Quest For Glory II: Trial By Fire

"...And wind, and earth, and water..."

Ah, Quest for Glory, my favorite "quest" series. Nothing not funny to say this time, so let's just jump right in.

Story-7/10
Having proven himself a hero by solving Spielburg's brigand problem and running Baba Yaga out of town, our customizable protagonist has been asked by some friends he made to return to their home, the desert kingdom of Shapeir, to save it from its own mystical misfortunes.

Gameplay-7/10
Sierra never updated this one, so even in the compilation packs, Trial by Fire is the same old game with the clunky combat and requiring you to guess what phrase the programmers were thinking of to do things. It's still pretty good, but not as good as it would be after they took out the guess work.

You have your three basic character types, fighter, wizard, and thief, each of whom has different skills and, appropriately, different ways of tackling the game's problems. The fighter solves problems by hacking them or smashing to bits, the wizard uses his magic spells to attack problems indirectly, and the thief uses his agility and stealth to get around problems with as little fuss as possible. You have to use items to solve puzzles, but also keep an eye on your hit points and skill ratings, taking King's Quest that next step.

Graphics-7/10
Totally 8-bit. That was the norm at the time, and they look all right. Still, it kind of makes you wish Sierra had gotten around to doing a revamp, or wanting those freeware developers to hurry up with their version.

Audio-?/10
The sound in this game works only on speakers from a gaming era far, far away. I can't comment.

Replay value-6/10
Personally I never felt as much of an urge as I think Sierra wanted to play the game over as another character who'd see only a few extra scenes not seen by other types. When I beat the game with one character, I felt ready to save him on a disk and move onto the next one.

Overall-7/10 (not averaged)
Not a bad game by any stretch, but being redone couldn't have hurt it. I'm looking forward to when it finally is.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 03/23/07