Hero's Quest / Quest for Glory - In-depth Written Amiga Review With Pics
Hero's Quest / Quest for GloryAmiga, 1990 (Original DOS 1989)
Sierra
$59.95
*Alphabetical list of writings
*Game played/shown in its designed NTSC mode with 4:3 aspect ratio
*Game played/shown in its designed NTSC mode with 4:3 aspect ratio
From their first games released for the Apple II in 1980, Sierra (then known as On-line Systems) gave the text adventure a twist with graphics. While they would publish all kinds of games throughout their history, the heart of their in-house development would long remain the adventure game. With their beginnings from Mystery House, they were also pioneers in recycling their previous works, each new adventure often based on the game engine technology of the previous ones. Their "Hi-Res Adventure" engine being used in multiple titles through 1984 prior to IBM contracting them to create launch titles for the PC-JR. King's Quest and the resulting AGI (Adventure Game Interpreter) engine would spawn over fifteen of Sierra's own games through 1990, with the 3rd person animated style showing inspiration through many other companies as well.
Adored by countless in the PC world, Sierra's games often showed a more complicated relationship with Commodore Amiga owners. Their 160x200 DOS based AGI engine games all came to the Amiga, though the lowest possible resolution for the Amiga was 320x200, necessitating the games graphics to be blown up on the much more capable Amiga platform. While this engine was never converted to the 8-bit Commodore 64, you'd be hard pressed to find anyone who'd say it wasn't possible, several Lucas Arts games being first developed there. Starting in 1988 for DOS but not appearing on the Amiga until 1990, their SCI (Sierra Creative Interpreter) engine finally brought 320x200 native graphics to the Amiga, though with colors still based on DOS 16 color EGA. Version 1.1 of SCI brought 32 color versions of Sierras 256 color VGA graphics to the Amiga in 1991, though the conversation process was not often done with care.
In other words, while impressive PC titles for their time, Sierra could be delicately described as disappointing in nearly all of their Amiga works. Obviously capable of their 1991 VGA graphics system many years prior, the Amiga never got the respect it deserved from Sierra. Still, their influence on the Amiga cannot be denied. If we're counting numbers, Sierra "developed" (not just published) over 40 games for the Amiga, add upon that over 10 more if including Dynamix's Amiga games after 1990 (acquired by Sierra). They kept releasing Amiga games even as they discontinued support for systems like the Apple IIGS and Atari ST, even supporting the rare Roland MT-32 sound module on the Amiga. While Amiga owners may have a claim of disappointment in not getting more out of Sierra, there's no denying that countless great games were still released for this platform, Hero's Quest is one of them.
^Adjusting our skills, choosing our character in this hybrid Adventure/RPG
While based on their upgraded EGA SCI graphics, Hero's Quest (along with many Sierra titles) formed its own unique identity separate to its game engine. It achieved this through not only its story, but with fresh graphics not recycled from other games. Hero's Quest was a first for the company, injecting a role playing system into their famous adventure game style. This is not the story of a King Graham, Roger Wilco, or any other company decided name and personality. Here you name the character, you'll choose their class, and you can impart upon them whatever personality you see fit.
The character selection process primarily effects how you start the game, and what the game is expecting from you in order to score points. A fighter starts the game with a sword and certain other fighting attributes that the other classes don't automatically start with. A mage starts with the ability to cast magic, while the thief has stealth and lock picking on their side. Any class has the ability to crossover to others, though it comes at the price of other stats. You can distribute up to an extra 50 points to various attributes when creating your character, but the cost of attaining a stat you have no points in will end up costing you 15 just to raise that one stat to 5. You needn't be too concerned about your starting statistics however, as all attributes you have skill with can be raised in-game to a maximum of 100.
Always an effective strategy to get the gamer more involved personally with the characters they are playing, I loved taking the time to craft my hero. Beyond how you start the game, each class is meant to go about completing the game in its own unique way, though you are by no means confined to that classes journey. Each class might have a goal of finding a lost ring, but how will you go about getting that ring? Throw a rock at the nest which is concealing it high above in a tree? Climb that tree and simply pick it up? Or cast a spell to make it come right to you? While one technique may be better suited for a particular character class, perhaps throwing a rock or casting a spell didn't occur to you, but climbing the tree did. In this way there are often multiple ways for the same class to achieve an objective without becoming frustrated.
^Exploring Spielburg, using the text parser
While Sierra were the first to include graphics in an adventure game, they long held true to requiring text input to control them. I imagine it's the single most significant element which causes many these days (DOS gamers included) to have negative impressions of Sierra's titles. After all it's 1989 when this game was originally released for DOS, and 1990 when it came out for the Amiga. Graphics had been around for some time by this point, and if mouse support was too complicated to include with DOS, they certainly could have assigned a cursor to be moved via the keyboard or joystick. I found the mouse to have come in somewhat handy as a matter of fact, preferring to use it as a substitute for the "look at" command. Right click on any person or object and the game will describe it for you, in the same way the text command would. Often I would also use the mouse to access the games menu system in order to reach the inventory and character screens, as I couldn't remember the keyboard shortcuts.
You can also use the mouse's left button in order to move your character, however I found he would constantly smash into objects with this method, and therefore mostly used the keypad for movement. While the mouse can be used for convenience here and there, Hero's Quest is simply one of many games which were designed for keyboards, so you'll have to get used to it. Get used to it, you can. The manual lists off many of the verbs the game accepts, although there's quite a few more that it understands beyond the ones listed. I certainly started off the game with some audible groans of frustration. I typed in the same basic statement over and over, before finally I hit upon that magical grouping of words the game was looking for.
Many phrases can be used for the same purpose, for example "take note" and "get note", though I recall the word "take" didn't work on everything and thus I became accustomed to using "get", which always worked for me. Other times I needed to be more specific, "buy food" got me several vegetables at a market, but a storm giant was instead looking to trade for some "fruit", or "apples". By the time I got through the first quarter of the game I found I was really getting the feel for the phrases which seemed to work. Topics of conversation were often right there in a characters response to you. One paragraph might have someone mentioning "brigands", so by asking them about brigands you'll be given a paragraph in which another keyword can be used. If you're finding a particular character unresponsive, try using the topics you know worked with others.
^Exploring outside the town
I tested out the VGA DOS remake of this game in order to compare it with this one, and I found that since I had gotten used to the text input that the point and click nature of that game seemed to waste ungodly amounts of time navigating through icon driven menus. Once you get used to it, this system truly is faster, and I became more forgiving of its use in these Sierra titles. "Easy", a text system should never be described as, but if you can be bothered to get a feel for these games, I could see many preferring them.
Despite the designers stated intentions of this being a role playing game, it's impossible to be put face to face with this Sierra engine and not get an adventure game out of that. The game is a mixture of the genres, but it's still firmly inside of the adventure game category. Under no circumstances could I call Hero's Quest a separate and good role playing game, however the role playing elements are both significant and different enough compared to your average adventure that I came to regard this as a favorite in that genre. The reasons are largely because of the role playing elements present, making Hero's Quest an incredibly unique adventure.
There's an economy, and it's not your typical adventure fare where doing a certain task will net you a specific amount of gold, meaning you can now buy an item you'll need to complete the game. Once you buy what you need, you'll then be left with no money in most adventures, since there's no need of it anymore. A thief can buy multiple daggers in this game, using any extras to throw at an enemy prior to combat. A mage or any character you've given magical abilities will find several spells for sale in the local magic shop, and you'll find them rather pricey. All characters would benefit from the upgraded chain armor, and you'll definitely want to save up your money for that. In some areas Hero's Quest manages to do one better than your typical RPG. Here I found a constant need of various potions, items which you'll often save in many RPGs, but you'll rarely use.
^The night, combat, improving our climbing skill
Fighting will cause your hit-points to decrease, most activities will cause a degradation of your stamina, and casting spells will lower your mana. You can raise these slightly by resting for several minutes, but even sleeping a full night may not fully restore these stats. Potions therefore become quite viable. They're expensive enough that you'll want to conserve them, there's often a need to use them anyway, and there will be times a lack of funds will force you onward without them. Earning money is achieved through completing quests, reselling items you "acquired" as a thief, and by killing various humanoid monsters. While I do find the amount of things you can buy to be limited, you'll want what's available and your money will remain tight, thus making it an overall good game economy.
Like many role playing games, grinding is necessary to improve your skills. In most RPGs you grind purely through fighting, which gives you extra experience so you can gain levels. There are no levels in Hero's Quest. Much like in real life, you gradually hone individual skills through practice of those exact skills. If you're looking to be a stealthy thief, sneaking around raises that skill. The more a mage uses his spells, the more havoc that spell will wreak. Climbing a rock will help not only with your climbing skill, but should increase your strength as well. Certain characters may avoid proficiency in some areas, but you're unlikely to get through this game with the skill levels you begin with.
Being unique and true to life, I loved this system of building up my hero. Grinding would be an appropriate term, however. Thus an effort to max out your stats will certainly require some time, perhaps leaving some frustrated. A couple mini-games are included in what feels like an effort to more quickly and easily increase certain skills. A thief can play a dagger game for money, though even if you never manage to win you'll find your throwing skills quickly increasing through play. Maxing out a mage's spell skills can be incredibly time consuming, but a mini-game with a local wizard will have you casting multiple spells, quickly increasing those skills. Though as overall games to play inside of this one, I didn't have much fun playing through them myself.
^Meeting the Baron, getting kissed
The game is non-linear, so if you're not having fun doing a certain activity you're more than welcome to skip that particular one for now, or perhaps altogether. I found myself exploring areas nearby the town at first, mapping it all by hand. In the beginning I did little except take notes and run away from things. I'd then go back to certain areas, explore outward some more, and I'd find clues or items which fit with areas I had previously encountered. While the best ending requires three exact quests to be completed, you can trigger a couple endings by doing only one quest in the entire game. Not much is required of you here, so there's very few dead ends, another unique side to an adventure game. You can certainly screw up achievement of the best ending, so typical Sierra style saving is still useful, and of course there's always plenty of amusing deaths you'll spring up as well.
While the manual is not a required read for Hero's Quest, I found it to have some charming introduction pages, and it provided some useful tips on how to play. Two separate manuals came with the game, one of them presented fully in-universe as a handbook from the "Famous Adventurers Correspondence School for Hero's". While I certainly wish the two most famous adventure game companies (Sierra and LucasArts) would have maybe considered making a game which took itself somewhat seriously, I also don't think I could trust the soul who couldn't crack a smile at a game like this.
The story is one we've heard before, a curse has fallen onto the land and its leader, brought about by an evil witch (ogress in this case). It's not so much the uniqueness of the story itself, but the characters which make an impact on you. That's always an impressive feat in a non-linear game, where complicated character arcs are rare. The characters manage to make quite an impression on you in the limited amount of dialogue that's there. I know the names of Otto and Crusher, two characters with no lines. It's all in their look, how others talk about them, and in the description provided by the game. There are talking cats, one of which makes me think I may have ended up as the wrong species. There's that castle guard who so kindly opens the gate for us, but also seems to be the local gossip with something to say for just about everything! Then there's the fairy's who just want to have fun. The story is the heart of any adventure game, and this one sure did feature a lot of heart.
^Funny dialogue, mini games, combat
Combat is the biggest letdown for Hero's Quest, and a major factor in why I would never divorce this game from the adventure category. Separated from adventures due largely to their character building and combat, a game bereft of a solidly thought out combat system is difficult to describe as an RPG. Some RPGs have better combat systems than others, but as elements which take up large chunks of game time, they are all obviously designed with combat as a priority. Hero's Quest is an adventure game in which combat has been sloppily slapped onto it. It must have proved unpopular to gamers and designers alike, as the second game in the series altered it, as did the VGA remake.
The primary form of combat enters you into a 3D type of view directly behind the hero. The fighter in particular is meant to have various options for strategy including dodging, parrying, and of course attacking. It's real time, or more accurately a real time slide show on standard hardware (Amiga or DOS). Accelerated machines will speed up the combat, but that could end up working against you! I died constantly as I attempted to figure out a good approach, but in the end I found the best strategy was to have none at all! Stab the thing over and over until it's dead! Luck will need to be on your side in the beginning, even against the weakest creatures. Once you have some of those weaker enemies under your belt, simply pressing the up arrow repeatedly will be all that's required for them. As the enemies get tougher, it's rinse and repeat with luck and singular button presses.
You can help yourself speed up the process by throwing daggers at an enemy as it enters the adventuring screen prior to getting into combat. A spell caster can cast the spell "calm", which freezes an enemy in its place, giving you more time to throw daggers, cast offensive spells, or run away. A couple flame dart spells or daggers into an enemy could drain a good quarter of its health if your throwing or magic skills are strong. There's no healing that you can do while in battle, but again you can influence the outcome by running away. You'll have a near guaranteed chance of doing that, where you can then drink a healing potion and reenter battle with some better odds. There's not enough time to figure out the defensive dodging until your character is good enough to win the battles just by stabbing. Once you've reached those top tier levels, even the nasty "cheetaur" is but a session of up arrows from doom. It's a poor combat system.
^Many deaths, alternate combat
There is a secondary combat system as well, though it can only appear in select battles. I definitely preferred this second form of combat to the primary method, though it's not particularly great itself. Here you remain on the main 3rd person view adventuring screen, where again by pressing arrow buttons you can perform various actions. The difference here is that the game is much more responsive, and you're allowed to do any other action you might normally do on this screen, such as drink a healing potion. I don't want to run away just to scarf a potion and go right back into a battle! Spells also tend to make more sense in the main screen here. While it only adds a tiny amount of strategy to what is still an overwhelmingly arcade like experience, here it was button mashing I could enjoy. Still, I only came across it for one battle, so it's not able to redeem the games combat.
If you don't want to deal with the games combat, don't! Both the thief as well as the mage have various defenses to avoid battles. As mentioned previously the "calm" spell will freeze a monster in its place, giving you the opportunity to run. If a thief is using their sneaking skill, they will see fewer battles and have a chance of avoiding the ones that do come their way. Even the fighter can run away with great success. As far as I could tell, you're not required to defeat a single enemy in this entire game. The fighter class would certainly miss out on quite a few score points by doing this, but it appears as if even they could find non violent ways to win. However, it would still be best to get to the point where you can at least handle the daytime creatures, if only to increase your attributes and gain money.
The role playing takes a wonderful turn for the better when playing as the thief in particular. Here your character starts off with a lock pick, enabling you to enter a couple normally inaccessible houses at night. You'll need to practice quite a bit of lock picking to pull this off, but these extra screens of action would debatably make the thief the games best class. It's only a couple of extra screens, but I truly got the feeling I was role playing as a thief here. I felt a sense of relief from a series of unsuccessful lock picking after hearing that "snick" as a sound effect, indicating I had succeeded. The music changes to a jazzy tune which makes you ponder the dangers that lie ahead. Carefully scouting the room of its easily seen valuables, I then attempted to locate a few hidden ones. When your shopping spree is over, you can take the items to the local thieves guild and sell them for pure profit.
^Mainline story, sneaky sneaky thief
I can't say thieves have ever been particularly well represented in role playing games. While I often put them in my party as I feel the game requires it from me, I'd gladly choose other classes if I thought I could. They open chests, apparently a skill nobody else could ever possibly learn! Sometimes they can steal things, but there's rarely any story elements connected to the stealing, and the possible consequences for failing means I don't ever want to attempt it. The backstabbing ability in AD&D games does have me wanting a thief in those games, but this is perhaps the first time a game ever had me really feeling like a sneaky thief. Any character can still access these areas if they know what to do, and there's a lot of enjoyment from being a hybrid.
Graphically, Hero's Quest is among the best looking 16 color "EGA" games. When first released for DOS in 1989, 256 color VGA games had started to become common, so it wouldn't have been particularly impressive in terms of what DOS could have done at that point. For the Amiga it's a major disappointment if you know what the machine was capable of. Even minor alternations to the default EGA palette could have made this Amiga port stunning. It's just so difficult to take a video game for anything but a child's toy when staring directly into a red skinned face. DOS graphics were made for business applications, and the resulting available colors honestly make 8-bit Commodore 64 games come out more polished.
Sierra was getting credit for their upgraded SCI engine, as it certainly blows the top off of their earlier adventure titles. I believe I've read their process of creating graphics for these games involved converting actual hand drawings to the computer, where a dithering technique was then applied for the colors. The result is some of the heaviest and most obvious dithering you're ever going to see in a computer game. Even an old television set could never hide this effect, where nearly every other pixel gets a separate color to produce the illusion of more. And while obvious to the eye, it still works, making you see shades of colors that EGA otherwise cannot produce. If considering the EGA hardware it was designed on, the game is graphically stunning. While not impressive for the Amiga, Hero's Quest is nonetheless still a beautiful game.
^Nearing the end for these "wise guys"
The music and sound effects are a strength. Once getting into their SCI engine games, Sierra took a sudden and strong turn away from the PC speaker. Designed for the Roland MT-32 in DOS (a $550 music synth you could buy directly from Sierra), the Amiga conversion does not sound as good as the MT-32, but it still sounds very good, and billions of times better than the DOS Adlib music card ($175 direct from Sierra), which is reasonably the best DOS users would have had at the time. It's not quite a full soundtrack, but there's tons of music here, adding much to the game. There's also a fair amount of simple background types of noises, such as a hammer in the town and birds in the wilderness. The sound effects are arguably best on Amiga, with its PCM samples.
Performance wise, it runs acceptably on my un-accelerated NTSC Amiga 500 when installed onto a hard drive. NTSC is an important thing to note here, as besides being where the graphics look correct, the enhanced speed of the animations will never be overcome on a PAL machine. A hard drive is probably necessary these days for sanity, as I noted lots of disk swapping during a test. The game does slow down in spots, but reviews of the DOS version from back in the day note the same issues, and acceleration will help in these areas. I would argue that despite not taking advantage of the Amiga, your average computer user may still have had the best experience with this version back in the day due to its music. Today the DOS version is more readily available, and on the Amiga there's not enough unique qualities to seek this over DOS. Still if you're a fan of the Amiga you're not going to go wrong playing it here, as it's at least equal to DOS.
As previously alluded to, there was a 256 color VGA remake released for DOS, and I show it off at this point in my video review. The graphical style changes quite a bit there, and while more colorful, it's really a matter of personal taste which one you're going to prefer. Despite the EGA, I feel the love was put into this original version. If you can't see yourself typing commands into the program, it's all point and click there. Interestingly Hero's Quest was planned from the beginning to be a multipart series, and has several references to the second game found here in the first. Upon completion you're prompted to insert a disk, where your hero's stats will be saved for transfer. A fine feature that while appearing in quite a few RPGs, was never a guarantee.
^Winning
In late 1990 Sierra, noting pending trademarks in the U.K. for a Milton Bradley board game titled "HeroQuest", decided to change this games name to Quest for Glory. It seems to have been a proactive measure, as I could find nothing to suggest legal action was being considered. Worth noting is the 1991 release of the computer version of that boardgame, which may have also had something to do with it. Box art, manuals, and the games title screen were altered to Quest for Glory for this original release on all formats (including the Amiga), as were the games sequels. Other than the VGA remake, these renamed versions should play exactly the same as this one.
Magazines of the era seemed divided on system lines, with most DOS magazines praising it, while Amiga magazines had more of a mixed reaction to the game. Amiga World in America noted the solid plot and sound, but called the graphics pathetic and the game a large disappointment. American Amiga magazine Info went through multiple rounds of bashing the game, first calling it not an Amiga game at all, but an IBM game poorly ported to the Amiga. The reviewer, who called the game "Hero's Tale 1", said he finds Sierra's games hysterically funny, but refused to play through them on the Amiga, giving the game 3 and 1/2 out of 5 stars. In another issue they published thoughts from a reader praising the previous reviewer for his stance against Sierra, but who still admitted the game design was good. A separate reviewer from the same magazine gave Hero's Quest another look later on, saying it was "not as funny as Space Quest, not as enchanting as King's Quest, yet will still intrigue fantasy fans."
The Amiga version largely got a better response in Europe. Amiga Action gave the game an 84%, calling it "a brilliant game that is worth anybodies money." Amiga Format called it "a five disk work of art", giving it a 92% "Amiga Gold" rating. CU Amiga praised the unlikelihood of it playing the same way twice, saying it was certain to give hours of fun, and gave it an 88% rating. Zzapp called the sound effects and music brilliant, the graphics well drawn if a bit slow in places, and gave it a 91%. German magazine Amiga Joker named it 2nd best role playing game of 1990. It wasn't total praise overseas however, with Your Amiga calling the graphics system crude, and saying as a role playing game "which it purports to be, it is incredibly simplistic", giving it a 58%. Amiga User International called it graphically stunning, but thought Sierra tried too hard and produced a rather confusing game to play, giving it a 6 out of 10.
For DOS, Game Players PC Strategy Guide called it part Robin Hood, part Lord of the Rings, part John Wayne western, and undeniably fun to play. Quest Busters called it the most fun they had with any game in years, recommending it to adventures and role players alike. Scorpia through Computer Gaming World made numerous remarks about the game being "introductory" (a thought several other magazines disagreed with) but said it would appeal to both those experienced as well as to new comers. She called the role playing aspects surprisingly well integrated, and a definite winner. CGW would go on to name Hero's Quest 1989's adventure game of the year, and in 1996 placed it as the 73rd best game of all time, as well as the 15th most innovative game of all time. A sales chart I found in Compute ranked it as the 8th best selling game, with magazine Strategy Plus claiming it had sold 100,000 in 6 months, and designer Corey Cole saying a quarter million in the first few years.
I found Hero's Quest incredibly unique for an adventure game, and a new favorite there. The role playing elements are not strong enough for the game to stand up alone in that category, but greatly enhance the underlying adventure. I enjoyed building up my skills by doing related activities to that attribute, and feel this makes the game about the journey rather than the destination. In terms of this Amiga version, I must state clearly that a good game is a good game. This port may not have the bells and whistles certain games did, but it is still a carbon copy of a wonderful game. It should thus be worth playing for Amiga fans, and in particular fans of adventure and role playing games who'd like to taste a wonderfully different flavored game. I hope you'll check out my video review, where I'll read from the manual, show off the magazines mentioned here, as well as challenge several of those reviewers in response. Readers of this article may also enjoy my looks at Curse of the Azure Bonds (RPG), The Secret of Monkey Island (adventure), or Uninvited (adventure). For fans of Sierra I did video only reviews for Silpheed and Hoyle Card Games. I'd like to close by acknowledging friends Stygian Phoenix, and Brian Davis, both lovers of Sierra.
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