Judging by the reviews on here i t dont think i'll enjoy 1/2/3 due to people saying you can miss stuff and break the game etc, i was wondering if you need to understand the story of 1/2/3 to enjoy 4/5/6?

You don't really need to play the first three games to enjoy the rest. The plot of the first two is very basic, and whilst the third one is one of my favourites, I think pretty much everyone agrees that the best in the series is King's Quest 6.

Also, there are remakes of the first three games if you'd prefer to play them with a point-and-click interface:

http://www.agdinteractive.com/games/games.html

http://www.infamous-adventures.com/home/index.php?page=games

You can play in the game games in any order... The stories are generallys stand-alone, and designed to be picked up by new players and old players alike...

There are generally only a few references to previous games, but those explained within the game...

I would not recommend playing the fan remakes of KQ1-3 without playing the originals first, as they do change the storylines (what basic storyline there are) from the original. They have their own direction, and are merely fanfiction based on the originals...

I'd say that's more so to the AGDI retellings of KQ2 and KQ3... The KQ1 by AGDI remake is pretty much an exact remake of Sierra's KQ1 SCI remake...

The very first adventure game I played as a kid was King's Quest V and I LOVED it. After that, I played King's Quest VI. I understood the storyline perfectly fine and replayed them over and over. I never got into the older King's Quest games until just recently. Playing the older games helped me understand Graham's and Alexander's background in V and VI more but I didn't feel it was necessary for me to play them first.

If you don't like dead ends, then I can't recommend to you 4/5/6 either. It's possible to reach dead ends in all of these games by doing something wrong. If you want to play King's Quest without dead ends then you should buy 7+8 (although I think that the latest games are weaker than the earlier ones).

First three are relatively short, so even if you make a mistake replaying the game doesn't take that long (even if you don't have earlier saves where you haven't made the mistake). Personally I enjoyed playing the first three games and there's some continuity between the games, despite the fact that all of the are stand alone adventures.