Legend of Kyrandia 2

(Warning: spoilers!)

Looks like the designers of the second Legend of Kyrandia learned half a lesson from the mistakes of the first game (two words: "everglowing fireberries"). This game has double the inventory space, and frequently purges unnecessary stuff, so you don't run out of inventory slots. And it only involves the insufferable Brandon during the intro, after which you take control of Zanthia. Her mission: having figured out why parts of Kyrandia are disappearing, she is sent to the center of the world to find an anchorstone which will presumably fix this.

But she can't just use a portal, unlike everyone else in the game, because she's out of blueberries. No, seriously. So it's off to a bunch of wacky adventures, including a game of Simon that you really need to write down the color order of and further fetch-and-deliver and interpret-these-instructions-in-a-punny-way-to-make-a-potion quests. All of which don't take all that much time, so at some point the designers apparently realized that the game didn't take long enough and added padding. So you get to pick up 6 coins for these guys. Then 6 other things. Then 6 more things. Then they tell you you could have just jumped in a vent -- but if you try that before they tell you, it doesn't work! Later, you get to make all the potions you've made again. All the ingredients are right there on a shelf, so it's clearly only playing for time, and probably also hoping to trick you into ordering the colors the same way as you did in the Simon game and two subsequent times, but here's a free hint: that is not it. Roy B. Giv is your friend.

The plot is so incredibly stupid I don't even want to begin to get into it. Wait, you want me to? Ok. Here's the twist: apparently this sorcerer exploded, and now his body parts are wreaking havoc on the world. As Rod Hilton might put it, "this actually f---ing happens."

Even with the artificial padding and pixel hunting it took me little more than three hours to finish the game (again, by walkthrough -- I'm not playing any of these old games without one). This was such an improvement over the first game that it's hard to put into words. Let's hope the third one is even better.