CHAMPIONS OF KRYNN 

 CHAMPIONS OF KRYNN, a DRAGONLANCE game from SSI, is unlike the
previous releases on this AD&D plane. CHAMPIONS is _not_ an arcade
game, but a role-playing game based on the same design used in POOL
OF RADIANCE and CURSE OF THE AZURE BONDS. (This review is based on
the IBM-PC version; Apple II and Amiga version notes follow.) 

 For those unfamiliar with the mechanics of these games, you're
either traveling in a local area, traveling in the countryside, or
fighting a battle. The countryside travel uses a map of the local
area; very little happens there, and random encounters in the
countryside are very rare. In local travel, you're provided with a
ground-level, straight-on view of what your character sees, and you
can travel only straight ahead. To look to the side or travel in a
different direction, you must rotate your party. 

 There is an Area command that displays an outline of the local
area. This is very useful for mapping, but not very useful for
traveling. There are a few situations in which the Area command is
not available because your characters have no familiarity with the
local area. In combat, you see a skewed three-dimensional view of
the battle area. Every combatant moves individually and serially
until all have moved (or tried to); this equals one round. Rounds
continue until everyone on one side is dead, has fled, or has
surrendered. If the number of combatants is very large, a battle can
take literally hours to fight. Fortunately, there are no really big
battles in this game. 

 CHAMPIONS is a hack-and-slash game. You can't play this game
without spending a large amount of time fighting. What makes the
game special are the story, the interaction with non-player
characters (NPCs), and the clever dialog. You don't simply encounter
monsters. You enter a room of enemy soldiers who are practicing, and
who smile at the thought of a dull session that has suddenly turned
very interesting; or you come upon some enemy soldiers gambling, and
you have the option of either joining or attacking them. (You can
fight your way into Gargath or bluff your way in, but don't try it
twice.) 

 There's a story driving this game, and although you have options, 
in most cases there is only one right choice, and you're prodded
into making it. If you take the wrong action, the game becomes
harder and eventually brings you back on course. The endgame is a
fixed sequence in which you have little choice about how to
proceed. Care has been taken to include many characters from the
DRAGONLANCE books as NPCs in this game, so playing CHAMPIONS is very
much like reading a DRAGONLANCE book in which you are one of the
characters. 

 The only serious complaint I have is that CHAMPIONS is over all too
soon: An experienced computer role-playing gamer can zip through it
in 20 hours. Many small side-encounters are irrelevant to the main
story, but if you search for these, you can extend the gameplay to
about 25-30 hours. Because CHAMPIONS is very linear, there's not
much point in replaying it to discover possible variations; there
are very few, despite all the choices you have. Unfortunately, many
of your best magical items are taken from you at the end, but this
is a minor complaint: At least you can continue to play the game
afterwards, and it's worthwhile to do so. If you follow the
storyline faithfully, there will be one mission in Neraka that
remains unaccomplished at the end. 

 SSI has fiddled with the game mechanics a bit, achieving mixed
results. The Undead now disappear when Turned; you no longer have to
hunt them down to end a combat. However, the game menus are now more
awkward to use than in CURSE OF THE AZURE BONDS, and more keystrokes
are required to perform the same action. 

 Because CHAMPIONS takes place on a different plane, some changes
have been made to conform to the special rules of the DRAGONLANCE
universe. Unlike the previous games (developed for the Forgotten
Realms), this program does not automatically adjust the difficulty
of certain battles; you can now specify the difficulty level
yourself. Increasing the difficulty level increases the number of
random encounters, as well as the number of attackers; however, the
level of the attackers is not affected. As a result, increasing the
difficulty increases the length and tedium of the game without
significantly increasing the difficulty. 

 There are no three-hour battles in CHAMPIONS; SSI has kept them
small. There are also very few encounters with monsters who are
several levels higher than those of your characters. Combined with
explicit hints about where to rest, and a much slighter chance of
random encounters, this game is the easiest of the series to play. 
Therefore, it's quite suitable for someone unfamiliar with the AD&D
gaming system, or SSI's implementation of it. 

 CHAMPIONS frequently includes magic users among your attackers, 
which makes the battles more interesting without increasing
difficulty. The game also reduces the number of magical items you're
required to find. In general, only high officials of the other side
will possess magical items; the common foot soldiers and low-level
commanders have only ordinary weapons and armor. There are magic
shops in which you can buy some useful items, but the prices and
quality of the items varies among shops. If only there were a magic
armory, as well! (After all, those magic weapons and armor had to be
manufactured and sold _somewhere_.) 

 In the IBM-PC version of CHAMPIONS, SSI provides sound board and
mouse support. Unfortunately, you hear only the music accompanying
the opening credits through the sound board; the PC's tiny speaker
is used during the game itself -- a major disappointment. Mouse
control is generally well-implemented, but the menu system is still
designed for a keyboard. As a result, the mouse only supplements the
keyboard; it's extremely awkward to play using the mouse alone. The
program supports VGA cards in EGA mode only, but the EGA graphics
are well-done and present some nicely executed two-stage animation. 
Although you can play from floppies, a hard drive is recommended
because the program is so disk-intensive. (For example, your
character information is stored on disk in as many as three files. 
Since it's possible to have up to eight characters and NPCs within
your party, you'll be swapping up to 24 files in and out of
memory.) 

 CHAMPIONS relies on a hard-copy protection scheme that's
redundant: You must enter a code word from the Adventurer's Journal
when you begin the game, and you're randomly asked for a code word
from the rule book when you save a game. Because you can't play at
all without the Adventurer's Journal, requiring you to look up a
code word in that book doesn't provide any added protection. 

 Although the game mechanics are a half-step backward from CURSE OF
THE AZURE BONDS, CHAMPIONS OF KRYNN is a major step forward. With
your computer serving as Dungeon Master, this game is as close as
you can come right now to a real AD&D adventure. 

 APPLE VERSION NOTES 

 The Apple version of CHAMPIONS OF KRYNN is basically the same as
the IBM version, at least in storyline and game mechanics. The
graphics are rather good for an Apple game, but the sound is limited
to a small selection of beeps, clicks, and screeches. The tag on the
box claims the game will run on a II+, IIe, IIc, or IIgs with a
minimum of 64K, but the data card inside says that a 65C02
microprocessor (not the 6502 found in the II+ and early IIe) is
required. Use of a hard drive is not supported; the starting
instructions say, "If you have a Hard Disk, turn it off," which
could present problems. On the bright side, the number of required
disk swaps has dropped dramatically from POOL OF RADIANCE. 

 The command interface in CHAMPIONS is the same maddening mixture
that POOL uses: IJKM for 3-D movement; numbers in a clockwise
pattern (1 for North, 5 for South, etc.) for movement overland and
in combat; cursor keys for menu selection. I suppose it has the
virtue of consistency, if not ease of use. A joystick can substitute
for the keyboard, but Apple joysticks are notoriously bad about
handling those diagonal movements that are critical in combat. 

 The Apple version of the documentation check isn't quite as
redundant as that of the IBM: It requires a code word only at the
start of each session. Also, I feel the game is sufficiently linear
that it _could_ be played without reference to the Adventurer's
Journal, so the check does provide a bit of extra protection. 

 AMIGA VERSION NOTES 

 Amiga owners everywhere have been waiting for the day when they, 
too, could play AD&D based-games like POOL OF RADIANCE and CURSE OF
THE AZURE BONDS. Up until now, we've had to make do with the much
more arcade/action-oriented HEROES OF THE LANCE, and others of that
ilk. Sorry, SSI, that just won't do. A hardcore role-playing gamer
is not going to be happy with a game that requires anything more
than the hand-eye coordination necessary to put the disk in the
slot. Well, we're still waiting for the first two games to leap the
conversion barrier, but CHAMPIONS OF KRYNN, using the same basic
system of gameplay, is a lot of fun to spend time on while we're
waiting. It is a sophisticated, involving game, lacking the
complexity of an ULTIMA V and the sheer graphic excitement of
DUNGEON MASTER, but with its own richness and style. And those
familiar with the AD&D gaming system should be happy with the
generally high level of fidelity to the original concept. 

 The IBM version reviewer complained that the game is over all too
soon; I've put over 20 hours into it so far, and I'm only up to my
sixth mission, so I won't carp about not getting my game-playing
money's worth. My complaints have more to do with the game
mechanics. At first, I was happy with the mouse interface, but it
became too cumbersome, and now I use the keyboard for just about
everything. Point-and-click works well in some places, but yields
strange results elsewhere, as in casting spells while encamped. On
the other hand, too many keystrokes are necessary to do certain
things, such as aim a weapon, or switch from one weapon to another. 
The game-save process takes forever to accomplish, and you cannot
load a game position without restarting the game. And while I know
that piracy is rampant, and I'm grateful for non-protected games -- 
grateful enough to accept wheels and brown-on-brown eye-straining
code sheets and relatively simple keyword systems like CHAMPIONS's
-- why require a keyword entry from a manual that's referred to
many, many times in the regular course of the game? It has already
served its purpose in that regard, and anything more is redundant. 
However, you only need to enter the keyword at the beginning of the
session, so that's some small respite. 

 Note: As in the IBM Version, you can specify the difficulty level
of the game, but finding out how to do that takes some careful
reading. (From the Encamp menu, chose Alter, then Difficulty.) It
would have made more sense to have a chance to set the difficulty
level at the same point where you can alter your characters's traits
to species maximums. "Alter Difficulty" is particularly nice when
you get wiped out in a battle: Reboot, set for a lower level, and
try again. 

 The Amiga version of CHAMPIONS comes on three non-copy-protected
discs, and can be installed on a hard drive, or played from one or
two floppy drives. (The manual does not explain that the best way of
playing on two floppy drives is to boot Disk 1 in the internal drive
and Disk 2 or 3 in the external. You then replace Disk 1 with your
pre-formatted Save disk during gameplay, and it cuts down on the
Save time from 20 minutes to 10.) The game requires 1MB of memory to
play. The graphics and sound are good, but not that good. The sounds
of battle are there in spades, but some scenes cry out for music, 
which you just don't get. I stopped playing POOL OF RADIANCE on the
Commodore 64 because the graphics were so hard to follow. Here, you
have a really good 3-D perspective and battle scenes are very easy
to keep track of. 

 I'm having a lot of fun with CHAMPIONS OF KRYNN, but for a
three-disk game requiring 1MB, I sort of expected a little more. 
However, these minor grouses aside, this is one of the best CPRGs
available for Amiga owners to date. Of course, I'm still waiting for
ULTIMA VI.... 

 CHAMPIONS OF KRYNN is published by Strategic Simulations, Inc. and
distributed by Electronic Arts. 

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