King's Quest VI: Heir Today, Gone Tomorrow

"A game worth all the build up."

This was actually the first King's Quest game I played, but I couldn't even tie my shoes when the first one was the latest thing, so to me it always seemed okay. After getting a chance to play the other ones, it felt like they were all building up to this one.

Story-8/10
Prince Alexander can't get the beautiful Cassima, who he met when his father saved from the wizard Mordack, out of his mind. As it is wont to do when the game takes place outside of Daventry, he sees a vision in the royal magic mirror of Cassima longing for him as well, and he immediately sets sail for her kingdom in the Green Isles. Alexander's ship sinks but he arrives, and finds that Cassima is supposed engaged to the slimy vizier (viziers are always slimy). But is this wedding what she truly wants...?

Gameplay-9/10
Standard for a Sierra graphic adventure, although that means it's of the "harsh" school of gameplay, meaning it's possible to get stuck and have to start over if you don't have a fixed save for each stage of the game. I did like a lot of the puzzles, and KQ6 was the second game I played to have ending variations, and at the time I thought it was that much cooler because so few games did.

Graphics-8/10
They were awesome for a PC game at the time, when 3D polygon games were still a rarity. The animations are okay, and I liked how the sword fight at the end looked.

Audio-9/10
When I first played the game it was on a primitive computer with no sound to speak of. Having picked up the recent collection pack with the talkie version of kQ6, I got to experience the game with great music, decent sound effects and first rate voice acting. Tony Jay and Don Messick were pros and brought their characters to life. The winged people's ruler having the voice of the Tick was kind of strange, but it worked.

Replay Value-7/10
There are two main paths through the game and which one you take affects how awesome the ending is; one shorter, easier and less rewarding, while one is longer, more intensive and pays off bigger. The climax to both paths are basically the same, though, which seemed weird to me at the time.

Overall-10/10 (not averaged)
This game was awesome, and playing through the series again seemed like the perfect note to end a series on. As we all know, they didn't, and as we all know, the world is a much poorer place for it.

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 03/23/07