A mix of fun and frustration.

The Legend of Kyrandia (Book One) is the first in a trilogy of point and click adventure games developed by Westwood Studios, it was based on a text-adventure game for Major BBS.

The story, while simple and not particularly original, is coherent and enhanced by details like the charming locations and colorful characters. You play as Brandon, grandson of Kallak, in a quest to stop the evil jester Malcolm, who has broken free and is wreaking havoc all over Kyrandia. The game mechanics are simpler than those in graphic adventure games by LucasArts and Sierra On-Line, there are no verbs, no parser, just one-click interactions. The game is easy to control and navigate.

The inventory management has interesting mechanics. While you can’t carry many items at once, if your inventory is full, you can carry one extra item in your hand and navigate between rooms with it; you are also free to drop items anywhere (there’s a “room” limit) and they will remain where you left them until you come back to pick them up.
A lot of content was cut from this game during production (there are graphics, even animations, hidden in the game files), and some inventory items, probably left over from abandoned puzzles, have no function whatsoever. Most of these items are found by the end of the game.

An interesting addition to the GUI is Brandon’s amulet; you obtain it early in the game, then you have to activate four gems, each of which will have a magic effect, adding some needed variety in the puzzle solving mechanics.
The puzzles range from logical to nonsensical, some can be particularly aggravating, others, however, are rewarding and several are humorous. The difficulty also varies greatly, I wouldn’t say the game is very hard in general, but it’s not an easy ride.

There are plenty of ways to die in Kyrandia, if you’re not familiar with the game, you will probably die many times. Dying can be frustrating, especially if you forget to save often, but the animations are fun to watch.

More frustrating than the many possible deaths is the infamous maze... yes, there’s an ugly maze in this game and you can only map it through trial and error, dying over and over again. While some may find amusement in drawing a map and finding the way without anyone’s help (like we used to do back in ‘92), others will (justifiably so) find this part of the game irritating. This is, perhaps, the most criticized part in the whole Kyrandia trilogy.

However, if you don’t want to spend your time exploring and mapping the cave by yourself, don’t worry, there’s no need to waste precious time searching for a decent walkthrough; in the game goodies provided by GOG you’ll find a PDF file titled Official Guide, print page 55 and you’ll have a nice map of the maze… this guide will also help if you get stuck at any point.

The uglier side of this game, however, is the fact that you can get yourself into a state in which the game can’t be completed anymore… and you have no way to know if your chances have been ruined after you ate some apples (hint, hint) or forgot to bring an object with you and now you can’t go back and get it. Although not uncommon in games of that era, it’s still bad design and that’s the reason I don’t give this game a higher rating.

The brightest part of the game is its humor and magical atmosphere, the gorgeous backgrounds and the awesome music by composer Frank Klepacki.

The version sold at GOG is the fully voiced CD ROM edition. The voice acting is nice in general, some voices are better than others. The main character, Brandon, is voiced by Joseph D. Kucan, of Command & Conquer fame, and he does a great job. The audio quality for the voices, however, is not that good, it has a lot of noise. I’m not sure if the game was originally like that, or if it’s an issue with ScummVM (the emulator used to run the game in modern machines). The music, thankfully, sounds beautiful, without any noise or distortion. The game, at least in my personal experience, runs perfectly fine with ScummVM; I did a full playthrough of Kyrandia 1 and 2, and, at the time I’m writing this, I’m currently playing Kyrandia 3. The trilogy works great, like in the good old days.

The game comes with a few goodies:

*The Manual. This is a scan of the CD Rom booklet (instead of the better looking, full color, larger manual that came in the box). I would have preferred a higher resolution scan, but it is readable. It also comes in English, French and German.

*Avatar. This is a picture of Malcolm the Jester, from the art used as the game’s cover.

*Official Guide. This is included with all three games in the series. It’s a thorough book with hints, solutions, and maps. Almost 300 pages long, it covers all three games thoroughly. Definitely a great addition.

So, do I recommend this game? Of course! If you like those good old pixelated adventure games from the early 90’s, you’ll probably enjoy this one too. It may not be as good as the classics everyone remembers from those days, but some of us love this game just as much or even more!