A look back at: Pokemon Sors

A substantial improvement, that's for sure. Saiph was a disappointment, plagued with a number of bugs and just not feeling all that great despite having a large selection. Sors, the immediate sequel, provides us with a whole lot more without all the bugs that ruined the previous game. You get the new region, mons up to Gen-7 with the Pokedex covering all of them (except a select few mons including some legendaries not coded in), but when you have so much you'll have lots of options for party configuration, which makes it more adventurous. Even with the trade evos accounted for too. I went with a party of those I have used in the past: Crobat and Ampharos I have used more than many other Pokemon in ROM hacks, Gardevoir and Aegislash I last used in Kanlara Ultimate, Lucario I've used a number of times (it was the starter here, and has a red scarf, so it's special), and then Lapras I last used recently in Cloud White.

Having a tournament-style arc welded in to a plot involving your evil mother was interesting in and of itself. Even more when this isn't a tournament where every battle is back-to-back, where you can actually prepare before every single battle. But it's such a weird thing when you do the tournament, then the plot, then the tournament again. Super weird and seesaws the plot. The characters you battle in the tournament are familiar characters, from gym leaders to Elite Four members to other protagonists or rivals or companions, and it's quite the weird ensemble. Nevertheless, when the plot goes on, your character Asher goes with his father, a woman caretaker professor, and an actual love interest that grows on you as they battle...mom and her company of grunts. And then you have the Eclipse species of Pokemon, all with an ability that halves direct damage. How fun. Needless to say those were the biggest challenges going up against Eclipse mons, culminating in an actual fakemon legendary as the actual final boss. Unfortunately just like Saiph, Sors' postgame is lackluster, even if it's a little better. You can't explore much of Colen, and the Cord Island is just a battle location with...well...Discord mods as a small sidequest. And the legendaries of course, what else. Battles in this hack thankfully are light on the difficulty, which is one of the major things that sells it, as the game doesn't go immediately to level 50 before the halfway point unlike other hacks I've played. So it's all a substantial improvement. Sorry, no walkthrough from me here, there's enough documentation for this hack already including one full walkthrough from Allen.

A look back at: The Dark Queen of Krynn

 

I played this one in spades, often taking breaks either from work or trying to do other things. Nevertheless, I'm quite glad this one took a little less than a month in hindsight. It's just as linear if not more than Death Knights of Krynn, though it's both longer and harder in general. I mean, more dragons to deal with, more Draconians and their special nonsense death conditions. Yay, exploding enemies, rising into another form and exploding, or just blowing fireballs diagonally. And as I would always expect, both Fireball and Delayed Blast Fireball were the fun spells to use for almost every encounter with the mages taking point. The developers of this game really took that into account because there's an underwater kingdom to deal with though, so obviously the favorite spells aren't always useful. And then there's the dragons and beholder enemies which also proved quite challenging especially with multiples of them in one area!

So aside from fun and frustration, I take it that The Dark Queen of Krynn is perhaps the most advanced game of its engine, the Gold Box engine. The graphics are sleeker and there's more color usage, and I think the AI might have been slightly tweaked better, you never know. I also enjoy the guest characters here far more. Whereas your own party completely lacks characterization, where they MAY have something during the story in spades depending on who you choose to tackle certain events, the guest characters and other major characters shine a lot brighter. Captain Daenor is an ally who comes and goes, with his own story and trying to get his sister back. Grunschka and Baldric are other characters who are interesting allies, with the former being a party member until the end and the latter ending up doing something for the semi-twist ending. It's a shame that black mage guy in the Abyss isn't playable, and the defeat of the actual dark queen is underwhelming since you really don't directly fight her. It is sort of funny when dragons invade the celebration victory party at the end though, that was the semi-twist ending. But all in all, it really boils down to "do I already enjoy playing through the other Gold Box games" here. If you know nothing about them, it's probably not as good.