"Not a bad ending, but could have put more effort into it"

The capstone of the Quest for Glory series begins like all of the others. You've been zipped off to some exotic land that's in a load of trouble and through a series of quests and battles you'll save the day. This time you'll be in contest with several other heroes to do it, though.

You can kind of tell Sierra had planned to close the series with this game with all the old friends who appear. Rakeesh, the banker, Salim and Julanar, Elsa, Nawar and Budar, Senior Ferrari, Erasmus...Honestly, it's a shame this series had to end at all. And I would probably be grieving a lot more if not for the fact that everything in this game feels so half-baked with the new touches to the series.

Every Quest for Glory game introduced new elements. New spells for the wizard, new tricks for the thief, new and stronger monsters for the fighter to kill. But when it comes to the new devices for QFGV, it felt like they weren't really trying anymore.

For example, if you play as a thief, you do your normal routine of breaking and entering to steal treasures from people you don't like. In addition, you can buy a special swiss army knife to learn a new skill: pickpocketing. Is this skill vital at some point in the thief's game? Nope. It's just for fun. And you won't get much of a return even if you do go around picking people's pockets.

And it's the same for another big feature of the game: getting married. I thought this was a nice touch after all of the hero's failures in love throughout the series, but I'd think it would effect relations with that woman after you propose and they accept, but once the initial gushing is over, pretty much all you hear about it again is a throwaway line on your bride's part after you've beaten the dragon. For all the people telling you how great love is, surprisingly little is done with it. Not even a scene of the marriage. Even King's Quest II had that!

And there's the assortment of weapons. You can get your hands on axes, spears, swords, daggers, and a whole load of arms and armor instead of the dagger or sword and shield that your character type sticks you with. Also, for the first time, lots of weapons and armor are even magic. But some of them, like the Dragon Slayer Sword, the best weapon in the game, seemed to me like something you should have had to go on a side quest to find. For the power of these items, they sure are easy to get as long as you've got money. If you kill the right kinds of enemies you can pretty much count on getting all the magic armor you'll ever need, too.

I could go on but I think I've made my point. The game isn't bad by any means, in fact I enjoyed it, but the new things it attempts to add to the series seem so half-baked. And all the familiar faces just seemed to be there to make this game one last big one to remember before Sierra shut down the adventure game department. If you've been playing Quest for Glory since the beginning, by all means add this to your collection. Just don't expect anything break-out original to happen. If you aren't a longtime QFG player, don't start with this one.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 12/19/03, Updated 03/16/04