LucasArts had a very strong bent towards not putting you in a fail state.
My understanding is that Sierra was intending to be more fair as time went on, but they had a bias against playtesting so there were still some big goofs that got through.
I think all of the first 5 KQ games had ways to lose items that would later be needed to win.
KQ VI had a branching path and if you picked the "easy" branch you were unlikely to end up in a very unwinnable state, but there was no indication at the time of the branch that you were doing so (IIRC you were about to be burned alive and you could either use some maid's clothes to put out the fire, destroying the clothes, or cast a spell that required boiling some water, using up some component). With a hint-book it took me several attempts to make it through the "hard" path.
I never got full points on that game. I think I wasted months on it before giving up.
Maybe my favorite KQ memory was KQ 3. Just getting out of the house took my family weeks. Every single misstep turned you into dust. And once you figured it all out, just walking down that stupid path you were 1 pixel away from death in some places.
My understanding is that Sierra was intending to be more fair as time went on, but they had a bias against playtesting so there were still some big goofs that got through.
I think all of the first 5 KQ games had ways to lose items that would later be needed to win.
KQ VI had a branching path and if you picked the "easy" branch you were unlikely to end up in a very unwinnable state, but there was no indication at the time of the branch that you were doing so (IIRC you were about to be burned alive and you could either use some maid's clothes to put out the fire, destroying the clothes, or cast a spell that required boiling some water, using up some component). With a hint-book it took me several attempts to make it through the "hard" path.