The Legend of Kyrandia Fables and Fiends Book 1  Reviewed by Lance House.     ¿? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿? Kyrandia is a land of dark mysterious forests and sleeping dragons. A fantasy land where rubies grow on trees and magic abounds. Who would imagine that a land so idyllic would lead to murder? Some say that the court jester Malcom was mad to begin with. Others that it was his burning desire to possess the precious Kyragem that slowly unhinged his mind and led him to slay the peaceful King William, the sole protector of the powerful gemstone that is the source of all magic in the land of Kyrandia. As the rightful prince of Kyrandia, you must pursue the elusive MAlcom to recover the KyraGem. Only then will you be able to reclaim the throne and restore harmony to the land of Kyrandia. THE LEGEND OF KYRANDIA (TM) awaits you. The blurb doesn't really tell you anything about the game itself, and I think that the most important statement is right at the bottom. It says : Screenshots may be taken from a different version. ie The pictures seen here are the IBM SVGA screenshots, so If you have a different computer, then suffer! because yours will not look as good. Now don't get me wrong here the graphics are very good, but the ones on the box are a lot better.  ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ I have just finished this graphic adventure, like 5 minutes ago. The blurb doesn't say much, so here is a general summary of the story itself. (ie the bit in the front of the manual) Life was great in the early years of Kyrandia, people and plants and animals lived in beautiful harmony, and, from the place that the king created this covenant, a giant Gem - the KyraGem* - grew. The gem was a gift from the earth to the people as a symbol of this covenant, and from it stemmed all strong magic. The Royal Family had to look after it. The magic was used wisely at first, but then people started using it to wash the dishes, mow the lawn and put the cat out. As a result an order of Mystics was created to organize and control the magic, and four orders were created blah blah blah blah, And lots of different things happened, none of which have any bearing on the story itself, until Malcom, the evil court-jester killed the King and Queen and seized the throne. The chief mystic sealed Malcom in the castle so he couldn't get out and wreak too much damage, and the head mystic fled with the heir to the throne - Brandon (you) - far away from Malcom's evil clutches. However it temporarily slipped Kallak's (the mystic) mind, and he forgot to tell you you were the rightful king. Since the mystics couldn't get to the Gem, their magic weakened, and Malcom escaped from the castle. Brandon it Kyrandia's only hope! Rescue the World! Be a hero! * for those interested, judging by the size of this gem when compared with Brandon,(what a horribly American name for a main character) it would probably be bigger than the family car. So you can see that this has rather more plot that your average computer game, and so I can see a number of sequels ranging into the future. Upon opening the box the thing that will strike most people is the number of disks. This monster comes on nine disks, which as far as I know is second only to Monkey Island II which weighs in at 11 disks. The very first thing that you should do is install it onto your hard disk. I have to assume that you do have one, because if you dont then I do not really recommend this game. Unfortunately the manual has no instructions, but having played some of Westwood Solutions' earlier games (EOB and EOB II) I worked it out without difficulty. The instructions for this are at the bottom of the page. As is common to Graphic adventures it also uses alot of memory, and although it is a 1 meg game it suggests WB2 owners should use only 1 floppy drive. If you only use 1 floppy drive the game will be hell, and if you have it on your hard disk on your 600 or 500+, it would be a good idea to disable everything except the partition the game is on (by using the boot menu.) The faster computer you have the better, because on my A500 it can be painfully slow at times, particularly when there is some animation on the scene and at times it is reminiscent of Kings Quest V. The game is very easy to get into. There are no commands to learn, and unlike monkey island you don't construct sentences using icons and words and items on screen. Instead, if you click on an item in your inventory the pointer changes to that item, and then you can drop it or use it. If there is nothing for you to do on the screen then the item is dropped, this is an attempt at a totally user friendly interface, and while good at times it falls flat on its face. For instance if you try to do something you can't the item is dropped, then a few seconds later the computer realises, and within five seconds you can pick it up again. Another of my gripes is the inventory. You can only hold TEN lousy items at once. Does that suck or what?? Is really p----s me off when I play Monkey Island and hold 50 or 60 things at once. I think that if a sequel comes about this should be the first thing that should be improved and it should never be necessary to drop items. What if you drop something, and then need it later on ? There is one answer - Trek through a series of repetitive screens to get the item, then trek back again. Ho hum. My third and last complaint is stupid and pathetic comments. Brandon has a habit of repeating them if you click somewhere wrong on the screen. His favourites are: "Would any one notice if I just went home" "Why do I have to do all the work" "How can they let this happen?" And later in the game this springs up alot: "I'd do anything for a pair of sandals." Okay. Go live in Ninben, then you can have all the sandals you want. Apart from these gripes The Legend of Kyrandia is a very good game. As you can see I am a Monkey Island (I & II) fan, and so this game inevitably is judged against the standard which is Monkey Island II. This game, as you can tell, is not as good as Monkey Island 2 and I dont think is as good as Monkey Island I either, but it is a good attempt at a similar type of game. Maybe the next will be even better, and will have more comedy in it, as the (apparent) comedy in this is almost non-existant. If the above errors can be improved upon then Legend of Kyrandia II may almost knock Monkey Island II off it's pedestal and become King of graphic adventures. In the meanwhile it is a competant adventure game which is not the best, but is okay for Ex-Monkey Islanders. If you want to try out the Graphic Adventure scene, first play Monkey Island, then (and I recommend a hard disk for this) move to Monkey Island II and when you have finished both, you might like to play this one. Although I think they are narrow minded, I will give a score for this game. I reckon it is worth about 7 1/2 out of 10, with MI 1 at 8 1/2 and MI 2 at 9 1/4. -----------------------------------------------------------------------------  How to Install Kyrandia on ya Hard disk. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Make sure you have at least 7 meg to spare. If there isnt, delete all the contents of the following directories (tee-hee, only joking): C DEVS LIBS L S SYSTEM FONTS (DONT DO THIS. NEVER delete ANYTHING from any of these directories unless you know what you are doing.) Instead do this: Enter a shell and type the following, system/format drive dh0: name YouGullibleIdiot noicons... Whoops! wrong again, try this for a change: Insert Disk One. Open the disk window and drag the INSTALL program icon over into the directory of you hard disk you want the game in (eg Dh0:games/Kyrandia) When the install program has copied, just double click on the one on your hard disk and follow the prompts. TAA-DAA, you have installed the game onto your Hard Disk.  ¿? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿?