The added emphasis on puzzles adds to the depth of the King’s Quest experience. It feels like a slightly better bridging of traditional King’s Quest with modern adventure gaming than what was achieved in Chapter 1. While there were puzzles in the first chapter, they weren’t particularly difficult. However, I’ll confess to finding myself stumped at least twice during my time with Chapter 2. There are few things as puzzling as finding yourself with a chair, chopsticks, a pea, and no idea what you should do with them. This different approach to adventure gaming sacrifices some of the flowing transitions popularized by Telltale Games, but introduces more gameplay decisions. The way you solve the different conundrums presented to the player result in different outcomes. That idea might seem intuitive, but in practice it leads to a varied experience that’s actually pretty neat.

King Graham makes progress through the dungeon over the course of several days. In addition to solving puzzles, players have to monitor the health of their subjects. If a subject’s health reaches zero they will definitely remember how their king didn’t look out for them. At one point in my playthrough I made a mistake. That mistake resulted in a sick, pregnant woman being carted off by the goblins to an unknown fate. I felt awful and, of course, attempted to reload my save. That’s when I realized that King’s Quest doesn’t allow for reloading to previous saves. King’s Quest autosaves every time Graham moves to a new screen. There is no rewinding, no do-over. From a user friendly perspective it would be nice to have a rewind feature of some sort, if only so players who want to replay certain chapters don’t have to start from the complete beginning. However, I appreciate King’s Quest as a harsh mistress. It forced me to come to terms with the consequences of my own poor decision making. That tied in really well with the thematics of the chapter; how leaders aren’t always perfect and must live with the weight of their decisions. Not being able to go back forces players into the same position as Graham and I think that’s a good thing, albeit frustrating.

If I could suggest a change to Chapter 3, it would be a more obscure choices. The Odd Gentlemen have really made a great amalgamation of new and old with King’s Quest, but I think that the first two episodes have been overly obvious about the various paths open to players. It usually comes down to a choice between one of three paths: Bravery, cunning, and compassion. Level layouts and some really on-the-nose dialogue have often been overly telling rather than allowing the decisions to speak for themselves. It’s not a knock against what Chapter 2 offers, as it easily improves on this over Chapter 1, but King’s Quest can do even better. A bit of murkiness to the decision making process would go a long way.