The Legend of Kyrandia: Book One

The Legend of Kyrandia: Book One

MS-DOS - USA - 1st Edition.

Developer Westwood Studios Publisher Virgin Games Published 1992-08-?? Platforms Amiga, DOS, FM Towns, Macintosh Classic, PC-9800, Windows Genres Adventure, Graphic adventure, Passive puzzle, Puzzle Themes Adventure, Fantasy Series The Legend of Kyrandia Distribution Commercial

The Legend of Kyrandia: Book One is a graphic adventure puzzle game developed by Westwood Studios and published by Virgin Games in August 1992 for Amiga and MS-DOS, and later ported to FM Towns, Macintosh, PC-9800, and Windows. A CD-ROM version was released which has full speech for all of the game's dialogue. This is the first game in the The Legend of Kyrandia series. Westwood created a new category of games with this title called "Fables & Fiends," but they only used it for the Kyrandia series, despite it fitting with the Lands of Lore series as well.

In the game, an evil jester named Malcolm has escaped from his prison and, armed with the powerful magic Kyragem, is seeking revenge from those who imprisoned him. You play Brandon, the grandson of the wizard Kallek who has been turned into stone by Malcolm, who must not only find a way to return his grandfather to flesh, but must also stop Malcolm before he destroys your homeland.

Personal

Own?	Yes. CD-ROM Windows port signed by Frank Klepacki.
Won?	Yes. Needed a couple hints near the end of the game.
Finished	2020-06-14.

My high school girlfriend owned the CD-ROM version of this game and I played it with her in the late 1990s. We got to the Serpent Grotto maze before ending our session. Later, she told me that she had beat the game without me, which made me a bit disappointed (although, after playing the game again much later, I assume she meant she solved the cave, because the game continues after that for quite a while and has some very difficult parts). Years later, I got a copy of the game myself and even brought with me when I met Frank Klepacki in 2019 to have him sign it. I didn't restart playing the game until 2020. I got about half way in before I started needing to consult a walkthrough for some of the more unfair puzzles, then finally beat it.

Review

5	4	9	4	3

Best Version: Windows CD-ROM

— This section contains spoilers! —

Good

• The graphics are utterly amazing for this era. The background art is highly detailed, the character animation is fluid, and the pixel art of the sprites are fantastic. Ordinarily, vibrantly colored palettes make games feel artificial, but, in the magical land of Kyrandia, it helps maintain an air of mysticism.
• Although the voice acting isn't fantastic, the fact that there is speech for the entire game's dialog was still impressive in 1992.

Bad

• Many of the forest backgrounds are reused throughout the game to pad the size of the map. Sometimes they were flipped horizontally to make it less obvious. This wasn't too uncommon of a practice at the time, but it still looks bad.
• There is very little to do in most of the rooms and there is very little to click on to get better descriptions. While this speeds up the game play because you can only interact with things that are relevant, it also makes the game a lot less interesting. If the developers just decreased the number of rooms, they could condense the objects and make them more interesting while at the same time not need to reuse backgrounds.
• Some of the puzzles don't let you try obvious items. For example, at one point in the game you need to douse a fire and you may have a flask of water, but you can't use it! There is also a locked door, but you can't use the iron key you're holding. Even if they didn't want to animate the items not working, they could have at least given a message explaining why it wouldn't work.
• None of the music really impressed me.
• One of the rocks is hidden unnecessarily well in the serpent grotto.
• The well fills entirely with water... that's not how wells work!
• I prefer games of this type to have alternate solutions to various puzzles in order to increase replay value and reward more clever thinking. The only optional puzzle I can think of is the one which results in you getting the silver statuette, but you never do anything with it.
• The yellow spell is confusingly inconsistent. In one part of the game, it cures poison, in another it puts someone to sleep.
• While I appreciate that you can't accidentally destroy a necessary item because it randomly respawns somewhere else in the game map, I would prefer they just didn't let you do it in the first place and save you a lot of backtracking to find it again.

Ugly

• The limited inventory really slows down the game. Since there is no way to tell when an item is no longer necessary, and there are dozens more items than you can fit in your inventory, you're often forced to drop items and come back for them later, even if that means having to navigate a huge maze to get back to them. This is a good example of where realism works against player enjoyment.
• There are a lot of puzzles that have no hints to them, or hints that are very obscure. For example, the only clue given about needing to dump two same-colored items into the cauldron to make a potion is Brandon saying the potion looks "half-finished." Where and how you use the orange potion seems to only be hinted at Brandon saying it tastes like alfalfa, but all of the potions say something odd like that. The bell puzzle has no hints at all, you just have to brute force all 24 combinations. The book puzzle is especially unfair without any hints. I used an anagram program just to see how many possibilities there would be and it came up with 260 different words, not including multi-word answers (PORNGAME is possible, but, sadly, does nothing). The royal item puzzle has no hints, but, mercifully, there are only 6 possible combinations. These moon logic puzzles really hurts the game.
• There is a pretty serious way to put the game into an unwinnable state after you reach the final island. You will have acquired a couple dozen different items at this point in the game, but four specific ones are needed. There are no hints which four are needed, and you can't return from the island if you guessed incorrectly.

Media

Box Art

• 

  Most regions used this box art, although there were variations on the graphic layout. Malcolm is looking down on Brandon and a fairy that must have been cut from the final game, and we're looking down on Malcolm. Although, the painting is professional and I love the perspective, I think Malcolm looks a bit stupid.

• 

  The Japanese releases use this box. The art style is more anime-inspired and the perspective is great, but Malcolm is again stupid looking.

Documentation

• 

  Manual - MS-DOS - USA.

• 

  Hintbook - USA.

Maps

• 

  Brandon's home.

• 

  Timbermist Woods.

• 

  Serpent's Grotto.

• 

  The Faeriewood.

• 

  Castle Kyrandia.

Fan Art

• 

  Fan art by Taleea.

Videos

Demo trailer.

Longplay - DOS.

Play Online

MS-DOS (Disk), MS-DOS (CD-ROM)

Representation

Strong female character?	Fail	Brynn, Zanthia, and Brandon's mother are women, but none are particularly strong.
Bechdel test?	Fail	None of the women talk to each other.
Strong person of color character?	Fail	Everyone appears to be white.
Queer character?	Fail	There are no queer characters.

In the original version, the player can sexually assault Brynn.

Titles

Language	Native	Transliteration	Translation
Chinese	超级马力欧兄弟	Chāojí Mǎlìōu Xiōngdì	The Legend of Kailandia
English	The Legend of Kyrandia: Book One
Hebrew	דברי ימי קירנדיה		The Chronidia Chronicles
Japanese
Korean	키란디아의 전설	Kilandiaui Jeonseol	Kirlandia's Legend

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