Quest For Glory III: Wages of War

"Well, Nobody's Perfect"

The 'Quest For Glory' saga is one of the more enjoyable gaming series that Sierra has to offer. Mixing a light-hearted blend of adventuring, combat, and a little role-playing, it is a group of games that rarely lets you down. 'Quest For Glory III' is, alas, that rare little slip-up, but at least the game's heart is in the right place. It's a game that is so sweet and well-meaning that it feels cruel to give it a middling review. (Especially since the rest of the 'Quest For Glory' games have been extremely wonderful.) Credit should be given for creating a peace-promoting game in a rare African-based setting, but this game seems to be based more on concept and is less able in the actual execution.
As usual, you star as the Hero (you can either create your character or import him from previous 'Quest For Glory' games), playing as either a fighter, wizard, or thief. Some of the puzzles or plot details are different for each class, although this game has less class-unique puzzles as compared to its predecessors. This is one of the game's main weaknesses, since the selection of character class seems arbitrary at best.
For example, one of the fighter-specific quests is to slay one of the roaming dinosaur beasts and take its horn. That sounds exciting and dangerous enough, but while playing as a wizard, I must have killed thirty of those things during my travels. Couldn't the fighter have instead gotten a quest where he had to go into some mysterious cave and slayed something rare and mighty? Worse yet, one of the wizard-only quests is to make a magical staff, which consists of such exciting steps as finding the wood, and then handing it to someone to create your staff for you. And choosing a thief character almost seems ridiculous, since he has so little to do (hardly any of the great and exciting house-robbing from 'Quest For Glory I) and he is the weakest fighter of the three.
As you may have already guessed, the puzzles are by far the weakest part of the game, and in an adventure game, weak puzzles spell doom for the game as a whole. The 'Quest For Glory' games have never had the hardest puzzles, but they at least made an effort to have you use your brains between the wonderfully silly conversations and combat encounters. But the puzzles in this game are just sad. More than half of them seem to be brainless 'courier puzzles' (bring Item A to Person B, and then get Item C, to bring to Location D), which are duller than dirt. You spend most of your time running around the wilderness, bring people gems and fruit and all other kinds of knick-knacks. Hey, it's nice that the apothecary guy needs a special fruit, but why doesn't he get it himself, and let me do something wild and dangerous and heroic? Here I am, trying to prevent two societies from going to war and spilling blood all over the savannah, and the game designers have me running around like an errand boy.
The combat is equally poor, which doesn't help things one bit. The enemies attack in repetitive patterns, so it becomes rather simple to dodge anything they throw at you. And the combat is SLOW. You can see a spear-jab or bite coming from a mile away; not that you need to, though. You could probably just stand there and stab away to win your battles, as long as you rest enough to keep your hit points up. But why bother? Running away is easy to do and has a 100% success rate.
And it gets worse. When you wound an enemy, it takes time for his health bar to sloooooowly go down for the damage you've done. So no matter how bad you're beating on somebody, he or it won't die until their energy bar fully depletes. You could hit your foe a hundred times by repeatedly clicking your mouse, but it will stay standing until its energy bar painfully trickles down to zero. Ridiculous things like this should NEVER survive the beta-testing stages of game development.
But it's not all bad. The usual charm of the 'Quest For Glory' series is alive and well here; memorable characters (especially your little monkey companion later in the game) and colorful locales are abundant. The conversations with other characters are enjoyable, and you can haggle in the marketplace, which is a lot of fun.
The graphics are also quite good. Most scenes are colorful and vibrant, and you really feel immersed in an African type of environment. The only exception is during combat, where everything is just sort of dark and stagnant.
The music is also well done, with some decent sound effects, too. If more people would like to put an African drum-type sound in their games, I would be much obliged. (I enjoy video game music immensely, but I get a little tired of the electronic, synthesizer sort of sound.)
The actual plot of the game is less than stellar. You're supposed to be preventing a war, but you spend most of your time doing small errands that don't seem to add up to much. Some of the smaller plot points, like a brief relationship with a Leapordmen girl, seem hollow and tacked-on. I would have enjoyed it more if the hero was a larger part of the peace effort with the other characters, rather than just running around all by himself, solving simple little puzzles.
It's a pleasant game, to be sure, but deeply flawed. Interestingly enough, at the end of 'Quest For Glory II,' the game said that the sequel would be 'Quest For Glory III: Shadows Of Darkness.' 'Shadows Of Darkness' ended up becoming 'Quest For Glory IV.' Why did the designers end up doing this game first? I strongly suspect that they visited Africa (or read a book on it, or whatever), and became so enraptured with the idea of an African-esque game that they just had to make one. Unfortunately, in their zeal to create a game with an African setting, they threw together the plot and puzzles too quickly. I too know how it feels when you're so excited about creating something that you start to lose your objectivity about it, and end up with a product that you adore but it fails to meet the standards of others.
I suppose that this game really deserves a '4' (or maybe even a '3'), but I don't have the heart.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 02/20/00, Updated 02/20/00