King's Quest III: To Heir Is Human

King's Quest III: To Heir Is Human was the third installment of the King's Quest saga. It took an ambitious approach by setting a different person as the player character than the well-known King Graham from the previous episodes.

Story
In King's Quest III, the game has moved away from Daventry and King Graham to the land of Llewdor, where a boy named Gwydion is being kept by the wicked magician Manannan. Gwydion was kidnapped from Daventry by the magician when he was young, and this adventure tells the story of his journey back to that land.

The player plays Gwydion in King's Quest III. The major events of the story include breaking free of Gwydion’s captor wizard by turning him into a cat and escaping Llewdor, returning to Daventry and freeing Princess Rosella (Gwydion’s twin sister and daughter of King Graham and Queen Valanice), and finally discovering that Gwydion is actually the royal couple's lost boy, Alexander.

Because King’s Quest III initially shows no connection to the previous installments of the series, some fans initially criticized the third installment of King's Quest for not tying into the previous games. Only after playing to near the end of the game did players find a connection to King's Quest I and II.

Cat's Cute and Thorough Description
I was informed that my first two game reviews were too sassy, so I'll try to calm down with this one :-P

The game begins with a young slave Gwydion. He is a slave to the wizard Manannan. Gwydion just goes around the house, doing any chores that he is commanded to do. He knows that Manannan kills his slave boys at the age of eighteen, and he knows he will turn eighteen soon. When Manannan informs Gwydion that he is going on a journey, Gwydion realizes that this is his chance!

As soon as possible, Gwydion goes into Manannan's study and finds a latch which opens the floorboards and a set of stairs which leads to a laboratory. In it, there is a spellbook, which includes spells such as "Causing a deep sleep," "flying like an eagle," and "transforming another into a cat." Gwydion figures that this is his way to make his escape!

Gwydion starts collecting the ingredients for the different spells. He has to go down the mountain several times, going into town, dodging thieves, and getting back to the house before Manannan returns home from his journey. In order to stay out of trouble, Gwydion has to hide the spell ingredients under his bed, since Manannan never goes in there.

The next time Manannan goes on a journey, Gwydion hurries down to the laboratory and starts casting spells. One is for him to be able to understand the speech of animals. Once he does that, he goes down to the foot of the mountain and starts listening to the squirrels and birds around the land. He finds out some very interesting pieces of information about his past. Because of that, he knows he has to get home, and soon!

Gwydion goes back to the house and finishes casting the spells. When Manannan comes home, he's hungry, so Gwydion has to feed him something. He makes a porridge and crumbles in a cookie that he made. But it's not just any cookie... it's the cookie that will turn the person who eats it into a cat. Once that happens, Gwydion is able to escape the wizard's house.

He goes down to the town of Llewdor, which is at the base of the mountain. There he discovers that a ship is about to set sail. He gets a passage, only to discover soon afterwards that it's a pirate's ship! He is knocked out and all of his possessions are stolen.

Once he wakes up, he is in the hull of the ship. He is able to jump and climb the ladder and goes to the captain's quarters. He peeks in and sees that the room is empty. He goes in and checks out the trunk at the foot of the bed. There, he discovers his items that were stolen. Gwydion knows that it's not time yet for him to try to escape... he's in the middle of the sea! So he waits in the hull. As soon as he hears the pirate's cry "Land ho!" he casts the sleeping spell.

Soon afterwards, he uses a stone that will transport him to Daventry. He gets to Daventry and has to cross beach, snow, and cliffs to get to the castle.

When he is almost there, he meets another man who tells him even more about his history. He is then told that a three-headed dragon has captured Princess Rosella. He must go up some stairs (remember the stairs from KQI?) to the Land of the Clouds to rescue her. He does so and casts the "Brewing a Storm" spell. Lightning strikes the dragon and Gwydion's able to untie the ropes and save Rosella. He tells her what the man told him and she doesn't believe it. She mentions something about a birthmark and Gwydion must show it to her to prove who he is.

They go down the stairs (Rosella is horrible about getting in the way!) and back to the castle to unite Gwydion with the Royal family.

Technology and Development
This was allegedly the first adventure game featuring auto-mapping, with a "magic map" found in the game that can be used to teleport to most locations that the player has visited before. This feature was unpopular among some fans who claim it made the game too easy, hence magic maps in future Sierra games were more limited in their teleporting ability.

The Apple II version included improved sound but lacked the internal clock due to limitations of the Apple computer. The lack of the internal clock made it harder to judge when Manannan would return to his house.

Copy Protection
King’s Quest III was the first game in which Sierra used a manual-based copy protection scheme. Nearly all AGI games (including King’s Quest III) have a disk-based copy protection, requiring the original game disk to be present in order to play the game. This wasn't entirely effective and unofficial versions were widespread. (This key-disk check was removed from the later released "King's Quest Collection" versions.)

However, to complete King’s Quest III, the player needs to create a number of magic spells, through alchemical formulae that are only available in the game’s manual. Many considered the process slightly overdone – 140 of the 210 possible points in the game are obtained through simply doing what the manual says, leaving less room for real puzzles. Starting with KQIV, later Sierra games would open with a dialog requesting that the player enter word X from page Y of the manual.