A good while back, I posted reviews for Sierra‘s Leisure Suit Larry 5: Passionate Patti Does a Little Undercover Work and Leisure Suit Larry 6: Shape Up or Slip Out! The former being my least favorite game in the series and the latter being my second most favorite game out of all the original Leisure Suit Larry games. For some odd reason, I just stopped there and didn’t review my absolute favorite Leisure Suit Larry game.

Well, I’m going to correct that right now and give you my thoughts on Leisure Suit Larry 7: Love for Sail! and explain why, even after all of this time, it’s still my favorite game in the franchise.

Once again, before we do get into the review itself, let me start off by saying this will be a SPOILER FILLED review. Leisure Suit Larry 7: Love for Sail! is almost three whole decades old now! So, if you haven’t played it by now, I’m letting you know this early about SPOILERS. I also do have to mention that, even though I played this game all those decades ago, I did replay it for this review by getting it from GOG.com‘s Leisure Suit Larry’s Greatest Hits and Misses Collection. This isn’t sponsored by GOG.com; I just like to give you an idea of where to get the games.

Anyway, Leisure Suit Larry 7 takes place pretty much immediately after Leisure Suit Larry 6. Larry; Larry Laffer (hehe) is once again unlucky in love as Shamara, the final girl of Leisure Suit Larry 6, almost immediately breaks up with him after one night (actually, not even finishing the night). Larry does get a consolation prize of sorts as he does score a trip on a luxury cruise line after the “breakup.” It turns out that the cruise is filled with babes and there’s also a ship-wide contest where the winner will get to spend the week with Captain Thygh where “your every need will be met,” if you know what I mean (wink, wink). So, Larry; Larry Laffer (hehe) joins the competition and, while on her quest to shack up with Captain Thygh, will get to also shack up with the bevy of beauties who are on the ship, if you know what I mean (wink, wink). Yeah, I redid the joke. Sue me.

Now, I will admit, Leisure Suit Larry 7 is a big departure from all of the previous Leisure Suit Larry games and even the older Sierra games. For one, this game doesn’t use a typing interface of Sierra’s very early adventure games nor does it use the “new” icon point-and-click interface they’ve been using ever since they moved to using EGA graphics. No, Leisure Suit Larry 7 uses a very, shall we say, dumbed down version of the point-and-click system. There really isn’t a need to try to click on everything to see if something can be interacted with as the mouse pointer will change if you can. And yes, I know what it looks like but I’m trying to keep this review as clean as possible. Clicking on an interactive object will open up a list of commands, removing a lot of the guesswork that’s involved in most of Sierra’s older adventure games.

There is a twist to this, however, as there are some commands that will not show up initially. Sometimes, you might not have access to the right command until you do a specific thing in the game or interact with another object you haven’t run across yet. There are even “hidden” commands which you would have to manually type in! So, you can’t just muscle your way through the game, clicking on everything in sight in the hopes of getting to the ending. Some thought has to be put into what to do when you do eventually get stuck. This can feel a little unfair at times but, at the same time, it does make things feel like you have a little more freedom on what to do.

Another huge departure Leisure Suit Larry 7 has over the previous games are the graphics. Instead of all of the sprite based graphics they’ve used in previous Sierra games, this time everything is hand drawn. Thankfully, the art is pretty good for it’s time and it does look like Sierra got a better handle on how to do animation in their games as it’s much better than what we got from King’s Quest VII: The Princeless Bride. Unfortunately, there isn’t a high resolution version of Leisure Suit Larry 7 so it can look a bit outdated by today’s standards. But, I will tell you that, back then, this looked really nice!

One of the biggest reasons why Leisure Suit Larry 7 is my favorite game in the series is because, in my opinion, this is the funniest game of the bunch. The Leisure Suit Larry franchise might have a reputation for being very risque. And while that is a factor why I was attracted to the games as a teenager, I actually appreciated the humor a whole lot more. What makes a lot of the jokes work here is the line delivery of both Jan Rabson (who voices Larry) and Neil Ross (who voices The Narrator). The two of them do a good job of bouncing their lines between them and I just love it when Neil Ross’ The Narrator would do a wonderful putdown and hearing Jan Rabson’s Larry have a defeated groan. Then again, even without the duo, a lot of the jokes are already pretty funny. Still, both Jan Rabson and Neil Ross just add that extra spice to make an already funny game even funnier.

Still, as this is a Leisure Suit Larry game, you do expect it to be a raunchy adventure. Well, I have to say Leisure Suit Larry 7 is the raunchiest game of all of the Sierra created Leisure Suit Larry games! In games prior, all of the sexy stuff has either been hinted at or obscured in one way or another. Normally, this goes the same here. But this time around, there are “easter eggs” where you can get a glimpse of the stuff that was covered up. Note that none of these “easter eggs” make a whole lot of sense to do so you would need a walkthrough on how to get them. It’s not bad because you don’t really need to get these scenes to finish the game. Even so, the mere option that Sierra finally added visible naughty bits here does elevate this above all of the previous Leisure Suit Larry games.

Even though this is my favorite Leisure Suit Larry game, I do still have some complaints with it. For one, they went back to Leisure Suit Larry 5 and made it so Larry cannot die here. I’ve mentioned before how a big part of what made Sierra adventure games great is trying to find all of the creative ways to die. The worst thing you can get here is just being stuck. Speaking of that, there are indeed some puzzles here that require some moon logic to complete the game. I remember getting stuck really early as there’s a section in the game where you have to get to the craps table but it’s surrounded by James Bond lookalikes. How was I supposed to know that I had to eat the bean dip twice, go near the craps table and fart in order to clear the room?

Probably the worst thing about the game is the Liar’s Dice portion. This plays like an old school gambling section of other Sierra games but there is some strategy involved and is a little too complicated than it needs to be! Basically, you have to bet on how many face numbers there are in total among your dice and your opponent’s dice. So, you can try to guess correctly or bluff your way to win. Still, as this was my first time playing Liar’s Dice, it took me a few turns to really understand what the heck I was doing. And even once I understood how to play the game, this took me something like an hour to win. Even with those complaints, the overall gameplay and the humor makes up for all of that.

Even though this is my favorite game in the series, it is kind of hard for me to recommend that everyone should play Leisure Suit Larry 7: Love for Sail! This is because of the low-resolution animation of the time and some newer players might not be able to get over the grainy look and how very little frames of animation they used here. However, those who would like to play an extremely hilarious adventure game and more silly adult situations, it’s hard to go wrong here and you really should come aboard to have a good time, if you know what I mean (wink, wink). Yes, I used the same joke for a third time. Stop complaining.

Have you played Leisure Suit Larry 7: Love for Sail!? What would you say is your favorite adventure game? Let me know in the comments section below!