When Westwood Studios replaced the dreary hero Brandon with the dry-witted alchemist Zanthia in The Legend of Kyrandia: Book Two - The Hand of Fate, they traded standard fantasy tropes for potion recipes, absurd humor, and a giant rogue hand.

Swapping Brandon for Zanthia saved the series from taking itself too seriously

The original game had you wandering around forest screens as Brandon, trying to stop an evil jester named Malcolm. For the sequel, writer and director Rick Gush shifted the tone toward comedy, casting Zanthia as a practical heroine whose swamp hut gets ransacked before she even gets moving. Instead of saving a kingdom out of royal duty, you spend the opening act trying to reach the center of the earth because the high council thinks an anchor stone will stop Kyrandia from disappearing piece by piece.

That journey takes you from the murky waters of Darkwood through a dragon's lair, past cannibals on Mustard Island, and across a snow-covered mountain with a ski resort. Along the way, Zanthia changes into zone-specific outfits, while her well-meaning but clumsy friend Marko keeps getting caught in ridiculous traps. The plot pivots once you reach the Volcanic Caverns, revealing that Marko's giant living Hand is actually behind the destruction, forcing a final confrontation near the Wheels of Fate past the Rainbow Bridge.

Brewing potions is fun until your inventory runs out of room

Instead of copying the obscure spellcasting mechanics of Sierra adventure titles, this game centers its puzzles on a portable alchemy cauldron sitting right on your main screen interface. You consult a recipe book, toss ingredients into the pot, and carry the resulting magical flasks around to bypass obstacles. Solvers end up juggling items like hot water, cheese, mustard, spell ingredients, and even a teddy bear to progress.

The catch is that your inventory grid is tiny. You will spend a lot of time dropping essential components on the grass, backtracking to retrieve a item you left three screens behind, or getting tripped up by red herrings in the second half. While early puzzles play fair, the later chapters introduce cryptic logic that relies on tedious trial and error.

Westwood mastered VGA visuals and Roland audio at the cost of play time

Artist Rick Parks delivered stunning 256-color VGA graphics, creating distinct visual themes for every region Zanthia visits. The production quality got an extra boost from composer Frank Klepacki, whose soundtrack sounds fantastic whether driven by a Sound Blaster card or a Roland MT-32 synth. A later talkie CD-ROM version added full voice acting, expanding on the original floppy release.

The trade-off for all this polish was overall length. Experienced adventure gamers can breeze through the story in a couple of evenings, a shortcoming that contemporary writers at Power Play and PC Review noted back in 1994. You get a dense, snappy quest, but anyone expecting a sprawling fifty-hour epic will find it over quickly.

The late action sequence and inventory crunch prevent perfection

If you play through this Westwood Studios title today, the biggest point of frustration comes near the endgame. Just as you reach the climax, the design introduces a jarring arcade action sequence featuring the evil Hand. Paired with a Yeti encounter and swamp monsters earlier on, these sudden shifts in style feel out of place in an otherwise clean point-and-click interface.

Despite those stumbles, the humorous dialogue and smooth interface make it one of the better point-and-click adventure games from 1994. Published by Virgin Interactive, it proved that Westwood could build memorable comedic stories alongside their strategy hits.

Play The Legend of Kyrandia: Book Two - The Hand of Fate free in your browser

You can launch this complete MS-DOS game right here in your web browser with no setup or installation required. Running it directly lets you appreciate the bright frame-by-frame character animations and instant mouse response that made the original engine feel so crisp.

If you want to start off on the right foot, keep a close eye on your magic recipe book and do not leave useful ingredients sitting in the swamp mud when you move between chapters.