After having played the other King's Quest games, I would have to say that this is quite different. KQ8 is more of an RPG masquerading as an adventure game. There truly is alot of violence, you have to fight your way through each level. But the game is very high on atmosphere. The music is very good. And the settings are very convincing. I couldn't really give this game a very high vote, however, because the dialogue is really bad. It's like something out of a bad B film. In fact it makes your character so annoying that you don't want to click on any of the other characters. And the game plays very slow, even with adjusting the settings, it's slow on my P233, which is rediculous. The load times in between levels are also rediculously slow. This game is just another example of the software companies not caring that their main fans have older, slower pc's, and most of them probably couldn't even play this game on their systems. I also think that KQ8 has failed to deliver the same type of gaming experience that King's Quest fans have come to expect. If you feed your audience pure adventure for seven games, you shouldn't suddenly say, "Here's a violent RPG, now deal with it." It's tantamount to feeding Western fans a Sci Fi story. It just doesn't work. That isn't to say that KQ8 is a bad game. It's just that it really should have been given a different title and not been made a part of the King's Quest series. As a stand alone game, it is fun. But if you are a King's Quest fan, I can see where the outrage can come from. If you want a non-violent adventure, this isn't it. But if you want something alittle different, you might want to give this game a try.
