60%PC

A solid point-and-click adventure game. I've never played the original, but the VGA remake is exceptionally well done.

50%PC

Pretty point click, with interesting story

60%PC

Decent for its time, but that beanstalk climbing portion can die in a fire. Similar to the original Zork series, just with graphics and less complex puzzles.

60%PC

As a fan remake, this version improves upon the original game so much and I wish I could give it a higher score. I grew up playing the old King's Quest games so I have a lot of nostalgia and love for them, but I never really fell in love with the first game. The open ended design of it was wonderfully ambitious, but playing it was never all that much fun. The story is barebones with no extra details. Graham himself is an empty character with no personality, and several of the puzzles are unreasonably hard (the gnome's name being really evil).

But I do remember the sense of exploration and adventure when I first played this in the late '80s/early '90s. There was a magical feeling it to all, and while time may have removed a lot of those feelings for me I don't think it's fair to completely blame the game for that.

It's an important game, because it laid the groundwork for a huge amount of games after it. It's fair to call it revolutionary as the first game to include graphics you were able to directly interact with. This remake is based mostly on Sierra's own EGA remake of the game, but gets rid of the text parser and adds some lovely 256 colour graphics and voice acting. I like the fact that it actually feels like it could be a Sierra game from the '90s and you can feel the care and attention put into it. The real highlight is that it gives you the option to remove the dead-ends from the game, which made the original incompletable if you made mistakes.

AGD Interactive's later remakes would be much more ambitious than this and add a lot more narrative, but if you're going to play the first King's Quest game then I would recommend this as the one to go for.

60%PC

Quite enjoyable, but it's near impossible to beat without any walkthroughs.

40%PC

Hey, not a bad start at all for adventure games of its ilk. King's Quest differs from some of the other titles in the series by being almost entirely open-ended. Unfortunately, many solutions are obscure and the graphics have aged quite poorly.