Cult of Jared

Ye Olden Queste Fore Glorye

Recommended Posts

So I've been slowly playing through Bioware games, and they are pretty miserable. Also sometimes great.

Does anyone remember the Quest for Glory series? I haven't played the series since age eight, but I remember it doing many of the cool things Bioware games do.

As I remember them:

-combination rpg/adventure game

-varied puzzle solutions based on which character class you picked.

-character import between games.

-super-cool eastern european flavor.

-spot on humor.

Can anyone refresh my memory? Is there a legal method of obtaining these games?

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I remember these and I loved 'em.

There's a freely available remake of the second one, but the maze-like city navigation was just too much for me to handle despite my somehow being okay with it when I played the original. But it's free, so you might as well give it a try. Maybe you'll find your tolerance for that kind of thing to be higher than mine.

I think you can still find the original games on amazon. If I were to buy them, I would probably go for the collection of 1-4 as it comes pre-patched and hopefully(?) is more likely to run ok on a modern system? Otherwise you might find yourself having to fiddle around with dosbox a lot to get anything going.

If you buy them individually be warned that 4 has a lot of gamebreaking bugs that need to be patched up and 3 is disappointingly short. Post-patching, 4 is probably my favorite of the lot.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Thanks for the links! You can also buy these individually for way less than the collection.

Does anyone remember how the plot worked? I remember the fifth game allowing you to kill off almost any character, which is kind of mind blowing if true. It came out in 1998. I think I only watched a friend beat it though, and I might be conflating this with a different game.

The thumbs sometimes talk about RPGs and adventures being cast from the same mold, referencing Monkey Island games having a monetary system. These games might be a much better example though, they involve getting money for slaying monsters in the wilderness.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Quest for Glory series was weirdly ahead of their time in terms of being a hybrid of multiple genres. I have nothing but praise for any of them. Except the 5th one which I had forgotten existed until this thread and as far as i can recall now was garbage.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I remember reading an interview with the designers in which they stated that they wanted to make an adventure game, but they worked at Sierra, who was pushing the use of their adventure game engine, so....they implemented an RPG, as best they could, in the adventure game engine. As reasons go for genre hybridization, I think that's pretty hilarious.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I remember the first four games being pretty good, with three being the worst, and two and four being tied in awesomeness. I started to play five but I couldn't stand it. It just seemed incredibly boring and ugly.

Not sure how they hold up because it's been almost a decade since I've played one. I did enjoy playing the game with each different path (or character). I always found it fun to see how things alter for just changing your skillset.

Also if you love puns, you're going to think Quest for Glory is side splitting.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
I remember the first four games being pretty good, with three being the worst, and two and four being tied in awesomeness. I started to play five but I couldn't stand it. It just seemed incredibly boring and ugly.

Not sure how they hold up because it's been almost a decade since I've played one. I did enjoy playing the game with each different path (or character). I always found it fun to see how things alter for just changing your skillset.

Also if you love puns, you're going to think Quest for Glory is side splitting.

QFG4 was narrated by John Rhys-Davies, which is possibly the coolest thing ever.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Pretty much the best games. The series is in my top 10 (probably my top 5) games alongside Star Control 2.

I probably replay at least the first 2-3 games every couple years. I'd rank them in the following order, probably: 2 > 1 > 3 > 4 > 5

5 is not...the worst game ever, it's just kind of an ignoble end to a great, under-appreciated series. The FA in #5 always managed to cause a serious bit of melancholy from me, though.

The games have a few rough spots, but age better than most games their age - and I'm still surprised no one else has really tried to conquer the RPG+Adventure game hybrid. It still has similar(ish) puzzles as many adventure games, albeit with a different interface - and what's better, many puzzles and problems effectively have multiple solutions. Maybe some purists will feel it pulls away from the adventure game mold, but I've always loved them.

Someone BRAND NEW to the series should be warned/told (it's mostly a good thing, though it skews the games' difficulty balancing) that each successive game lets you import your character from the previous game.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I probably replay at least the first 2-3 games every couple years. I'd rank them in the following order, probably: 2 > 1 > 3 > 4 > 5

3>4, really? I mean what was there in 3 was fine, but there was so little of it.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
3>4, really? I mean what was there in 3 was fine, but there was so little of it.

I may be a bit blinded by nostalgia, as I came into playing QFG1/2 after their release, finishing them right before 3 came out. Hell, when I played QFG1, it was a copy of Hero's Quest, prior to the rename.

I had a lot of fun with 3, and thought it was really solid. It never struck me as 'too short', really - QFG1 is pretty short if you have any idea what you're doing too - I guess QFG2 feels a lot longer, what with the second half basically.

I think the biggest lacking aspect of #2 is the lack of Thiefy things to do, but I still liked it. It also taught me what Mancala was! No surprise I guess that #3 is a little 'off', since it wasn't originally planned and got inserted into the overall storyline.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
Someone BRAND NEW to the series should be warned/told (it's mostly a good thing, though it skews the games' difficulty balancing) that each successive game lets you import your character from the previous game.

I always found the only real benefit of doing that was to continue playing as a paladin. It did get super easy to keep being the same thief the whole way through or something like that, so I always started over for everyone except the paladin.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I remember one or more of 2, 3, 4 you could fake it out because when you loaded a save from a previous one, it wouldn't know what class you were so you could tell it you were a paladin even if you weren't. I always thought it was most fun to put a single point into every skill at the beginning so you could always have the option of doing whatever neat thing came your way if you felt like it. (because new skills generally couldn't be learned over the course of the game, but existing skills could always be improved).

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
I always found the only real benefit of doing that was to continue playing as a paladin. It did get super easy to keep being the same thief the whole way through or something like that, so I always started over for everyone except the paladin.

That's the main benefit, but it's got some other nice bits.

This is a little hazy, (it's been a long time and I'm not in front of the games) but as I recall, one of the things you can use it to do this way is theoretically have a char with all skills (ie, a thief with magic) which I think you might not be able to do if you start in some of the later games because you might not have enough skills to raise things above 0 to start. Again, a bit hazy - and that's really just some goofy power-gaming best left for 2nd/third/etc times through the game.

edit: basically beaten I guess, but stated differently. Misread at first.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now