Death Knights of Krynn: Final Rating

Death Knights of Krynn
United States

Strategic Simulations, Inc. (developer and publisher)

Released 1991 for DOS, Amiga, and Commodore 64; 1993 for PC-98
Date Started: 13 August 2015
Date Ended: 24 August 2015

Total Hours: 23

Reload Count: 19 (plus another 10-12 while "rest-scumming" in the challenge dungeon)

Difficulty: Moderate-Hard (3.5/5)
Final Rating: 54

Ranking at Time of Posting: 188/196 (96%)

Raking at Game #437: 425/437 (97%)

As I closed my last post, I noted that my characters were 2-4 levels below the maximum they could have achieved in this game, despite having completed all the side quests I could find. I prematurely downloaded The Dark Queen of Krynn and created some new characters. I was happy to see that they started at about half my party's experience totals, so importing veteran characters does impart some benefit, but I still wouldn't mind another level or two. I was also eager to try out a variety of higher-level spells on more monsters, so I could properly update my "Gold Box: Spells and Their Uses" posting.

 

A commenter clued me in to a special dungeon called "Dave's Challenge" that opens up only once you've won the game. (The "Dave" in question is likely Dave Shelley, co-credited with "game development.") The documentation says nothing about it, so you have to be thorough enough to re-search the entire overworld map after winning to find it. It's in the far northwest corner, above some mountains, the middle of water. It looks like you shouldn't even be able to walk there. Getting there was no picnic. Soth may be gone, his plans in ruins, but the countryside is still crawling with undead and evil warriors.

Finding the challenge in the far northwest.

 

The dungeon is described as a "dim and decaying temple dedicated to Takhisis." As I entered, the spirit of a knight named Sir Vansward told me that he had died trying to make it to the altar of Takhisis and destroy it. He said I'd find a special amulet, capable of destroying the altar, with his body.

     
The dungeon was only one 16 x 16 level, but the "challenge" took on several forms:

• There were numerous secret doors (trapped) and trapped chests. My thief worked overtime, after hardly being used at all for this purpose during the game.

• Several places in which a thief had to sneak across a room or hide in shadows, skills not called up on in any other Gold Box maps that I can remember.

   

Why couldn't we have more stuff like this in the main game?

       

• Turning doesn't work at all and there are numerous spectres and vampires in the level. These monsters can naturally drain you, and you have to decide whether to suck it up or reload. (I reloaded; after all, I was there specifically to get experience, not lose it.)

   

When turning doesn't work, it's not easy to defeat a large group of vampires and spectres without any of them touching you.

     

• A hallway of battles against flesh golems and iron golems that respawn the moment you leave the squares.

• Resting is nearly impossible throughout the dungeon.

  

The "challenge" dungeon was one of the few I bothered to map during the game.

    
Both the material rewards and experience rewards were quite good. I found several +4 weapons and armor, a +3 hoopak (Coral had been using the +2 one brought over from Champions the entire game), and more gems and steel than I could carry. Before long, most of my party members' names had changed color, indicating they could level up.

Approaching the end of the level. Note the typical "tell instead of show" approach of the Gold Box games.

 

Defeating the level meant finding the dead knight's necklace in a pit in the middle of the map (avoiding fake ones) and bringing it to the altar room at the top. There, I had to fight a battle with 3 spectral dragons, 4 vampire mages, and 4 death knights, scattered around the map when the battle began. The spectral dragons can drain levels just like the vampire mages. The death knights, of course, were fond of casting "Fireball" every round, and they were mostly immune to spells. The vampire mages cast high-powered magic missiles, drain levels with physical attacks, and have a gaze attack that charms characters.

Death knights, vampire mages, and spectral dragons appear in small groups around the final combat map.

 

Given the state of my party when I arrived at the altar room, I didn't stand a chance. I probably wouldn't have even been able to make it back through the golem fights to the entrance by then. I was only able to prevail through "rest-scumming"--attempting to rest and restore health and spells and reloading if I got attacked. This took a while. Thus restored, I cast every buffing spell at my disposal and was able to win the final battle on the third try. I particularly enjoyed the hastened Midsummer running around the map and killing all three spectral dragons in one round.

When the final battle is over, the altar is destroyed by the necklace, the dungeon collapses, and you find yourself outside. The first time I won, I made the mistake of not saving and walking one step. My beleaguered party was immediately attacked by a large group of hatori (sand crocodiles) who killed two of my characters in the first two rounds. I had to reload from an earlier save in the dungeon and fight the final battle again.

That was a load-bearing altar.

    
When it was all over, I made my way to Cekos, sold all my excess equipment, gems, and jewelry, and bought all the arrows +2 and Darts of the Hornet's Nest that I could afford. (I look forward to seeing why these are particularly valuable in Dark Queen.) I then returned to Gargath Outpost, leveled up four of my characters, memorized new spells, and made a final save in preparation for Dark Queen next year.

"Dave's Challenge" was suitably challenging. I cheated a bit, I guess, but the real game was over at that point, wasn't it?

This is the only time I remember a message like this appearing in a Gold Box game. We could stand more of them.

    
Before moving on to the GIMLET, let's check out the fake journal entries. Perhaps reflecting the developers' abilities to put more text in the game, there aren't that many total journal entries this time around. Champions had 88 entries and 57 "tavern tales"; Death Knights has only 66 entries and no tavern tales. But a full third of them--23 entries--were ones I didn't encounter during the game. Some of them might have been real and I just missed them. Obvious fake ones included one in which the commander of the Kalaman garrison was revealed as Soth; a pair of entries in which Durfey and Lenore are tortured by the "Snake King"; a trio that would have had the party wasting time plodding around the mountains searching for the Rod of Omniscience in an non-existent city called Sudulto; and one in which Maya is revealed to be a servant of Soth. They're all reasonably clever.

A pair of bogus journal entries.

       
As we discussed a couple of posts ago, I expect the game to GIMLET at around the same level as Champions and Curse of the Azure Bonds, but not as good as Pool of Radiance. Let's check it out:

1. Game World. The setting is the same as Champions, of course, and the Dragonlance universe brings a lot of lore and backstory to the game. But I was alternately bored and annoyed with this particular game's approach to the story. The plot is both bland and nonsensical, and relies too much on characters you'd have to read the books to understand. It is, on the other hand, a responsive game world, with actions taken in some areas leading to repercussions in others, and NPCs reacting appropriately to the party's accomplishments. A mixed bag. Score: 5.

A knight greets me appropriately after I've won the game.

2. Character Creation and Development. As I discussed in the first post, I like the Dragonlance approach to characters better than the Forgotten Realms. There are few racial level caps, and the various races, sub-races, and classes have clearer and more interesting strengths and weaknesses. It's much more fun playing a Silvanesti Elf cleric of Kiri-Jolith than just an "elven cleric."

Like most sequels, the game suffers from the fact that you have more fun going from Level 1 to Level 8 in the first game than from Level 8 to Level 12 in the second. But the rewards are still pretty good, particularly in terms of spells, extra attacks, and backstab multipliers. I also like that there are several places in which you gain experience for non-combat solutions to problems. A strong part of the game. Score: 6.

3. NPC Interaction. There's a cast of characters who flesh out the story and impart bits of lore and quest assistance. The writing and characterizations are somewhat bland, and the series remains weak in dialogue and role-playing options. The couple of NPCs who joined the party--including squads of Solamnic Knights at various locations--were a welcome addition. Score: 5.

One wonders why the game bothered to give me a "talk" option here.

        
4. Encounters and Foes. This category is relatively strong, just like most Dungeons & Dragons titles. We have a well-stocked menagerie of monsters with various strengths and weaknesses, all well-described in the manual. There are maybe a few less than the previous game. I mourn the loss of the non-Sivak Draconians and I hope they reappear in Dark Queen.

Non-combat encounters are only average, with several role-playing options on each map. Although none of them are real nail-biters, few other games of the era are offering encounter choices at all. Score: 6.

5. Magic and Combat. Gold Box standard. There's not much I can say that I haven't said in the five previous games. Even through the modern era, it's rare to see this good a turn-based, party combat system, offering innumerable options with attacking, spellcasting, using items, and special abilities. The challenging nature of combat in Death Knights encourages the player to make full use of all his options, including carrying multiple weapons and trading them as the situation demands.

I feel like Death Knights offered fewer resting opportunities than previous games, making it important to conserve energy and spells through an accumulation of combats. Overall, a well-balanced use of a great combat system. Score: 7.

Magically, my characters are starting to feel pretty powerful.

 

6. Equipment. No new ground in this one. Every map brought one or two new equipment rewards, and with the dragonlance and "Olin's quarterstaff," we have two of the few artifact items in Gold Box games. As always, the items are all in scripted locations, which I don't care for, and there wasn't really anything interesting to buy. Boots of Speed made an appearance; still no helms. At least the Knights of Solamnia didn't commandeer all my good stuff at the end. Score: 5.

My lead knight's inventory as we end the game.

       
7. Economy. Not only does Death Knights make no improvement here, it somehow gets worse than the previous games. Healing and training don't even cost money, and the knights don't have to tithe any of their earnings. There is only a single shop worth buying anything at, and all they sell are magic arrows and darts. Meanwhile, I left millions glittering in the sun because it was too heavy to carry. Gold Box remains horribly disappointing in this category.

Nonetheless, I'm going to reluctantly give it a score of 2 rather than 1, since it does feature a potentially-useful "money sink" in the form of the +2 arrows, which sell at a crazy 15,000 steel pieces for 10. They could be part of a legitimate combat strategy in this game and apparently have a lot of value in the next. Score: 2.

8. Quests. Probably the best approach since Pool of Radiance. The main quest is only so-so, and with only one outcome, but I loved the number of side quests. Fully half of the game world is optional. Score: 6.

9. Graphics, Sound, and Interface. The interface remains excellent, with redundant keyboard and mouse options, and a few improvements that I outlined in the first post. Though the game doesn't take advantage of VGA yet, it didn't really lose any points on that account, and overall the graphics were fine, although I'm still a bit sick of bland corridors and rooms. Sound effects are tolerable but optional. Score: 6.

The cut scenes and monster portraits are well-drawn and animated; I just wish the game showed more in the normal environment.

     
10. Gameplay. I loved that Death Knights returned to a mostly open world. Although certain plot events trigger in a prescribed order (as they do in, you know, real life), I like that you can visit areas ahead of their importance to the plot. In this, it felt a bit less linear than Champions. The game lasted exactly the right amount of time for its content, and the difficultly level was perfect: usually challenging, but almost never unfair. Score: 6.

That gives us a final score of 54. This is actually lower than I would have thought; I gave Champions a 56 and Curse of the Azure Bonds a 60. I don't see anything I want to change, though, so we'll go with it. It still puts the game on the "Highest Rated" list, which is going to be dominated with Gold Box games unless the other franchises start bringing it.
  

By this time, I guess clue books were pretty much standard game accompaniments. I could understand buying one for something like Eye of the Beholder, but anyone who needs one for this game is pathetic.

   
For a truly annoying contemporary review, we have to turn to our old friend Stuart Campbell of Amiga Power. In the November 1991 issue, he rated the game at 60%, apparently after creating characters and fighting one combat. He spends half the short "review" discussing why he should have never been given the assignment in the first place. His main point is that he can't enjoy the game because he's not a Dungeons & Dragons fan, ignoring the fact that his most serious under-qualification is not knowing anything about CRPGs. "You could argue that there's not much point in my reviewing it at all, and I'd tend to agree," he says. So would I. What kind of idiotic magazine was this?

Scorpia's July 1991 Computer Gaming World review calls it "standard 'Gold Box' fare," which surprises me a bit because I didn't know the term "Gold Box" was in use that early. She complains about all the level draining, which I suppose ought to have made an appearance somewhere in the GIMLET because I did find it annoying. She praises the open world nature of the game and suggests there are more things to find post-winning than just "Dave's Challenge." (I think she's mistaken and is describing places that are in the game proper, but I could be wrong.) She concludes:

In general, there's a humdrum feel to the game. We've been this way before and play tends to have a mechanical quality. There are no puzzles to speak of, little scope for true role-playing, and even the side quests begin to look depressingly similar after a while. So, perhaps it's just as well that SSI is now experimenting in new directions with their Legends line (Eye of the Beholder) and the rumored Citadel of the Black Sun project.

 
Now, on the one hand, I find these comments a little mystifying. This was 1991. What games was she playing that did offer "true role-playing"? You could count on one hand all the games through 1991 that had side quests at all. She's writing like someone who already has Baldur's Gate and Morrowind on her computer instead of schlock like Elvira II and HeroQuest. And having played Eye of the Beholder the previous month, she must have been fully aware that it wasn't anyone's savior when it came to role-playing. (As an aside, here is an interesting account of what happened to Citadel of the Black Sun.)

On the other hand, perhaps she simply feels some of the angst that I've felt with every Gold Box game since the original. I think there's one respect in which I'm different than most reviewers: I don't punish games for using the same mechanics as previous games, even many previous games, unless the mechanics are bad. If the engine is good, I don't complain that it's old. I wish there were still Infinity Engine games being released in 2015.

But I am critical of titles that don't reach their full potential even within the confines of their engines. Death Knights, though highly rated in comparison of the totality of games I've played, could have been better. Secret of the Silver Blades could have been better. There's nothing about the Gold Box engine that requires bland writing, lackluster storytelling, limited encounters, and an awful economy. There's no reason that every title since Pool of Radiance couldn't have improved on the original instead of falling short of it. Every time I play a Gold Box game, I enjoy the satisfaction of a good engine--perhaps the best of its time--and yet simultaneously lament what could have been. Perhaps that's where Scorpia is coming from. The Gold Box series is like a lazy genius who always tops the class in grades but still under-achieves.

It'll have plenty of chances to rouse itself yet. We still have Gateway to the Savage Frontier, Neverwinter Nights, and Pools of Darkness this year; Treasures of the Savage Frontier, The Dark Queen of Krynn, and Buck Rogers: Matrix Cubed in 1992; and some Unlimited Adventures modules in 1993. I'll probably check out Gateway in another 10-12 games, then Neverwinter, and play Darkness towards the end of 1991.

I guess I'd better play some more Antares before I forget how, but I hope it's escaped no one's notice that we have a major landmark coming up.