Two years ago, the Extra-Life marathon of 2016 saw the completion of The Legend of Kyrandia early on. It was a fun little point and click adventure that, while it had a major bug towards the end of the game, I enjoyed a lot. So when this game came up as one of the possible next games to play, it intrigued me. After all, the first game completed it’s story quite well, so where would the sequel go? And while I must admit aside from the lands involved, it went somewhere completely unrelated to the original title… but at the same time, it still fit as a descent sequel, if not a great one. Come on in.
Story: Time has past since the events of Book One and Kyrandia has settled down. Brandon is now king and Malcolm gone from this world… but this would not last. Years later, a crisis has hit Kyrandia as for reasons unknown, the lands and things that live on it are disappearing!
In a desperate plea to solve this issue, the Royal Mystics gather together to study and fix this phenomenon before the entire land is gone. They are so desperate in fact, that they even include Marko, a charismatic but ultimately TERRIBLE magician to try to help. This would prove fortuitous, however, as his valet known simply as the Hand (as that is literally what he is… a giant hand) comes up with the solution… someone has to go to Volcania. Once there, they should find a way to the center of the planet and collect an anchor stone. With this stone, they can collectively anchor the world together and stop it from ceasing to be.
With a plan in action, the mystics decide who should go on this perilous journey and Zanthia the alchemist is chosen. Surprised, she returns to her home to prepare… or would do so if she didn’t find her home ransacked and all her equipment destroyed.
This is quite the issue for our alchemist as she normally would have just made a portal potion to get to Volcania, but as it stands, that journey just became a whole lot longer due to the acts of some ner-do-well, so it’s time to head out. Time is not on her side, after all.
There are a few twists along the way in this tale, two of which are rather big and important, and while one is kinda-lightly-not really-but still kinda hinted at along the way, both of them are dropped on your lap when they happen. And while the barely hinted at twist puts a new light on everything else that has happened in the entire game (in a good way and if you choose to look back at it), the one with no warning at all is rather jarring as it comes out of left field and changes the goal of the entire game in a 10 second or so scene.
The end result, however, is very cohesive for the most part and paint a complete and satisfying picture of what just happened by the time the credits roll. And the sense of humor the game retains the entire way will make you smirk from time to time. But overall, this game is fairly direct in the moment-to-moment sense, letting focus more on the puzzle work as it chugs along.
7/10
Graphics: If you played the original game, you already have an idea of how this game will look, especially in the first section taking place in the same land and in fact using some of the same exact scenes!
But then again, the art used was gorgeous before and remains so now. And the screen layout, while still dating the game to an early 90’s, has improved as well, starting with removing all borders from the edge of the screen, giving the artists just a little more space to draw the scenes in which you will play.
And those scenes are every bit as gorgeous as the previous game, but a lot more expansive and varied. From Zanthia’s house in the swamp to a castle to a jail made of a giant fish to even dinosaur filled tunnels! Add to this a lot less needed (or noticeable) dithering then the sky-work of the original title and you can expect to see a lot of very nice looking world-art for this game.
The interface has also had a face-lift and in fact really only keeps the big “Options” gem and the rather flat menu it brings up. Your inventory is now arranged on a shelf, but unique to this game is a spellbook and a cauldron, both of which fit nicely on the cloth laid out below. The cauldron is also far from lifeless as idle animations are a fairly constant event, from eyes peering out to a boat sailing across the top.
Overall, while low resolution thanks to the age of the game, you will find it very pleasant looking and generally carrying a very fanciful feel that never takes itself too seriously. A bit of a trend with a lot of point and click titles of it’s day, but it fits together pretty damn well in this case.
8/10
Sound: When you play a PC game from the early 90’s, you expect certain things out of the sound. You expect midi-based music which feels just memorable enough to stick for a while and at least decently fit the scenes it’s made for. You also expect 8-bit sounds which while they sound alright, do not stand out from much of anything else of the day due to the limits of tech at the time. But Kyrandia 2 doesn’t quite follow this trend.
Musically, it does. It sounds good at the moment, but most of it is very forgetful and you will do so shortly after you quit to your desktop. But sound effects are where it bumps the trend a little. Let’s be up front, there is very little use for them in this game, but what is here seems to have be a mix of 8-bit sounds for things like splashes or swirly sounds or even the chimes of a magic potion being finished, but also using some actual audio for things like dinosaur roars or gears, making things feel a little more complete.
But once again, as with pretty much any “talkie” version of a game from this era, the voices are bad… really bad. To start with the voice actors in this game are basically from the development team and a number of the lines show they are not professionals. But even that falls short of the biggest issue the game has: a sense of timing. You see, when “talkie” games came out, they were generally made as a CD-ROM edition of an already non-talkie game. This means that both the game had to be sure nothing needed to load faster then 150Kb per second, and that the voices didn’t get out of sync with the already setup subtitles. The result of this is a lot of these games speak in a very broken manner, as the voice actor has to be paused until the next couple lines of text is in place. Kyrandia 2 suffers from this same situation, and yet doesn’t at the same time. If you are like me and like subtitles in games as a rule, you will face this issue. However, the game by default does not use them, which can make the game feel like it’s rushing through some cutscenes, but feel a lot more natural during gameplay… if you can deal with some terrible voice acting (which sadly, isn’t funny bad this time around).
6/10
Gameplay: If you have played other point and click adventure titles, you have a good idea of how this one is going to play in the grand scale. You will click about each of the scenes to walk to or interact with various points in the screen. You will find items to collect and use in various puzzles, but like the previous Kyrandia title, the interface is actually very simple and intuitive. If you can interact with something you click, you will, be it picking it up, using it, talking to it, or whatever that interaction is. Otherwise, you will just walk to (or as close to as the map allows) the point you clicked.
If you want to use anything it’s as simple as dragging and dropping it where you want to use it. Want to use something on something else in your inventory? Go for it! Worst thing that can happen is it doesnt work and you switch which item is on your mouse cursor. How about using it with something on the map? Same thing! Worst thing that can happen is it falls through a hole and you need a new one. And unlike most games of this nature (including the previous title) chances are if you run out, the game will simply spawn more on the map. You really have to work at losing a vital (or even not important) item for good… enough so in fact I am not convinced it’s possible.
In addition to that, this game understands space restraints of only having 10 slots, so while like the first it may only show 10, they are ten spaces in a shelf with a crank on it. Turn the crank and move the shelves to reveal more space. But if you do manage to use everything up, you can still drop items on a location for later.
But this is also a place where the game streamlines a lot as well. Many points in the game completely change which locations are available to you. At these points, it’s basically a rule that everything you had that you will not need again disappears from your inventory, marking them as almost the beginning of new chapters. This tends to lend the game to varying up the world immensely, but it also lends a linearity to the story beyond what was there for the first title where the world just expanded until the very end.
Sadly, this also leads to the real weakness of this installment. Some of these puzzles are absolutely terrible and there is no way you would think to do them without a guide. A key example is fairly early in the game, where a couple of gaurds will not let you into their walled-off city unless you can offer them something. Based on the place exporting mustard and the random sandwhich spell in your spellbook, you are supposed to figure out they are hungry and will literally trip over each other to get a sandwhich if you just make it and drop it on the ground in front of the gates.
Now, these points don’t happen often, but there is no legitimate way to figure that out and a handful of other puzzles like it without some kind of guide besides stumbling on it at random. And just as unfortunately, when you find one, you are likely to have to stop all progress until you finish due to how linear this game tends to be.
7/10
Bugs: Sadly this game is also not without it’s own bugs, but at least this time they are more annoying then gamebreaking.
- The mouse like the screen edges: Unfortunately, this game has a major interface issue which will at best annoy you and at worst actively push you to click the wrong spot and have to recollect an item, but the mouse in this game jumps… a lot. One moment it’s moving where it should go and the next it’s on the edge of the screen. This was a big source of frustration for me while playing, but again, the game is well enough crafted that even this couldn’t break it.
- TURBO-CUTSCENES! Sometimes, timing just didn’t work in this game and the game would just speed through a scene like you were clicking through it on a caffeine crazed episode. Thankfully the few times this happened to me, it was shortly after I saved my game, so I could easily just reload and see the scene as it was intended, but it is worth mentioning as it can happen.
- The end: There is no other way to describe the last issue in the game but “The End.” It happens after the credits (and a stinger for part 3), but rather then go back to the title screen, the game just ends, dropping you to the desktop.
Overall: Kyrandia 2 is a very enjoyable title when all is said and done, but is far from perfect. In fact, I would say it is outshined by the preceding title. For everything it did better like improve the use of color to make it even more stunning or introduce a way to expand your inventory beyond 10 slots, it seems to do something else wrong, like technical glitches or an extremely obtuse puzzle here or there. If you want to continue the story of the Kyrandia series, it will not let you down, but it is definitely a “one step forward, two-steps back” situation.
Score:
6/10
System Requirements:
- 1.8 Ghz Processor
- 512MB RAM
- Any Graphic card that supports DirectX 9.0c
- 2 GB hard drive
- Windows XP/Vista/7/8/10
System Specs:
- AMD FX 8350 (8 cores) running at 4 Ghz
- 16 GB RAM
- NVidia GeForce 960 GTX with 4 GB VRAM
- Windows 10
Source: GoG.com
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