Reader reviews for Galador: The Prince and the Coward

Galador might be one of the most forgettable games ever. I bought it long time ago, back when the genre was proclaimed dead, yet somehow European market was chock full of cheap adventure games: you could basically visit your local store and buy a new ag from almost any country on the continent. This one also didn’t go unnoticed, it was even advertised in gaming mags. I don’t remember whether it was a present or I just bought it myself, but I played a bit of it and uninstalled, being put off by the horrible localisation (guess some things just don’t translate). And completely forgot about it for years.

In 2021 I was reminded of its existence. By that time it was ported to ScummVM and translated into English, so I found my CD and played it till the end. And then completely forgot about it once again! A year has passed, and now I’m reading a review on this website, thinking “Oh yeah, there was this adventure… I wonder if I should play it”. Only to realise that I had in fact finished it last year.

What’s more, I found my own short review at the forums where I wrote that “it’s a pretty solid classic adventure with plenty of nice animations, some good humour and ok puzzles for the most part up until the last chapters when it becomes almost impossible. Had to finish it with a walkthrough by my hand, and I’m not proud of it”. This does ring a bell.

The game indeed has some good parts (mostly art/animation) mixed with some bad parts (gameplay-related), but it is writing that makes it so hard to remember. The developers created yet another parody fantasy world with a bit of everything thrown in, from wizards, dragons and vampires to ancient gods and demons, but didn’t bother to come up with any sort of storyline or at least some interesting setting for them, ending with an unremarkable series of quests that make you run between colourful, but unconnected locations.

Don’t expect to find a new Discworld here, it’s just not, not even close, even though the game tries really hard to look like one. Now let me forget about it once again…

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Time Played: 10-20 hours
Difficulty: Hard