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Legend of Kyrandia

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Divinity: Original Sin Torment: Tides of Numenera Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath
Gameplay-wise it's OK. Multiple paths, alternate solutions and possibility to choose mood of Malcolm is cool.
But still... the game is ugly.
Just compare such beauty
gfs_97344_2_23.jpg

with this low poly crap
gfs_29620_2_4.jpg
 

Infinitron

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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
Malcolm's Revenge is the best game by far. Y'all motherfuckers need jesus.

The only problem is that it's "wacky" and many of the puzzle solutions make zero logical sense, but I like that it has multiple paths and solutions. Great game.

Who cares about multiple paths when they all lead to boring bullshit? Malcolm's Revenge is soulless. It's "wacky" but it has nothing of the charm of the first two games. COLLECTING BONES AND GEMS AND EELS AND PETRIFIED SQUIRRELS FUCK YEAH

That's the thing. The game doesn't really have any puzzles. All you do is collect stuff.
 

Sceptic

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That's the thing. The game doesn't really have any puzzles. All you do is collect stuff.
Because the previous 2 games were full of real puzzles and totally didn't have you collect random crap.

At least MR ditched the shitty action scenes from HOF.
 

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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
Because the previous 2 games were full of real puzzles and totally didn't have you collect random crap.

They had more than MR. The problem is that in MR you don't actually do anything interesting.

In the first chapter of HOF, you explore a swamp full of mysterious creatures, concoct potions and defeat a monster in a cave.

In the first chapter of MR you wander around a town pissing people off while collecting items to collect more items to collect more items to create something called a "Fish Cream Sandwich" which I guess is supposed to be a funny name or something. And then you give it somebody and suddenly you're on this retarded "Isle of Cats" where you COLLECT BONES ahfaeuyhdfayfda

The point is that in the first two games you actually had a sense that you were getting stuff done. MR was more like a sandbox or something, where you could wander around and play with items but never actually achieve anything except escaping to the next area.
 
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Aeschylus

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Well, puzzle design was never really a strong-point of the Kyrandia games. Actually it was probably their biggest weak point (that and the mazes). The strong point was always the large game world and large amounts of exploration and discovery. In that sense, MR was alright. It did take the collection aspect from the previous games to an unnecessary extreme though.
 

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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
large amounts of exploration and discovery. In that sense, MR was alright.

Not really.

I can think of two parts of Kyrandia 3 where I thought to myself "Hey, this is pretty cool/interesting". There's the little prison escape vignettes in the first area whenever Herman captures you. Pretty meaningless in the big picture, but clever. And then there's having to defeat the pirates in the final chapter, when everybody has been turned into mice. Those were the only parts of the game where you feel that you're actually doing something and making a difference.
 
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Infinitron

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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
I remember one bit in MR where you had to take some kind of water slide, and the route you took was semi-random? And there were weird points or scores you'd get for doing stuff? My memory of this game is far more hazy than Kyrandia 1 and 2 which I remember fondly. Even that goddamn grue cave maze was a memorable puzzle.

Perhaps you're thinking of The Ends Of The Earth. You had to climb down this series of cliffsides next to a waterfall using various methods.

That was more of a puzzle-type area. Fun idea, but it wasn't nearly as deep as it seemed at first.
 

Sceptic

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In the first chapter of HOF, you explore a swamp full of mysterious creatures, concoct potions and defeat a monster in a cave.

In the first chapter of MR you wander around a town pissing people off while collecting items to collect more items to collect more items to create something called a "Fish Cream Sandwich" which I guess is supposed to be a funny name or something. And then you give it somebody and suddenly you're on this retarded "Isle of Cats" where you COLLECT BONES ahfaeuyhdfayfda
The double standard is making me want to puke.

Guess what other Kyrandia game had you make a sandwich for no reason whatsoever? oh right, HOF.

Hey I can play this game too: In the first second chapter of HOF you wander around town pissing people off while collecting items to collect more items to collect more items to create a Sandwich Spell which I guess is suppoed to be funny or something. And then you give it somebody and suddenly you're on this retarded "Volcania" where you COLLECT EVERY POSSIBLE FUCKING THING UNDER THE SUN skgkhdjghjdhg.

I'm sorry, but claiming that HOF is this amazing exploration game full of "mystery" while dissing MR because zomg collecting items and "funny names" is one of the most retarded things I've read on the Codex.
 

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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
In the first chapter of HOF, you explore a swamp full of mysterious creatures, concoct potions and defeat a monster in a cave.

In the first chapter of MR you wander around a town pissing people off while collecting items to collect more items to collect more items to create something called a "Fish Cream Sandwich" which I guess is supposed to be a funny name or something. And then you give it somebody and suddenly you're on this retarded "Isle of Cats" where you COLLECT BONES ahfaeuyhdfayfda
The double standard is making me want to puke.

Guess what other Kyrandia game had you make a sandwich for no reason whatsoever? oh right, HOF.

Hey I can play this game too: In the first second chapter of HOF you wander around town pissing people off while collecting items to collect more items to collect more items to create a Sandwich Spell which I guess is suppoed to be funny or something. And then you give it somebody and suddenly you're on this retarded "Volcania" where you COLLECT EVERY POSSIBLE FUCKING THING UNDER THE SUN skgkhdjghjdhg.

I'm sorry, but claiming that HOF is this amazing exploration game full of "mystery" while dissing MR because zomg collecting items and "funny names" is one of the most retarded things I've read on the Codex.

Good thing that's not the only criticism of MR I have, then. The wackiness isn't the game's real problem. They could have even pulled it off. The item collection itself isn't necessarily a problem either.

The game's problem is that it's entirely organized around providing you with all sorts of mechanisms for creating and combining items, but not actually using them to solve problems and defeat obstacles in the game world. It's just not a very satisfying adventure, is what I'm saying, because you don't really feel like you're doing anything.

BTW, now that I think of it, it kind of reminds me of MRY's ideas for his next adventure game. I hope he doesn't go too far.
 

MRY

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Maybe I should play it as a cautionary tale!

We're still not really into the puzzle / gameplay design phase of the next game, but, in my head, there actually isn't very much item combining. The interaction I've conceived of thus far is much more conversation, exploration, research, and relatively simply item exchanges. Obviously once I turn to designing, though, I'll want to have more complex, puzzle-oriented type stuff, too. It's just that at the moment, what I'm working on is pre-production stuff like coming up with the backstory and lore for the locations, characters, environments, etc. When that part of my mind is active, I'm mostly thinking of area and item descriptions, dialogues, visuals, but not so much about puzzles. Okay, I'll stop hijacking now. :)
 

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I remember giving up Malcom's Revenge quite early ; at the island with dogs where you need to throw bones at random on the screen to dig up some gems. Bones that could only be found randomly in the jungle. This was so tedious and random that I stopped caring.

The same thing for Kyrandia 1. It was good, but not good enough to make me forget its tediousness. Thankfully this studio produced a good adventure game with Blade Runner.
 

Sceptic

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Good thing that's not the only criticism of MR I have, then.
Great! Let's see this list of specific and detailed things that the game did wrong compared to HOF!

It's just not a very satisfying adventure, is what I'm saying, because you don't really feel like you're doing anything.
Yeah that's a good criticism :hmmm:

Look I get you don't like MR. But everything you write makes it feel like you have somehow decided that it's so different from the others, when, aside from graphics, it's not. "Not satisfying" and "not feel like you're doing anything" and "interface that should allow for things but doesn't" and "pointless padding" is pretty much what defines the series 5 minutes into LOK1. You want "doesn't feel like doing anything?" Trying mapping the maze in 1, one dead end and berry at a time. Frankly it's why I'm not a huge fun of any of them compared to the better adventure games at the time from both Sierra and Lucas (not to mention the less well known ones from Legend). The spellmaking stuff was woefully underused in 2. The gems were woefully underused in 1 (I remember expecting the finale to involve clever use of all 4 gems in various combinations. Nope, you just click one once and that's it). Presentation was pretty much all 1 and 2 had going for them. Very good presentation, but the gameplay varied from mediocre to "it sucks". Which is why your praising of HOF while criticizing MR for the exact same damn things that were there before HOF even makes no sense.
 
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Infinitron

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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
You'll notice that I haven't really praised the first game, only the second. Although it does have more of a sense of achieving things than the third.

*shrug* MR just feels more like a puzzle game filled with various Rube Goldberg machines to play around with than a proper adventure game.

It's true that all three games share some similarities but MR took this aspect way too far. It almost feels like some kind of deliberate experiment in game design - I have trouble believing the designers didn't know exactly what they were creating.
 

Unkillable Cat

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:necro:

I just finished a small "retrospective" of the Kyrandia trilogy. I find it interesting to see the differing opinions here, but my opinons follow the majority:

# Kyrandia 1 is OK. It falls into some of the basic pitfalls of bad adventure game design, but since it isn't a long game to begin with it's not much of a problem. Its biggest problems are the aforementioned maze (ARGH!) the randomness of item locations and the bloated feel I get from playing the game - even without touching the maze, the game can be reduced by two dozen "screens" without impacting gameplay at all.

My biggest gripe with the game is the "trial and error" puzzle design in the second half - brewing the potions, to be precise. Yes, the game teaches the player early on that there is a big colour theme going on, but I couldn't find (or recall) a single clue anywhere about what colours the player is supposed to be aiming for. And there are a LOT of possibilites in that puzzle alone.

As for the plot and characters? Brandon comes off as a moron, Malcolm as a decent antagonist and Zanthia as the only character with some sense. Of the others, only the talking flower makes a lasting impression, with everyone else either being underdeveloped or done-to-death stereotypes. More on that later.

# Kyrandia 2 is the best one of them all, but I'm on the fence whether it should be considered a "classic" or just "a decent adventure game". Kyrandia 2 does away with the mazes and reduces item mismanagement problems by dividing the game into chapters, but it botches up by introducing two different puzzles instead that will cause problems throughout.

The first one is the recipes. Every "episode" requires at least one recipe, and not all of the recipes are easy to understand. In fact, the recipes are a gigantic puzzle of synonyms, puns and vocabulary - an instant detractor for people not good enough with the English language. I was pretty decent with English when I played the game back when it was new, but I had serious trouble with the first recipe. But once I got the hang of them, the game became easier as I progressed. That's right - Kyrandia 2 starts out hard then gets easier, unlike most other games.

The other puzzle is Simon's Fireflies. 7 fireflies of different colours are sitting in a tree in the swamp. Start clicking on them, and it soon becomes apparent that they must be clicked in order to complete a sequence, which is needed to unlock a treasure chest a few screens away. Fair enough. Except the puzzle is used AGAIN in the next chapter (and you can't go back and re-visit the fireflies, so hopefully you wrote down that sequence) and then it pops up again with a twist at the end of the penultimate chapter, where the POSITIONS of the fireflies in that tree also becomes a factor. If it weren't for the fact that there IS an obscure way to find a hint for that puzzle at the relevant position (use the rainbow stone on Zanthia) that puzzle would singehandedly kill the entire game. Sadly that's not the last puzzle of the game - they squeezed in a Tower of Hanoi puzzle (aptly named Tower of Anoi) right at the very end, but once past that the last sequence (which has been slammed here for being "too much action") is actually pretty simple - because by that time people are fucking fed up with complex time-wasting puzzles and want this all over with.

Another gripe I have with Kyrandia 2 (and Kyrandia 1 as well) is Westwood's practice of crudely cutting out content from the games (This is apparent in games like Eye of the Beholder 1 & 2, Lands of Lore 1 & 2 and probably a few others, but I digress.) which leaves them sorely missing "something". In Kyrandia 1 it was not only character depth, but most characters just come and go - no time spent trying to introduce them or give them a proper exit from scenes. Only by exploring the castle at the end can most of the supporting cast be found - stoned out of their minds, sadly. But in Kyrandia 2 this becomes even worse, and is best exemplified by Marco. Marco never gets a proper introduction, except that he dresses like a pimp and has a giant gloved hand for an assistant. It isn't until shortly into the next chapter that we're given a short cutscene that shows that Marco is a stage-act magician. Worse yet, he keeps popping in and out of the story without little to no explanation - and he's the third-most important character in the game!

# Kyrandia 3 is a total disaster. The amount of bad calls made in designing this game - the atrocious CGI cutscenes, the rendered backgrounds instead of the hand-drawn pixel art that Westwood is famous for, the ret-conning of the story to try to give Malcolm some depth of character, the first chapter of the game, the title song, the re-introduction of a maze, the incessant grinding and crafting to get the proper items needed, that fucking timed Tic-Tac-Toe puzzle. I'm not saying Kyrandia 3 is the worst adventure game I've ever played, but it's certainly the most frustrating one.

The first chapter alone could win some Raspberry awards. Malcolm is free, a wanted man and constantly being told to leave Kyrandia. Many will have trouble with this part, which is understandable - it's actually SIX puzzles active at the same time. That's right - there are six possible ways for Malcolm to get away, and since one is never certain which action contributes to what puzzle, the game comes close to dying right there. It's one thing to have multiple solutions to a puzzle, but this is absolute overkill. The "choice & consequences" faggots can shut the fuck up right now, because this is an adventure game, not an RPG. Those players that actually managed to solve one of these puzzles and reach the next section are immediately greeted by a maze - pointless filler that does little else but make players rage, but now with added QTEs (whack those snakes before they get you!) and grinding through jungles for bones, while constantly clicking yourself to get rid of fleas. Wünderbar.

It's not that Kyrandia 3 doesn't have any redeeming qualities - it's just that they're crushed by all the bad ones. It doesn't even feel like a Kyrandia game, which is a shame.
 

taxalot

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After experimenting around in Hands of Fate, I am a bit worried : is this one of these games where you can get stuck permanently for doing something wrong with items in your inventory? (Or other reasons)
 

Darth Roxor

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After experimenting around in Hands of Fate, I am a bit worried : is this one of these games where you can get stuck permanently for doing something wrong with items in your inventory? (Or other reasons)

Nope. If you are concerned about throwing things randomly into the cauldron, IIRC they will all either reappear in the world, or Zanthia will comment that putting them in there isn't a good idea.

Also, I had no idea I'd ever see someone defending the trainwreck that was Malcolm's Revenge, but rpgcodex always delivers, and it's not even just one lunatic, but multiple ones.
 

taxalot

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I am stuck already and I can't find my cauldron.

This is what happens from a LP
16-kyrandia2_part2_007.png


This is what happens inside my Android ScummVM

Screenshot_20201122_141641_org.scummvm.scummvm.jpg
 

Darth Roxor

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No idea about that. Maybe that ScummVM version of LoK2 is bugged in some way? I'm a little wary of ScummVM ever since I played a version of Woodruff that just so happened to have gamebreaking bugs on it.
 

taxalot

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Solved, by the way :

Most walkthroughs imagine you click on the hollow next to the alligator second, and on the tree stump first.

I clicked on the hollow , and got the spellbook. Then I clicked on the stump and got the cauldron there.

Most people experience it the other way around, apparently. This is absolutely batshit puzzle design. Can't wait for more.
 

MRY

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My favorite puzzle that I recall is the “windy woof” play on words, which only works without VO.
 

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