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.