Death Knights of Krynn

Death Knights of Krynn is the second game in the Dragonlance series of RPG created by Strategic Simulations Inc. The game uses the Gold Box engine, and it was released in 1991 for MS-DOS, Amiga, and Commodore 64.

Its predecessor is named Champions of Krynn, and then we have The Dark Queen of Krynn as its sequel. What’s unique is that you could import your party and characters from the previous game, thus getting a great immersion sense. You could go on adventures either via the 1st person town adventure or through the overland map travel. Every encounter showed you the power of your enemy, your attacks, and loot if you managed to eliminate the enemy.

The Death Knights of Krynn game was developed and also published by the Strategic Simulations, INC team. It was a part of the Gold Box series mentioned above. Unlike other RPGs, this one had a lot of focus on tactics, which did make it quite different. The title had a lot more tie-ins to the Dragonlance setting, and it sold around 61k copies of the game, which was a success for that time. There were some critics regarding the game, stating that they had less role-playing and puzzles than the predecessors or competitors.

The game had many races you could choose from, such as elves, dwarves, "kender" (the halflings of Dragonlance), and humans. They also had multiple classes, like cleric, mage, knight, fighter, thief, or ranger. It’s important to note that the developers maintained the same gameplay ideas for the entire series. They did remove the magical items from the previous game, so even if you could import previous players, the magic items would not be used here. You were able to explore the colorful map, engage enemies, and solve all kinds of quests. Sure, some quests were similar and quite repetitive, but there were many of them, so you could hop in and go on new adventures.

Innovations and technological advancements

Death Knights of Krynn’s Amiga version is the only one that had 32 color graphics. This is also the first time we saw the fireball sprite used inside a game. Overall, the game had incredible visuals for its time, which would surpass some of the issues like the lack of story and repeatability.

The truth is that while Death Knights of Krynn does lack some substance, it’s still a delightful and colorful RPG for its time. It does have deep moments, and the fact that you can import characters from the previous game makes it even more immersive and exciting.

Granted, there aren’t many puzzles here, but if you want a long RPG experience with some great retro graphics, you can’t go wrong with Death Knights of Krynn. It does take a bit of getting used to, and ideally, you want to play the entire trilogy to get a hold of the story and have a fully immersive, fulfilling experience.