King's Quest Chapter 4: Snow Place Like Home (PS4) Playthrough - NintendoComplete
80A playthrough of Sierra Games and The Odd Gentlemen's King's Quest Chapter 4: Snow Place Like Home, the fourth installment of Activision's reboot of the classic Roberta Williams PC series, released 9/2016.
I'm really torn, just like I was with Chapter 2, with this entry in the King's Quest reboot. Chapter 4: Snow Place Like Home gets *so* many things right, to begin with the positive. Of course the graphics are just as artfully done as they are in all of the other chapters, and the backdrops look great (even if 90% of the game is stuck looking at icy walls) and the music has all sorts of neat flourishes that echo classic tunes from the older games. I'm a particular fan of when wifey plays the "flying to Serenia on fairy dust with Cedric the talking owl" theme from KQ5 on a xylophone.
It also nails the personality of the main characters down with so much charm and goofiness that it ultimately manages to save the whole chapter. The lullaby that Graham sings to Alexander is completely adorable, and I couldn't possibly have had a wider nostalgic smile than I did when I walked into the bakery and Wente told me who his son was. The smile only continued to grow when I realized that the background music from the area is a remix of the town theme from KQ5. I really found myself liking Alexander by the end as well. He was a bit angsty, but I thought that the actor did an awesome job of making him the whole mixture of grateful, resentful, appreciative, bitter, and any other thing someone with his backstory would probably feel. Rosella was also really well done - they really managed to "get" the feel of the character the way she was in KQ4 and KQ7. She's still the beautiful, violent but sensitive tomboy princess and doting daughter.
I also loved how the game doled out several major plot reveals and tied them all back into the original series. I was surprised at how cleverly the plot seemed to be tying everything together from the new series and the old series at the same time. I pray that they keep up the narrative A-train for Chapter 5 and the bonus chapter - the emotional impact of the events that unravel this time is leagues beyond that in the first three chapters.
I also *really* love how much this chapter's story reflects on and illuminates the events of King's Quest V, one my favorite games of all time.
But there always has to be a but, right? And unfortunately, Sir Mix-a-Lot would approve of the size and number of but(t)s here. I don't know if the storytelling consumed all of the resources allocated for this chapter, but it certainly feels like it. The puzzles, in a word, suck. The *only* puzzle in the first hour or so requires Graham to pack luggage. Yeah, it's not what one might particularly think of as being an auspicious start.
Most of the puzzles here are "logic puzzles" that have you rearranging some room full of tiles and objects to make a solid purple line to the door. Most of them are also insultingly easy, and drag the pace of the game to a seeming halt for all of the unnecessary steps they require. I wanted to scream at the three-layer high puzzle (1:46:09) for how long it took just to go between each section when I was initially figuring it out.
The chapter started on such a ridiculously high note, and it ended on an equally high one. It's really a shame that the cheap-feeling cut and paste puzzles (that really have nothing to do with the original King's Quest series - they never had puzzles like this! Graham and Alexander even comment on this during the game!) that fill half of the playtime essentially wreck the gameplay element here.
It's well worth a play, but I would have really preferred to wait another month or two so that the game play might have been beefed up a bit. The concept that sets it up is so clever and well staged, so what the hell happened?
For more King's Quest, see the card links for the chapters leading up to this, and also be sure to check out my PC Playthroughs playlist for walkthroughs of the original series' games.
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No cheats were used during the recording of this video.
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