King's Quest VII: A Fair and Balanced Retrospective 

There's actually one very important caveat to this game that indirectly changed the course of another company for the better; Humongous Entertainment. Ron Gilbert was at a convention where Sierra was showing off the opening cutscene to KQ VII. This absolutely scared the shit out of him because here was his main competition using hand-drawn animation instead of sprites. At the time, Humongous was about halfway through production on the first Freddi Fish game and Ron basically asked the team at Humongous to dump ALL of the progress made up to that point and fully commit to a new art style NONE of them were familiar with. And it ultimately paid off in the end, so if there's anything you can take away from King's Quest VII, it's that it scared Humongous enough to go balls deep into hand-drawn animation in adventure games.

Can wait for you to cover the Leisure Suit Larry Series! I'll definitely will be a patreon for that

Idk y anyone would be surprised Rosella only has 4 fingers. The incestuous nature of the royal family has been well established.

@5:13 putting the crown cursor on top of characters heads, man, I wonder how many that played the game did that ^^

The animation was actually praised in reviews back in 1994. As to Animation Magic, they actually get an unfair rap. The CDi games were produced on a budget of $600,000 for BOTH GAMES (so that's 300k each in an age where quality games cost a million dollars to produce) with a year deadline. That is six months for each game on a low budget, for a shitty system that had to have any animation heavily compressed to work. KQ7 similarly started its animation in February 1994 with a strict Christmas 1994 deadline, so once again you have Animation Magic (working with 5 other animation studios including Sierra's own animators) on a tight deadline. If you look at WarCraft Adventures: Lord of the Clans (which they did the art and animation for), or their own games they developed fully such as Darby the Dragon, they were actually a really talented studio. Companies like Broderbund and Davidson contracted them specifically for their skills (And Davidson was no slouch when it came to eyeing talent, as they bought Blizzard when Blizzard was unknown solely on the potential WarCraft 1 showed as an alpha). Davidson liked their work so much they ended up buying Animation Magic's parent company Capitol Multimedia.

I've been waiting years for your KQ7 review and it did not disappoint. Your whole series in general has been a real treat. Well-researched and well-roasted throughout.

You made one minor factual error when you said Roberta was picking out orange shirtS (plural) for the actress in Phantasmagoria. Said actress has gone on record stating that she had to wear the same clothing for the entirety of shooting that "game", and that it was indescribably ripe by the time they were finished.

This is my favorite kings quest. Funny thing was I let Edgar die the first time I beat the game.

Lorelai Shannon was like "you can put Roberta Williams' name on this game. I don't mind."

This was the first game I got to play on my new CD-ROM - a bit late to the talkie party - I guess I was 11 or 12 and after a long history with King's Quest I was excited despite the Disney's She-ra aesthetic on the box. I had no idea - _"Grow Up Young Lady"_ she's singing her "I want" song on a cliff, _"I want that magic laaaaand, a land beyond dreeeeeams"_ (cause Daventy's not crazy enough I guess). I was *gob-smacked,* didn't know what to feel. This wasn't the serious tone I loved from KQ6 (even the Isle of Wonder felt more grounded, maybe it helped that Alex wasn't constantly weeping), and so many strange choices. And for some reason for a lot of games, my CD-ROM would play the sound files, but the music would only play if I connected headphones to it, but it was months before I learned that, so I got none of that nice atmosphere music to mellow me, just the voice acting and loony tunes sounds - and despite all the great music in prior games I didn't question that. So I'd play chapter one, get stuck, not in the mood to figure out a game I'm ambivalent about, I'd make a new profile and play chapter 2. Then 3. Then 4. In 5 the CD was scratched and always paused in one place, so I completed the short chapter 6 thoroughly confused! I think chapter 2 was the first I completed, but the order got so jumbled I can't remember much but a fair bit of confusion about the over all story while still being able to solve localized puzzles. Why did they tempt me with the option, WHY? I'm a kid, I can't resist, and I'm not going convince Mom to pay for your hint-hot-line! Though I must have been lucky, or you got unlucky, because I don't think I got any of those bugs. Only the firecracker timer thing came up when my computer improved. So I had a bad impression from the first, but I couldn't just put it down, guess it remained curiously weird. I played it properly a few years latter with adjusted expectations and...I liked it - bit by bit it grew on me like a colorful mind-altering fungus. They way things were rushed between chapter 5 & 6 was unfortunate (thanks for the helpful context as to why), but it was fairly good, light world building, gorgious art, janky but not strictly bad animation, and meeting all the Roman Deities was pretty cool. Archduke FeFe le YipYap is very silly _(that's why he's the Archduke, that's what it's all about!)_ and for that I love him and I don't care who knows. I think at the age I first played it I was predisposed to not like it because I was "too cool" for such sappy characters, now I'm all: *"We accept her, Gooble Gobble".* I do cut it some slack though it makes lots of errors and design choices like the one click wonder wand. Otherwise the puzzles are a bit basic, but make sense and I enjoy the story. I don't know why Edgar gets targeted by bad Fairies so much, but he's not in his right mind when he kidnapped Rosella, and she wanted a diversion anyway - and it's nice they just date and don't instantly get married (in either of the games).

KQ7 was my first KQ game (and one of my first games ever) and while 5 year old me loved it, i don't think back as fondly on this game as I do other Sierra titles. At least the music's good

I remember when I got stuck, I used the very old school method of calling the help line to find my way around

Who else put the crown cursor on Valanice's head, presumably because a non-interactive segment dragged on? (5:12)

I remember playing this game and being soooo dissapointed after playing Kings Quest 6 (which I actually loved) I would love to see you cover the Gabriel Knight games!

Way to take another one for the team SQH!

Was Sierra trying to make this entry look like Disney's Cinderella? Because holy shit, the general art style and the character design are pushing a copyright lawsuit.

I got this for Christmas in 1996 and I remember I loved it. I replayed it with my son and wife last year and it doesn't hold up. He (my son) seemed to like it though. Could be that child imagination that makes even the most full things interesting.

I actually like it when King's Quest leans more on its magical fantasy side, such as in this game. It does kind of fall apart as you progress, but I think the locations and characters are great. Love the voice acting honestly.

Space quest Historian did you try trading every item with the rhyming mouse. that is my favorite part of the game hearing the funny rhyming.

ive been subbed to you for months waiting for you to review this game and i am so disappointed. i really appreciated your take and enjoyed hearing about its flaws (of which there are many!) but you never talked about what you liked about it. i suppose its fair to say you didnt like anything and thats why the entire video is a roast but i would have liked for you to at least have tried to find some positives. this was one of the first video games i ever played and fully completed when i was a little girl. i thought the opening song and animations were magical, in particular i loved the crystal dragon. unlike the rest of the animations the dragon was CG and really stood out as otherworldly, i also loved the sound design of hearing it sighing as you approached not knowing what it was - it really built up the anticipation and mystery. i can still hear the music that plays after you help him and he flies away. yes the plot wasnt amazing, the animations are scuffed and its buggy as hell but in my opinion its a really fantastical game full of creative and fun ideas and characters. you said you hated the cartoon town with all the puns (like the bull in the china shop) but surely the idea was for the entire town to be full of parody/comedy/irony? anyway, my point is i think your review only focused on the bad and was rather unfair. if you ever find the time id love to hear you list some positives in a future video or a comment. thanks.

I remember my mom renting this from the local library. Don’t think she ever finished it. I think she got stuck somewhere after the cheese slingshot.

Would you be doing the King's Quest reboot (2015?) before Police Quest?

Can't wait to hear space quest historian opinion about how many times it took to finally get in Malicia's House because of the dog wouldn't stop barking. Oh and makes it worse you have to do this 2 times in the game. Worst part of the game stupid random puzzle.

ALSO! YES! I hate the pointer in this game! Thank you for talking about it! So many people have argued with me over the years! It does all the work for you and takes so much away from the game! Or makes you do really STUPID shit!

you seem angry... Wanna play some KQ? that might calm you my friend.

I don't care I still love this game! My friends dad got a Compaq Pressario PC and it came with this game. Hi res 256 color graphics with digitized sound was enough to keep me interested back then.

17:00 where did you got this vid about subtitles?

Still loving your videos! This may be random, or rather a belated response to how you said you don't care about Star Wars lore, but as a bit of a nod to you, I'm thinking about occasionally nicknaming myself "Star Wars Historian"! :P

This was the only game i actually liked in the whole series, and thus, the only review of yours i couldn't get more than 5 minutes into without stopping. Somebody told you that you were the angry video game nerd, and that person lied to you several times.

I really enjoyed your Kings Quest retrospectives. Though you’re far tougher on Kings Quest than it deserves 😅 Thanks for another lovely trip down memory lane. I’d love to see a Quest for Glory series retrospective sometime. The only Sierra series I enjoyed more than Space Quest 😁

As I've said before. I've loved this series and have laughed my way through each one! As a King's Quest fan, I certainly agree with you on this one. Shame it could have been so much more. Good job making me laugh on this series..."enjoy" Mask of Eternity!

It just boggles my mind that Sierra would get into bed with Animation Magic without knowing their history of disastrous CD-i Zelda games. It's like... well, it's like Cassima getting into bed with Prince Alexander.

Haha oh man! This was the first p&c adventure i ever played. And i loved it. I was not really around heydays of the cruel parser games.

Thanks man for this video, absolutely awesome. Back in the day i bought this game on a CD on a magazine, but never played it.

I remember getting into this game about six months ago, due to vivid early childhood memories of playing it with my mom. All I can say is, wow, this is way rougher than I remember it being!

This was the 1st KQ that I owned. I was so excited!...Then I played it. I think I only finished the first chapter, but attempted them all. Even when eventially looking solutions up, it wasn't even fun.

"Macromedia Dreamweaver" 😂

i loved this game growing up and played through it all the time (with a walkthrough of course bc i was a dumb kid and, well, sierra games.) So itll always have a soft spot in my heart bc of how weird and trippy it is. I know everyone hates it but i still wanna go back one of these days and blast through it in a few hours. Cant be worse than 8 was at least

I did think Rosella's view on freedom, love, setting your own path in life would play in the game along with the mom learning something from Rosella. She had a life family hope dreams goals before he did take her off to a faraway land, she did not know to live there forever with no means of her own to leave, mom thinks what she gave up but is fine yet does see Rosellas not fine.

I liked KQ7, but I also admit that part of that is rooted in nostalgia and is not ultimately in its stellar gameplay. Still, despite the total craziness of the story, I still think it succeeded I telling a more interesting story than the first 3 games (which had their limitations of the time, which I understand). As I have aged, I have come to the conclusion that although KQ is still my favorite Sierra series, it has a lot of problems and limitations, and when compared to other games in the genre as a whole, it has its own set of problems with character and story. I have never played much of Mask of Eternity (it’s on my list to play, but right now, I’m playing Fate of Atlantis). I look forward to hearing your continued thoughts on the series!

IIRC I think Josh Mandel had left Sierra by the time this game got to the point of voice casting btw.

17:22 "I have no idea why playing these particular four notes powers up this crystal ball that somehow teleports you [to space]." Ha! That's a good one! As if the Space Quest Historian would ever fail to recognize the theme from Space Quest! You... you are just joking, right?

It weirds me out seeing a King's Quest game in the art style I associate with Leisure Suit Larry 7.

Yeah, even as a hardcore King's Quest fan, I could not enjoy this one either. I mean, I like the concept of Rosella and Valanice going on an adventure together, but the animation and the dialogue were just horrible and I feel like they totally destroyed Rosella's character. Like in the intro, when she dismisses the idea of getting with that one prince because he's "so boring!" Now, if her problem with him was that he was selfish and arrogant - like the ungrateful frog prince she met in Tamir, then I'd understand. There were also a lot of confusing moments, like how Rosella turns into a shoeless troll, but changes back into a human with shoes on. How did she get those back? One of my brothers had lots of friends whom he occasionally borrowed games from, and KQ 5, 6, and 7 were among them. (My other brothers had the first four.) And most of those games we were able to figure out how to get through on our own, or were lent a hintbook to help us out with. (For KQ3, it was notecards with info on all the spells.) But KQ7 was one of the few games that neither of us could get very far in, and we had little internet access back then. Only years later, thanks to youtube, was I eventually able to find out how the story went. And frankly... it was somewhat decent, but even before I became an author, I could've done better.

I cannot wait to see what sort of abominations you find of this games first release version. (( given how surprisingly different versions of kings quest can perform and even look, even on the same engine. ))

Artwork is nice but they need a good story and a good GUI system. Remake? Thanks for the video.

the subtitle of kings quest seven the princeless bride is a reference to the 1987 family comedy movie the princess bride

You mentioned no dead ends and while that’s technically true I swear on my life I got my game rendered unwinnable in chapter 1 by accidentally leaving the temple with the scorpion after trapping it but accidentally leaving the room without solving the light puzzle (when I came back the scorpion immediately killed me). Maybe I’m misremembering but I did have to start the game over again

I never played VII myself. My sister obsessed over it for some reason back in the day. That was really the only game she played at the time. Personally, I was not a fan of the artwork and animation style for this game. It was too far gone from the previous styles for my taste.

The visual style impressed many of us back in the day. But even as a teenager, I was never sold on KQ7. It felt like a step backwards from the other Sierra titles. The one-button interface felt cheap. And it's clear that Sierra had a real boner for trying to replicate the popular Disney movies of the 1990s - or maybe an over-inflated sense of their ability as a multimedia company that can only come from having started believing their own press releases - that they'd completely sacrificed their trademark interactivity in exchange for... a veneer of style. It was the first King's Quest game I never bothered to play to completion. Or much beyond the first few chapters, to be honest.

I first played this with my daughters when they were young (circa 2005) and we loved it. Seeing this I now realise it really was a terrible game, it was just we had so much fun playing it together, the content didn't really matter at the time.

The bored wife of a programmer unleashed on of the most mind-bending adventure series of the planet... They say: Life imitates art, but capitalism imitating the high security loony bins sure tops it.

3:05 I guess it's Irn Bru :-)

If your like me then KQ7 is the only KQ game you played 😂

I was looking forward to this video and it didn't disappoint

Oof, Mask of Eternity is the only KQ game I couldn't stomach... Are you going to be ok?

Mask of Eternity is secretly the best KQ :D Shhh, don't telll anyone.

This is _Girl in the Tower_ in game form.

An extra comment about something I just thought about, the chapter selection may have been a debug feature left in the game. PQ3 'sdebug mode has something similar that lets you choose which day to start at if you start the game with debug enabled

Ouch

Why does this guy sound almost exactly like Spoony?

Or just made the game simpler- the queen run through a rat her complicated helping people maze and then it leads to her daughter and helps her daughter..

Wait it requires you to play the opening bars of the SQ theme song on the harp? Did I hear that right?

A cartoony game featuring val and rosella sounds like it'd be right up my alley but I have no interest in anything that happens in the game

Enjoyed that

10/10 på Chamberlain skalaen

Your avatar is not wearing his King Graham hat! Plot hole! Enjoyed your video, looking forward to the next one, and since I couldn't care less about King's Quest, I am even more looking forward to seeing you play Police Quest (and possibly Leisure Suit Larry after?) Thanks!

This game was a huge disappointment. I wanted it for Christmas, but you, know it wasn't ready. My mom explained the whole "all you get is a letter to send in so they can mail you a copy when it's ready" BS. When I finally got the game, I hated that you couldn't have multiple saves and that stupid wand instead of the old action icons. And what they did to Rosella, why did they make her all whiney? She was so badass in KQ4. anyway, as far as I'm concerned the last good King's Quest game was KQ4. 6 was ok, I enjoyed it as a kid, but as an adult it's pretty annoying. Those games started getting lame when they tried to make them kid friendly.

Interesting review, I have to say while I agree on most poi- VOLCANO!! 🌋🌋🌋🌋

KQ6 and SQ4 were my favorite games as a kid, I couldn't WAIT for this game to come out. I remember saving up my pocket money, heading down to the store, picking it up and being so excited...I think it took about 30 mins for reality to set in. After the masterpiece that is KQ6, the fall was very real and very painful. I think I took the disc out and immediately started playing KQ3 😂

I had this game as a child, and I remember liking it back then. But I picked it up a few years ago from GOG and went through it again... Woof. It's not great. Not really sure why I liked it other than "kids are stupid". I mean, I also used to like Bubsy. 🤷‍♂️

Looking more forward to lsl1

i belief it's the same actress that does the voice for Valanice is the old woman in SQ 6

You forgot to cover the release of 2.0, or "enhanced version". No idea if that is the one included in anthologies. It reportedly fixed some bugs (unlikely all). Anyway, what I had some 25 years ago (!!!) was so buggy in Act V I gave up, and Act VI was very anticlimactic nor did it make much sense.

KQ VII is awful so glad to see it get a proper roasting

Why does she only have 4 fingers in the intro?

Version 2.00b of KQ7 makes the Fire Cracker puzzle less annoying to do. Yeah KQ7 was weaker than KQ6 and even KQ5 just like SQ5 in my opinion was a step back since we got no voice acting for that game vs SQ4. KQ7 is like SQ5 in sense of that Sierra wanted to try something different SQ5 have their sister company Dynamix get their hands dirty with their first adventure game so I can understand why SQ5 didn't get a talking version was probably due to budget restraints. And with KQ7 they wanted to change up the graphics and upgrade the SCI engine yet again. I liked KQ7 at least is was a million times better than Mask of Eternity. At least KQ7 was a proper KQ game unlike Mask of Eternity.

Wow so this game was just made to ship rosella and Edgar as some messed up fan fiction? He was trying so hard to get her but she was like my dad could die any sec now so could you maybe leave me alone, But after all the crap he pulls this time, we are to think aw that is so sweet. She was all about setting her own path in life, doing what is best for her , only to do as in mom at end.

You sound angry. Treat yourself.

Yeah, I never finished this game, because I just didn't care anymore.

I remember being so disappointed by that "twist" ending. The most I can say about this game is that it was so impossibly ambitious that it just had no chance of outdoing itself. And for as much personality as the game tries to throw at you, it's probably the most empty feeling and least fun of the series (next to 3, that game's a f*kn nightmare that breaks everything fun about adventure gaming).

This game was a drastic step down in quality from KQ6. Literally the only thing I truly enjoyed was the opening sing. And I was joking when I said to somebody that the animation looks like a Phillips CDI game--now I know why! By far the worst KQ (and no I do not count KQ8 as a KQ game).

I *hated* this one back in the day. Its the only one I never beat. It was a bad disney story in a pseudo sierra form.

The only Sierra game with the word 'quest' in the title that I refuse to play

I loved this game but im gay so of course I would

Yeaaah this game is bad... but at least the scenes looked pretty. By scenes I mean the backgrounds and enviroments.

OK, at this point I'm feeling a little bad about all the torture you're putting yourself through. Maybe you should play some GOOD games before diving into Police Quest ('coz lord knows they ain't great.) What about a Monkey Island or two?

The interface really annoyed me when playin but valanice crying "my daughter" was the worst part of the game imo. It seems like sierrra required the SVGA SCI32 games to have a different interface from the older VGA SCI games SQ6 at least tried to make things similarish to the previous game with the text buttons to choose your action instead of the iconbar and had a proper savescreen and had a decent ingame options screen with speed settings the cursor changing over hotspots could have been a good thing if you needed to decide what to do with the thing. There were many complaints that the art style of the game was intended to appeal to children. The simplification of the ui (except for 3d inventory item manipulation why do this) and removing normal save games seems like an attempt to make things more accessable to children. If they did try to make it more accessable to children its was unnecessary as a child i played the various text praser games and these games were perfectly appealing to a child with their low res chunky graphics and complex way of interacting with the game world. Now with only 1 game in the series left I have to wonder if you're going to take a look at Wizard and The Princess/Adventure in Serenia the game that sierra made before Kings Quest set in the same universe (kq5 was actually set in serenia). With how old this game is its not worth playing and the endless desert nonsense started with it

I'm so happy I never played the game before, and stopped at KQVI. It looks horrible.

Worst review Ive seen so far on RU-vid

You're trying way too hard. Tone it down like 50% and you'd make better videos.