King's Quest IV: The Perils of Rosella

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File:King's Quest IV - DOS - USA.jpg
North American box art.

King's Quest IV: The Perils of Rosella is an adventure game by Sierra Online, originally released in 1988 for DOS, but later ported to several other platforms. Like many Sierra games, the game is a pioneer, in this case, of high-fidelity audio.

Status

I own a digital release of the game through Steam. I have beaten it with a full score.

Review

  • Overall: 6/10
  • Best Version: DOS

Good

  • The graphics are pretty amazing and are a good example of what is possible with EGA.
  • The soundtrack is professionally scored with leitmotifs, themes, and even an overture.
  • Most of the puzzles are fairly intuitive.
  • I think this is one of the first adventure games that has larger character art for close-up screens.
  • Having a real-time day and night transition was a pretty creative idea, and the redrawn backgrounds is quite impressive.

Bad

  • Some of the puzzles are pretty abstract.
  • I don't like the walking puzzles where the character stupidly walks off a cliff face. Thankfully, there are only a couple in this game.
  • Some of the puzzles later in the game are extremely easy, like avoiding the mummy.
  • There are several walking-dead scenarios which I don't like.
  • The real-time day and night transition, while creative, isn't implemented very well. I've never known anyone to actually play for several hours to make it to night time, without first solving the puzzles. This is good since it causes several walking-dead scenarios if you do.

Ugly

Box Art

Documentation

Maps

Links