Quest For Glory IV: Shadows of Darkness

"A wonderful adventure"

As an enthusiastic fan of Sierra’s Quest games (King, Space AND Police, thank you very much) I feel guilty that I came into this wonderful series at #4 without having played the previous titles. What I found was a game in the tradition of the Quest adventure style, with additional role-playing elements such as control over character generation and skills development. This combined with that quirky Sierra brand of humor made Quest for Glory IV thoroughly enjoyable.

Story
Thankfully the game is quite merciful to people like myself who didn’t know any of the backstory from previous titles. It’s easy just to jump right in as though you were starting out on a brand new adventure, which technically you are. This time the story takes place in the kingdom of Mordavia. Sierra is known for taking traditional periods of history and imbuing them with fantastical elements. Here they have made Mordavia resemble a traditional Slavic/Eastern European kingdom complete with the folklore and superstitions that go along with it. You play a Hero for Hire who travels around doing good things for people. Gradually as you get to know the people of Mordavia and perform tasks for them, a bigger plot will reveal itself—an evil which threatens the entire kingdom. Predictably it is you who must put a stop to it.

Gameplay
You advance through Quest for Glory by doing your job and acting like a hero. You begin the game as one of three classes: Fighter, Magic User or Thief. A fourth option, Paladin, is only open to people who have completed previous QfG games. What character type you choose impacts how you play the game and complete quests, because each character has different skills and ways of doing things. You interact with your environment by pointing and clicking on things that look important, and using various items (and spells, if you can). As in a true RPG you will encounter randomly generated monsters, so fighting is inevitable, but thankfully it doesn’t take up too much of the game. You can even let the computer fight for you if want. I found the computer’s AI to be very good during fights and was content just to sit back and watching the fight play out. There is nothing random about fighting and the outcome of will always depend on your skill levels vs. the monster’s.

Through the course of the game almost everyone in town has some problem that they need your help with. The townspeople are wonderfully eccentric and I found myself really getting attached to them. And the town is not the only part of the kingdom you can explore. The game has many nice touches that make it all the more fun to play. For example, time passes as you play and the graphics will change accordingly to reflect dawn, midday, dusk and night. The townspeople believe strongly in their folklore which tells of evil creatures that come out at night. So woe to you if you get caught outside the town after the sun sets, because its citizens will have barred the gates and left you to fend for yourself.

Audio
As always with Sierra, the music reflects the setting of the story and goes a long way to establishing the proper mood. There are definitely some hummable melodies, but overall the music is innocuous—you know it’s there but it doesn’t stand out too much. The sound-effects are much the same, but a definite stand-out is the voice-acting which is both believable and entertaining.

Video
I really loved the graphics in QfG IV. For once your character is a decent size so that you can see all his details! Any animations in the game are smooth and realistic and there is a high level of detail on everything. The overall mood of QfGIV is rather gloomy and dark so I will attribute the sometimes lack of colors to this fact. But when it was appropriate, the use of colors could be quite spectacular. I also loved the way the entire screen changed color to reflect what time of day it was.

Replayability
The game itself will take many hours to complete. But besides that you’ll want to play through at least three times to try each character class because gameplay will be significantly different each time. Then there’s the Paladin option.

To buy or to rent?
Definitely worth buying if you see it. I bought QfG IV on its own but you can also get the Quest for Glory Anthology which includes games I, II, III and IV.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 08/18/02, Updated 05/06/03