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theadventurerslog · 2 years ago

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King's Quest VII: The Princeless Bride | Part 1

The Adventurer’s Log

King’s Quest VII: The Princeless Bride Part 1

Release Date: 1994

As always for King's Quest, not a blind play.

Introduction:

It's time for King's Quest VII, the last game I'll be doing in this series, at least for a while.

A couple of notes:

ScummVM allows for subtitles. Unfortunately, the game's subtitles were never completed and were taken out but ScummVM adds them back in. Except it warns of errors, not always matching and that they're not complete, so I left them off. They were also quite ugly. Definitely a let down after VI! It would have been nice if they'd learned from VI and kept it up…

No dead ends! At least not intentional ones. There are apparently a couple spots you can glitch and get stuck, but otherwise far more forgiving. No point system either as far as I can tell.

As for other changes, well: there have been some shifts in the series from text parser to point and click with verbs and of course graphical changes. VII brings another shift as quite a lot has changed.

We now have a very cartoony, Disney inspired style. It's still a point and click, but a lot more streamlined (too much so in my opinion) which I'll get into more when we get into the game proper.

This game alternates between two protagonists! We get Rosella back, but now it's finally time for Valanice to get her time too. It's funny: shortly before I decided to get King's Quest VII I was grumbling a bit that all the Daventry family get their time except for Valanice and lo and behold I just needed to wait for VII.

The game is split into chapters each one focusing on one of our pair. And, well, I'll let the intro speak for itself. I apologise for the sound quality. That's just how it was and I don't know if there was something I could have tweaked, or just. old. And not the best quality. The actual game is better.

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Rosella laments the possibilities of incoming marriage and wants more adventure. She and Valanice discuss suitors - "Prince Throckmorton!" Boring! Rosella gets distracted by an odd winged seahorse critter and lured into a pool. Valanice takes the plunge and dives after leading them both into some kind of portal tunnel until they get separated.

And so we begin with Chapter 1.

Chapter One - "Where in the blazes am I?"

It's Valanice time! Okay, so interface stuff:

It can't be seen here because a scene was still playing but when you're playing the cursor is a wand. When you're at a hot spot it sparkles. There are no verbs to select, you just click and she'll take the appropriate action.

Got our inventory in the black box there. The eye is for looking. You drag an item over and you get an image that you can rotate around to see it all from angles. Like so:

The red gem is the menu. The slider above lets you pan the scene side to side but I mostly ignored that. It also slides as you're moving so I think it may be meant to give you an idea of when you're hitting an exit of that particular scene? Maybe? The cursor also turns into an arrow at exits too.

Tech talk aside before I get back into the game proper.

Now, I would like to say I set off for adventure! Except I ran into a hiccup of my own making. I've been using ScummVM for a long time now mostly to run Monkey Island. Then after the special editions of the first two games came out it essentially became my Curse of Monkey Island launcher. So, while I've been using it for ages I had a set up that worked for me and (almost, this almost being key) never looked back. All that to say I don't really have a good understanding of how things work. Going through King's Quest has taught me a little, but still very much a total amateur.

A while back I got the OpenGL + xBRZ scaler for Curse of Monkey Island and it's great for it! Cleans things up nicely without making a smoodgy mess or anything like that. So, I thought in my infinite wisdom of not knowing what I'm doing, it might be good with another cartoon-y 2D game like KQ VII and switched to it.

That was a terrible idea. I didn't see much if any difference and I've rarely if ever heard my computer fans go that loud. After some panicky and baffled moments of wondering how the hell a game from the 90s could be making my computer sound like it wants to explode I realized I had that shader going. I switched back to 2x and all was well again.

There might be better shaders to use for it. After having some issues with recording the intro and then that, I just wanted to get on with actually playing the game and left things at that. Live and learn.

Back to the game!

So Valanice appears in this desert in a whirlwind, but there's no sign of Rosella. She calls for her. She walks around looking around and gets her petticoat caught on a cactus which tears it because it's really not Valanice's day. On the other hand that petticoat piece became an inventory item so that's always good! She now has Rosella's comb and a piece of ripped fabric. Right after the tearing a jackalope bounds by being very annoying and obnoxiously laughing because again, it's not her day.

I wandered off to the left first and found a giant statue and a pool.

There were several points of interest here. I grabbed the stick. The sparkles were salt crystals and I took some of those. Looking into the pool shows a scene of another little statue holding a shallow bowl with two pieces of something in it. And you also get a view of the stairs going down.

Checking the pool again leads Valanice to trying a little and discovering it's salty.

As for the statue itself there's an inscription at the base that gives some clues.

The blue beads around the statue's neck can be moved around and the head itself can be twirled to create either the current head which I guess is the moon? Because the other is definitely a sun.

There wasn't anything else I could do there so I carried on. I briefly dipped into full blown desert dunes and noped out of that.

Going the other way I found a stone temple or shrine. However, I didn't get to explore before a giant scorpion showed up and I got my first death.

Deaths work a little differently in this game. They're more forgiving. Not much of a message by text but Valanice (or later Rosella) will make some comment related to the death and sometimes a vague sort of nudge about what to do. When you try again it puts you back right before you did whatever you shouldn't have done.

Also in this case there's a small window of time where you can run away back outside. Which I did on the retry.

From there I found another screen with two holes and a little door in a house built into stone with a sign saying Rare Curiosities the proprietor of which is Ricardo Eduardo Rodriguez Roo Rat.

Knocking on the door let me meet Mr. Roo Rat himself! But the poor little fellow has lost his glasses and can't see so he wasn't willing to converse much, but it didn't stop him from speaking in rhyme. After he disappears inside, the darned jackalope pops out of the holes and what a shock, he has the glasses.

I caught this mid-jump for quite the shot... Jerk also kicked up a bunch of sand at Valanice and laughed some more before disappearing back down its burrow. What a jerk.

I continued to explore finding an area with a cave, damp sand where water was dripping down and a gourd. There were also more paintings with clues on the one wall. I couldn't do much here yet.

And going further to left leads to another statue.

There's an arrow-like indent that can be looked at more closely.

So clearly I needed something to fit in there.

Further exploration outside led me to another patch of desert area against stone walls, very similar to a spot in KQV actually. There I met a ghostly man.

This fellow died and is wandering the desert in perpetual thirst. He warns Valanice away after she asks if there's anything she can do, but he also mentions a portal out of this land through mountains--the mouth of a great statue that was closed by an evil enchantress. That we've seen! Valanice protests leaving him, but the thirst drives him mad and he doesn't know what he might do, so go, go. Then he leaves.

I had a collection of things to do by now:

Get water for the spirit

Find a way past the scorpion

Get the glasses back for roo rat

Find the piece for the closed statue door

First thing's first was the water. I knew that inscription that was on the statue by the pool would help.

I went back to the area where the wet sand and cave was. I entered the cave where I found a basket inside of which was a corn kernel. There was also a row of pots. The first few kept breaking leading to a very annoyed Valanice.

But I was able to pick up the final pot.

Outside I planted the corn kernel in the wet sand and it grew into a full plant and I was able to pick an ear of corn.

I had everything I needed for the pool statue. I used the pot to get salt water from the pool and poured that into the statue's basin. Using Rosella's comb on Valanice causes her to think of Rosella and cry, so then you use the comb on the basin and Valanice cries into the basin. Put the corn in the statue's hand and twirl the head and voila. The water is purified.

I went back out to the desert, this time into the dunes, which I started to regret, but thankfully found the thirsty spirit very quickly and gave him the water.

In thanks for the water he led me to his remains and gifted me with the choice of a rope or bug reducing powder.

I took the powder. Then he faded, now at peace.

There was also a hunting horn which I took too.

Had to blow the sand out of it. Valanice comments on the usefulness of being long-winded sometimes.

All going well! ...except I got lost in the desert trying to get back and stayed long enough to die of thirst. And I must make it clear that it's a lot more generous than KQ V about that, but I just could not find my way back. Retrying brought me back to the remains and I then found my back very quickly... Oops.

I went back to the temple-y place where I could fearlessly confront that scorpion. Bug reducing powder go!

Who's a cute a little itty bitty fellow. Off it scampered.

I then went to examine that statue? Structure? Altar? There was also a carving of a face on the wall with one eye partly opened letting in some light.

And I didn't know what to do with it yet so I left it for now.

Instead I went back to the curiosities shop and the jackalope and got my revenge.

Blew the horn into the burrow. The jackalope flung himself out, the glasses were tossed and he dived back into his hole though not without losing a little fur to the cactus (which I of course grabbed too). Valanice seemed satisfied and I sure don't blame her.

I returned the glasses to Ricardo Eduardo and he was willing to start trading with me. For most of my stuff he only offered junk, junk that rhymes mind you, but still junk, that Valanice refuses in various ways. However, offering the comb leads to some information, if not a trade because Valanice doesn't want to part with it and the return trade was more junk. However, information: he heard of a princess in the west and that the troll king lost his heart and plans to wed a princess, a foreign princess. Valanice thinks that could be Rosella and he says she'll have to go beyond the woods and far below. There was much rhyming here.

While I was around this area, I ended up back near the corn and discovered the gourd had split open revealing a gourd seed. I took the seed and was able to trade it to Ricardo for a turquoise bead.

I knew there had to be something I could do with that shrine place so I went back to try again and realized I could have pressed the big water droplet in the centre. That caused the orbs to rise and I could move them around until I got the correct configuration.

This was the final configuration that gave me a piece that looked just like the indentation on the sealed door statue. I gotta be honest: I don't understand this puzzle. The beam colours change depending on where the orbs are based on colour mixing but otherwise I got nothing. I just fiddled until something worked. I'm sure there is a logic here with all the symbols but I'm just not really seeing it.

I got my key piece anyway! Except it was too small to fit in the indent, so I was missing another piece.

All I had left was the pool. I got stuck here for a bit. I had the clue painted on the wall:

I figured the blue circles probably corresponded to the beads on the statue neck and I knew needed to empty the pool.

There was wandering and fiddling until I found out you could click on the statue's wrist and it flips the bowl upside down. I didn't wave my cursor around enough! Missed that hot spot. With the beads aligned correctly and the bowl flipped the water was drained.

I went down the steps to another statue.

Once again I'm glad to have stairs I don't have to do myself.

Got an offering bowl here holding two turquoise pieces. If you just take one water floods in and drowns you. So that was another death. I put in the turquoise bead and took one of the pieces that looked like my piece and all was well until I tried taking the other piece too. Hello flood waters and death 4. So you gotta pick the right piece and that piece only. Combine with it the piece I already had and presto, one complete piece that fits in the statue.

And the statue's mouth opened into a door leading into a tunnel. Nothing can be so simple however, and a creature comes out and menaces Valanice

So ends this chapter.

And chapter 2 begins.

Next time: Chapter Two - "A troll is as a troll does."

Deaths: 4 Time: 1:15

Kind of miss listing my points. This feels emptier.

#king's quest #king's quest VII #the princeless bride #KQVII #KQVII_Log #sierra #adventure games

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