~5 minute readArthur & Conquests of Camelot
Adventure Comparison
Arthur: Just A Lad
Ah, Arthur ... you are just a boy now. But, soon you will become a man. You have much to learn and a vast amount wisdom and experience to attain. Although the rightful heir to the throne, your birthright has been stolen by the evil King Lot, who has whisked away the sword and the stone. In order for you to regain what is rightfully yours, you must prove yourself. You must grow in wisdom, experience, chivalrous deed and questing ability. But you will not go alone, Arthur. You will have help - just look deeply into this crystal and you will feel my presence.
Eye Of Eel And Wart Of Toad
Thus begins the adventures of Arthur: The Quest for Excalibur from Infocom. Merlin, in his wisdom, has given you, Arthur, a small magic crystal into which you can peer to gain some much needed help. But be careful and do not rely on this crystal too often (unless you don't mind receiving a lot of help). By having this source of help so handy, it could get to be too easy to automatically look into the crystal at every tight spot. This could take away from the pleasure of discovery. Fortunately, only so many hints will be revealed depending upon where you are in the game. Of course, you can put the crystal away so that you are not tempted to seek out its hidden mysteries.
In addition to the crystal, Merlin will also give you the ability to change your form. Once you visit Merlin and he grants you this power, you will be able to transfonn into an owl, a badger, a salamander, a turtle or an eel. This is very useful magic, but it must also be used wisely as you can find yourself in the wrong place at the wrong time and in the wrong form. This could be quite dangerous and/or embarrassing!
Tapestry Of Color
As in all other Infocom games, Arthur: The Quest for Excalibur is mainly a text adventure. However, Arthur includes a graphics window in the upper one-third of the screen where the current image can be viewed. The graphic image is placed in a small rectangular area on a tapestry background. Other options to be viewed in this location are the auto-mapping feature, inventory and Arthur's status. I particularly enjoyed the auto-mapping feature as it showed me where I had been and what directions were available to me. Also, there are no sounds to be found in Arthur, which did not bother me too much as this is a more cerebral type of game.
In Arthur, you will have many enjoyable hours traipsing about the countryside, exploring a castle, meandering your way through a swamp and even going for a swim. You will soar over the land as an owl and slither through the waters as an eel. There are knights (some not so friendly) that you will encounter and a prisoner to rescue from the depths of a castle.
Overall, I found Arthur: The Quest for Excalibur an enjoyable game. I must admit, however, that I have not yet finished this adventure, but am looking forward to doing so with a little (make that a lot ot) help from the crystal.
Camelot: From Boy To King
Arthur is now the High King of Britain and Merlin is still his friend, advisor and confidant. Several of Arthur's faithful knights have gone off searching for the Holy Grail â and none have returned. Word has come back to Camelot, reaching the ear of the King, as to the possible fate of the knights, including Launcelot. This will be King Arthur's greatest quest â to find out what has happened to his knights and to seek out the Holy Grail.
Same Old Sights, But Oh, The Sounds!
Conquests of Camelot, The Search for the Grail, takes place much later than Arthur: The Quest for Excalibur. Unlike Arthur, Conquests of Camelot is much more graphically oriented. However, it does take textual input, which is necessary to play the game. Also, there is no help feature as there is in Arthur. Most of the puzzles you will encounter in Conquests do not need an on-screen help feature, as many of them (if you don't get them right away) will come to you in time.
The music in Conquests is outstanding and lends itself to the game play. Sierra has really done an excellent job providing sounds and music that use the Amiga's capabilities. The graphics, however, only rate as fair by Amiga standards, still being primarily a direct port from the MS-DOS platform. (Hopefully, this will change with the release of King's Quest V and Space Quest IV this next year with Sierra's new Cinemagraphics.)
Shish Kebabs, Anyone?
In Conquests, you will not only have puzzles and riddles to solve, but you will also need to know how to use a boar spear (for those heathen swine â pigs that is), a lance and your sword, Excalibur. You will come upon many people â friend and foe; choose your words and actions wisely during these encounters. Examine everything and ask many questions when the opportunity arises.
Conquests of Camelot is an animated adventure, as you will be moving Arthur around from place to place, with some textual input and some small "action" sequences. When Conquests begins, you will find a small image of Arthur on a layout of the castle. Move Arthur on top of the room you want him to enter and click. When you enter the room, you will then have full graphics. After Arthur has completed his tasks in the castle, he must then leave Camelot and go on his search for his missing knights and the Holy Grail. Once outside the castle walls, an overall map of the region appears and Arthur becomes minuscule again. You then travel from city to city by clicking on them, and then clicking once more to enter. If there is nothing of interest in that city, it will let you know and won't allow you admittance. Once inside a city, however, you return to the full graphics view.
Courting A Legend
I thoroughly enjoyed playing Conquests or Camelot, The Search for the Grail. I found the puzzles intriguing and the music mood-setting.
Neither Arthur nor Conquests are copy-protected and both are hard drive installable (good thing, as Conquests is a six-disk game). Arthur can be played on 512K machines; however, Conquests requires 1 MB to run. The parser on both games also did not detract from game play. However, I did encounter occasional messages in Conquests or Camelot from Merlin telling me that he really didn't understand why I wanted to do something. This did not seem to be as much of a problem in Arthur.
I can heartily recommend either of these Arthurian adventures. However, I would have to say that Arthur, being primarily a text adventure, is a bit over-priced in comparison to the more state-of-the-art graphic adventures. Documentation for both games is excellent, especially for Conquests. (However, be forewarned, if you are not a text adventure fan, Arthur may not be for you.) Both games include an historical and legendary background to the story of King Arthur and Camelot (Arthur, on disk; and Conquests, in the manual). And, both will provide many hours of riddle solving enjoyment.
This article appeared in
Enchanted Realms
Nov-Dec 1990
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These historical, out-of-print articles and literary works have been GNUSTOed onto InvisiClues.org for academic and research purposes.
