What is Quest for Glory V: Dragon Fire?

Decent adventure games have become a rare commodity in the past few years. Too often, flashy, full-motion video or obscure, mind-numbing puzzles have gotten in the way of developing and exploring expansive stories. SierraFX has changed that trend with Quest for Glory V, now in simultaneous Mac and PC release. It takes up the mantle of high-quality adventure gaming.

The fifth installment in a series (some earlier installments were PC only), Quest for Glory V spins an engaging story into a rich narrative tapestry. Your old friend, the wizard Fenris, has summoned you to the island of Marete to help unravel the web of deception surrounding recent raids and the king’s assassination. You must compete for the throne by entering the Rites of Rulership, a long series of contests, while avoiding the assassin’s poisoned blade. Quests take you from the lively city of Sihnaria to the mythical worlds of Atlantis and Hades.

Quest for Glory V’s garaeplay is a mix of adventure and role-playing genres, combining quests and puzzle-solving with such RPG staples as the four character classes (Warrior, Wizard, Thief, and Paladin), combat, and numerical character stats. The difficulty setting allows you to set the challenge of combat and puzzles to match your own playing style.

Intuitive puzzles flesh out the story and put your noggin through its paces. You can converse interactively with a colorful cast of characters; the voice acting is as fresh and entertaining as the script is humorous.

Quest for Glory V’s lush world draws you into the island calm and magical terrors of Silmaria, The engine delivers the smoothest scrolling panoramas we’ve seen, with minimal dithering, but it doesn’t support hardware acceleration, which would have enhanced the visuals. The 3D figures are cleverly animated and scale realistically to merge with the scrolling backdrops. The delighlful oundtrack can lull you into the exotic locale’s tranquility or drive you into the clash of battle.

You move tlirough the game and interact with objects and people using simple mouse-clicks. But throwing objects, casting spells, and engaging in 3D combat require more-complicated key commands, and the polygonal figures projected against 2D backdrops can make it difficult to judge whether a target is in front of or behind you. Also, the lack of zooming means Quest for Glory’s fighting figures can look tiny on large backgrounds. On the other hand, key items and hot spots are consistently well drawn and obvious enough to prevent the “click everywhere” syndrome common in adventure games.

If you get stuck, SierraFX provides an online forum to ensure you don’t become permanently blocked. Beware of spoilers who reveal all the answers, and remember that most of the fun comes from discovering solutions to the side adventures. Quest for Glory V is an awesome epic.

Parker, Samuel. (May 1999). Quest for Glory V: Dragon Fire. MacAddict. (pg. 50).

Download Quest for Glory V: Dragon Fire for Mac

Architecture

IBM PowerPC

System Requirements

From Mac OS 7.5 up to Mac OS 9.2

Compatibility notes

Emulating this? It could probably run under: SheepShaver