Comedy is Not Pretty

A Review of The Legend of Kyrandia

The Legend of Kyrandia, Book 3: Malcolm's Revenge takes the player yet again into the magical world of Kyrandia. This time your playing the, supposedly evil jester, Malcolm. You have been accused of killing the King and Queen of Kyrandia (see Legend of Kyrandia, Book 1) and your job is to clear your name and prove yourself innocent.

This will be no easy task, as everyone in Kyrandia remembers who you are, and has their very negative opinion of you. The adventure take you through five separate areas, and back again to three of those areas, for a total of traversing eight sections.

Game play is very simple. You simply point to something you see on the screen and your character will 'touch' it or go there with the simple click of the button. K3 has made a few modifications over their old Kyrandia engine. They have improved the inventory / options screen so that it shrinks down to just a bar when not in use giving, you about 20more graphics than before. They upgraded their graphics, which are still VGA, but dazzlingly rendered. The characters now all speak with real voices instead of text. The music is the same higher than normal quality for all Westwood Studios games. These are all great improvements from previous games.

However they have also made some changes which are bad. They have changed the linear plot to a slightly flexible one. While this makes everyone's game slightly different it is also a double edged sword. Every key sequence seem to have two puzzles attached, only one of which you have to do. This is not told to you at the beginning of the game and if you do not figure this out on your own you may wander around for hours trying to figure out a puzzle you do not even have to do.

The improved graphics are great. They are still the same old VGA graphics, however they have greatly upgraded the look and amount of colors they are using. Each scene is absolutely breathtaking. However again this can also be a double edged sword. Some of the pictures are not obvious that you can click there, or that the black thing in the corner is actually a tunnel somewhere else. I myself became stuck for four days moving between two locations because what I thought was a black spout, was indeed a tunnel. They do still have the mouse pointer which changes to an arrow to travel to a different scene, but with the new engine it does not always do this in some parts. This can easily trick the player into thinking they are stuck and can not progress in the game.

The voices and music are great, no complaints about these, accept that the first few songs you hear are very Leisure Suit Larry like in nature. Some of the voices are so amusing you find yourself reciting the lines with the characters. Yes, some things you will hear far too many times, and some far to few.

The sectional game play is still the same. They have also added an improvement to your characters deaths. If you die and haven't saved your game for a while its OK, you can hit the "second chance" button and return to just before you died. However they have also set several critical junctures in the game which can permanently trap you. I highly suggest when you play this game you save at the beginning of each section of the game before you touch or do anything else. I also suggest you have at least two slots you periodically save during the sections. This will help prevent you from saving too much or too little, and being stuck and having to start your game completely over again.

In summary: K3 is a great game if you can actually do all the right things and not get stuck. I think that most people will however, become stuck or do the wrong thing, and eventually just get sick of the game. Some parts are way too hard, and some puzzles while having two ways to be solved often becomes a choice of an easy or hard way. And lets hope you chose the easy way because if you didn't the hard way more often than not be your only choice. I highly suggest when purchasing this game you keep your receipt and registration. I feel the puzzles are too easy, and the game play too repetitive or hard, for most people to like the game.

If I were not reviewing this game I would have never bothered to complete it. I am a great fan of Westwood Studios work and look forward to their future projects, but in my opinion save your money for another game. If your looking for a good Kyrandia game then buy Kyrandia 2, in my opinion it is just a much better game, and far more enjoyable.

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