The player controls Thayer, an apprentice magician on a quest to recover the five magical relics that make up the Hand of Quoid ("kwod") before the evil wizard Sorsabal can find them and cement his rule over the five kingdoms. During the game, Thayer only visits three of the kingdoms and finds their relics.
The game was fully animated like Dragon's Lair but required more than simply choosing when to fight or which way to dodge in accordance with the animation. Instead the player had full control over Thayer's movement to different areas and was required to find and use a variety of magical objects to overcome enemies and obstacles like in most later graphic adventure games.
Source: Wikipedia, "Thayer's Quest," available under the CC-BY-SA License.