Game 382: The Dark Queen of Krynn (1992)

       

The Dark Queen of Krynn
United States
MicroMagic (developer); Strategic Simulations, Inc. (publisher)

Released in 1992 for Amiga, DOS, and Macintosh
Date Started: 21 September 2020

         

The Dark Queen of Krynn is not quite the end of the Gold Box--we still have Unlimited Adventures and its sample and fan scenarios to investigate in 1993--but it's mostly the end. I find myself not quite as sad at the prospect as I was when I picked up Pool of Radiance (1988), the first Gold Box game, nearly a decade ago. It's a great engine, of course, and I don't know when we'll see another combat system this intuitive and faithful to the original rule set. On the other hand, I can't exactly complain that there aren't enough Gold Box games. The series put out two or three games a year for the five years of its life; if that isn't the most impressive work ethic we've ever seen, it has to be close. If you played nothing but Gold Box games, you'd probably forget enough of the first one by the time you got to the last one to just start the series fresh again.

     

Some might say that the engine was "showing its age" by 1992, but I'm not sure that's the problem. I think parts of the engine were always old-fashioned. We just forgave it because of the good stuff. Once Dungeon Master (1987) allowed you to see and hear enemies in the distance, no game that allowed you to "stumble upon" an encounter with 6 dragons was ever going to seem cutting-edge again. This is an issue that the engine never solved. Nor did it ever design a decent automap, and it's absurd that we still have to refer to a paper journal in 1992.

          

The game's opening screen.

          

But of course the good outweighs the bad, particularly in the series' adaptation of combat and spell rules and its robust character development. However, even these elements are best (in my opinion) in games where you're going from Level 1 to Level 8. There are times that playing with high-level characters starts to become boring, and I particularly worry how this dynamic is going to play in the Dragonlance series, where I already find the draconians a bit tiresome. I want the series to go out with honor, so you can understand why I'm beginning this game less optimistic than usual. It doesn't help that SSI turned development over to MicroMagic, a long time contractor whose involvement thus far had been limited to Amiga conversions of the other games.

     

Dark Queen is the third of the Dragonlance titles; the previous two were Champions of Krynn (1990) and Death Knights of Krynn (1991). The series takes place after the War of the Lance, a major event in the universe's literature and tabletop gaming, in which the goddess Takhisis tried to conquer the world of Krynn with evil dragons and a race of creatures called draconians, created from the corrupted eggs of good dragons. The famed Heroes of the Lance arose during this period, and they defeated Takhisis with the help of an ancient chivalric order called the Knights of Solamnia.

       

I guess this is probably Takhisis, but it could also be some minor NPC.

        

The games are set in the aftermath of the war. The characters are members, or at least contractors, of the Knights of Solamnia. In Champions, they foiled a plot to start a new war with a new horde of draconians. Death Knights dealt with an attempt by Lord Soth to conquer the land with an undead army. There was a weird wolf involved that I never really understood.

   

Dark Queen begins two years later, the party having been summoned to the city of Palanthas to meet with the elven general Lauralanthalasa, one of the Heroes of the Lance. Her letter warns of forces still loyal to Takhisis, the titular Dark Queen.

          

The party meets General Laurana.

      

As usual, the party imported smoothly from Death Knights, including all of their high-level gear. It looks like I spent most of my money at the end of that game on arrows +1, because I have several hundred, which of course will go very fast. My party in summary:

        

• Midsummer, a human female lawful good Knight of the Rose of Level 11. She wears Solamnic plate, a Girdle of Giant Strength, and carries a footman's dragonlance plus a mace +4.

• Dutch, human male lawful good Knight of the Rose of Level 11. He has Solamnic plate, a mace +4, a long sword +4, a shield +2, and Boots of Speed.

• Grave, a Silvanesti elf male chaotic good cleric/ranger of Levels 12/12. He has something called Olin's Quarter Staff and plate mail +4.

• Atmos, a Qualinesti elf male lawful good cleric/white mage of Levels 12/12. He has a mace +4, plate mail +4, and a shield +4.

• Squirrel, a Qualinesti elf female true neutral red mage/thief of Levels 13/15. She has a short sword +4, bracers AC4, and Gauntlets of Ogre Power.

• Coral, a kender female neutral good cleric/thief of Levels 12/15. She has a chain mail +4 and a hoopak +3.

       

Characters imported about the same level as newly-created party members, but they're at the upper ends of their levels, while newly-created characters are at the lower ends (or one level lower) with about half the experience. The implication in the journal is that leveling in this game is limitless, or near so, just like Pools of Darkness. On the other hand, despite starting with so many more points, only half my characters became eligible for a new level in 4 hours of playing, so perhaps advancement won't be that rapid.

     

This last entry revamps the character creation process.

           

I tried out the character creation process just for fun and noted a few changes. Options for race, sex, class, and alignment are all on a single screen here. You no longer have the ability to create unique icons for the characters; instead, you select from a set of 49 prepared icons. I'd complain about that, but I never had any luck creating good-looking icons in the first place, and the pre-rendered ones look better than anything I'd ever come up with. All of my characters had been converted to the new icons, and I was happy enough with their new look.

          

The new system has fewer icon options, but arguably better ones.

         

The windows have some new textures, and it looks like the developers threw keyboard mavens like me a bone by letting the initial letter work for all commands. In previous games, they worked for some commands but others you had to arrow through. The images in the exploration window take full advantage of VGA and are some of the nicest artwork in the games to date. So far, the portraits have been considerably less cartoonish than the previous games.

    

Palanthas was just a menu town. My party was fully rested, equipped, and trained, so there was nothing to do but head right for the palace and speak with Lauralanthalasa, or Laurana for short. (The Dragonlance writers seem to do this a lot; "My name is Chestricradrolicanardafluffle, but you can call me Chet!") While happy to see us, she dismally warned us of a new threat. Draconians have recently been seen hanging around the city of Caergoth to the south. She asked us to check it out. 

         

Yes, we're still using "journal entries."

      

Moments later, we found ourselves on a standard 16 x 16 map, though with more than half of it blocked by forest. The forest textures were as complex as anything we've seen before in this engine, but as usual I don't get terribly excited about textures. It turns out that Caergoth was a smoldering rubble, recently sacked by an enemy that left pools of acid behind--a clear sign of Kapak draconians. I like to think that my party was muttering "f****** Kapaks" at the same time that I was.

       

"Without a 'kill them' option, it's not really role-playing!" -- some sick bastard, probably.

     

There were a few minor encounters around the town, such as helping townsfolk bury their dead. But the enemies weren't gone, and it wasn't long before we found ourselves in the first combat of the game, with two blue dragons and one green dragon. Midsummer made short work of them with her dragonlance, which does damage to dragons equal to the wielder's current hit points with every hit. If she doesn't miss, she can slay two per round--four if she's hastened.

         

No easing the player into combat here: the game's first battle is with dragons.

        

At the docks of the city, the party was ambushed by a bunch of sailors. Their leader introduced himself as Daenor, captain of the Silver Shark. The sailors had returned after the battle, but survivors told them tales of draconians and dragons. Daenor's sister, Crysia, was kidnapped. He asked if we wanted to accompany him in pursuit, and for some perverse reason I said no. The party returned to Palanthas instead, to report to Laurana, but she just sent us back to Caergoth. Daenor was still there, and we had no choice but to join his expedition. Daenor became a seventh character in the combats throughout the rest of this narrative.

          

I wonder what happens if you "attack" here.

       

Not far out of Caergoth, Daenor spied the wreckage of a ship, and we dropped anchor to investigate. It appeared that the ship had crashed, and captors and captives alike had fled into a nearby cave. The subsequent cave network was set on a fairly large 30 x 30 grid (though with only about half the squares used). As we chased the draconians, we ran afoul of several types of cave denizens, including giant beetles (easy), purple worms (moderate), and greater otyughs (surprisingly hard). There were some giant spiders who actually poisoned some of my characters, which feels like an awfully n00b thing to have happen. Fortunately, I had a couple of "Neutralize Poison" spells memorized.

         

Even with "Fireball" spells, these guys were hard.

         

There were also several battles with draconians, and while I'm already a bit sick of them, I do appreciate them a little for the unique challenges they create. Baaz turn to stone when they die, often trapping the weapon that killed them. Kapaks dissolve into a pool of acid when slain, messing up the battlefield. Sivaks can fly and have the power to shape-shift, which often makes them plot-relevant but poses no extra difficulty in combat. Bozaks explode when killed, damaging everyone around them, and it's always fun in combat to get a chain reaction of Bozak explosions going.

        

The Bozak dies and explodes, causing more damage to other Bozaks, which die and explode.

        

Auraks are more difficult than all the rest put together. They're spellcasters, to begin, and will fry the party with "Lightning Bolt" if they get the initiative. You have to try to damage or "Silence" every one of them every round to stop them from casting, which is tough because they have a permanent "Invisibility" that often prevents you from targeting them. If you get close to them, they "Immolate" every round and damage everyone in the periphery.

   

Once you kill them the first time, they immediately resurrect with 20 hit points. Kill them a second time and they resurrect again, this time rooted in place. After three rounds, they explode in fireballs and are dead for good. You have to keep careful track of which ones are about to go nuclear and get the party members out of the way.

           

I feel the Aurak here is unnecessarily specific about how they'll dispose of us if they achieve victory.

         

"Fireball" takes care of a lot of this, of course, but I found that my party had fewer slots for both the base spell and its "Delayed Blast" alternative than I had remembered. I ran out quickly, and there were a lot of battles. This forced me to get creative with other spells, which of course is a good thing. My fighters used up a lot of those arrows.

    

We spotted Crysia a few times during the pursuit, but she seemed to be aiding the draconians. One group of freed prisoners confirmed that she was working with them. (They also credited a sailor named Aolan for crashing the ship while the draconians were distracted.) Later, a dying old man named Sensilan said that Crysia was under the influence of a "Charm" spell and thus not responsible for her actions.

         

Come to think of it, the character on the cover looks a lot like Crysia.

      

We finally caught up with Crysia, but just then some blue dragons arrived. One of them told her to "go with Zzrivanth" and that they would meet her "at the rendezvous on Taladas." The resulting battle was supposed to be hard, I guess, but again I made such short work of the dragons with the dragonlance that I didn't even bother to take a screen shot. The average draconian battles were harder.

          

I realized I hadn't included a shot of Daenor yet, so here he is.

       

As we exited the caves, we committed to joining Daenor in a pursuit to Taladas, which I guess is an entirely different continent, the action in the series so far having taken place on Ansalon.

    

On the way to Taladas, we ran into a storm that caused the ship to founder and the party to fall beneath the waves. We woke up underwater, somehow able to breathe, and I'm sure it's going to turn out that sea elves or Sahuagin or some stupid thing is behind it. Seriously, have I ever talked about how much I hate underwater levels? Either there are no special rules about moving and fighting under water, in which case they make no sense, or there are, in which case they're just annoying. I don't know why developers insist on doing this. Anyway, I realized I was exhibiting a bad attitude and decided to knock off for the night.

        

This is probably going to suck for a few hours.

       

So far: It's okay, I guess. It has most of the Gold Box strengths and weaknesses. It's been very linear, but then again most RPGs are linear during the first few hours. I hope the underwater episode is short, and the game opens up when we get to Taladas. We'll see.

    

Time so far: 4 hours