Hero’s Quest: So You Want to Be A Hero
| Developer: Sierra | Graphics: |
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| Publisher: Sierra | Sound: |
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| Year: 1990 | Difficulty: |
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| Genre: Adventure/RPG | Lastability: |
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| Number of players: 1 | Rating: |
7/10 | |
Released in 1989 on PC-DOS, and unfortunately ported without any attempt at enhancement to the Amiga, this iconic title from Sierra combines traditional adventure gameplay (puzzles, dialogue, commands typed on the keyboard) with real time combat mechanics borrowed from role-playing games. You even start by choosing your class from three options (warrior, wizard, thief) and customise your character sheet by selecting your dominant stats (strength, intelligence, agility, etc.) and various abilities (combat skill, lockpicking, climbing, magic…). Naturally, all these characteristics can evolve over time.
A minimalist mouse interface is provided (left-click to move, right-click on something to view its description, and you’ll need to type commands for just about everything else). The dialogue is well-written and filled with humour, quests can be completed in any order you choose, and often, in multiple ways, depending on the class picked or the skills developed. Aside from solving puzzles, managing your health, equipment, supplies, and occasionally your purse (by working, for example) will offer some distractions. Much care has been taken with the staging, and as long as you understand English, you’ll dive into the game quite easily.
Hero’s Quest is the first game in a five-part series. Shortly after its release, the name was changed to Quest for Glory, to avoid confusion with the other well-known role-playing game, Hero Quest. It’s under this new name that its sequels (as well as the re-release of the first title in 1993) are known. Only the first two episodes were released on Amiga.
I’d recommend the PC version to spare yourself the endless floppy disk swaps, especially since they bundled all five games into one compilation, installable on the latest versions of Windows. Plus, you can carry over your character from one episode to the next!
More images here, here, here, here.
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