WARNING: CONTAINS SPOILERS
Grrr.... I played through a decent portion of this game only to be rewarded with finding out that I should have thrown the boot (found in the deadly and confusing desert) that wasn't in my inventory (at the time) at the rat being chased by a cat (a one time event). I get that the games were short so dead ends were a way to expand game time, but this reminds me of my frustration back in the day regarding these games. Roberta should be ashamed.

Yeah, it's a pain alright. Best option is to quite religiously save - in a different save slot. I played through it using ScummVM because I liked the sound quality a bit better, so I had 99 saves by the end of the game - made it easy to select the part where I went wrong, and replay from there.

Yup. I recall (not so fondly) that KQ5 has a number of dead ends if you have not done something, or talked to someone, or collected something, by a certain point. In a number of places, there is no way to go back and resolve the issue and return. Best option is to create separate save files at significant points, so there is at least one fallback.

The manuals back in the day always warned save early save often. It's one of the classic rules of adventure gaming even back to Infocom.

Also if something happens on screen that leads to death of a npc it's probably important event.

Secondly you can also use the stick on the cat iirc, invade you used the boot on the dog.

However one thing about KQ5 is most of the dead ends are intentional stumpers that lead to actual deaths, often with unique deaths that are not available if you have the correct items. Or you are warned about doing into places that may be dead ends. The snake is another barrier that is there to help limit certain dead end situations.

Ahhh.....KQ5. What wonderful memories. A more atmospheric and exciting horrible game possibly doesn't exist :D.

Always remember, if eating something removes it from your inventory, don't eat it. And save everyone you can.
Also, yetis are killed in a very weird, odd way :D.

If something removed from your inventory doesn't give you points, or you lose points. It's probably the wrong action.

I don't know why this was never pointed out (but I'll point it out anyway for anyone in the future who has this issue), but you could have thrown the stick at the cat. If you saw the cat chasing the rat and you didn't have the boot, you must have had the stick in the inventory. You can use the stick with the cat and the boot with the dog. There are a couple of instances in this game where 2 items can be reversed, albeit for lesser points.

While stunningly beautiful at the time, KQ5 is definitely the worst-designed King's Quest. The puzzles are extremely unfair -- I recommend using a walkthrough throughout, or just watching the game on youtube.

That's what passed for complex game development at the time. KQ4 also had many of its own puzzles that, like KQ5, at the time, were supposed to be considered imaginative, challenging, and ake a long time to figure out. When looked at by today's audiences and compared to modern titles (which are arguably easier), most Sierra games are thought of as badly designed.

The problem isn't challenge -- it's unfairness. As The Digital Antiquarian discusses here [url=]http://www.filfre.net/2015/07/the-14-deadly-sins-of-graphic-adventure-design/[/url], it's very easy to create an unfair adventure game since the designer has all the power and the player has none. Once the player thinks the designer isn't playing by fair rules, he'll just go to a walkthrough to figure out the game and there might as well not be a game. An adventure game can be challenging without being unfair -- see almost all LucasArts games after Monkey Island.

My point is that the concept of "unfairness" didn't exist in the age of KQ, at least not from the dev's point of view. Any complaint about unfairness was dismissed by saying, "Yeah well it's supposed to be hard. Keep trying." The LucasArts games set out to combat that and set the standards in fairness we see in pretty much all adventure games now: trial and error without consequences, no unwinnnable situations, etc...

Actually the fairness standards were set way before both Sierra and LucasArts by Infocom. Unfortunately, neither LucasArts nor Sierra seemed to have played Infocom's games or learned from them. Sierra didn't play anyone else's games (Sierra devs are notorious for being devs who don't play games) and LucasArts had to relearn the lessons learned by Infocom a decade earlier.

The King's Quest games are indeed very unfair games. I know adventure games are supposed to be hard, but there should not be dead ends. When they made the first 6 King's Quest games, they didn't even try to make the games devoid of dead ends. They just didn't care. Not to mention King's Quest games probably have more Guide Dang it puzzles than any other series.

That said, somehow I still love those games anyway.

I think most of us played these games when we were kids, and we had few things to compare them to. Our PCs could only do one thing at a time, and so our attention was entirely on the games. Really obscure puzzles could occupy us for days, making the experience special. As kids, you also don't have a sense of what's appropriate and what's not, what's a good use of your time and what isn't.

If you replay these games now, you mostly know the solutions, which means you're getting an 'easy mode' through the game. Sierra games were almost meant to be played with a walkthrough.

I played the KQ games when I was a kid. I was 11 when the 1st one came out. And I beat them without a hint book. While I agree that some of the puzzles were unfairly difficult, with obscure solutions, it was fun trying to figure them out. I get people having to use a hint book when they get stuck, but nowadays, people don't even try. They just play the game with a walkthrough pulled up on the internet. To me, that's totally missing the point. I feel like people have become lazy & no longer try to think anymore. And it's not just with video games, but people's mentality in general. People want everything handed to them. Having to think & figure things out on there own is more trouble than people want to deal with anymore