Posted August 11, 2024
The Colonel's Bequest. Another classic Sierra game. I ended up falling a few points shy of the Super Sleuth rating, but I'm fine with that. I've never been too hung up on 100-percenting Sierra games.
It's interesting because although it has some item gathering and puzzle-solving, and you can get yourself killed by doing foolish things, it doesn't really play a lot like Sierra's usual output. The key to the game is just to wander around and trigger events, observing things as much as possible. In that sense it actually plays a bit like the style associated with Japanese adventure games, where you're constantly going back to the same locations and talking to the same people to see if anything different happens. If you're having trouble triggering the clock to move forward, just go back to a location you haven't visited in a while and something will probably happen, and just keep doing this until the game ends.
You do need to be thinking about how things fit together to get the good ending, but it's not especially demanding, the game never requires you to spell out the entire mystery and how everything fits together.
I also really like the ambience of the game, especially with the MT-32 soundtrack. I think they could have gone even more over the top, but it's still a cool setting and a fun bunch of stereotypical characters.
It's interesting because although it has some item gathering and puzzle-solving, and you can get yourself killed by doing foolish things, it doesn't really play a lot like Sierra's usual output. The key to the game is just to wander around and trigger events, observing things as much as possible. In that sense it actually plays a bit like the style associated with Japanese adventure games, where you're constantly going back to the same locations and talking to the same people to see if anything different happens. If you're having trouble triggering the clock to move forward, just go back to a location you haven't visited in a while and something will probably happen, and just keep doing this until the game ends.
You do need to be thinking about how things fit together to get the good ending, but it's not especially demanding, the game never requires you to spell out the entire mystery and how everything fits together.
I also really like the ambience of the game, especially with the MT-32 soundtrack. I think they could have gone even more over the top, but it's still a cool setting and a fun bunch of stereotypical characters.