Legend of Kyrandia, The

[derboo]

www.hardcoregaming101.net/kyrandia/kyrandia.htm

Westwood's trilogy of goofy fantasy adventures. This is an old article, but it was so old that it didn't have a discussion thread yet.

[vid]

Part of my childhood. I originally played the first game on Amiga and at the time I really liked the art style and especially the music. Serpent's Grotto music is my favorite. I also had to play it with a photocopy of the walkthrough because I was too young to figure out a lot of the stuff. In hindsight, I agree with the article in that it has some bad design. Navigating the cave is pretty ridiculous. Maybe it was just because I was a kid but when you got to the castle, I always found it scary and spooky. I have a nostalgic soft spot for the game.

I actually disliked how each subsequent game got wackier and wackier (at least in the visual style). I thought it deviated a bit too much from the visual style of the first game. On the plus side, Zanthia is 10x better of a protagonist than Brandon. She's funny, sarcastic and sassy. Gameplay-wise, the second game is much better than the other games.

Playing as the villain, Malcolm, and having different moods was interesting if inconsequential, an idea which was better done in Blade Runner. I didn't like playing Malcolm's game very much though and found most of it to be a chore. I don't remember there being any sort of hint about where to find the last item needed to finish the game, which I remember being quite frustrated with as well as the sequences like playing tic tac toe and the jungle as mentioned in the article.

I would've been curious to see where the story would be taken in a 4th game since an additional mystery was introduced in the 3rd game's ending. It would've been interesting to see how to resolve the contradictory portrayals of Malcolm in the first and third games. It could have potentially involved Malcolm's good and bad consciences.

[alphex]

I've only played part 1 & 2, and even though #1 was one of the very first PC games I'd ever played, #2 seemed to be a much better game. It still had its problems (some of the puzzles seemed like the screws were barely covered; I don't like it if puzzles are not integrated elegantly into the game world), it was a very charming experience. Not to say part one wasn't - the sequel just seemed to be much more fleshed out.

[kyouki]

Legend of Kyrandia was one of the first games I bought when I finally moved from a Commodore 64 to a PC (the others were Quest for Glory III and Ultima VII). I spent a fun summer working through the game, and my only access to help was dialing up Prodigy and posting my question on a game message board haha.

Kyrandia still looks amazing today, and played in native res on a CRT monitor looks absolutely gorgeous. The soundtrack is one of the best of all time- really pushes the MT-32, and it even sound surprisingly great on soundblaster/adlib.

I never played the second game, and while the third game seems loved the 3D rendered background look horrible- even when the game was released I remember thinking it looked worse than the first two games.