Champions Of Krynn - In-depth Written Amiga Review With Pics
Champions Of Krynn
Amiga, 1990
SSI
$49.95
*Game best played in NTSC mode with 4:3 aspect ratio
The year of 1999 was a fascinating time on my path to preferring older games to newer ones. My father had bought a new PC, putting the older one in my room, and via some zip disk action I was often using the newer computers internet access to transfer programs to fool around with on the computer in my room. I had started thinking back to my Amiga days and the games I had played, often coming across long defunct abandonware sites like Classic Trash. I'd end up playing the DOS versions of the games I had loved, eventually causing me to seek out emulation with the DOS based Fellow emulator. One of the games that caused me to seek out the "right" way to play those old games (The Amiga way) was a classic from Strategic Simulations Incorporated, Champions of Krynn.
The year of 1999 was a fascinating time on my path to preferring older games to newer ones. My father had bought a new PC, putting the older one in my room, and via some zip disk action I was often using the newer computers internet access to transfer programs to fool around with on the computer in my room. I had started thinking back to my Amiga days and the games I had played, often coming across long defunct abandonware sites like Classic Trash. I'd end up playing the DOS versions of the games I had loved, eventually causing me to seek out emulation with the DOS based Fellow emulator. One of the games that caused me to seek out the "right" way to play those old games (The Amiga way) was a classic from Strategic Simulations Incorporated, Champions of Krynn.
^Gather 'round for a tale; Only the Amiga version features animations
Champions was the third game in the "Gold Box" series, referred as that based on the over ten games that came out in similar gold boxes, which had an official TSR Advanced Dungeons and Dragons license, featuring the same game engine. It was the first game to take place in the DragonLance universe, and it also happened to be the very first Gold Box game I won, in 1999, playing the DOS version. I remember coming back to this game having read that it was the first in the Krynn series, with memories of playing Death Knights of Krynn, its sequel, years prior on the Amiga. Of course it was my father who I had long watched play the many Gold Box games, causing me to fool around with Death Knights, loving what I had no chance of defeating at that time. When I had finally defeated Champions on DOS, I'll never forget excitedly telling my father about winning one of those games I remembered him playing. His response, and I quote, "Oh yeah? That one was easy... Try Pool of Radiance..."
^Starting it off, Character selection screen unique to Amiga, later games copied this styleDifficulty thoughts put off to the side for now, the game does offer a few tweaks to the Forgotten Realms saga of games. Foremost amongst these, in terms of gameplay, is your magic users reliance on the moons of Krynn. There are three of them in total, and their current phase is always shown at the top of the game screen. The white moon influences white mages, the red moon red mages, and the dark moon is said to influence dark robed mages. As the moons wane and wax, your mages will effectively gain or decrease in level. When your mage's moon is in its new phase, they're acting a level below their actual rank. During a waning phase, the mage is at a neutral status. When the moon is waxing, you'll gain a bonus spell, and finally, during a full moon, you'll gain two bonus spells and be operating at a level higher than your actual rank.
^Not giant rats! - Amiga version features unique death sounds for different sized enemiesYou are not allowed to play as evil characters in this game, meaning the dark moon's phase has no obvious impact on your party. I can't tell you if the game is working internally to provide these advantages and disadvantages to your enemies, but if it is, it is by no means spelled out to you. Beyond this bonus mechanic, certain spells are only available to certain mages. Haste is an example, and is only available to red robed mages, while charm person is a spell that only white robed mages can utilize. Cleric's show no allegiance to the planet's moons, instead various god's, again in a very unique way compared to this games Forgotten Realms brothers. "Paladine" is a god worshiped by good aligned characters, and offers his followers the benefit of an extra protection from evil 15' radius spell. The neutral god "Reorx" will provide +1 thaco, but only to dwarves, and all dwarven clerics must follow Reorx.
^Caramon is visiting from the TSR novels, portraits feature more colors on AmigaRaces in the game also differ in this DragonLance entry, with multiple dwarf and elf variants, along with the Kender, who are the only race allowed to use a Hoopak, a weapon that can be used in far and close range. The Kender also have the ability to "yell", which causes the enemy to lose thaco and focus their attacks on the Kender. There are a couple new classes as well, including the solamnic knight. These changes to the game mechanics are really only minor in nature, but will necessitate a good read of the manual in order to best strategize the makeup of your party, which I find to be quite different than my usual parties in the Forgotten Realms games.
^Spells, training, questingWith these changes in mind, Champions of Krynn is both easier and harder than the Forgotten Realms games. Overall, I find the game to be much easier than its family of games. You gain experience at a much more advanced rate, level three and four characters were coming out of the very first major questing area of Throtl. Stinking cloud spells along with the sorcerer's darling, the fireball, all procured long before they were in Pool of Radiance. Dragons are all over the place in this game, few of which will present much of a problem, with not much more than twenty-five hit points. Later on in the game, when faced with some mighty powerful dragons, the dragonlance which will then be in your possession, will make quite short work of them indeed. But it's partly easier based simply on the understanding of the new changes to the game.
^A memorable section of the game are the knights trials
In this game you'll actually be facing a great number of human spell casters, many of which have devastating spells like hold or charm person, stinking clouds, or lightning bolts. The number of these types of enemies are by far greater than the previous Gold Box games. It's certainly possible someone who is unfamiliar with how to deal with combat situations involving magic users could find this game incredibly difficult. Veteran Gold Box aficionado's will know to quickly nullify the enemies abilities to cast spells by hitting them before or during spell casting. Due to their higher numbers, you'll also be wanting a higher number of magic users in your own party. Once you've properly thought up the best strategies, I believe you'll find this game to be amongst the easier CRPGs.
^A love story comes to an endThere will still be those moments of "instant resets", for due to the spells the enemy has gotten off, you simply understand you're doomed and you might as well reload and try again. There will come battles you're not already prepared for, which can cause the death of the entire party. I find it an incredible thing that I'm able to find such ease in this game. Some of that is surely by design, as the game is more linear than the other Gold Box games, it's wanting to tell you a story, a pretty good story, and in order to get you through that enjoyable story, it's wanting you to have all that you need to have in order to make that happen.
^A real decision. We know the "correct" decision, nevertheless, it is a real option with benefits/consequences
But no CRPG is a complete pushover, nor are they generally completely linear. Even in this more linear style Gold Box game, you will have moments of choice, where you can choose to go to an area for a quest, or choose to ignore it all together in favor of skipping ahead, perhaps perform quests according to your own time frame of when they should be performed. If you're asked a yes or no question, unlike in a JRPG, that actually means something. Someone might get killed, you may be chastised and lose out on experience, perhaps forced to go through a larger maze instead of sneaking right up to the back door. So make no mistake about it, this is still a non-linear game, it's just more linear than some others, including in its own family of games.
^Though things are heating up, don't ever forget to stop for a moment of silenceThe worth of this game for me is mostly in its story. It doesn't happen to be my favorite story in the Gold Box line, but it's certainly yet another fantastic one. I love these games because they offer genuine role playing, you will feel connected to the characters you meet, you will feel a part of the story. And while you're experiencing that story you'll be taking part in the single greatest RPG combat system there ever was, at least in terms of turned based, in my opinion anyway. It's that strategic chess game. If you found previous entries a bit tedious, found it hard to deal with the number of random encounters, this is probably the best game for you to start with. There are less random encounters, you gain levels ever so much quicker, you get access to some fantastic spells, you get to experience so much of the fun of the Gold Box games, and you get to do that without much of the frustrations.
^Besides the always wonderful journal entries, Champions features more descriptive in-game textThe manual is typical and wonderful Gold Box, it's not only fantastic introductory reading, which immerses you in the games backstory, it's rather essential reading in terms of the journal entries. It's perhaps the greatest ever copy protection. People wanted these games, this particular game sold over one-hundred thousand copies, the highest selling Gold Box game, Pool of Radiance, sold over a quarter million, enormous numbers for a computer game at that time. This game itself was only ever sold for computers, there were no console ports.
I recently watched a great video where Will Wright was talking about the Commodore 64 game, Raid on Bungeling Bay. He noted almost all of the money he made on that game was from the NES port, as even though everybody seemed to know about his game on the C64, and even though they all seemed to have played it, he only actually sold around twenty thousand copies for its home system. A great and fun game it was, a game deserving to have been bought, but certainly the issues proved deeper than rampant piracy when games like this managed to sell so well, and at fairly hefty price tags at that. There's simply so much here that people want, and it seemed they were willing to pay for it.
^Variety of enemies is not this games strong point
In my eyes the only truly disappointing thing in this game is its lack of variations in the enemies you face. You'll primarily be facing several types of draconians. These are sort of humanoid dragons, but are treated in-game as pure reptiles rather than dragons. The different types of these creatures all look rather similar to each other, although they do have very different abilities. One of the more frustrating and unnecessary parts of the game are how the baaz draconians will sometimes (all too frequently) devour the weapon from the person that kills them.
You'll get it back at the end of the battle, but you'll have to equip it again, and you'll be forced to keep around at least one other good weapon on each of your characters, unless you enjoy fighting with your fists... and despite knowing all of this, I guarantee you'll experience moments of doing just that. I'm sure this is all part of the TSR rules, it's called DragonLance for a reason, after all. You should be expecting dragons as well as draconians, but I'm not quite sure we needed to expect this level of them. From your very first battle to the second to last one, you'll be seeing plenty of these creatures. The greatest variety of enemies in this game is from the great outdoors, of which you'll find quite easy to travel from town to town without many encounters, unless you're hand mapping it all.
^And oh how I recommend you indeed hand map it allPlease do hand map this and all of the gold box games. Far too often others negative comments comes from a place of frustration that is almost certainly caused by either running around completely blind, or because they're following a written or video walkthrough. When you're expecting to be seeing a certain thing based on your advanced knowledge, when anything comes between what you're expecting and what you're getting, untold frustrations can occur and unfair critique will be handed down. You are meant to hand map these games.
You will not be blind, because you'll be your own cartographer, but nor will you simply be going through the motions on your ultimate quest to get through it all as quickly as humanly possible. This is an RPG. These games are not about the destination, they are about the journey. If you use guides, you're forcing them to be about the destination, and you're doing it wrong. Yes, it will take you more time. It won't actually take you that much more time, not once you get used to it. But you'll end up enjoying the entirety of your time with the game so much more. My entire being is imploring all reading to give it a shot. I've defeated this game as well as the other gold box games many times, and I've always started fresh maps when I come to them the next time.
^Such beauty on the AmigaIn terms of this Amiga version that you're seeing here; This is by far the greatest version of this game, as is true with many of the gold box games. Champions was actually the first gold box game to be developed in-house by SSI themselves. I'm wondering if for whatever reason they had decided with the original release of Pool of Radiance in 1988, that the Amiga was not worth their time. The Atari ST, for example, only ever received Curse of the Azure Bonds, an Apple II GS version was never developed, those users needing to put their computers into pure Apple II mode.
The late entry into the Amiga market in 1990, may have been them reversing a decision made prior, and the fact that the Amiga got nearly all of the gold box games (the 2nd Buck Rogers game is the only one left out) might mean that their decision was successful for them, where they obviously gave up on the Atari ST. It feels as if SSI wanted to be a part of the Amiga here, and probably ended up green lighting ports of the prior games to the Amiga as they started working on this one. By the time they had finished their work on Champions, Ubi-soft had released Pool of Radiance, and Micro-Magic had released Curse of the Azure Bonds, catching the Amiga up to the other platforms quite quickly.
^The final battles
SSI proves that they were not afraid of doing it themselves on the Amiga. There's only one musical track, but it's pure awesome on the Amiga. The sound effects are much like the music; not too much of it, but best with this version. With the graphics the overall artwork owes its assets to the DOS version, so it's not obvious when looking at screenshots just how much better the graphics actually are. We need to look closer than stretched 320x200 screenshots on our HD monitors, where it's all not even as big as our thumb.
The DOS version is hampered with dithering, an EGA 16 color palette, backgrounds and skin tones that don't quite show polish, where as the Amiga version is in its 32 color glory from a palette of 4096. It is incredibly polished. Put them side by side on CRT monitors, and you'll be blown away with just how much more SSI themselves put into this version. Only the Amiga version features any kind of animations. This is rather odd, considering plenty of the other versions of the previous games featured animations, including the Commodore 64. But with Champions, all of the rest feature simple static screens, except on the Amiga. At the start of the game you get to select the icon for your characters by looking at them all on one screen at the same time, a feature which would be in the rest of the gold box games, but was first implemented with Champions and only on the Amiga. Top notch port, through and through.
^Despite what a certain reviewer might think, a very satisfying endingThe game is an incredible ride, a must play for any CRPG fan, and possibly a fantastic entry point into the genre for JRPG fans. The ending, despite some quite perplexing thoughts from renowned RPG reviewer Scorpia, is quite satisfying indeed. She would be responsible for this game being listed in Computer Gaming World's list of worst endings of all time... I don't think I've ever felt someone's opinion was more wrong than that one right there. She seems to have been triggered by a small amount of text in the ending that simply stated that Mr. noble knight, much like you've been giving us all of your money throughout the entire game... Well, yeah, we kind of have need for that dragonlance and girdle of giant strength... You're going to be seeing them again later on in the next game, but you're not going to start out as a god in that one. No, I'm sorry Scorpia, but no. You will have most of your good items when you go on to Death Knights of Krynn, but other games in the goldbox line wouldn't even be that generous, yet this ranks as one of the worst endings?
My video review will go far more into my thoughts on that particular topic, while reading Scorpia's thoughts. You'll also experience some readings from Champion's great manual, read some overwhelmingly positive reviews (even from the Scorpion), and hear me delve off into topics not covered here. Consider checking out my party members in this one. Make it personal everyone, let others know the people you enjoy, don't just make it about yourself. Watch some videos from The Guru Meditation (Amiga Bill), Amiga Love (Intric8), Jikyuu Gamer, Esper Dreams, and Stygian Phoenix. Honorable mention to dfortae, a rare breed that also covers these types of games.
My father was right when he pointed me toward Pool of Radiance as a more worthy challenge. It's by far the harder game. However, he did not properly convey his thoughts on the games overall feeling. He wanted to jab at me a little, in his own way he was showing he was impressed and honored I was playing the games he loved, but at the same time he wanted to say I hadn't quite caught up to him yet, but he was welcoming my attempts to do so, and pointing me to some other great games, of which I did end up playing, and loving. But while he and I might find Champions a bit easy compared to the others, I would hope I speak for him when I say this is a game that is absolutely worth your time.
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