Preliminary: I honestly hadn't heard of the King's Quest series, well maybe vaguely but not really, until Peter himself mentioned the series when I was first getting into early text adventures. This review is specifically the 1.1 / original release for PCjr/Tandy/etc. (I'm playing via PCjr... wellllp scratch that had to do the Apple IIGS version... wellllp scratch that Amiga version.... welllppppp now I'm not sure if I will be able to play it lol)
Omg finally!!!!!! I'm able to play this! The Amiga version (2.0J)
Look: 9/10
Succcch a good cover image. And I like the colors and vibe of the Amiga version (not sure how the other versions/ports look) 
Some pretty scenes for sure 
Lol I love this door it reminds me of Beetlejuice oddly 
The King Neptune screen reminded me so much of the Pajama Sams, and also the Little Mermaid world in Kingdom Hearts. Lots of good shadows too throughout the game, it was cool how you could always tell what way the sun was coming from ha, nice little touch. Honestly, the look was a big part of what got me to push through the tedium, frustrating attempts at "action" and navigation aspects, and trudging slow movement.
Lol this woman just rocking her chair in this pretty little shop despite a murderous enchanter outside and Hagatha the Witch... and thieving dwarves... and on and on. She must have her groceries delivered... 
Wow, and the Death/Ghoul bringing you across the river part was so well-animated! The Look really is the shining gem of this well-done but tedious game.
Sound: -/10
Cheesy but nice to finally hear some Amiga sounds. I love how the water hits up against the rocks at the beach area 
Mostly non-existent when it comes to sounds tho. Really just to show that something appeared, or to announce King Neptune, etc. They were mostly effective, but often annoying (and if they had sound effects more often, the annoying factor probly would have risen).
Play: 7/10
God this was a headache to be able to play--so I sure hope it pays off! I love that it looks to be a true adventure, and I love that it seems to incorporate Amiga mouse, text input, and joystick? We shall see... The navigation is a bit slow and the collision masks are quite literally the MS Paint images, not much logic beyond that. But that's to be expected since this is really a text adventure brought to life, which is awesome. I do wish the movement was faster tho heh, some parts felt soooooo slothy. And I hatttte the randomized appearance of overpowered enemies, like just let me wander and enjoy the adventure--but no, a dwarf! no, a wolf! etc etc. I mean there has to be some danger, but I've always preferred adventures where you can prepare for an enemy--have a certain item or weapon to defeat them etc. Oh shoot, and as I was starting to get burnt out and frustrated (this has taken me so many days, and I've been frustrated lately with not having enough time to stream and game and get irl stuff done), I came upon a Fairy. I like that, very Zelda-esque, and I like that indeed it protects you from enemies. Not how i'd like it to work--an item specific to an enemy protects you or defeat its, but at least there's something to help. I had been asking myself why did I spend this last week playing this, trudging through the slow movement and limited time I have to game at all, but moments like that enliven me (a bit..)
Pro-tip: do not use the Sword to kill the Snake (which is really a Horse under a spell). This will help you in so many ways later, not to mention the increase in Score saving Treasures.
Another pro-tip: anywhere an enemy can spawn (you'll learn these quickly, not hard to figure out), stick to the edges so you can quickly dip and come back for a different chance for spawn/when the enemy spawns
Feel: 8/10
Yessss that you can click to head to that spot, like in Runescape! Definitely different from the point and click of the Mac game Enchanted Sceptres, but giving me that similarly innovative and unique vibe. And yessss the item retrieval/item trading gameplay like in Zeldas. I also love that you see your Score in the top UI, reminding me of early treasure collecting text adventures that displayed 100/100 Scores etc at the end. Those adventure game elements were where this really shined, indeed. Much like Below the Root and other text adventure-derivative early "action"-adventures--the action elements really suffered: in this case, the slow and clunky movement, the enemies like Hagatha, falling into the pond, etc. Tho they often reminded me of text adventures' RNG-based enemies (Hagatha) or don't-say-east-so-many-times (falling in the pond), still, detracted from the joy of the adventure game aspects. When it'd say I was too far from, say, Red Riding Hood when I was mere pixels away >.< Or when I fell off that dumb ladder in the dwarf's tree house >.< One positive of the clunky action elements was, for instance, Hagatha's awful pathfinding ability :-p Thank goodness for that.
As I played it more and more, I learned more about the game. As an adventure game should work. And I love how there are main plot points you can solve by trading in Treasures, losing Score thereby, but there is always a best trade available. I love the Zelda-esque item trading, but also the flexibility and treasure-based text adventure game core.
Attachment: 8/10
A bit tacky that it's got all the Red Riding Hood, Wolf, etc. stuff and even more tacky, Roberta was super happy about incorporating all that stuff heh. But I suppose, that is classic hodgepodge text adventure style, just felt a bit less creative and interesting than I had hoped. I can't really say I will play this that often, as well-done as it was, it's just so slow and trudging. When I'd see that I'd have to navigate like 10 screens over, the thought of it sounded so tedious. Uff I almost had a panic when, even with the Gold Key from King Neptune, the First Door wouldn't open with "Unlock Door." I tried it a few different ways to no avail (ohhhh, text adventure parsers...). However, oddly, perhaps a bug with this specific Amiga version, retrying Unlock Door worked after that ha. Phew
Returned to this yet another night. The damn staircases in the Dracula Castle. Why do games who must clearly know they have clunky action elements, specifically use those clunky action elements?! >.< 
The 1d part of the stairs at the top.... yea we are supposed to navigate that lol. I did do it first try, though. What was tacky was in the next screen the perspective is so goofy it took me several tries not to just return to the prior screen with the 1-d staircase and fall over and over heh... Thing is, like many early platformers and action-adventures, whenever the game would start to make me think I might drop it... it follows up with something awesome! The "other world" segment was beautiful! (Again, the Look doing a lot for this game) 
Ahhhh, yesss, the large golden fish you ride through the other world's sea like a perpetual Activision sunset 
Superrrrr lame that after all that, sure enough we are just saving the girl to become our wife... and ending with a wedding... 
...and to top it off I didn't quite get 100%! Maybe it's because I didn't watch one of the easter egg advertisements?! Silly if so. I do love that all the characters, both good and bad, are at the wedding--I know it's technically tacky since it was just to use all their sprites, but it's also cute and classic and credits-y. I also love that the castle graphic looks so much like the Fisher Price castle toys + videogame 
Indeed, I have such a love-hate feeling about this game! So much to love, so much to get frustrated about, and so much to roll my eyes at. But I complete it at least this once, and certainly wont forget about it when perusing back through my played games... A memorable game if nothing else. And the fact I kept returning to it, and that most the early text-adventures-become-action-adventures, even my beloved Below the Root, had clunky action aspects, pushed me to give this an 8 here even though I'm unsure if I'd return to actually playing this someday.
Completion: 182/185
Playtime: ~3 hours
