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Does Quest for Glory 5 Suck?

Posted: Fri Aug 08, 2008 5:28 pm
by kosch
I was very disappointed with QG5. Anyone else who hated it please vote why! :)

Re: Does Quest for Glory 5 Suck?

Posted: Fri Aug 08, 2008 5:47 pm
by Erpy
Seeing that the options only offer one answer to the original question, do you think Kosch named his topic inappropriately?

A) Yes.
B) Hell yeah.
C) Definitely.
D) No kidding.
E) Seriously.
F) Positively.
G) Absolutely.
H) Totally.
I) Right.
J) No doubt about it.

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Re: Does Quest for Glory 5 Suck?

Posted: Fri Aug 08, 2008 5:48 pm
by kosch
lol! :) Sorry. Is there a way I can rename it to "Why does quest for glory 5 suck?" :D ok ok.. i'll add a real 'No' option

Re: Does Quest for Glory 5 Suck?

Posted: Fri Aug 08, 2008 6:00 pm
by JonWW
How about an option of no like:
"No, but doesn't fit in with past Quest for Glory games"
Cause I don't think it sucks, but it just doesn't feel like a good fit with the rest of the series.

Re: Does Quest for Glory 5 Suck?

Posted: Fri Aug 08, 2008 6:01 pm
by kosch
ok i'll change it to what you said :)

Re: Does Quest for Glory 5 Suck?

Posted: Fri Aug 08, 2008 11:33 pm
by Dasilva
I enjoyed QFG5 more than I enjoyed QFG1 EGA & VGA.

Re: Does Quest for Glory 5 Suck?

Posted: Sat Aug 09, 2008 6:51 am
by Kloreep
The voice acting wasn't great, but it wasn't terrible. My biggest gripe with it was that it wasn't all that consistent with QFG4. Bring back Jennifer Hale! Get proper Katrina recordings for 5! (While we're chasing impossibilities, let's get John Rhys-Davies to do the QFG5 narration. ;))

I actually liked5. The weakest element for me was gameplay. Some stuff, like sneaking about as the Thief, became very cool owing to the fact that you didn't have to switch screens every time you went a certain distance. The Minos fortress robbery is definitely up there in all-time QFG thieving. However, a lot suffered; it was too early in the 3D era for them to have good examples to copy from, and since the Coles were apparently not 3D game design gods on top of their other skills, combat and such seems weak to me. That, and polygonal characters was not a good way to go, especially when they're put up against the character portraits of 4 - or even 3.

Re: Does Quest for Glory 5 Suck?

Posted: Sat Aug 09, 2008 8:21 am
by haradan
I really don't understand why some people hate QFG5 so much. Sure, it had some weak points, but every game has weak points. OK, the portraits were terrible, there were too many characters from previous games and, worst of all, the combat system sucked. But that's it. 3D graphics don't fit with past QFG games? C'mon, I could say VGA doesn't fit with QFG since it all started in glorious EGA! You don't like the new interface? I don't like Point-N-Click! I could even argue that digital music doesn't fit with QFG since it all started with MT32 music in good old MIDI format. Taken to the extreme, I could argue there were only two real QFG games! :p

OK, so everyone has its favorite games and you have the right to hate QFG5, all right. Come to think of it, what really bothers me is when people claim that it doesn't belong to the series, kind of with MOE and King's Quest. This seems greatly exagerated for me, I consider QFG5 quite a decent end to the greatest series of all times, but that's just me.

Re: Does Quest for Glory 5 Suck?

Posted: Sat Aug 09, 2008 11:12 pm
by jpnuar1
Answering more to one of the poll answers than the topic itself, what do you have against Claymation? I thought it was adorable. Plus there was the Claymation Christmas Special....

Re: Does Quest for Glory 5 Suck?

Posted: Sun Aug 10, 2008 12:13 am
by kosch
Nothing against claymation. But 80's claymation. blech. >_<

Re: Does Quest for Glory 5 Suck?

Posted: Sun Aug 10, 2008 6:45 am
by adeyke
I think the MoE thing does put it in perspective. MoE was a terrible game that didn't have anything to do with KQ. QfG5 was just not as good a conclusion to the series as QfG would have deserved, with some significant flaws. It's still a QfG game. Ignoring the bugs and compatibility issues, I'm not sure I'd even call it the worst of the series (QfG3 may get that title from me).

Re: Does Quest for Glory 5 Suck?

Posted: Sun Aug 10, 2008 5:34 pm
by kosch
I liked qg3 :) I think the map idea was brilliant. And the lion men look really cool! The jokes were funniest in part 3 too. Btw was there a voice version available for Qg3?

Re: Does Quest for Glory 5 Suck?

Posted: Sun Aug 10, 2008 9:09 pm
by Dasilva
kosch wrote:I liked qg3 :) I think the map idea was brilliant. And the lion men look really cool! The jokes were funniest in part 3 too. Btw was there a voice version available for Qg3?
I think it was planned but never happened. Like space Quest 5 was going to have a CD version as mentioned in the hint book, but never happened.

Re: Does Quest for Glory 5 Suck?

Posted: Mon Aug 11, 2008 12:22 am
by MusicallyInspired
adeyke wrote:I think the MoE thing does put it in perspective. MoE was a terrible game that didn't have anything to do with KQ.
Aw come on. MOE wasn't that bad. It was a fine game for its time on its own. It had very little to do with KQ, though, you're right there. It seems to even introduce inconsistencies with the whole Lord of the Dead thing as well, doesn't it? I don't know I haven't beaten it.

Re: Does Quest for Glory 5 Suck?

Posted: Mon Aug 11, 2008 12:50 am
by Ghost_Rider
I didn't really like QFG5 at first, but after playing a bit I got used to it. It took me quite a while to get into it, but it's really not all that bad. I liked how they really made large portions of the game unique to each character class. It is a different style, yes, but sometimes you just have to change with the times.

Re: Does Quest for Glory 5 Suck?

Posted: Mon Aug 11, 2008 9:33 am
by JustLuke32
I don't like Quest for Glory 5 because it is so awfully bland. It seemed to exist to tie up loose ends. It was all sentiment and fan service, and there was nothing fresh or interesting about it. The ancient Greek setting could have been interesting, but somehow nothing stood out about it - it had no flavour or distinctive character to seperate it from the games that preceded it

Likewise, the music was very smooth and slick, but also unmemorable and bland. The backgrounds were acceptable, but again, bland. The real time 3d models were primitive, even for the time, and the combat system was terribly clunky, twitchy, and unexciting.

Re: Does Quest for Glory 5 Suck?

Posted: Sat Sep 06, 2008 7:57 pm
by Xyloc
^JustLuke32 has said it all. :-D

Re: Does Quest for Glory 5 Suck?

Posted: Fri Sep 12, 2008 10:37 pm
by MK
The thing I despised the most in the game was that stylistically it didn't seem to fit. too much greco-roman influences. I also don't think it tied up the loose ends very well. Honestly I think that the hero character should have died.

Re: Does Quest for Glory 5 Suck?

Posted: Fri Sep 12, 2008 10:40 pm
by Erpy
Well, there's the option to get yourself killed at the end.

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Re: Does Quest for Glory 5 Suck?

Posted: Sat Sep 13, 2008 6:52 am
by Asrai
MK wrote:The thing I despised the most in the game was that stylistically it didn't seem to fit. too much greco-roman influences.
Ermm... well it is set in a Greek inspired setting with Roman-like mercenaries invading the land. I think that argument is kind of like saying that QfG 2 had too much Arabian influence, and QfG 3 had too much African influence. Really the only two games that had locations with a similar feeling were 1 and 4, based on Western Europe and Eastern Europe.

Re: Does Quest for Glory 5 Suck?

Posted: Sun Sep 14, 2008 8:08 am
by adeyke
I did finally manage to get QfG5 running, and I just finished playing through again. So I think that, to be fair, I should post an assessment with it fresher in my memory.

The worst part is definitely the bugs/instability. I was only able to get it to run by getting rid of my qgm directory. I don't know what those files are for, but before I got rid of it, it would crash instantly. With it gone, I was finally able to get it to run, but it still crashed sometimes. At one point, any random encounters would crash it, so I avoided those. And at one point, it crashed as soon as I loaded a game, so I had to go back to a previous position. And crashes were frequent in the dragon battle and end-game ceremony. I was finally able to get past that by running it in Win95 compatibility. Running it that way made all sounds jerky, but running without it made all keyboard commands overly responsive (it'd interpret one key press as two or three, and holding down a key meant you'd get the effect of holding it much longer, and the game wouldn't respond until it was done with that action). I normally chose the sound over the keyboard support, but for the end, I had to switch.

The combat was definitely as bad as I remembered. While I couldn't use the keyboard, even with it, even having it available wouldn't help much, since it's so hard to aim for monsters. So combat is basically just clicking the opponent until it dies, or using spells. Frostbite was ridiculously overpowered, being able to take out nearly any opponent (or two or three) with one cast. In the same way, the fire attack used by the Manes is almost instantly lethal, so I just had to hope they wouldn't cast it on me. Also, while it was the first game (before the QfG2 remake) to allow multiple simultaneous opponents, it was only ever 2 at a time, which isn't really that big of an improvement. The rest of the army would still just watch.

In a way, it seems like they gave people what they wanted instead of what's good for the game. The thief gets several new tools, a trap to defeat at every chest or door (that gets really old really fast) and the ability to steal from practically everyone, including friends, merchants, and townspeople. The fighter gets lots of exotic weaponry and armor, as well as a big fighting tournament thing to win at (except that you won't actually see the whole thing unless you drag out the game on purpose). There's also a very big variety of monsters to fight (though they tend to act very similarly). The wizard gets lots of fancy new spells that do new and interesting things and that will probably never actually be used (frostbite kills everything, so there's no need to fascinate or shrink anyone). People often ask for more things to rob, more weapons, more monsters, and more spells, and QfG5 has them. I think, though, that those features are in directions other than the QfG games went.

I did remember the story elements, and in this play-through, I had the same problems with it. The whole competition thing still rubs me the wrong way. And it still bothers me that, even though the introduction gives away the plot (you see who's responsible for the murders and you learn the significance of the pillars) and even though the game itself quickly makes these even more obvious, you can't actually act on that knowledge and instead just have to watch it unfold. And the widespread use of instant teleportation is also a bit cheesy.

The graphics are also bad. Really bad. The tiny plastic-looking faces bothered me. This time, I noticed that while they were lip-synched, the faces would move a bit from frame to frame, so it would jump back and forth depending on what words were being pronounced. And the in-game models are horribly blocky and their animations robotic. I know the 3D technology wasn't great at that time, but that knowledge doesn't really make them look better.

One huge positive in the game, though, is the music. I absolutely love the night Silmaria music and the dryad dance music. Great stuff.

The atmosphere in general was also pleasant. It's a very scenic area, and I appreciated the in-flavor things. All the characters who've come from other lands rather detract from this, however. There are over a dozen characters from previous games, and even many of the other characters come from other lands. This made the setting feel rather artificial.

One thing that bothered me more this time around was the anti-scientific stuff. I'm perfectly fine with fantasy games and things being fantastical in them. So the presence of magic is perfectly okay. However, the game then has scientists that are trying to make apply scientific ideas to a thoroughly unscientific world. QfG4's Dr. Cranium was okay, since he's just an obvious reference to Dr. Brain. And while he's eccentric, he's harmless and actually helps the player a lot. The QfG5 scientist, however, is major antagonist who's actively trying to get rid of the things he doesn't understand. And, without going into it too much, Salim's use of homeopathy bothered me a lot, too. Both of those could just stand for themselves (i.e. there just happens to be that one scientist doing those irrational and unethical things and there's just this one character who believes in homeopathy), but they could also be examples for a more wide-reaching message, and it's that latter possibility that I have problems with.

Re: Does Quest for Glory 5 Suck?

Posted: Sun Sep 14, 2008 10:15 am
by GloomSaber
I didnt think it was awful. It was bland and the voice actin isn't as great as the one before it. However, it is understandable:

The ppl who provided their vocal talents in 4 were ppl who did original Canadian/American cartoons

I mean, other tha the narrator, you have guys like Cam Clarke, who was the voice for Leonardo(ninja turtles,) 2002 He-man/Prince Adam, Freddy Pharkas, Liquid Snake, some pbs cartoons, and the original dubbed Kanada(Akira,); Jennifer Hale who voiced stuff that is too long to mentioned; Jeff? Bennet (who does a lot of CN shows) as Ad Advis; and a bunch of other actors who are still doin cartoons.

In dragon fire, the talent is mostly "new" and were not as popular as they are now.. Steve Blum, who did Magnum Opus, along with two others and Beau Billingslea, the guy that did the voice for the lion paladin are popular in the anime english dubbed community. Both did a lot of cartoons together such as Cowboy Bebop (Steve Blum=Spike and Beau=Jet Black.)

I believe that the voice acting is not as good as the other game probably because the person in charge of the voices because he/she is responsible of how the script should be read. Shadows had awsome voice direction while DF was more bland and straight foward.

Until a few years ago, voice actin in english dubbed anime shows/movies were bad since they mostly get those who are not expensive as say, someone who voices Minnie Mouse(Tanya in Shadows of Darkness.) I mean, before Cartoon Network's dedication to anime, japanese animation programs were not as popular in America and because of that, a lot of studios who did translated them, were small. They normally hired folks where were either new or would do things cheap. This is somewhat similar to video games in the US whereas most of the voices were from ppl workin on the game(King's Quest V.) Eventually, video game companies started to use professional talent, which can be seen in any Sierra game other than V. The 3d Glory title was a game that from what I can see, had less budget than shadows of darkness and is most likely the cause of why they got lesser known voices for it.

Re: Does Quest for Glory 5 Suck?

Posted: Sun Sep 14, 2008 6:04 pm
by Brainiac
adeyke wrote:The worst part is definitely the bugs/instability. I was only able to get it to run by getting rid of my qgm directory. I don't know what those files are for, but before I got rid of it, it would crash instantly. With it gone, I was finally able to get it to run, but it still crashed sometimes. At one point, any random encounters would crash it, so I avoided those.
The random enocounter crash is a known issue not addressed by the version 1.2 patch or the fanmade 2000/XP patch. It's a systemic buildup glitch similar to the inability to access the Stat Screen in QfG4 for certain games. This one, however, is believed to be caused by using the Mystic Magnets on any generic island interior screen. In other words, NEVER transport back to Silmaria after an enemy encounter unless it's at a Dragon Pillar or a coastline scene.

Re: Does Quest for Glory 5 Suck?

Posted: Sun Sep 14, 2008 6:55 pm
by adeyke
Thanks for the heads-up. I'll keep that in mind if/when I replay it.

Re: Does Quest for Glory 5 Suck?

Posted: Sun Sep 14, 2008 8:46 pm
by Schloss Ritter
I'm assuming it's safe to Magnet from Villages and other unique scenes then?

Also, NEVER save your game on the overworld map. I found that out the very hard way (and was barely able to get my character to restore after a number of retries each time I continued playing).