Way too hard playing QFG 3 now!

[AtypicalChuck]

I spent so much time training my characters for their eventual transitions to QFG 3... and now that I am actually playing it again in DOSBox I find that is it so much harder to play. I think the impossible has happened and QFG 2 has become my new favorite of the series just based on how great the game play turned out and how the designers stuck to the original so well.

Anyone else find it hard to play through the 3rd game now?

[adeyke]

It already found it hard to go to QfG3 from the original QfG2 .

[murphy]

As much as I love QFG2's remake (thanks for the actually enjoyable combat, guys!), QFG3 has always been my favorite. Having the protagonist not being quite as mercenary, and involving secondary characters more deeply (QFG3 is almost as much about Rakeesh as it is the Hero), really sell it for me, not to mention that -being- a Paladin is so much more fun than -becoming- a Paladin.

That being said, I'm really looking forward to playing through the rest of the series with other characters, now. I'd only ever beaten QFG2 with my paladin character before, the text-ish parser just didn't do it for me. So, I'm the reverse. QFG2 is my QFG3 facilitator. :3

[Jack Sawyer]

QFG3 is still a good game, the problem is that it has the definite feeling of being "rushed" - its like they expected the new graphics to wow people, but shorttchanged alot on other aspects (like making combat interesting) or on the puzzles and such. There was a ton of potential there though. The characters and setting were fun and interesting, the premise and the story weren't actually half bad, and it had alot going for it (hell the first two days still are well done.. its just after that where things sorta seem to slack off)

And playing as a paladin was a good plus. Unfotunatley though I think the game kinda shortchanged the characters some, but I tend to feel this happesn a bit in all the QFGs up to 4 and 5.

[zavlin]

3 was always my least favorite. But 4 was definitely my favorite, and i think this remake has changed that. I always thought it would be a really tough choice between 4 and 2 if 2 was more accessible. Well this remake goes above and beyond that and quite easily makes it the best game in the series.

[avatar_58]

I'm an oddball, I like QFG3 the best. The adventure aspects, the exploration, the music and the environment is just so rich. I don't even care about how it is limited choice wise (not much for thieves to do).

This remake would have to blow me off my socks to change that.

[oxygen1234]

I liked Qfg3 the most as well. Among other things, I liked the grand scale of the environment and the story.

[Crowley9]

I recently played through Wages of War (has anyone actually seen a copy that used the title Seekers of the Lost City?) again and I have to say I was pleasantly surprised as I noticed new depths to it. It has plenty of downright philosophical points about the nature of war and peace, and about putting common good above personal interests. Yeah, there is once again a villain to beat up at the end, but look at what he actually did: move around two sacred objects and arrange for less than a dozen people to get killed, and you have three separate factions ready to go to war. It's just taking advantage of existing tensions. Pretty damn crafty.

[synthe]

i must admit QFG3 has been my all time fav too... something about the atmosphere was just more epic, the world felt alot bigger. This game is so great too though. i cant wait to import my wizard thru the rest of the series fully in vga now :D thnx agdi

[daventry]

Is there a Patch for QFG3 because of its speedy Time thing.

My Walkthrough is very Short and quick, because it kept going from morning to night in 1 minute Game time so to speak.

[Schloss Ritter]

New patches for many Sierra games: http://geocities.com/belzorash/

DosBox: http://www.dosbox.com/

[daventry]

[quote="Schloss Ritter"]New patches for many Sierra games: http://geocities.com/belzorash/

DosBox: http://www.dosbox.com/[/quote]Thanks, but cant i just use scummvm instead of dosbox

[soule]

I am a fan of QG3 as well.
I just liked the scale of the story.. it's more of various groups than just the hero's judgement alone.
I am quite surprised to find so many people who liked it here..finally!
Everywhere I go, people say QG3 sucks.. but truly no one can appreciate the story..

[Goilveig]

Everywhere I go, people say QG3 sucks.. but truly no one can appreciate the story..

The only reason that I was disappointed in QG3 was that I like being a thief. And thief is basically the class that QG3 forgot.

Plus, it's sandwiched in between the best games of the series, 4 and 2, so in some sense, it's not that it's a bad game, it's just not as good as the games around it.

[soule]

I like the character specific scenes in QG3.

For the fighter, you had the Simbani initiation; wizards: the magic staff animation.. very grand..much better than the spell binding in QG5. Even the Shaman duel was a puzzle by its own self. Unfortunately in QG4 the Faerie duel was horrible.. just blind spell casting. The thief was neglected, but had his own scene and puzzles.

And the main characters in QQ3 has their own leitmotif at the end! Each personality was truly fleshed out. I loved the Pool of Peace music..it's the best Erana theme out there.

I don't really like QG4 actually. The world seems so much smaller. Why don't a QG4 fan tell me what's so great about it? It's basically like QG1 repackaged.

[Erpy]

Thanks, but cant i just use scummvm instead of dosbox

I don't think scummvm supports sierra games.

I really liked QFG4 too. It's true that its setting is SOMEWHAT similar to Spielburg, but that's basically where the similarity stops. Mordavia is much gloomier than Spielburg...you're not even welcome there and the whole process of the hero getting to be liked by the villagers is really nice. The characters are much deeper than QFG1's. And the hero gets to develop a bond with Erana and Katrina, two of my favourite characters in the series. Plus it had a kick-ass battle system too which inspired me a great deal while designing QFG2VGA's combat scenes.

[Schloss Ritter]

New patches for many Sierra games: http://geocities.com/belzorash/

DosBox: http://www.dosbox.com/

Thanks, but cant i just use scummvm instead of dosbox

ScummVM was written for LucasArts games and works optimally for them. Yes, it supports some Sierra games, but as far as I've heard, it's not quite optimized for them yet. For now, it's better to stick with DosBox. And having a frontend program for DosBox makes it easier to configure. In fact, I just found out that the new "D-Fend Reloaded" also includes an automated install of the DosBox program. Look here: http://dfendreloaded.sourceforge.net/

[Brainiac]

ScummVM integrated the Sarien interpreter a few versions back. This means it can run AGI games with ease. Anything more advanced (in other words, SCI, which means anything originally in VGA) will require DOSbox, a more generic emulation environment.

I don't have a problem switching from QfG2, old or new, to QfG3. I still have the same issue with QfG3 - the freakin' messed up point system (and I still haven't figured out how to outrace Yesufu).

[Schloss Ritter]

I still have the same issue with QfG3 - the freakin' messed up point system (and I still haven't figured out how to outrace Yesufu).

I don't think you can beat him if you stop to help him when he gets stuck, can you? Otherwise it's easy if you leave him behind dishonorably.

[Brainiac]

Supposedly it should be possible to beat him honorably. At least one person has claimed they've done it. From the way the point system is designed, you're supposed to (though you're also supposed to run after Harami and perform a class-specific action to stop him, according to the point system).

[daventry]

[quote="Erpy"][quote]Thanks, but cant i just use scummvm instead of dosbox[/quote]

[quote="Schloss Ritter"]ScummVM was written for LucasArts games and works optimally for them. Yes, it supports some Sierra games, but as far as I've heard, it's not quite optimized for them yet. For now, it's better to stick with DosBox. And having a frontend program for DosBox makes it easier to configure. In fact, I just found out that the new "D-Fend Reloaded" also includes an automated install of the DosBox program. Look here: http://dfendreloaded.sourceforge.net/[/quote]

I still have the Old Willy Beamish Game and QFG1 + QFG3 + QFG4 Games, but Scummvm doesent detect them and i have no clue on how this Dos Program works.

Is there another Program that makes Sierra Games work through today's Machines.

[Goilveig]

DosBox is pretty simple to set up, especially if you know DOS commands (but it's simple enough without them).

Here's the thirty second guide:

1. Install DosBox

2. Make a folder somewhere that is used to hold your DOS programs (for me, it's E:\DosBoxRoot\)

3. In the DosBox program files folder, edit dosbox.conf (using notepad or any text editor). Specifically, add this at the very end under where it says [autoexec]:

MOUNT C E:\DosBoxRoot\
C:

The first line tells it to use the folder E:\DosBoxRoot\ (of course, replace that with whatever folder you made) and make it the virtual drive C: on the emulated DOS. The second line switches to that virtual drive.

4. To run a game, you just install it somewhere under that directory. For example, if I install Quest for Glory 3 into E:\DosBoxRoot\QG3E, then to run it I'd start DosBox and type:

cd qg3e
qg3e

The first to change into the game's folder, the second to run the game.

[Schloss Ritter]

daventry, as Braniac said, you can't run those in ScummVM, as it only supports the old AGI Sierra games, ie the ones with really blocky graphics (KQ 1-3, SQ 1-2, LSL 1, and other older ones).

What Goilveig wrote is even more complex than DosBox use needs to be (though I could do it personally, why bother when a frontend program can do it faster and Mount, etc, automatically).

With D-Fend Reloaded, it automates most of the DosBox setup in a relatively easy to use Windows interface. Seriously, just download D-Fend Reloaded and try it out, and you'll quickly get the hang of it. I can't imagine it would be any more complex than ScummVM's interface.

[Almagnus1]

I am a fan of QG3 as well.
I just liked the scale of the story.. it's more of various groups than just the hero's judgement alone.
I am quite surprised to find so many people who liked it here..finally!
Everywhere I go, people say QG3 sucks.. but truly no one can appreciate the story..

After playing through the entire series with all classes (thief and fighter tend to wind up as magic using hybrids), QfG3 is the second weakest in the series (I rank them as 2/4, 1, 3, 5 - 2 and 4 tie for best). And when I'm referencing QfG 4, I'm referencing the voiced CD version, not the floppy one. For most of this, I'm also gonna ignore 5 - as discussion on that game should be stuck in another thread.

While 3 is not a bad game by any stretch of the mind, nor is it the buggiest of them all (that would be 4), it simply doesn't feel as fletched out as it should be. The paladin and fighter play throughs are virtually the same, the thief is pretty much forgotten. At least they fletched out what the magic user's view of the game. QfG3 feels like there could have been more to it, it felt rushed out the door (they even botched up the point counts on it). I'm blaming Sierra upper management on that one.

With QfGIIVGA now in the mix, 2VGA's combat system is what should have been implemented as 3 & 4's - it's just that good. With 3 they dumbed down the combat system from QfG2. And while turning up the difficulty slider swamped you with random encounters, it only made the combat marginally more difficult.

It should be noted that while 3's combat system is same one that 1 VGA has, all the later combat systems are improvements over what was in 1EGA's.

**STORY SPOILERS**
The story, is good - however, good writing alone does not make a video game. It needs to have enough other stuff in the gameplay that makes people want to play it. This is where QfG 3 falls flat, as you basically have your hand held throughout the entire game, unlike the others in the series. The story is essentially "stop the demons", which is a lot like 1's "stop the brigands" in some sense, with the exception that you just saved humanity from Iblis in 2. While that worked in the first game, it's kinda "oh woohoo" in the third, especially considering that you stop Avoozl from coming back in 4.
**END STORY SPOILERS**

Also, considering the quality of the rest of the series (and QfG2VGA's is up there with QfG2EGA and QfG4), 3 simply does not live up to the quality, so while people don't like it as much of it, it basically boils down to 3 being a good game, while 1 is a great game, and 4, 2VGA, and 2EGA are excellent games. 5 needs help, let's just leave it at that. It's not that we hate 3, it just not as strong of an act as what's around it.

[adeyke]

I think what QfG3 really lacked is polish and fleshing out. The basis of the game and the setting were very well done. There were just a lot of little things that detracted from the overall quality.

For example, the game had no keyboard shortcuts. That is, it was missing the QfG-specific ctrl-S for character sheet, as well as the ones standard to almost all sierra games (F5, F7, F9, ctrl-Q, tab). So every time I want to use one of those keys and then realize I instead have to use the menus, it's a bit irritating.

The combat is also very sloppy. Three of the monsters (ants, dinosaurs, and demon worms) don't have full-body animation, instead consisting of disjoint, independently moving parts. In the latter two cases, there isn't even a body that those parts are attached to. The monsters also don't seem to actively block or dodge anything. You just sometimes hit when you attack and sometimes don't. And the slow life drain means you could kill the monster and then still have to continue combat a few seconds until the monster realizes that it's dead.

And many of the graphics are rough around the edges, sometimes literally. For example, the animation for when the hero exercises beneath the jumping bridge has some very obvious blue pixels, presumably because of anti-aliasing on a blue background. And the random savanna screens have trees that don't quite fit in. There are several things like that. Also, while sprite scaling is a good technology, its use in QfG3 resulted in some very ugly monsters with obvious pixels when they come from the south, as well as some low-resolution sprites that would look better if they'd been made for that small size (the Laibon's hut guard, for example).

And yes, the relative linearity and lack of points of interest are also a bit of a problem. East Fricana looks absolutely immense, but there are only 5 places you can go normally in it (plus some that you go to in scripted sequences). There are very few optional things to do, especially as a thief.

The plot advancement also has some very annoying non-sequiturs. That is, relevant plot points happen based on entirely unrelated actions. I think there's something like having to meet Manu in order for Johari to become captured. Those situations are very annoying, especially if you don't know exactly what the required triggers are.

And then there are some minor things, like having storage chests but not possibly permanently being locked out of their contents, having a money changer but never ever getting commons, insufficient opportunities for stat practice, the problems with the game points, and so on.

These are all issues that could have been solved if they'd spent the time and resources required to do so. And they do detract from what could otherwise have been a great game.