needed to be solved but this is a great thing as it shows that King’s Quest has been growing and not stuck using the same patterns. If only all of them would have been like this and not just a solid showing in the final bit of things.

While it did seem out of sorts for King Graham to become so senile out of nowhere, it did lead to some interesting level designs and bits of gameplay to be had. I am a huge fan of having a good story in my games, and that is what King’s Quest is supposed to be all about, but this was one of those times I was okay with story getting the sacrifice for the gameplay. It was interesting to see the world shift and change as the mind slowly went and it caught me off guard a few times. All of which in the most wonderful of ways. It was a truly interesting experience and even though the story suffered, it was a well-received addition to the level and game design.

Overall

Over the past year we’ve seen King’s Quest evolve and change with each new episode. Some for the better and some for the worse. To be completely honest, this has become one of the titles that sits in so much grey area that it is hard to say one way or the other if you should pick it up. The story is a bit all over the place but the gameplay gets stronger for it. When the story is strong, the gameplay lacks. In the end true fans of King’s Quest are going to love this game and should give it a go. If you are a fan of weird puzzles with a bit of story then you too will enjoy things here. Outside of that, use your judgement on what you see as that will be the true dictation on if you should give it a full purchase now that it is out in full.

I give King’s Quest: The Good Knight 6 Bad Memories on the Bad Memory scale.

King’s Quest: The Good Knight was developed by The Odd Gentlemen and published by Sierra Entertainment for the PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, Xbox One, and PC on October 14^th 2016. A PS4 copy of the game was provided by the publisher for reviewing purposes.