This video speaks for me. To give a short answer to your questions, yes there is a maze, and the game is nothing like the other entries in the series.

King's Quest VIII: The Mask of Eternity
http://thatguywiththeglasses.com/videolinks/teamt/paw/kingsquest/31949-kings-quest-retrospective-mask-of-eternity

Except for King's Quest VI, no King's Quest games are good. I'm a firm follower of the "Roberta Williams is shit" fan club. Leisure Suit Larry? Great. Space Quest? Great. King's Quest? A load of drivel, a mash of different fairy tales filled with unfair deaths and shitty puzzles without any shred of originality. King's Quest VI (and partially V) was easily the best because it was a lot less brutal and sinned way less against basic adventure gaming rules.

King's Quest VIII is still better than King's Quest 1-4.

This.

Funny thing is, King's Quest 1 was pretty much the founder of the graphic adventure, so it can hardly be accused of sinning against any rules.

If you are a die hard fan of the other entries into the series (I-VII) Then you might be disappointed in KQ: Mask of Eternity because it is very different than the previous games. Also since you completed 1-7 then there is slight chance that you might be disappointed. Also the Mask of Eternity the whole game is one giant maze. I agree with you that KQ6 is a good game but I disagree with you saying that Mask of Eternity is better than 1-4 and Saying that KQ is a load of drivel. Mask of Eternity is not better than KQ 1-7 by any stretches of the imagination.

I played it when it was relatively new (well, about a year or so old), and I liked it. It is not a game that I can wholeheartedly recommend, it is not great, but I thought it was fun.
There are mazes, and maze-like environments (though they are far from the worst examples around). I did not beat the game back then, but I did not find it to be a super hard game when I played it.
It is not a pure adventure game though, so don't expect that.

This is a dumb question, but...is King's Quest 8 better or worst than Ultima IX? They both killed off an iconic series...

I only played the demo for KQ8.

Despite not being very successful, I think it was a necessary gamble since pretty much all games were going 3D at that time.

It was quite different from other KQ games, but actually from what I've read it's supposed to be a decent game. Not great, but decent.

I remember my mom buying that game for my brother and me and I was like.... what is this crap? WTH? I felt cheated as a child.

I recently went on a quest to replay the whole KQ's series when I was sick in bed and it wasn't THAT bad, but it was by no means good either.

Being the first at something doesn't make it good. Before KQ1, you had Infocom text adventure games with brilliant writing, loads of attention to detail and original settings. KQ1 was very very generic compared to that. They literately jammed the game full of well known fairy tales.

And stuff like "keep things fair" isn't something that has to be a rule for you to follow. As I said before, I always imagined Roberta Williams was a kind of closet pain dominatrix considering how she just loved to shove her games full of unfair deaths and the ability to get completely stuck through no fault of your own. Space Quest had quite a few of those as well, but at least had original stories, comedy and style. KQ was just flat as a piece of paper and only from KQ5 onwards, the game finally showed some character.

That link shows, funnily, the worst reviewer I've seen recently... reviewing a pretty dated game.

As I understand it, King's Quest 8 was as solid as a rock when it came to stability. Ultima IX on the other paw, is filled with bugs. As before, I would refer people to someone else who has a deeper connection to a game series, in this case SpoonyOne with the Ultima series. He actually covers most of the entries in the series, so I recommend checking out the videos leading up to Ultima IX in order to have some context about the downfall of Ultima.


Ultima IX: Acension (retrospective)
http://spoonyexperiment.com/2012/08/11/ultima-9-ascension-finale-uncut/


Ultima videos by SpoonyOne
http://spoonyexperiment.com/category/game-reviews/ultima-retrospective/

Well,I played the first three chapters of this saga thanks to AGD remakes, they are pretty good.But well,these games are impossible to finish without a solution,they can require eternity because puzzles are pretty illogical.
I will give KQ8 a try,then I will decide if play it or not.

Hi Big Boss,
I've finished all King quests in their original form (no fan remakes). I actually enjoyed KQ8, it has terrible camera - you must switch to 1st person view to be able to move :) and it's not classical point&click adventure anymore, but it still has the "KQ feeling". If you can accept that it's very simple RPG with only a few adventure elements, you might be satisfied.

About mazes - there are some locations with complicated layout, but you have automap and i didn't have problems with being lost. If you hate mazes you will not like it though :)