King's Quest II: Romancing the Throne
| King's Quest II: Romancing the Throne |
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Amiga cover art
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| Developer(s) | Sierra On-Line |
| Publisher(s) | Sierra On-Line |
| Designer(s) |
Roberta Williams Ken Williams Scott Murphy |
| Artist(s) | Doug MacNeill Mark Crowe |
| Writer(s) | Roberta Williams Annette Child |
| Composer(s) | Al Lowe |
| Series | King's Quest |
| Engine | AGI |
| Platform(s) | PC, Macintosh, Apple II, Apple IIGS, Amiga, Atari ST, PCjr |
| Release date(s) | May 1985, 1987 |
| Genre(s) | Adventure |
| Mode(s) | Single player |
King's Quest II: Romancing the Throne is the second installment in the King's Quest series of graphic adventure games by Sierra On-Line. It uses the same AGI game engine as King's Quest I: Quest for the Crown and features King Graham as the player character. The title is a spoof of the 1984 film Romancing the Stone.
King's Quest II resembles King's Quest I in appearance and interface. Like in King's Quest I, the game world has 'wrap around' allowing player to travel infinitely in the directions of the north or south. (The King's Quest Companion which represented a novelized walkthrough explains that the western side of Kolyma folds back upon itself to both the north and south, forever bringing travelers back to where they started.) This was the first King's Quest to include an introduction cutscene, just past the credits. It also is the first game in the series with a linear story progression. The world actually changes as the story progresses, new characters appear in the world, areas are opened up to the player, and closed off when no longer needed.
Puzzles involve trading these or using these items to receive new items or to get past obstacles, allowing the player to progress. The game in general honors non-violent solutions, offering more points for them. Many puzzles have more than one solution, but only one optimum solution to earn maximum points. Alternate solutions will net less points or in some cases cause the player to lose points. Examples of alternate solutions are taking more violent approach to getting past an obstacle such as killing or stealing. Some choices may lead to dead ends or death.
All puzzles in the game are solved through a parser. The player may type a phrase with a verb and noun, for example 'Look at' or 'Pick up', the word list in the parser is fairly robust and understands quite a lot of non-important verbs which will result in unexpected replies. For example, you could type, 'dig', or 'dig the beach' and receive messages about how pointless it is to be digging. Sometimes even illogical verb/noun combinations will net unique comments, such as typing 'Pick up horse' will mention that the flying steed is too fast to catch. With this system the player is able to collect many items using 'pick up' placed into the games inventory. The items in the inventory have close up pictures giving an idea what the item looks like, or in some cases offering clues about the item. In a rare few examples an item may be manipulated in some way.
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