King's Quest II: Romancing the Throne

King's Quest II: Romancing the Throne builds on the success of the first installment from 1984 and sends King Graham, now ruler of Daventry, on a new fairy-tale adventure – this time tasked with freeing the beautiful Valanice, imprisoned by the evil witch Hagatha in a distant land. The game runs on an improved version of the AGI engine and offers a somewhat larger world than the first game, divided into several areas connected by magic doors that the player gradually unlocks using items collected along the way. The path to completing the quest also leads through a portal into an entirely different, fairy-tale-flavored realm, which was an imaginative way at the time to expand the series beyond a single kingdom.

The gameplay remains true to the Sierra style: a text parser for interacting with the surroundings, arrow keys for movement, and plenty of random deaths if the player doesn't proceed carefully or save often enough. Graham's journey leads through graveyards, caves, and enchanted castles, with some puzzles requiring unconventional logic that the era's player community solved more by sharing tips in magazines than by pure deduction. Technically it's still modest sixteen-color graphics, but for the mid-1980s it was an above-average presentation of a fairy-tale world on PC, complemented by simple melodic music that accompanied transitions between locations.

Among fans of the series, King's Quest II is often seen as somewhat weaker than the first and third installments due to the illogical nature of some puzzles and the strictness of timed situations, yet it holds an irreplaceable place in the genre's history as a direct successor to the formula Sierra gradually refined. Today's player will mainly find a nostalgic glimpse into the early stage of graphic adventures rather than a smooth, trouble-free gaming experience, and it will be appreciated above all by those interested in the development of the series as a whole.

Why play: Anyone interested in the development of the series as a whole will appreciate King's Quest II as a nostalgic glimpse into the early stage of graphic adventures, even though illogical puzzles and strict time limits will test their patience.