Quest For Glory II: Trial By Fire

"The best in a great series"

The Quest for Glory series is by far the greatest series of adventure games from an era when adventure games were all the rage. Younger gamers will never know the fun of the Leisure Suit Larry, Space Quest, Kings Quest, Police Quest, or the Quest for Glory series, and it's a shame. Sierra was top dog in those days, and the aforementioned games are why. True adventure games have gone the way of the dodo in these modern times when cut scenes are long, and puzzles are short. The original Quest for Glory: So you want to be Hero (a.k.a. Hero Quest) was voted game of the year, and for good reason. Quest for Glory II: Trial by Fire was also voted game of the year also for good reason. After your adventure in Spielburg the setting of the first QfG the hero takes off with his new Katta friends to the mystical land of Shapier. There has been a dark cloud hanging over the heads of the citizens of Shapier even since it's sister city of Rasier was taken over by a mysterious new leader who runs Rasier with an iron fist.
As either a thief, fighter, or a wizard you must save Shapier from magical attacks, then venture to Rasier and usurp the evil Sultan and restore peace to the land.
The feature that separates Quest for Glory from other games is the ability to play as separate classes then save your character on a disk and use them in the next installment of the game. This gives you a big advantage when starting QfG 3: Wages of War.
The reason I enjoy QfG 2 the most out of the rest of the series is because there are more character specific adventures. A wizard can join the Wizards' Institute of Technocery or WIT, the fighter can join the Eternal Order of Fighters or EOF, and thief can get various jobs from the shady Money Changer. The Wizard and the Fighters do not have any other guilds in the other installments while the thief has a guild in 1, 4, and 5.
Onto the technical points. Since this game is using only 16 colors don't expect to see a work of art, but the people at Sierra really make it look excellent. You know what everything is, and the graphics do not take away from the gameplay at all. Remember, this was top of the line stuff back then. Also when you see a close up of a characters face, the detail is done very well.
The interface is good too. You must type in what you want to do and move your character around via the directional keys, but still it's not bad at all. Typing commands to look at, take or talk to an object is not as annoying it sounds. The game more or less gets the gist of what you are trying to say and helps you out.
The story is great if not similar to the rest of the games, defeat the bad guy, pump up your stats, save the land, but hey, that's what you do in adventure games. It's how you get from A to B that's fun. And Quest for Glory II has a lot of that.
I will just touch on the soundtrack of the game. It has standard sounds and music, but if you use the right configuration i.e. don't use your computers internal speaker the game actually has good sounds, and music.
I highly recommend to anyone to buy this game and the entire series if you can still find it. Check on Ebay. Trust me, if you play one game you will want to play them all.

Gameplay: 9.5
Soundtrack: 8
Graphics (for the time): 8
Fun: 10
Replay Value: 10

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 01/30/04