Review of King's Quest V: Absence Makes the Heart Go Yonder! by TimovieMan

This was typical early Sierra brutality. Hundreds of deaths and dead ends had me restoring previous saves more often than in all the games I’ve played these last 5 years combined. And I was using a walkthrough to avoid the dead ends!

The story is decent, graphics were actually quite good (especially given its time period) and the voice-over (with Josh Mandel as the lead) was pretty good. Cedric the Owl was slightly annoying after a while (but not as bad as most people claim), and I didn’t like the fact that it was either voice-over or text, not both at the same time. Fortunately pronounciation and sound quality was good enough for everything to be clear.

It’s really not a bad game, but I’ve never liked the abundance of deaths and dead ends in Sierra’s games. It’s just too unforgiving…

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Time Played: 5-10 hours
Difficulty: Very Hard