King's Quest: A Knight to Remember is the first episode of five in a brand new episodic series based on the 1980s original. Taking a classic such as this and turning it into something brand new is always risky business - for example the game is no longer a point-and-click adventure but one that you will navigate through with your controller's joysticks - but here there's such an obvious love for the title that it pays off immensely.
Taking place before all of the other games in the franchise, players are transported into a magical world where they must take up the mantle of Graham. In his youth he's trodding an exciting path to become a knight, but this isn't a story you have to discover on your own. Instead, the game is framed as a tale told by an elderly bedridden King Graham, who's talking to his granddaughter Gwendolyn about his adventurous past, the people he came across and the challenges he had to face.
It's a novel way of engaging the gamer, and the choices made by each individual player will then frame the story told by the old King. You could be going through one particular version of the game, and your friends could be playing something very different. The first big choice you have to make is in the game's prologue, and King Graham promises that it will affect everything that is to come. Whether or not he was embellishing on his tale - as he likes to do - is yet to be seen.
The first episode is around five to six hours long, and the only grating thing that's worth noting is when dialogue is repeated, there's no option to skip it after realising you've engaged with the same person or object twice. This means that when you take those small moments and multiply them by the amount of times you're likely to actually DO the same things twice, quite a lot of time can be wasted.
Still, King's Quest manages to pull me back from that small slice of negativity. The humour for example is one of the game's best points. King Graham will crack some terrible puns, which you can't help but laugh at, especially when Gwendolyn moans about just how truly awful they are. And there's the brilliant characters made even better by the star-studded voice talent. Keep an ear out for Toy Story's Rex, Michael Shawn as a prominent character.
Then there's the gorgeous artwork which should manage to charm its way into the hearts of even the 'hardest' gamers. Hand-painted by the names behind the title, we can say without a doubt that their every effort was worth it. Long and wide camera shots mean that there will be moments you just stand still and take it all in. It's a game that really deserves to be looked at as well as played.
Puzzles are at times slightly challenging, but there's nothing here that managed to keep us stumped for too long. We imagine that as the chapters progress, so will the difficulty of the challenges within. It's refreshing to see that in Sierra's take on the genre that Telltale made famous, there are still ways to reinvent what's on offer.
It would not do King's Quest justice to talk about the story that unfolds as you play through the first episode. What we will say is that it is one definitely worth a purchase, and one worth exploring and getting to grips with yourself. The magic would be lost if we detailed every little thing, but we implore you to give it a go.
King's Quest: A Knight to Remember is out now via Xbox Live, PlayStation Network and Steam for PC, with new episodes coming throughout 2015 and 2016.