King's Quest VII: The Princeless Bride (1994)

This game had potential to be really good (and I do think it is pretty good). The story setup is fun and stands out from its contemporaries, the Disney-inspired art style is vibrant, and a lot of impactful quality-of-life changes add up for a much more "player-friendly" and low-pressure experience.

But overall it's just not nearly as interesting or memorable-feeling as King's Quest VI, despite some cool or funny individual moments here and there. Characters and dialogue can be good, but also just kind of annoying at points—not really classic Disney level. Even the nice art direction struggles in the animation department, occasionally bringing to mind the infamous CD-i Zelda games, and elsewhere getting a bit garish with its bright colorful design. There's also just something more satisfying in terms of pacing and flow in KQVI's continuous journey with 1 character, as opposed to this game's chapter-based structure that flips between characters.

I do think this was a great direction for the series to take in style and gameplay, evolving some of the fairy tale vibes that worked so well in the prior game and letting go of some frustrating old-school design decisions that had outstayed their welcome. It's a lot more approachable than earlier Sierra games I've played, and has a lot going on that could draw people in who were otherwise uninterested in the series, if only it was at the series's prior peak of quality. It's a shame that King's Quest VIII would be a dull-looking 3D game that's totally unrecognizable from this entry.

I've been spending my Covid quarantine playing through the King's Quest series. I was excited to finally get to KQ6 which I had played through many, many years ago and still the game held up for me. I felt like the series had finally matured enough where guides were no longer a necessity to puzzle out the solutions. I was interested in seeing what KQ7 was like, I had never played it or heard anything about it.

One interesting thing is that there is no longer the ability to save in multiple slots. You get a single "bookmark" which you can save and load from. The plus side of this is that Sierra finally learned that dead man walking scenarios are just no fun so there aren't any, and hence no need to provide multiple save slots. There are still deaths, but the game just loads you right before the death despite the last time you saved your bookmark.

King's Quest 7 looks very different from 5 and 6. It looks like an old Disney movie, like Cinderella. There is a singing princess intro and cute cartoony graphics! My daughter was super excited to start playing this with me.

Unfortunately the game got a bit too scary in the middle section for my child. There's an undead land with lots of monsters and ghosts. I wished that Sierra since Sierra made the choice to go with the cutesy look, they would have followed through until the end. Who is the audience if you make Disney graphics and then mature, scary stuff later?

The puzzles and characters are interesting. I think this makes a good King's Quest game and recommend it if you liked KQ6, but I didn't think it was as good. I needed a few hints at the very end, mainly because there's a puzzle with a very short time window to solve, the solution really doesn't make a lot of sense, and if you fail you have to sit through a long cutscene every attempt.