Review: The Krynn Series

[ProphetSword]

I have just finished all three of the Krynn Gold-Box games.  I played them in order, one after the other, and transferred my party completely through all three games.  I will keep spoilers to a minimum, but these are my thoughts on the games, despite having played the first two multiple times (this is the first time I completed the third one in the trilogy).  These are not in-depth reviews, mind you.

CHAMPIONS OF KRYNN:
The series starts off with promise.  Even though COK is mostly a linear adventure, the game doesn't suffer as a result.  The story is well managed, even if the text is sparse.  What sets COK apart from some of the Forgotten Realms Gold-Box games is the personal story of some of the characters.  It is far more interesting to know that real people live in Krynn and they aren't just all convenient shop keepers or trainers that can be put to use by the party on a whim.  Overall, COK is a solid adventure, despite having many areas that are empty and could have used more text to spice them up.

DEATH KNIGHTS OF KRYNN:
Continuing in the footsteps of the story that develops in the previous game, DKK starts off solidly enough.  However, where COK kept the focus tight, DKK tends to lose that focus not far into the game.  While there are some interesting characters and locales, the game seems empty overall.  It felt, at times, that more effort was put into developing artwork and locations than was put into the actual story.  So many locations could have used interesting flavor text to spice things up.  The game feels...well, lazy at times.  One whole area was copied and reused, though it is supposed to be a different area, and it felt like the developers were just filling space.  It's not a terrible game, but it could have been much, much better.

DARK QUEEN OF KRYNN:
The third game in the series completely tosses away the personal story of the previous two games and tries to develop a new one, but fails miserably at doing much to draw the player in. The game starts off fine. In fact, DQK has amazing flavor text and descriptions, as well as very inventive locations.  However, once you get past the beginning stages of the game and reach the main area where the game takes place, the game quickly becomes tedious.  That's a word that describes the final three-quarters of the game...tedious. Even when you enter a new location and get caught up in the excitement of what's going on there, the designers of the game managed to turn those areas into an exercise in frustration.  Many areas overstay their welcome very quickly.  Battles seem never ending.  Even when you think you're finally done with something, the game developers found a way to add even more irritation by finding ways to make you constantly back track, fight pointless battles or chase things around.  One particular confrontation comes down to a guessing game of which button to push in which order, so that your party isn't instantly killed, requiring you to restart the sequence again.  And, at the end, when you think you're finally done with everything...well, guess what...you aren't.  I know Secret of the Silver Blades is frequently considered to be the worst of the Gold Box games, but I think those people must not have played DQK; because, I would rather play SotSB three times in a row than play DQK again.

If anyone wants to post their own reviews, feel free...

[Mechanaut]

I played DQK last night. I have played through the others (recently), with a transferred party.  I'm still fairly early in the game; it's disheartening news to read that it is not just a slow/rough start...  The game put me to sleep more than once last night.   


BTW, in case anyone is interested or will benefit... I installed the games on my desktop, laptops, and tablets. The first thing I did afterwards was to delete (move) the saved game folders in each game, and replace them with file-system junctions; via the mklink console command.  In my Dropbox account folder, I created a folder for SSI save game folders; with one folder for each game inside it, and created the junctions to them in each of the (respective) game folders; pointing them each to the folder on Dropbox—(in my Dropbox folder).

What this does, is to make all of my SSI games have synced saved games across all of my devices. Anytime I save my game, Dropbox uploads it to the server. I can play on any device, save the game, and I can resume the game on any other device, picking up right where I left off. They all save & load their games to & from Dropbox.  The games themselves are none-the-wiser, it just works. They save & load their files as normal—in what they assume is their SAVE folder, while the OS(s) gives them access to the contents of the folder on Dropbox.

[Milos Gulan]

I was thinking today about death knight monster and Dragonlance. I surely would like to play this games and I am hoping one day it will happen. I decided to play as much FRUA as I can this summer, and not sure how much will be able to work with DC but I am hoping to do something :))

I need to learn to make things like Ray does, meaning acts in the story like 1, 2, 3 ect. Maybe I should try to mod with FRUA. I am missing link that makes someone good FRUA mod maker like maybe, playing default mod that comes with FRUA. But I am willing to give what it takes to learn and use both FRUA and DC to make things good, just because I like it so much and well... not to go to off topic I think I better copy paste into my mod thread just to remember and will link it here :)

Edit: Sorry for dividing this post but here is some of my latest thoughts, just happy that I can play FRUA again, off to Aerie of the Slave Lords now  ;D

[PetrusOctavianus]

I must say I disagree with those reviews.

Even as a fan of the Dragonlance novels, I found Dark Queen the best of the series, and Champions the weakest.

Champions suffers from an empty overland map. There's no use exploring, since there's nothing to find, and it's quite linear.
Also, I didn't quite like the encounter design. Fighting "Elvish Killers" really ruined the suspension of disbelief to me.
Overall a good game, though, with an excellent starting dungeon. But when I first played it, I thought it was a decline compared to Pool of Radiance and Curse of the Azure Bonds.

The main beef with Death Knight is that it's rather short. But I think it has excellent atmosphere (reminds me of the Legend of Huma novel).
It's very unlinear, and there's lots to explore, and many interesting adventures outside the main quest.

Dark Queen is my favourite, since IMO it has the best tactical combat of all the Gold Box games, with an even, high difficulty, whereas for example Pools of Darkness provides a much more uneven challenge.
It also has some of the most memorable, and fun to map/explore areas in the series, like The Lighthouse, the underwater area, Hawkbluff, and The Tower.
On the downside it takes place in a more obscure place of Krynn, with very litte tie-ins to the novels.
But overall my favourite GB game.

And the Krynn series is overall the best GB series IMO for several reasons:
1. Demi-Humans are not useless past the first game.
2. The Clerics worship actual gods with different benefits.
3. Added interesting races and classes like Kender and Knight.

[Ishad Nha]

Individual taste varies a fair bit it seems...
CK: there are only 19 maps in the game, that reduces the number of outdoor dungeons.
DKK: the Lich in Dulcimer has fond memories of Cerberus. He deliberately created Dulcimer as a copy of the other town.
DQK: If ProphetSword is finding combat to be a pain, he may need a better party. A single class Mage can overcome a lot of enemy Magic Resistance.
Enlarge spells last much longer in DQK...

[ProphetSword]

I didn't find the combats difficult. I found them tedious. Too many combats in some areas far too often. Hawkbluff, in particular, was really, really bad. So many trash fights. Most of them very easily beaten.


I give DQK a thumbs up for taking so many wallsets I am familiar with from UA and doing a lot of interesting things. Locations were great, but the game overall was quite weak in story and execution. I never felt the pull into the story the same way I did I the previous two games.


I get it. You guys love it. More power to you. I like Secret of the Silver Blades, which I know a lot of people don't. Opinions vary. So be it. I will likely never play it again, even if I do play COK and DKK again.

[hans]

...Opinions vary...

Yep.  As I brought up in the Big List of THE LAST JEDI Criticisms, there are objective and subjective criticisms, and there are major and minor criticisms, but ultimately we place a personal value on things due to personal reasons. 
"Whatever bangs your shutter, whatever melts your butter, whatever pops your corn, whatever blows your horn, whatever peels your banana, whatever plays your piano, whatever lights your candle, whatever turns your handle, whatever cocks your pistol, whatever toots your whistle, whatever slays your dragon, whatever paints your wagon," etc. 

I enjoyed CoK.  It had a very nice Huma-style, tragic relationship between Sir Karl and Maya.  Their's is, IMO, the best sub-storyline within any of the GoldBoxes.  And fighting the Draconians for the first time was a blast. 

DKK is my favorite of the trilogy, and perhaps exceeded only by Curse of the Azure Bonds and Pool of Radiance as my favorite GoldBox game.  The Sir Karl and Maya storyline goes from tragic to uber-dark.  The atmosphere is wonderfully creepy and dark.  Even the one, big comedy relief sequence in the gnome village gets a little undead.  The tension of the plot is released then tightened again very nicely.  The musical score is the best of any of the GoldBoxes, as well. 

DQK had problems.  The time-consuming nonsense in the elf valley (counting leaves?!) destroyed any sense of actual suspense.  Trying to build to a climax among a bunch of gnomes was also detrimental to the atmosphere.  IMO, for reasons like these, this was the least of the trilogy.

[Sir_Todd]

I have just finished all three of the Krynn Gold-Box games.  I played them in order, one after the other, and transferred my party completely through all three games.

CHAMPIONS OF KRYNN:

DEATH KNIGHTS OF KRYNN:

DARK QUEEN OF KRYNN:

If anyone wants to post their own reviews, feel free...

I just finished Champions of Krynn, and just started Death Knights of Krynn last night (only a handful of fights, haven't left the fort yet). But I have to say, most of my "feelings" on these games are biased a lot on where I was in life when I was younger and when I played them.


Champions of Krynn was cool to me because, having read all the Dragon Lance books back then (the Chronicles series), I knew all the characters they would reference... IE: Tanis, Sturm, Tasselhoff, etc... so that was pretty damned cool for me.


I liked Champions of Krynn a lot, but the game felt short. At least, it felt much shorter than Pools of Radiance. I use POOLRAD as a measure by which to compare all other games... and quite frankly... the open storyline of POR was just something that not all other games had. I loved the mini-quests, the unrelated encounters... the caves you'd randomly find... these really helped make the game FAR more diverse than it really was. It kind of gave the same "feeling" that games like Starflight had... which was a massively open universe. IE: the "unknown."


Champions of Krynn definitely didn't have that, as you knew you pretty much had to go from one place to the next... but there was still a great story, and the Dragon Lance world feels more rich than the Forgotten Realms one does.


Death Knights of Krynn... I've never beaten the game, but I did play it... maybe halfway through, and then life took over and it got deleted. ~25 years later, now I'm looking to go through it again, and... correct me if I'm wrong, Death Knights has more of that "unattached" open feel that Pool of Radiance had? I'm hoping so... but I suppose I'll find out.


I've never really spent much time playing Dark Queen of Krynn... other than just buying it. But I'm a fan of Gateway, Treasures, and Pools of Darkness... so I'm looking forward to playing with that "engine." It really does add significantly more "beauty" to the game, without negatively affecting the format that we all love.

[Sir_Todd]

I've spent quite a bit more time playing Death Knights of Krynn today... and have to say I've been really happy with it.

I like that Champions of Krynn is linear and follows some of the books that I remember reading as a kid (the Chronicals... IE: Dragons of Summer / Autumn, whatever they were called.)... but, the game felt a bit unrealistic in that sense. If you're going to be in a world like that, there are going to be other things going on that aren't specifically geared to a story-line. And that's what I like about Death Knights thus far.

I'm following the story line, just got through the Dragon's Pit and fought Daine or whatever her name is just before going out to the bazaar. And I'm realizing there's a whole bunch of other areas that aren't even tied to the game's plot. Like the beached pirate ship, etc. This is EXACTLY what I used to love about Pool of Radiance. The pirate ship reminded me a lot of the Nomad Camp, or the Lizard Keep in Pool of Radiance. Basically encounters / hidden areas on the map that really have nothing to do with completing the game... but win you prizes, XP, and fun.