Introduction

Remember a company called Westwood Studios? Perhaps best known for real-time strategy classic Command & Conquer (1995) and the enormous franchise that sprung from it, they were also responsible for C&C spiritual precursor Dune II (1992), as well as D&D-based role-playing classics Eye of the Beholder (1990) and its sequel (1991), followed by a new franchise set in their own original universe, Lands of Lore (1993). The company was acquired by Electronic Arts in 1998, and as was typical of Electronic Arts acquires at the time, Westwood Studios was swiftly run into the ground and finally dismantled in 2003.

Shortly before the height of their career, Westwood Studios produced a trilogy of point-and-click adventure games in the vein of Monkey Island or King's Quest. The first game, titled Fables & Fiends: The Legend of Kyrandia, was released in 1992, approximately a year after Monkey Island 2, and two years after King's Quest V (that's the one with that insufferable owl). The game was well received, despite its generic plot and occasional... issues, and was followed by a CD-ROM re-release with added voice track the following year, and two sequels with titles riddled with colons (Fables & Fiends: The Legend of Kyrandia: Book Two: Hand of Fate and Fables & Fiends: The Legend of Kyrandia: Book Three: Malcolm's Revenge), soon to come.

While the games are not, in my opinion, quite up to par with Lucasarts classics like Monkey Island or Day of the Tentacle in terms of writing, they nevertheless have a certain charm to them (the later two games in particular), and the graphics, music and voice acting are fantastic by period standards. And yet, whenever the topic of classic point-and-click adventure games is brought up, the Kyrandia games are often forgotten in favor of more famous examples. While it's certainly understandable why they don't hold the same place in people's hearts as certain other classics, forgetting them entirely is a shame, in my opinion.

Well, that's enough backstory; let's see what this is about. But before that, let's talk briefly about

spoilers

. The Kyrandia series does not have a deep and intricate plot, but the later two games do have a few (fairly predictable) twists, so for now the official spoiler policy is no talking about things that haven't been shown yet.

Because this is a point-and-click adventure game and there is a lot of walking around and looking at things that aren't particularly entertaining, this will primarily be a screenshot LP with transcribed dialogue and my commentary in italics. However, since we're playing the CD-ROM version, this game is also fairly competently voice acted. Therefore, text updates will be supplemented with video clips of significant conversations or events, particularly whenever a new character is introduced.

The Let's Play Archive

Legend of Kyrandia

by Hyper Crab Tank

Introduction

Table of Contents