The Legend of Kyrandia (Book One)

Although less known than the LucasArts or Sierra games, the Kyrandia series firmly deserves a place in the history of graphical adventures. In my opinion, the highlights of the game (good and bad) are the following: - Historically, it was one of the first (if not the first) graphical adventures to do away with verbs and to present a pure point and click interface. In addition, the quality of the graphics and of the graphical effects was absolutely top notch at the time. - If you have played the other two games, know that the legend of Kyrandia has a completely different atmosphere: despite the abundance of colours, the tone of the game is rather somber, with only occasional bouts of light-heartedness. - Contributing to the overall tone of the story, most of the game is spent travelling alone in the wilderness of Kyrandia, and it is very easy to die there. Although the game generally gives hints that something is dangerous, the limited amount of interaction options that the user interface offers means that you'll likely die while trying to figure out what to do, even if you noticed the "danger" signs. - The game does not give a lot of hints about what is to be done to solve the puzzles, so many of them give the feeling that you need to use trial and error to solve them.

Legend of Kyrandia games hold a special place for me, since they were one of the first games I ever bought with my own money, with the first one being an exception I got as a gift. This one has a 'smart cursor' where the action that will be taken upon clicking things is automatically chosen. Clicking an apple picks it up, clicking on people makes you talk to them etc. The graphics were nice and the dialogue was well written for their first real adventure game, but the puzzles are sometimes frustrating and the game just seems to lack the level of polish they had in the second and third Kyrandia games (not to mention compared to Sierra and Lucasarts games of that era). I think people who aren't playing this for nostalgias sake will only give this game three stars, if you're already a fan of the series or just love adventure games then you will surely enjoy this one

Ahh! First of all, thank you GOG for bringing this classic gem here! It reminds me of my childhood, playing hours and hours with great games like this. I remember checking all the screens in this game several times not to miss anything important. I really enjoyed collecting gemstones, potion components, seeds, nuts and all the interesting stuff you can find in a point-and-click adventure game. Westwood being the developer speaks for itself. If you're familiar with the Eye of the Beholder series you know what I'm talking about. Music and sound effects are simply brilliant. The story itself is okay spiced with a great sense of humour. As for the graphics, some screens are quite nice, but don't expect too much and I've seen much worse anyway. I'd really love to see the 2 sequels here on GOG. A definite buy from me.

I'd wanted to play this since I saw screenshots in Amiga mags back in the day, but this was my first actual experience and... I was massively disappointed. Lucasarts set the bar high for point-and-click adventures. Storylines that made sense, an interface that didn't fight the player and puzzles that were tough but fair and made logical sense. The Broken Sword games and Telltale's output kept this up but a lot of titles just didn't learn these lessons; Kyrandia is one. It looks gorgeous and I like the voice acting but the puzzles just make no sense. The game gives you no clue at all where to go or what to do, you just have to experiment. But the game punishes experimentation harshly - take a wrong step and die. Use an item in a place you aren't supposed to and the game gets stuck in an unwinnable state. The latter makes the game a nightmare; it's absurdly easy to destroy items by mistake; if you're lucky, you can find a replacement by backtracking though it might take you hours. If you're unlucky, the item is irreplacable and you've had it. Saving before doing ANYTHING is the safest way. Also, the game goes out of its way to confuse the player; there are dozens of useless red-herring items that have no use, and the lack of inventory slots makes trying to work out which items you do and don't need at any one time a nightmare unless you've got some latent psychic ability. It's also quite a lonely game. With a five-ish hour playtime you'll meet maybe six or seven other characters; most of the time you're wandering around woods or caves with nobody to talk to but yourself. This leaves the game feeling a bit stark and characterless compared to something like Monkey Island. The plot is pretty slender, too. I toyed with giving it one star, but it does look lovely in places and the character of Malcolm has potential even if he's underused. So it scrapes a second one, but I wouldn't in any way recommend it over the Lucasarts/Revolution games available on GOG.