I thought this hit pretty well on all the major weak points of the game. Good job, Emily.
Nice to see a shout-out to the KQ5 thread a couple of weeks back too (the mention of the two Walk icons in the original disk version). Though of course they did work noticeably differently (the Walk icon made Graham move slowly in one direction, stopping if he hit any obstacles, SCI0-style, while the Travel icon made him move more swiftly to the point you clicked, navigating around things in his path, like LucasArts' standard walking mode).
And I did think that the problem of dead-ends might have merited a bit more emphasis in the review, given how it's one of the major sticking points for most gamers. You do a fine job of pointing out how bad they are, but perhaps there should have been a mention of just how unspeakably
long you can play on before you realize you're stuck in one!
PS - just thought I'd note something interesting: the inventory windows are different in the KQ5 disk vs. CD versions.
The original disk version had very large icons in the inventory window. To manipulate your items you moved the cursor up to the icon bar and selected the EYE or HAND. If you selected one of those and then wanted to get the pointy cursor back, you had to close the inventory and re-open it! Plus, your current score was also included on the inventory screen.
The CD version had a smaller window with shrunken icons. The EYE, HAND, and pointy cursor were all available as buttons in the window, and you didn't need to go up to the icon bar. Plus the points earned weren't there, as they had been moved to the now-combined options screen.
