tcrevier@jarthur.Claremont.EDU (Tom Crevier) (05/27/90)
Please, post a review! It isn't like Heroes of the Lance is it? (I thought
that was a pretty bad game...)
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-----> Tom Crevier -----> tcrevier@jarthur.claremont.edu
Harvey Mudd TCREVIER@hmcvax.claremont.edu
W I B S T R tcrevier@hmcvax.bitnet
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-jimmy@uhccux.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu (Jimmy Chan) (05/27/90)
In article <7282@jarthur.Claremont.EDU> tcrevier@jarthur.Claremont.EDU (Tom Crevier) writes: >Please, post a review! It isn't like Heroes of the Lance is it? (I thought >that was a pretty bad game...) > > >-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- >-----> Tom Crevier -----> tcrevier@jarthur.claremont.edu > Harvey Mudd TCREVIER@hmcvax.claremont.edu > W I B S T R tcrevier@hmcvax.bitnet >-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- It's not anything like Heroes of the Lance or its sequel which I thought was a lousy game also. If you have either played Pool of Radiance or Curse of the Azure Bonds it is the same format as those two while Heroes was more of an arcade type. REVIEW ------------ Champions of Krynn ------------- REVIEW A party can consist of 6 player characters (PC) and 2 non-player characters (NPC). The races that can be chosen for your player characters are Hill Dwarves, Mountain Dwarves, Silvanesti Elves (High Elves), Qualinesti Elves, Half-Elves, Kender, and Humans. The character classes are Clerics (different Gods so special abilities are allowed depending on the Deity worshipped. Gods are Paladine, Majere, Kiri-Jolith, Mishakal, Sirrion, Reorx, and Shinare.), Fighters, Rangers, Solamnic Knights (three orders - Knights of the Crown, Knights of the Sword and Knights of the Rose), Mages (White Robe, Red Robe and only NPCs can be evil Black Robe), Thieves, and Multi-Class. Game setting is such that PCs cannot be evil. Also characters can be either Male or Female, there are some stat differences between the sexes. Both Mages and Clerics can get up to 4th level spells. Knights of the Rose get some cleric spells after reaching 6th level. The spells are the same that are listed in the ADnD players handbook. All characters start at either 2nd or 3rd level which is necessary since the enemies are tough for 1st level characters. There are Baaz which are one type of Draconians that when they die they turn to stone and your weapon gets stuck until the encounter is done and the game will automatically return your weapon, it is necessary to carry two weapons throughout the game. Another nice thing about the game is that there is an a level option that is available throughout the game where you can set the difficulty level from novice, squire, veteran, adept, and champion. If the difficulty level is set to novice the enemies have less hits and less of them to defeat but the experience that is received is also less while the harder settings give more and tougher enemies the experience received is more. The view of going through a town or dungeon is a 3-d first person view which can be set to an overhead view to get the layout of an area. Combat is an overhead view with full independent movement of all 6 characters (if you have NPCs in your party you cannot control what they do in combat). A full range of monsters are available to combat from hobgoblins/vermin/undead and up to Dragons. Comments: The game comes on 3 disks which you format a fourth for a save disk. After playing Pool Of Radiance (POR) on the mac which comes in 6 disks which also includes the save disk I got tired of always having to change disks whenever moving from one area to another. On Champions of Krynn (CK) disk swapping only happens seldom and so isn't as tedious as POR. Combat for POR on the Mac was mucho slow (i.e. a combat with 20 NPCs would take about 30-60 minutes for the whole combat to be finished assuming that your PCs are in Quick mode {NPCs were DUMB!!!!} ) while the combat for CK is very quick. I did play Curse of the Azure Bonds (CAB) on a PC/XT but even that was pretty slow though a friend of mine that had an AT said it zipped along reasonably well but didn't get a chance to check it. In POR money was required for achieving the next character level but with CK training for a character is free so characters don't have to carry much money since money has weight but a vault is also provided to hold any wealth with a 20% charge..8-)... CK doesn't seem to require game play sequential but I follow along with the quests but you can still go exploring other areas that aren't even related to the quests and doesn't seem to affect on the outcome of quests. I should also mention that CK is harddisk installable and protection is manual lookup. CK will run with any other programs that you have running but it has to be the active window else anything that is happening in CK will stop til it becomes the active window somewhat like a pause feature. I have CK loaded while writing this message using vt100. There are a couple of problems with the software such as the mouse hasn't been implemented very well but is more keyboard oriented. There is also a problem which is hard to nail down since it hasn't happened recently but it was when I was inventorying one character and somehow I would end up in a different char. Also I did somehow lose about 80 arrows somehow and I am sure I didn't drop it. Saving a game to disk is very slow takes about 3-5 minutes not sure what it will be with a hard disk (wish I had more than 3 megs make a BIG ram disk so play and save from ram disk ought to be FAST). All in all this game is worth the $40 I spent on it. If you are an avid ADnD player then this game will be to your liking as it keeps with ADnD guidelines. Even for the beginner this game is great for its entertainment value though it takes a lot of writing...mapping and writing all the messages down. I hope that if POR and CAB does finally get finished for the Amiga it is done like CK otherwise I would pass and wait for the next scenario...8-)... -- **************************************************************************** // || Hardware : A2000, 3 megs, 2 internal 3 1/2" drives \\ // || Future Purchases : SCSI Controller, 40-60 meg harddrives, A3000 \X/ || jimmy@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu or jimmy@uhccux.bitnet
bgi@stiatl.UUCP (Brad Isley) (05/30/90)
In article <7911@uhccux.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu> jimmy@uhccux.UUCP (Jimmy Chan) writes: >characters. There are Baaz which are one type of Draconians that when they >die they turn to stone and your weapon gets stuck until the encounter is done Only sometimes ------------------^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ >The view of going through a town or dungeon is a 3-d first person view which >can be set to an overhead view to get the layout of an area. Combat is an Again, sometimes -^^^^^^^^^^^^^ >vault is also provided to hold any wealth with a 20% charge..8-)... Well, it's a 20 steel piece per transaction, not 20% >I didn't drop it. Saving a game to disk is very slow takes about 3-5 minutes >not sure what it will be with a hard disk (wish I had more than 3 megs make Takes about 15 seconds to save on my Supra 30meg. >All in all this game is worth the $40 I spent on it. Yup, it's worth the $42 I spent on it! I already wasted hours and hours on it! :-) The user interface can be nasty: Messages disappear as soon as they're printed - the menus can drive me batty, etc. But it's great fun! -- ------------------------------\ / ..and Apple thought GUI was theirs!.. \ emory!stiatl!bgi 841-4169 \---| Yer local zymurgist & Amiga hacker/user | emory!stiatl!slammer!brad \ Klein bottle for sale- Inquire within / gatech!bagend!slammer!brad Brad Isley, Sales Technologies, Inc.
matt@onyx.jpl.nasa.gov (matt of ASTD) (05/30/90)
In article <10144@stiatl.UUCP> bgi@stiatl.UUCP (Brad Isley) writes: >In article <7911@uhccux.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu> jimmy@uhccux.UUCP (Jimmy Chan) writes: > >>I didn't drop it. Saving a game to disk is very slow takes about 3-5 minutes >>not sure what it will be with a hard disk (wish I had more than 3 megs make > >Takes about 15 seconds to save on my Supra 30meg. Takes about 5 seconds on my GVP Impact 80Mb drive. > >>All in all this game is worth the $40 I spent on it. > >Yup, it's worth the $42 I spent on it! I already wasted hours and hours >on it! :-) Worth the $35.00 I spent on it. I've wasted hours and finals are coming up. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Matthew Presley (UCLA CS Grad. Student) & (JPL CS dude) Internet (presley@cs.ucla.edu) or (matt@sapphire.jpl.nasa.gov) "Twisted yellow puppies play broken flutes loudly..."