Head back to Part 4 – The Perils of Rosella Retold
King’s Quest 5 has some pretty heavy nostalgia for me, almost as much as the LucasArts classics. My Dad brought this one home, probably from a computer swap-meet held in an old school gym that smelt like the sweat and tears that had been produced by an angry PE teacher who had trouble satisfying his wife. Anyway… We used to play KQ5 back when hint hotlines still extorted people a few dollars per minute to find out that they’d hit a dead-end. We uh, never used them because that price was too rich for our blood. As a kid I remember watching my Dad play King’s Quest 5 and together with my brothers, we’d sometimes all huddle around and try to brute-force our way through the puzzles, fail miserably and watch on as King Graham met his gruesome death in a variety of different ways. Good times. I did this playthrough with a mod which re-adds text dialogue boxes, or subtitles, for the CD-ROM version of the game, it’s easy to install and I think it’s absolutely worth the time.
King’s Quest V was released by Sierra On-Line in 1990 for MS-DOS. It marked a significant change for the series, introducing updated VGA graphics complete with a point-and-click interface and the ditching of text-parser input. The CD-ROM talkie version gave our valiant hero a voice, even if the voice acting throughout is pretty rigid. The game kicks off with Castle Daventry and King Graham’s family being whisked away, enchanted and imprisoned by the evil wizard Mordack. Graham, conveniently, is out for a leisurely stroll while this happens and he returns to find no family, no castle and a well dressed owl by the name of Cedric. Cedric has seen the whole ordeal and takes Graham to his master, the good wizard Crispin, in the land of Serenia to help track them down. Graham learns Mordack’s evil antics are motivated by revenge for his brother Manannan, who was turned into a cat by his son Alexander back in King’s Quest 3. Graham journeys through Serenia, helping those he can along the way before confronting Mordack in his island lair. With help from an enslaved Princess Cassima and some clever spell-slinging, Graham manages to defeat Mordack and rescue his family along with Princess Cassima and restores Daventry to its former glory. I’d say up to this point, this was easily the best King’s Quest story Sierra ever released.
Just like the previous game, there’s an obvious step forward here with the introduction of a point-and-click interface and shiny new graphics. It’s like Sierra knew some people at IBM and wanted to mess around with new technology, or something…uh, anyway… the text-parsing input has been well and truly tossed in the bin and we have full voice acting throughout the game. The point-and-click interface and updated graphics are nothing short of unreal, for the time. The voice acting, though? It’s pretty rough. Voice acting was still relatively new for video games back in 1990 and it really seems like Sierra passed on getting professional voice actors in for the game. Instead, it feels like they pulled literally anyone they could find in the office at the time to run some lines and save on costs. Maybe that’s not exactly what happened, but it sure feels like it and to their credit, it sorta worked. The voice acting does kinda stink, but in its own weird and janky way it manages to fit the game pretty well.
A key requirement of any King’s Quest game, or any Sierra adventure game for that matter, is the need to save early, save often. King’s Quest V absolutely pushes that expectation with puzzles ranging from satisfyingly logical to full-blown moon logic. You’ll quickly become accustomed to Graham’s many, often brutal sudden deaths and the inevitable reloading that follows. There’s a shocking amount of unwinnable situations where missing a single item can quietly doom your entire playthrough hours after you neglected to pick it up. One of the more infamous examples is the lowly boot. This is found while wandering out in the desert, it turns out that this old hunk of leather is essential for surviving a pivotal moment in the game. Should you miss it, you won’t crash and burn immediately, but you’ll trudge on like a dickhead being blissfully unaware that you’ve completely cooked your playthrough. It’s definitely a product of its time, that much is clear. It’ll absolutely feel unfair but it’s a core part of the King’s Quest experience which demands patience, careful exploration and a willingness to accept that the game is always one bad decision or misclick away from killing you.
I touched on it earlier, but King’s Quest V was a major step forward in presentation for the series. It features rich and densely detailed hand-painted backgrounds that really pushed that storybook fantasy feel and made Serenia genuinely enjoyable to wander through. The soundtrack and sound effects do a good portion of heavy lifting too, they reinforce moments of wonder, tension and of course danger. Full voice acting helped the world feel more alive than ever, even if the quality wasn’t quite there. Directing and animation played a huge role here too with the scenes being staged and paced in a similar way to how Disney approached early animation. They used clear visual storytelling with character reactions and timing to draw the player’s eye. There’s a lot to like, even Cedric, who is universally hated by King’s Quest fans. Look, I like the little winged dweeb. He’s undeniably nervous to an extreme level, but he serves as a narrative anchor and offers some hints, his own commentary and just enough personality to keep us moving forward on our journey. He helps sell the game’s atmosphere and almost makes King’s Quest V feel less like a series of puzzles and more like a guided fairytale adventure. Almost.
Coming back to King’s Quest V today still has that magical feeling. It’s obviously still frustrating and occasionally cruel, but I think the balance is why it’s still so fondly remembered. It represents Sierra at its most ambitious, pushing new technology, presentation and storytelling forward while clinging to a design philosophy that takes pleasure in punishing the player for even the smallest of mistakes. I guess that could be said for any Sierra adventure game. The puzzles are often ridiculous, the deaths are frequent and the voice acting is rougher than a pineapple. But, the atmosphere, direction and pure sense of adventure carry it such a long way. It also sneaks in some valuable lessons about not being an asshole to people. King’s Quest V really feels like a turning point for the series, or at least it did back then, with one foot firmly planted in harsh, old school adventure game cruelty and the other in a more cinematic and guided experience. It’s not always fun, especially if you compare it to its LucasArts counterparts, but it’s a game that benefits from patience and the willingness to meet it on its own terms. In 2026, King’s Quest V remains one of Sierra’s most memorable and important releases.
Dad with a Deck 
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