Playing on: DOS PC (EGA, Sound Blaster 1.5, 286 16MHz)
Year: 1990
After the defeat of Tyranthraxus in Curse of the Azure Bonds it is finally time to move on to the second half of the original gold box quadilogy with Secret of the Silver Blades, released in 1990. It’s also time to switch over to a more capable PC to play these games on though if I wanted I could easily complete the last two games on my trusty Tandy 1000rl using Tandy color and sound. Secet does support EGA graphics as well as a mouse and Adlib sound. The box claims it supports CMS sound but there is no option for this during installation. other than the intro song at the title screen the game doesn’t seem to use the Adlib chip anyways.
I was able to pretty easily port my group over from Curse via floppy disk and using Secrets character importing option I was able to transfer the group into the new game pretty easily. The character screens in this game feel a little more polished.
After porting my group it was time to start my newest quest.
The game starts with your party being magically kidnapped against their will to a land in the frozen north in order to face some new mysterious threat to a small mining town.
Yes, the intro says your group has indeed grown bored with the peaceful life but I don’t quite think that translates into “Gosh, I wish I was randomly teleported away to a frozen waste without any money or the magical weapons, armor, or items I have acquired over the past adventures”. Obviously, the game needed a way to, once again, separate the group from its previously hard-earned magical goodies but it’s really feeling extra contrived at this point.
My group, being the nice chaps they are forgive this and gladly accept the new quest. Once my party arrived I was immediately exposition dumped about how the humans had delved too deep into the frozen mines and now monsters have started to appear and threaten the town. My group was teleported here by a sort of magical wishing well of knowledge that the town previously had access to but that was now in the hands of monstrous forces.
I’d still call being unexpectedly teleported away without any money weapons or armor more than an “inconvenience” but whatever. The mayor at least gives the party some money and a few random magical weapons and armor. after diving things up and buying the rest of what’s needed at the local armory I decided to exit out of the main town gate and venture into the ruins.
I quickly encountered my first battle as the ruins are patrolled by groups of minotaurs and bugbears.
Battles play out as they did in the previous game and my group quickly dispatched the group of minotaurs. I could immediately see there was an improvement in graphical quality in this title. Secret of the Silver Blade also immediately destroys its economy by giving the group thousands of coins and gems from the very first battle. After wandering around and fighting a few more battles I stumbled upon what appeared to be an entrance to a mine shaft though I couldn’t find a way down. It was at this point I remembered the mayor telling me that there was a portal in the back of his home that led to the magical well he spoke of earlier and figured maybe that was supposed to be my first destination.
On making it back to town I used my newfound riches to finish equipping my party with the best weapons and armor I could and then decided to rest at the mayor’s house. It was then I was attacked unexpectedly by a group of assassins. They weren’t very hard to kill but it was an unexpected encounter. This has also happened to me once more during a random rest since then so my guess is this is going to be a random occurrence I’m going to need to get used to.
This could end up being a real problem if I’m forced to rest after a particularly difficult battle and I am attacked in a vastly weakened state.
After finishing off the assassins and resting up I found the portal that the mayor talked about and hopped through. I was pretty quickly thrown into the middle of a fight between a group of priests and a group of wizards called the Black Circle. I was given the option to stay out of it or pick a side to fight and I decided to attack the black circle. First off I wanted some sweet sweet XP and second no group called the “Black Circle” can be good guys. After killing the wizards the priests promptly attacked me, turns out they were priests of Bane, oopsie.
When returning to rest the Maoyer filled me in that the Black Circle appeared after the monsters appeared and so far have been attempting to help the town. There’s even a wizard in town where the group can buy a few magical items.
traveling back through the portal I discovered an inner area surrounded by a metal fence. on entering the area I was attacked by a group of infant red dragons. After defeating them and moving past the second fence my group was assaulted by two adult red dragons which thankfully weren’t too problematic. In the center area, I encountered an ancient red dragon which pretty quickly decimated my unprepared and greatly weakened group. You would have thought I would have rested and prepared after the first two dragon encounters but I had pressed my luck.
On my second attempt, I was much better prepared and was able to beat the dragon without any casualties.
After killing the red dragon I had freed the well of knowledge as well as acquired some nice XP and treasure. The well then talked to my group and explained that the black circle is actually here to awaken the “Dread Lord” who is trapped in his frozen castle within the glacier. They are using the mines to access the castle and attempting to free this “Dread Lord”. I knew these Black Circle guys were bad news. The well also informs me that I can return here and offer gems for hints on where to go next as well as that a new portal has opened up in this area. The well also gave me a map and the location of an “Amulet of Eldmar” which it claims I must collect. Before heading for the amulet I decided to head back to town and take care of the magic shop run by the Black Circle now that it’s confirmed they are evil.
After calling the guards bluff and slaughtering them I defeated the Black Circle mage running the shop. After clearing out the shop I tried reentering and apparently, the locals immediately reopened the shop selling the items at a discount.
After this, I reentered the ruins and following the map made my way to the red dragon. making short work of him and recovering the Amulet. It still feels odd to me that Red Dragons are just an inconvenience at this point and I still have an entire game to go through in this series.
At this point, I was a little lost and unsure where to go, and spent some time wandering the ruins. Eventually, I made my way back to the Well of Knowledge and after exploring some more back into the ruins and then a headquarters of the Black Circle. The headquarters is filled with various rooms full of high-level fighters as well as magic-users that love to cast annoying spells such as lightning bolts and enfeeblement. At one point my party ran into the old clerk from Pool of Radiance. This was a fun nod to the first game as the party was seeing her likely more than any other NPC in the first game.
Apparently, she was acting as some kind of liaison, and once you catch up to her she’s happy to hand over some journal entries. There was also an instance where I was able to cast dispel magic in order to counter a magic assault while advancing through the compound which was a cool idea to be able to do that action outside of the tactical combat screen.
At the end of the headquarters was a final battle first with some young red dragons and then a group of Black Circle fighters and mages.
Now, I have to admit after this point I was kind of lost. I mean, I knew that I had to enter the mines to progress but I had no idea where the mine entrance was. The one mine entrance within the ruins I did know of was apparently sealed and nothing happened when I would go to that location so There was either some step I had missed or there was a second mine entrance.
I do enjoy the little details such as the townsfolk randomly shouting encouragement
Now at this point, I have to confess, I pretty much never draw maps. It’s not that I hate the idea but first off I feel it just slows the experience down to a crawl and second between my sense of direction and memory I’ve never really found the need to map, I always seem to be able to navigate the dungeons. I never once mapped in any of the previous gold box titles, nor games like Eye of the Beholder or any of the score of console RPGs I’ve beaten, as a matter of fact, Wizardry is probably the only game I’ve even found the need to map. That said I found myself utterly deated by the ruins in Secret of the Silver Blades. No matter how many hours I spent wondering about the ruins I could not progress. Finally, I broke down and referenced the clue book map which led me to a second mine entrance….I still don’t know how I failed to stumble across it in my hours of wandering the ruins.
On using the correct entrance I was given the option of selecting several mine levels to descend to as well as a temple. I chose the temple being it was the first option. Saving in front of the temple entrance I expected some kind of fight inside but upon entering I received text describing the temple as having a good aura….which kind of made looting the few treasures and magic weapons inside a bit awkward feeling. Upon exploring the temple I eventually came across a dwarf…or gnome, can’t recall who apparently had been expecting my party.
The dwarf (or gnome) explained a little more about the backstory and that he is the last surviving member of the group of heroes that originally defeated the lich. To enter the lich’s castle and defeat him I have to, apparently, get past a ghost paladin and to do this I need a magical staff. The staff is, of course, broken into eight pieces spread over eight different levels of the mine.
Most people have very fond memories of the first two gold box titles and up until this point, I felt Secret was actually pretty solid and I started to become curious why it wasn’t as beloved. I now think I know why.
So far I have recovered four pieces of the staff on levels 1-4. despite some random flavor text about seeing eyes glow in the dark and such and a handful of other described chambers the first four floors have been all the same as far as looks and also feature the same enemies, although in slightly more numerous amounts. This just all feels really lazy and to be honest when compared with sections of earlier games just feels like filler to me. Thankfully if you have gems you can go to the well of knowledge which will tell you which of the four directions to go on watch level to find the staff piece so if one chooses you could probably breeze through this section pretty quickly. Unfortunately, I want to explore watch level in its entirety which means a lot of monotonous encounters with giant centipedes, minatours, and cackatrices which can on occasion turn party members to stone.
There are monster lairs sprinkled around the mine levels which, after a fight with a group of monsters yield a few seemingly random magical items, so there is that.
There are a few, what appear to be, scripted encounters with Umber Hulks.
So I think this may be a good place to end part one of this playthrough of Secret of the Silver Blades. I suspect I may be about halfway through the game though I’m not really sure. I’m really hoping the game gets a bit more interesting and varied after I get this business of the staff and mines sorted out.
Playing on: DOS PC (Tandy 1000 RL, CGA, 10MHz 8086)
Year: 1989
After the side quest that was Hillsfar it was time to return to my gold box quadrilogy proper with Cure of the Azure Bonds. My first order of business was porting my part from Pool of Radiance and Hillsfar over.
There was one pressing decision I had to make after porting my characters though, would I keep my party as is or replace some of my battle-hardened warriors. The reason I had to make this decision is that Curse introduced two new classes, the Paladin and the Ranger. Curse also introduced dual classes for humans. After thinking hard on the subject I decided to remake two of my characters so I could include both a paladin and a ranger in my party. The two characters that had to get the axe with my human fighter Chris and my elf fighter/thief/mage Lt. Thankfully it only took a few battles to level my newly reborn characters up to close to what the rest of the group was at. It did hurt a little to lose my fighter/thief/mage, especially the mage part but rangers do get some druid and mage spells at higher levels and I can dual-class mage later on. The Ranger also can wear any armor (at least in Curse) and a bonus against giant creatures. Swapping my fighter out for the paladin wasn’t nearly as hard as a decision as they are basically both fighter types with the paladin getting some resistances, protection from evil aura as well as some limited cleric spell abilities at higher levels
This leaves Bill, my fighter/thief as the only nonhuman in my group. Unfortunately, because these gold box titles stick to the early D&D level caps for races humans are really the only race that makes sense for going through all four games.
Unfortunately, my phone that I take my game images on was reset so I lost all my images of my early gameplay so unfortunately I lack any early images of my gameplay.
Curse takes place shortly after Pool of Radiance and, if you played it, Hillsfar. After saving the city of Phlan your group is ambushed while traveling the surrounding lands looking for a runaway princess. They awake after the ambush outside of the city only to wake in the city of Tilverdon with all of your items missing. Your party members also all have five strange azure blue symbols tattoed on their arms. These are the cursed Azure bonds the title refers to.
Overall Curse is more or less the same gameplay-wise with a few exceptions. First is much quieter as far as sound goes. I played an early version of Pool of Radiance on the Tandy 1000 which had an intro tune as well as playing a tune before each battle but Curse is almost completely devoid of music on my Tandy 1000, I’m not sure if they ever released a version on IBM compatibles that did have music though. visually it’s mostly the same though it appears some sprites such as the Ogre look different than they did in Pool, not better, just different. There is a quality of life feature now when camping that is called fix, that casts your cure spells as well as rememorizes them.
After waking up in Tilverdon I started exploring the town and found a weapons and armor shop to reequip my party as best I could though their stats were a far cry from what they were at the conclusion of Pool.
After exploring the town and talking to several NPC’s I attempted to leave but could not as the exit was blocked due to a royal carriage passing through. At this point, one of the magical bonds on my arm started to glow and my party was compelled to attack the carriage resulting in a battle with the guards. After the battle, I surrendered and was thrown in jail only to be promptly rescued by the thieves guild.
After being led back to the thieves guild my party was informed that a group of assassins called the Fire Knives kidnapped the princess but before he could tell me more the guild was invaded by the Fire Knives resulting in a frantic escape through the guild and into the sewers. battling through the sewers and guild I was able to acquire a few magical items to help make up for the loss of all my best items at the game’s start. The sewer was filled with alligators, trolls and was also home to several otyughs and neo-otyughs which are basically tentacled garbage monsters. They do have a basic intelligence though and you can avoid fighting them if you retrieve a certain item for them in the sewers.
At the end of the sewer dungeon, I encountered the Fire Knives leader as well as the captive princess. The princess though turned the tables holding the fire knives leader hostage and forced him to remove one of the azure bonds on my party members’ arms. That’s one down and four to go. Soon after the king’s men ended the room but thankfully the princess cleared my name before running off.
After this, my party was kicked out of and banished from Tilverdon.
At this point, you are more or less given free rein on where to go as you quest to remove your remaining four bonds. Unlike the first game where you can freely traverse the overworld, Curse features a map with specific points you journey between. Usually, you are given the option to take the trail, the wilderness, or a boat if a river connects two towns. You can get attacked when traveling between two points though I found this doesn’t happen as often as you would think.
Most of the points on the map are large towns or cities but instead of entering a first-person view when you reach these areas, you are usually given a simple menu of key areas you can visit such as training halls, inns, weapons shops, etc.
I really wasn’t too sure of where to go at this point so starting from the bottom of the map up I figured I do things methodically. It wasn’t long before I came across the town of Hap which was apparently under the control of Drow elves. Fighting through several drow patrols I finally reached a large building housing an efreet and several drow that seemed to be running the occupation force. I was able to defeat them fairly easily.
After this, the town became a peaceful area that allowed me to utilize the inn and fully recover. I also found a map with a trail that led out of town to a cave was now available, also Akbar a magic user joined my group though he left me immediately when I decided to try and go back to a nearby major town to train and level up before tackling the caves.
The caves are where things started to feel really tough as they were filled with both drow and salamanders which required magical weapons to hit. The drow also dropped drow armor and swords but as I learned later when exposed to the sun the armor quickly disintegrates to nothing. It was also at this time I discovered that many times I could set camp and recover using spells and resting and not be attacked by enemies, even if I was camped in a main hallway.
Not too far into the caves, I was approached by a female drow who offered to brand my group’s only female which would allow us to get past some patrols, in exchange we had to find and return to her a dragon heart in the tower that lies ahead. I agreed since any reprieve from the constant patrols would be nice.
On exploring farther into the caves my group encountered a dracolich.
I was given the option to surrender but I chose to fight and was promptly slaughtered. To my surprise instead of a game over The dracolich instead captured me and sent me over to the tower. I wasn’t happy with this result so I restarted my game and faced the dracolich again, this time better prepared. I was able to kill the dracolich this time without too much effort and I was actually pretty surprised. In Dungeons & Dragons a dracolich, or an undead dragon with great magical abilities is a pretty powerful top tier foe. That’s when it occurred to me that I’m only at the start of the second game in a four game series. I’m already fighting dracolichs and drows and to be honest, I’m not sure how much farther up as far as monster difficulty it can go. I imagine by the final game I’ll be having random encounters with demigods.
After exiting the cave and arriving at the tower I was approached by Dracandros, apparently, he is another who controls one of the azure bonds.
Using the bond Dracandros paralyzed my group and brought me to the top of his tower where a hoard of black dragons awaited. He explained to the dragons that I was a great threat to them but they demanded he remove the bond to prove what he said was true. Two bonds down, three to go.
At this point, I was given a choice of attacking the dragons, fleeing, talking, or attacking Dracandros. not feeling very confident I could take on a hoard of black dragons at this point I decided to talk which prompted the dragons to find Dracandros a lier and fly off. Dracandros, without his dragon’s allies and without the bond to control my group quickly fled down this tower’s steps.
In the following description of the tower roof, it was stated that the roof was a safe area to camp out and regain spells and health but like the caves prior I discovered I could camp anywhere within the town and fully heal my party unmolested.
descending down the wizard’s tower There were several battles with more drow patrols consisting of fighters as well as pesky mages and clerics as well as other creatures such as owlbears. Surprisingly for a wizard’s tower there weren’t a lot of magical items laying around, unless that is, I missed them.
One room contains a magic user with an orb of annihilation. if you choose you can play a game of wills where you stand at equal distances and take turns attempting to move the orb away from you and to the opposing side. I selected my own magic user but had a very hard time winning and probably had to take the challenge at least ten times before I could pull off a victory.
Near the bottom of the tower was a room full of wyverns guarding the exit. The beasts themselves weren’t too powerful but their poison death sting was quite troublesome. thankfully after losing to them a few times I decided to stock up on the neutralize poison spell before the battle. thankfully you can use the spell after combat ends on those that died from poisoning, bringing them back to life.
After exiting the tower I was faced with Dracandros who was desperately attempting to escape with a bag of his goodies. This battle was the hardest battle yet for me in Curse. Not only must your party contend with Dracandros who seems to have an almost endless supply of lightning bolt spells but also a small army of drow and efreet. I found my best strategy was to retreat from Dracandros direct line of sight and take on his minions as they charge the group. Unfortunately, I had to redo this battle several times as the lightning bolt spell onslaught always seemed to kill several party members as the battle was winding down. I finally just accepted I was going to lose someone in this fight and defeated Dracandros with my ranger taking a con hit due to a needed raise dead.
At least his goodie bag was full of interesting magical items, one of which was a ring of wizardry that grants extra slots to memorize spells. This also explained why he had so many spells to cast as well as now giving my own group’s magic user a ridiculous amount of spells to cast.
After defeating Dracandros I healed up and quickly traveled to the closest city with a training hall where all but my high-level fighter had earned a level in at least one class.
From here I learned from a mysterious man at a nearby crossroads that something was occurring in a city to the northwest. Hot on trail of the next azure bond I traveled to the city farthest to the northwest which was Daggerfalls. I found nothing unusual in the city itself but I did notice an option when outside the city to travel a side trail. Traveling this trail took me to a tower that appeared to be locked when I approached the door. Naturally, I picked the lock and ventured inside. The description described this as a magic shop and I began to wonder if I had made a mistake when I was attacked by a sizable group of guards backed up by priests. This seemed to be the main encounter as I explored the tower “magic shop”. The guards weren’t too much of a problem but sometimes the priests could get off a lucky hold person spell that could doom the party. Other than a few odds and ends such as a +1 pole arm there wasn’t much to find in the tower. At the top was a head priest as well as some soldiers and otyughs. I easily dispatched them before descending the tower and continuing my search for the masters of my remaining azure bonds.
traveling between towns I did encounter several Zhentil patrols, a group I faced in the previous game, though on seeing my bond they allowed me free passage. I eventually came across the city of Yulash as I traveled east. This city was walled and seemed to be having some kind of disturbance inside. As my party approached the gates a horse with a man and the princess busted through, causing some minor trampling damage as they road off. At least she managed to shout back a “sorry” as she rode off.
I was quickly confronted by a guard at the gate who asked me to go with him. I complied.
After battling some spies trying to escape the HQ I was informed the city was dealing with a cult of some sort and there was widespread chaos in the city all emanating from a hole of some sort. With this, my party was given free passage but warned of the unsafeness of the current situation.
The ruins of the city itself are littered with random encounters and areas where your party can take damage from collapsing ruins. Thankfully between the map in the journal and my dwarf, I was able to avoid most of these. I came across several groups of looters who depending on how you approach them will usually leave you alone. There are however various groups of rouge soldiers that will attack you as well as shambling mounds which are plant monsters that kind of remind me of Swamp Thing.
I was able to eventually make my way over to a huge gaping hole on the other side of the city though I foolishly made the decision to enter without doing my usual methodical takedown of the current area, this would come back to haunt me in a bit.
Not long after entering the pit, the sounds of battle could be heard in a nearby room. After entering the room I was met by Alias and Dragonbait, the characters depicted on the cover of the box.
After talking to them and sharing my story they joined my group. They are both fighter types though I believe Dragonbait is a paladin, his species is the one exception to the human-only rule. As NPCs in my group, they are largely useless, firing all of their arrows until they are out and then charging in for melee but they are too weak and do too little damage to make much of a difference. They do make decent distractions though as Id rather an enemy take a swing or cast a spell at one of them than my main party members. I’m guessing these two must be important to D&D lore and even though I’ve played 1st and 2nd editions for years and know some of the in-game lore I have no clue who these two are.
The pit itself wasn’t too large and random enemy encounters seemed surprisingly low there were a few set encounters where my group did have the option to evade. Most of the monsters in the temple were cultists and things that aligned with the rot/decay theme of the god so there were a number of shambling mounds, giant acid-spitting slugs, and these green vegetable men.
The shambling mounds were hit sponges and the acid slugs packed a punch if they managed to hit you but the cultists were the most annoying by far. sometimes they were pushovers and a well-timed and placed fireball could eliminate an entire group. They did though have one trick on their sleeve and that was the mass casting of the hold-person spell. If my party was unlucky and the enemy not only went first but decided to span cast hold person, which they often did, then it was potentially game over as half the party could be held and rendered useless in a matter of a turn or two.
In the main room of the temple was a large battle against several cultists, including the main one, and of course several shambling mounds. I did manage to defeat the group but I wasn’t the best preparation for the battle so I was quite shocked when immediately after the battle I was forced to fight three Bit O Moander which were basically pieces of the rot god with 140HP each that acted more of less like super shambling mounds. I should also note that at the start of this battle, the bond of Moander is also removed, presumably as part of the ritual to revive the god.
I can’t help thinking of “Bit O’ Honey” when I see these guys.
Doing large back-to-back battles is actually one of my pet peeves in video games and being as unprepared as I was I took heavy losses in the battle though I was able to defeat the Bits O Hon…..Moander. Unfortunately, right after this battle, the prior mostly quiet temple started swarming with random encounters. Every time I attempted to rest to revive my fallen characters I was attacked and I felt like I was getting a random encounter every few moves. It felt like I was in an impossible situation.
It was at this point in a moment of mental weakness I decided to do something I usually try to avoid and that was going back and checking a walkthrough to see if I missed anything vital. I generally loathe to do this but I felt it shouldn’t be anywhere near this hard. After a quick glance at a walkthrough, I realized that I did make a big mistake in not searching the city more thoroughly if I did I would have encountered some dead wizard with a wand of defoliation, basically, this is like a short-range wand of magic missiles effective against plant-based monsters such as the shambling mounds and the “Bits”.
After learning this I reloaded a save from right before I entered the pit and proceeded to properly search the whole of the ruined city, finding the wand. After this, I redid the entire temple including the main fight. what I found was although the wand was a huge help I think I benefited more by just being more prepared and casting spells like praying before the fight. I also discovered that If I tried to rest behind the altar after the battle, (where some more treasure and items were hidden) I did not seem to be attacked by wandering monsters.
After looting the treasure in the alter room my group made their way to the exit where there was one last battle with a group of cultists and of course some more vegimen and shambling mounds. This battle was about on equal with the main alter room fight though the cultists seemed a bit more liberal in their casting of hold person. After the battle, Alais and Dragonbait parted ways and my group exited the pit and the ruined city via a secret side tunnel.
As my group returns to the world map screen it seems the city is invaded by Zenhtil keep. I know one of the remaining bonds is a Zenhtil Keep bond so I’m thinking this is a not-so-subtle hint that this should be my next destination.
I think I’ll leave things here and then in my second part I’ll finish the game up. I feel like I’m halfway or maybe even a little more than halfway through the game so I think this is a good stop point for now.
Playing on: DOS PC (Tandy 1000 RL, CGA, 10MHz 8086)
Year: 1989
I have a friend that played through the gold box games back in the 80s and 90s and as I started my own quest through these games he gave me one word of advice, skip Hillsfar. He dislikes the game so much he won’t even put it in his collection but being my quest is what it is and that Hillsfar is an RPG…more or less it was my next stop on my journey through the beloved “gold box” CRPGs.
Hillsfar is an interesting idea and is a bit ahead of its time being a stand-alone expansion to the early gold box titles. You can play the game on its own or import characters from Pool of Radiance or Curse of the Azure bonds. The game is a series of mini-games and quests that act as a side adventure roughly taking place after Pools and before Curse and within the same geographical area. There is even new dialogue that apparently is present in Curse if you play through it with a character imported from Hillsfar.
The game is a single character affair so you can only play through it with one character at a time if you’re importing from Pool of Radiance as I am. Due to time constraints, I’m only planning to run through Hillsfar once and with a character from Pool. I decided to import Bill my dwarf fighter/thief since I plan on remaking my other multi-class character for Curse (Curse adds Paladin and Ranger classes) and I feel Bill with his multi-class could benefit most from the extra XP he will gain in this game.
There isn’t really any storyline to the game. The single character that you either create or import is dropped in a camp area with a number of options, mostly related to creating, deleting, and importing a character. The camp is also the only place you can save your game so be prepared to make your way back here often.
To begin the game after importing my fighter/thief I selected “ride current character to Hillsfar” and then was thrown into an action side-scrolling section where your character is riding a horse and has to continuously jump over various obstacles. Fall too many times and you can get waylaid by bandits and lose money. There are also birds that force you to duck but in my entire playthrough, I only encountered this once.
These horse riding sections are required when traveling between any of the locations in Hillsfar and can get pretty tedious pretty fast. thankfully it’s not hard to get the controls and once you do it’s pretty easy. You can also make your horse run faster as you get more skilled so the sections go by quicker.
The world of Hillsfar is not very big and is made of a number of locations connected by horse trails. There is no exploring per se as you can only travel from point to point but you can come across “hidden roads” that take you to locations that may not be visible on the map.
There isn’t much initial direction in Hillsfar which is a little unusual for a late ’80s Dungeons and Dragons game. Once you reach Hillsfar you’re not really directed to go anywhere and your let go to basically wander the city, or leave the city and wander the areas around Hillsfar unsure what to do and where to go.
Navigating the city is pretty easy with the majority of the screen taken up by a city map while the left side of the screen is your character stats as well as a first-person navigation window.
While traveling around town you may randomly bump into wizards or strangers that will offer items or information for money. The information is rarely anything worthwhile and you are mostly fine ignoring these encounters. Sometimes the wizards will ask if they can perform a magic trick which can have either positive or negative results for you.
What you’re supposed to do to start the main story quest line is find your character’s guild which should match their class. I’m not sure how it decides for multi-class characters like mine though as I initially found the fighters guild but the guild master was never present when I asked but the rouges guild master was there when I found that guild so I went down the rouges quest line.
My first mission from the thieves guild follows a pretty simple pattern which usually is a string of fetch quests. The guild master wants a particular poison which I’m told can be found at the magic shop so I have to find and then enter the magic shop. The owner is out of ingredients but I can find said poisonous mushroom in the sewer so, it’s off to the sewers. That leads us to our first “dungeon”.
For any of the dungeon sections of Hillsfar the game switches to an overhead view where you navigate around a fairly boring maze with scattered treasure chests. Some chests have traps, some have gold or simple items like healing potions and one should have the key item you are looking for. There are no enemies to fight in these dungeons and the only way I assume you could die is by springing traps until your HP reach 0 though that never happened to me. You basically have a certain amount of time to find the key item before guards start appearing and attempting to catch you. If they do you get kicked out of the dungeon and have to reenter and start over. You also can’t leave the dungeon until a certain amount of time has passed and then an exit appears in a random location in the dungeon. In short, the goal is to find the key item and then find the exit before time runs out and the guards kick you out.
We should also talk about chests and lock-picking at this point.
At least for me, it never really worked. As a thief, I had a set of lock picks which you’re supposed to find the ones that have the right shape to match up with the lock….in theory, its a good idea but with the timer and fact that you usually break the pick if your guess is wrong I found it much easier to force chests open and risk the trap damage.
After returning to the rouges guild with the mushrooms I was then instructed to “retrieve a white liquid from the hermit”. which required traveling across the map via several of the side-scrolling horse sections and to another “dungeon” where I once again had to find the right chest and then the exit before returning to the guild in Hillsfar via more side-scrolling horse riding sections.
The second quest involved retrieving a powerful amulet for the guild which a prior thief failed to acquire. Of course, this quest requires a lot of taking a horse from point A to B and rushing through maze dungeons plundering every chest you can in the time limit to find key items but there are a few neat things to mix it up.
First off there are several points in this game where you need to go to a pub and listen for gossip to acquire certain information. You get other somewhat meaningless options as well such as carving your name on a table, it doesn’t seem to do anything but it’s a fun detail. you can also lurk in the shadows and climb walls, at least my thief could, I don’t know if other classes get other options.
This quest also introduced another aspect, secret rooms. At one point I had to infiltrate the cleric’s temple to retrieve the amulet but no matter how many times I searched I could not find the chest. The trick was to press up against the wall in an upper room of the mase to pass through to a secret room. This section held me back for some time and its discovery was mostly accidental. After this, I knew to look for secret rooms if I wasn’t finding a chest in the right area.
After a lot of back and forth, I finally completed the second quest and retrieved the amulet resulting in a reward of 5,000 gold and a new quest
The next mission involved routing out a rival thieves guild that has recently started appearing in Hillsfar. Apparently, these new thieves are not affiliated with the guild and are causing unnecessary pressure from the town guards due to their brazen thievery. Again, this quest involved gathering information from the local pub as well as a lot of back and forth to outside areas such as the trading post. Eventually, I learned I had to go to the arena and fight a certain opponent to gain a new clue and move the main story forward.
The arena is pretty much the only area in the game with actual combat. Usually even if defeated you cannot die here although sometimes if you get caught in Hillsfar committing a crime you can be sentenced to fight in the arena and if you lose your match you are killed making it one of the few instances you can actually die in Hillsfar.
I never really understood the combat too well here. you’re just given a basic selection of dodges and strikes. I found myself making it through most fights by randomly pressing the keys in alternating directions. Battling isn’t ever really necessary in the game except for this one instance I had to for a quest though I don’t know if this is different for other classes. The enemy I had to defeat, an Orc named Ottis was thankfully pretty easy and I was able to defeat him with my chaotic alternating button mashing.
After defeating Ottis he tells me about the rival thieves, the Grey Wolves, and that I should join. Doing so requires going to a certain pub in town and waiting around in the shadows until approached. At this point, I was told to join the group that needed men with weapon skills which I correctly interpreted as meaning I had to go to the archery range and meet some kind of score.
In all of the game, this was the part that gave me the most trouble as you need to go up the leaderboard by scoring high at the range. Needless to say, I wasn’t very good at this. The first challenges are easy enough but getting the timing to hit swinging objects at later parts can be quite tricky.
I’m pretty sure the range difficulty is partly determined by your character’s dexterity which didn’t do me any favors since despite being a thief by fighter/thief Bill only had a dex of 16, not terrible but its still no 18. Thankfully I eventually passed by scoring enough points and working up the board.
With this the Grey Wolves welcome me into their ranks and send me off to find a magical pick and as you can imagine this is more of the same timed dungeon maze fetch questing
Once finding the pick and return to the hideout you’re greeted by some thugs from the thieves guild who have “taken care of the problem” and that’s it. That’s the last story quest. No climactic battle, nothing. Just some guys telling you it’s been taken care of and that’s it.
On returning to the guild master I was granted a wish via a magical ring that substantially increased my hitpoints but that’s all. It was also hinted at that my character now is famous and is worthy of help from a group known as the Harpers, which may play a little into the next gold box game, Curse of the Asure Bonds but that’s yet to be seen.
After playing through Hillsfar I now understand my friend’s dislike for the game. It’s just not that fun. It’s an interesting idea as a sort of side distraction from the first game but to be honest the whole thing just felt like a bunch of stringed-together mini-games. I did like some of the elements like the information gathering at the pubs but the horse travel and “dungeon crawling” was tedious. The game was mercifully short which can be a negative but in the case of this game, we’ll call it a positive.
I’m not going to bother going back through the game with other characters for several reasons. First I just don’t have the time, second I just don’t want to because I really didn’t enjoy the game and thirdly I’m afraid it may unbalance the rest of the series. I have to stress the HP bump received as a reward for my character was quite substantial, maybe it’s because he had an unusually high CON but I feel like if the rest of my group got this bump it may make things a bit too easy in future games. I do think it serves Bill well though since he is going to end up being my only multi-class character that is soon only going to be allowed to level up in thief so the extra HP should help keep him useful in the later games.
I’m not going to give this game an F only because I feel like it’s connection to D&D and the gold box series game it has enough elements to make it tolerable to me but it’s not a game id recommend to anyone.
Playing on: DOS PC (Tandy 1000 RL, CGA, 10MHz 8086)
Year: 1988
As I’ve been on this RPG journey over the years, hell, over the decades I have had this idea in my head that I should play a lot of the more mediocre or even poor RPGs so I can get a lot of them out of the way. By doing this I’ve held off playing a lot of the more well-received games that I’ve personally longed to try for a very long time. As I’ve entered my early 40’s I’ve realized this manner of thinking is well, dumb. I could die tomorrow, with the state of things recently it feels like all of civilization could end tomorrow. So why am I denying myself these excellent RPGs that I may never get to play because I keep holding them off for my “golden years”.
That said I’ve decided to start playing a lot of what would be considered A-list games that I’ve held off playing for a time. One such series of games is the “Gold Box” games, a series of D&D games created by SSI in the late 1980s and early 90s. As a huge fan of tabletop Dungeons and Dragons I’ve always wanted to play this series of games and I found it especially cool that you can import your party to the various sequels. With the decision made I began my quest with the 1988 PC CRPG classic Pool of Radiance.
I want to state I am playing an earlier version of the game on my Tandy 1000 which supports sound. It’s not much but it does play a little jingle using Tandy sound at the title screen as well as at the start of all battles. This music was removed from later versions for unknown reasons. Later versions of the game do have some minor bug fixes and adds a “tavern tale” that fails to trigger in the original version but it’s no big deal, I prefer my short jingle welcoming me to every game.
Readers familiar with this blog may find this entry far wordier and longer than many previous posts but you can pin that down to simply my great enthusiasm for this game and joy in relaying this journey with you where I may not necessarily share that same enthusiasm with a console RPG.
The game starts off as most D&D adventures do with creating your party of six adventurers by randomly rolling and rerolling for basic stats. Pool of Radiance sticks pretty strictly to 1st edition Dungeon and Dragons rules which means if you want to transfer your party to the later games you’re pretty limited on what characters you can create since 1st edition has pretty strict level caps on nonhuman characters. I do intend on transferring my party so I stuck with mostly humans since they have no level caps. My party consisted of two human fighters, one human wizard, one human cleric one dwarf fighter/thief, and one half-elf fighter/mage/thief. I felt I had to add at least a few demi-humans to mix things up and at least there is no limit on leveling the thief class. One thing the game does have no limits on is the ability to swap body sections when creating portraits for your characters. This allows for pretty funny combos since you can mix and match male and female body types.
Sean Connery in a metal bikiniOne of my rolled-up party
Party stats are done in the traditional D&D way of random dice rolls. being the purist that I am I don’t cheese the stat rolls and will sometimes spend several minutes rolling and rerolling until I get acceptable numbers for whatever specific class I’m going for.
After making my party I was dropped into what remained of the great city of Phlan. Phlan was once a large and prosperous trading city though in the current time of the game the city has mostly been abandoned with the exception of a small starting area known as the civilized area. The rest of the city, along with the castle has been overrun by monsters and bandits and it’s up to my band of adventurers to clear out the city and eventually find and defeat the “big bad” behind the increasing attacks on the civilized section.
The main screen while exploring the town and dungeons is split into three sections. The top left section is a first-person 3D view common in first-person dungeon crawlers. This is how your party will travel when in any dungeon or in Phlan. On the right are the party members and states such as armor class and HP and at the bottom is an empty block for any text that should appear, usually, for descriptions or the environment, the party is facing.
You’ll be visiting the “civilized” area a lot to heal up, buy weapons and armor, level up characters, and get quests at the city hall.
Rolf is the town tour guide though he looks like he just got off his shift at the local hardware store
There’s also a variety of other shops and temples as well as the local tavern. The tavern is a great place to find rumors which are basically just numbers referring the player to an entry in the manual. Much of the heavier narrative of the game such as rumors and journal entries are offloaded this way with players given a number that corresponds to an entry in the manual. Finding things like maps or notes in dungeons are also handled this way by having the player refer to the manual journal entries.
One note of caution when in the tavern though is there seems to be a chance of getting involved in a random bar fight, which is more like a major battle. This happened to me on my first visit before I even equipped my characters and my whole party was wiped out.
When battles take place in Pool the view changes to a more tactical layout. The viewpoint is from the side with a slight isometric effect and you and the computer take turns moving characters, attacking, casting spells, running away, etc. There is an auto-battle feature where the PC can control your party but I don’t recommend it. Certain battles, especially if there are many enemies on screen can take a long time, especially on a slow PC. I have enormous patience with these kinds of older games but even I found myself feeling a little bored during the larger battles that involved, for instance, hordes of kobolds and goblins. One aspect of the game that does mitigate these huge battles against waves of weaker foes is that after a certain number of their ranks is killed they do tend to surrender. This has actually saved my group from total party destruction on more than one occasion where I was close to having party members killed and then I would kill one goblin and suddenly the remaining ten would surrender. Another saving grace of POR is it uses the -10 HP rule which means a character is only “unconscious” and not dead at 0 HP and is only dead after reaching -10 HP. Once brought to 0 HP a character will bleed -1 HP per round unless bandaged by another character. The character doing the bandaging does not have to be next to the knocked-out character.
On the DOS version, these battles are completely keyboard-controlled so if you insist on mouse support you’ll have to go for something like the Amiga version.
As I mentioned earlier be sure to stop by the equipment shop and buy weapons for all characters. The weapons show more or less has the entire roster of weapons from the 1st edition manual so be ready to pursue a vast assortment of polearms. The game really starts after you’ve visited the town hall and are given all the currently available “quests”. Keep in mind most of these quests given at the town hall can be completed without actually hearing and accepting them but it does act as a good way to guide you on where to head next. The general idea is to slowly clear the city of monsters one district at a time as well as the surrounding areas like the graveyard or nearby island. Eventually, the group will leave the city and explore the surrounding countryside clearing it from threats to the city as well.
One note I must give before leaving the city is do not hire any extra help from the local training school if you can help it. You can hire one mercenary to go with your group but they take a cut of the treasure and XP. I found myself not needing to take anyone with me until the very end of the game which let me keep all of that sweet, sweet XP and treasure.
Once I was equipped I ventured into the slums and started exploring and clearing things out. You probably want to start mapping as this game in its original form does not feature an automap but I’m fairly good with memorizing maze layouts in game so I didn’t find a need to.
The first few areas of the city are mostly populated by lower-level monsters such as goblins and kobolds with a hobgoblin group thrown in here and there although there are a few rooms that have more powerful enemies like trolls that you will need to come back and deal with after gaining a few levels. There are a few cool aspects of this game I noticed in my first few hours of playing. One is the day and night cycle as time does pass as you adventure. This can be annoying though if you head back into the inhabited areas of the city and all the shops are closed because it’s night. Another thing I discovered is monsters do not respawn once cleared from a room and in most cases, after a certain number of random encounter battles in any given area the encounters will cease and an area will be considered cleared. If you head back to the city hall after clearing an area you will usually be rewarded with treasure and XP. Right from the start, I was rather impressed with POR and how it was very loyal to D&D and really made the world feel alive.
I spend the first several hours methodically clearing out several areas of the city, returning to the civilized area to level up and restock on arrows when needed. I was able to handle most encounters though I had to leave a few for later such as the trolls in one abandoned building. The different areas vary on what monsters inhabit them and even how to tackle the various areas. for instance, the second area of the slums is inhabited by giant lizards and some undead ghouls who can paralyze and wipe out your entire party if you’re not careful. A clerics’ “turn undead” ability is very useful here. There is also a hidden thieves’ lair that needs to be cleared out.
This is the bandit leader “Norris the gray”. It’s never implied he’s anything but a human though I have no idea what’s going on with his face.
One city section is basically a large market square where the party is given a few options on how to infiltrate the area and check out a black market auction for a magical item. options include disguising your party as monsters, sneaking around all thief like or my choice, walking in like you own the place. Battles can sometimes be avoided completely with the tone you take up with monster groups should you choose to parley rather than simply jump into battle. I was able to successfully make it to the market and observe the auction for the city council.
After clearing a few city sections I noticed the riverboat man had begun offering rides to the nearby island keep which also happens to be something the town council has tasked my party with clearing.
The island is mostly overrun with weaker undead such as skeletons and zombies though there is also one particular room filled with poisonous insects. status effects such as poison can be devastating in POR and you can easily lose even higher-level characters to an unlucky save vs poison roll. Usually, the best course of action if you lose a party member is to just quit and reload an earlier save, of which you are allowed to save anywhere. The keep ended with a rather large battle against many groups of humanoids. thankfully I was able to win the battle thanks to the rather liberal use of the sleep spell which is a lifesaver in this game again humanoid enemies and could even be considered a little overpowered. The island keep was also one of the first areas I discovered the code wheel that came with the original game was meant for copy protection and is also used in the game to decode secret messages which is a cool touch. If you do not have the physical wheel there is a digital version online.
Be very careful around poisonous enemies like scorpions and frogs.
After clearing the island keep it was back to the city where I still had a few more sections to clear that was not the castle proper which seemed to be guarded by more powerful monsters and which I assumed (rightfully) should be saved for last. The final sections of the city were a large library, an area overrun with a troop of hobgoblins, a mansion taken over by bandits, a nondescript “wealthy area” and a temple of Bane. The temple of Bane is another area where you can fairly easily talk yourself out of more random encounters if you desire. I was a bit excited to search the library since I was hoping to find some magic scrolls for my wizard. I had to end up using a knock spell to get entry but I suppose if you had a skilled enough thief you could pick the lock, I didn’t apparently. Unfortunately, the library did house a basilisk which can turn you to stone and a specter who level drained, we will come back to the level draining in a moment. If either of these things happens to a party member I still found it easier to quit and reload a save.
Most of these areas were filled with the usual suspects of hobgoblins, ogres, and orcs. The mansion though was inhabited by a large number of bandits and several traps. The temple of Bane also had a rather large battle against a group of humanoids. Apparently from what I learned after already beating the game I was supposed to of picked up a cleric NPC to help cleanse the temple of Bane but somehow I missed them in my playthrough so I just handled the whole thing myself.
Now at this point, all that was left in the city area was the graveyard though I was also getting several quests for tasks outside of the city area such as finding the source of what was poisoning the main river and preventing a nomad tribe, as well as a large kobold tribe from joining forces with whomever, was trying to take over the city. being the methodical player I am I decided to take on the graveyard before venturing into the countryside around the city not knowing that the graveyard was actually meant to be tackled a little later in the game.
The graveyard kind of sucks. At first, it’s not so bad and your only facing your typical skeletons and zombies who at this point in the game do not pose much of a challenge. Once venturing deeper into the graveyard the challenge level takes a steep climb. This is primarily due to ghouls and wights. These are not powerful creatures due to high HP or damage dealing but they do have pretty devastating abilities in that both can level drain. Thankfully the game does give the party a copious amount of restoration scrolls but I still often found it better to just load a prior save since even using a restoration scroll you lose precious experience points. Besides wondering monsters that paralyze and level drain there are also several high-level undead such as mummies as well as a vampire which can be quite a challenge to unprepared, or in my case under-leveled characters.
Besides taking magical weapons to hurt him the vampire can cast charm person, has decent HP and worst of all…..level drains.
After several tries, a +3 vs undead sword, a lot of luck, and as many buff spells as I could cast prior to the battle I was able to defeat the vampire and clear out the cemetery.
After clearing out the evil of the cemetery I was finally ready to explore the work outside of Phlan. I had a rough idea where several of the locations that I had to go were from rumors and crude maps found in the city section but nothing concrete. I first decided to head east and try to tackle the kobold tribe since in my mind that would be an easy place to start.
Here is my party returning to Phlan after a fierce battle
Once you leave the city proper the view shifts to a sort of overworld map with the party being represented by a character on a horse. I’d also like to point out that at this point, and probably even prior money becomes completely pointless. At first, my party was scrounging and selling excess magical items to pay the high price to train to level up but very quickly my party amassed a large number of gems and jewelry. The great thing about gems is that one gem seems to weigh about the same as a gold piece but can be worth anywhere from 10 gold to 1000 gold when sold at the weapons shop which is important because encumbrance in this game, like in the pen and paper D&D game is a thing you have to be careful of. Too many coins or too heavy weapons and equipment will slow your character down and severely limit movement in battle.
Unfortunately in my first few ventures into the surrounding wilderness, I had very little to go on except loose directions. The overworld is plotted with X, and Y coordinates which are displayed under the party names HP (hit points) and AC (armor class) but at the time I was ignoring it for a more free-form overworld exploration.
Random monster encounters in the overworld range from fairly easy encounters with kobolds and giant lizards to minotaurs and driders, half spider half drow monstrosities, that hurl fireballs with reckless abandon. Why deep underdark creatures are freely wandering the surface is anyone’s guess.
Eventually, I decided to give up on the kobold lair and instead return to Phlan, restock and follow the river north in order to find the origin of the waters poisoning. This is when I discovered the pyramid.
Following the river upstream from the city of Phlan I eventually discovered a small island with what looked to be a pyramid on it. searching around the shore I found a boat that can be taken to the pyramid. The beginning of the pyramid has several teleporters. one seemed to take my party into a maze just filled with random groups of fighters and dwarves and clerics and such that attacked me. The other teleporter took my group to a separate section of the dungeon that seemed filled with various experiments and a toxic ooze being piped around which seemed to be the source of the polluted water. I also came across various lizardmen who were being experimented on and after talking to some I was given a password in case I ever encountered the lizardman village. After turning off the toxic sludge I eventually stumbled on and slew the wizard responsible for these experiments. I guess the wizard was kind of like a mix between a captain planet villain and dr. Moreau. as he was trying to build super lizard men with the toxic sludge. From the notes, I found he also wasn’t working with the main villains and they had actually threatened him if he did not join them. After gathering all the treasure and items and leaving the pyramid I was greeted with a short scene of the river and surrounding lands returning to normal after the sludge had been cut off a nice detail.
After returning to Phlan and collecting my reward I decided to search for the lizard men camp I was told about to the east. I soon found a spot of forest in an otherwise wasteland or rocky-type area and decided to investigate. Pro-tip, always check out clumps of forest sitting alone surrounded by different terrain in RPGs, always.
Using the password given to me by the lizardmen in the pyramid I was able to get an audience with the shaman who informed my group of a power struggle within the tribe. I was able to solve this issue by having a one-on-one fight with the challenger for the lizardman chief. The battle was actually pretty easy and assured that the lizard men would not become an issue for Phlan. At this point, the shaman warned my group to not venture into the lizard man dungeon or I would be attacked. Being the murderous group of adventurers we were though I decided to venture into the caves in search of treasure. I encounter many pools in the lizard man caves that allowed for constant harassing attacks by the enemy who would pop out of the pools, throw spears, and then dive back into the water. I really appreciate the small details like this that Pool Of Radiance is full of.
It was at this point that instead of randomly wandering the overworld in search of my quest goals I decided to simply start at one end of the map and sweep from top to bottom in order to cover everything, keeping track of course of my map X and Y coordinates. Doing this I came across several monster lairs which are basically monster encounters but instead of a group of monsters, it’s a small dungeon inhabited by a certain group of monsters and possibly treasure, again, a nice detail. I soon came across a friendly silver dragon that told me about a magic lamp that I should bring to him should I find it.
Using my methodical overworld search method I was able to eventually find all my quest goals given to me by the council. I quickly found the nomads I was tasked with stopping from joining the enemy. It turned out they were actually good people and after helping them repel a kobold attack which came in several waves they pledged not to attack Phlan.
I also eventually came across the large kobold tribe I was looking for initially. The tribe was actually a lot tougher than I anticipated with the final battle with the kobold king fought in several back-to-back battles involving trolls, dire wolves, and high-level fighters sent as emissaries from Tyranthraxus, the name of the final boss.
Thankfully I had some help from a warrior princess who was being held prisoner but had escaped. I also decided to go back to town and recruit a mercenary to lend even more help, maxing my party out to eight members. Even with the help this was a very challenging battle and took a few attempts to gain victory. I also learned in this battle that your hirelings can actually surrender if the battle isn’t going so well which can really, really suck.
This is the character portrait they chose for a female barbarian fighter.
I also found the lamp the dragon was referring to which supposedly has a djinn inside it which will help me fight the vampire. It seems I tackled the graveyard earlier than the game intended but that’s fine with me. I returned to Phlan and was given a quest to deliver a special message to a rival citys outpost to the west. I was familiar with this place since I had come across it earlier. On arriving at the outpost my party was asked to have dinner with the fort’s captain. At dinner, you are given the opportunity to ask several questions about events going on and the pool of radiance. after dinner, the party is ambushed by guardsmen and you have to escape the stronghold.
On the way back I decided to stop off and search a pirate stronghold I had seen earlier. On investigating the fort I came across a small boy being held in a slave pen.
I decided to buy the boy after gaining an audience with the pirate fort’s captain. I assume they are several ways to free the boy though as earlier I had released some wild animals by accident and it took several turns for the pirates to round them up. I’m guessing one option is to release the animals and sneak over and free the boy in the chaos.
On returning to Phlan yet again I learned that the boy was part of a quest I hadn’t received yet and got my reward. All that was left now was to storm the castle. At this point most of if not all of my single-classed characters had hit the level cap of 6th or 7th level while my dual multi-classed dwarf and half-elf were also decently leveled. my fighter/mage/thief character had mostly settled into a ranged fighter at this and had at least reached a high enough mage level to get a fireball spell.
When I initially entered the castle gate area when scouting in the early part of my playthrough I was approached by a man selling a wagon. I bought the wagon but then decided to leave the area so I think I lost the opportunity to sneak into the castle. This was fine for me since I kind of prefer just busting heads sometimes. I was greeted at the gates by bugbears and ettins (two-headed giants) as well as evil fighters and mages but it wasn’t too much of a challenge at this point and was more of an opportunity to collect more magical weapons and items from defeated foes.
Once in the castle area, there’s basically a large loop around the castle which has many doors and sections to explore. I ignored the large set of doors to the inner castle for not as I explored the various sections in the outer castle. One very annoying part of this area is the alarms that go off when passing certain doorways. I couldn’t seem to find a way to turn these alarms off and even after triggering them, they can be triggered. triggering an alarm means a minimum of at least two battles against a group of boulder throwing hill giants and even though the battles aren’t particularly tough it can really slow you down when you’re just trying to explore or get somewhere.
When entering the inner castle I was always damaged by some giants throwing boulders at me. I guess this is because I defaced the temple of Bane earlier.
Once inside I had to deal with Tyranthraxus most powerful defense, the dreaded hedge maze. I’m not really joking though as It took me several sessions to navigate through this maze which involves teleporters, poison hedges if you decide to cut through them, and referencing some map pieces in the manual that you should have come across during gameplay. There is a room with a fake Tyranthraxus who is just a high-level fighter. The battle seemed too easy and very uneventful so I had strong suspicions it was a fake. After going back to town and having the councilwoman give me the same lines it more or less confirmed things so I made the trip all the way back to the hedge maze to find the real Tyranthraxus. Eventually, I found the way forward through a secret wall and into the last sections of the final dungeon.
In the areas before the final battles, my party did come across a random medusa in a trap room all by herself. As long as she doesn’t stone any party members the battle is quite manageable as she’s alone and can be ganged up on pretty easily. There is also an evil wizard that if you talk to him will betray Tyranthraxus pretty quickly and join your cause. Pool of Radiance has no problem allowing evil characters to join a group full of good characters.
At this point, I was pretty prepared for the final battle and most of my characters had pretty decent magical armor, powerful spells, and at least +2 magical swords for my front line fighters. My main fighter was even wielding a magic flame tongue sword.
The fight with Tyranthraxus is in two parts and is back to back with no time to heal. The first battle is against a group of high-level fighters. My first attempt against this group went decidedly not good. I lost several party members and when the fight ended and I was thrown against Tyranthraxus I was handily defeated. I quickly remembered my hold person spell which thankfully worked like a charm against the humanoid fighters even though I first feared that their high level would grant them near immunity. casting prey and haste as much as I could beforehand also helped a great deal in the battle.
Next, my party faced Tyranthraxus who apparently was a bronze dragon who was corrupted and granted power by the pool of radiance which he also seemed to be guarding. the pool of radiance itself which really had very little to do with the game overall up to this point except it was “out there somewhere”.
After the dragon offers for your group to join him (you have to choose no else you die automatically) the real battle commences.
Thankfully the dragon has no minions at this point to deal with, unfortunately, it’s, well, a dragon. By circling the dragon and hitting it with my fighters as well as I could I was able to take down the dragon, though even after several attempts I was never able to claim victory without losing at least two party members. I had more than enough gold to have those members resurrected back in town but I had to take the -1 Constitution hit from a resurrection. Tyranthraxus’s most fearsome weapon was his lightning bolt breath weapon which is generally what caused fatalities during the fight.
I guess the dragon was possessed by a demon that lived in the pool the whole time and with his defeat, he is dragged into the depths before he can possess a still-living party member.
Heading back into town to see the town clerk officially ends the game. How bureaucratic.
You can tell how excited she is that evil is defeated by the expression on her face as well as all the exclamation marks!
Pool of Radiance is a great game and a good start for the gold box series. I was very impressed by the atmosphere and world that a game of this age provided. As a 1st and 2nd edition D&D player, I was also impressed by how loyal the game was to its pen-and-paper inspiration and really enjoyed fighting classic beasts from the papers of the monster manual. One thing I do dislike and a rule my D&D groups always ignored was level restrictions for demi-humans. I can’t really blame the game for this as it was a rule of the game but it really encourages players to pick nothing but single-classed humans, especially if you want to carry the same team across the entire series.
I thought the whole clearing Phlan of monsters was a well enough hook but the “Pool of Radiance” itself seemed to barely play any part in the game and was just a portal of some sort that allowed a demon to possess a dragon. I was half hoping it was more of a reward for completing the game that perhaps allowed a stat boost for a character or two.
Visuals were good in my opinion for 1988, especially some of the monster portraits that would come up prior to an actual encounter and were taken straight from the monster manual. Sound, at least on the Tandy was mostly non-existent except for beeps here and there. my version played a little jingle tune at the title screen and before every battle but this was removed from later revisions, even on the Tandy 1000. Players aren’t missing anything without the jingle, however, I liked it.
The world of course is taken straight from tabletop D&D so if you wanted you could delve very deep into the lore of the land, far more than with a straight video game. The entire game also had an adventure module created so if you wanted to play Pool in a tabletop setting you could. I really enjoyed touches like signs changing after completing certain quests and things like the area around the river clearing up after the source of the toxic waste was shut off.
The gameplay and battles are a bit clunky but once you get in the groove of it things work fine. It can be a drag to have to camp and then constantly rememorize spells followed by rest and repeat after a battle. There were some other odd things for instance after all enemies are defeated you have to toggle through several characters’ actions before the game realizes there are no more enemies and the option to end combat is given.
I’m really not sure they could have made a game on the PC much more faithful to D&D in 1988 than was done here. all the core weapons, armor, and spells are here as well as a nice assortment of monsters. you could argue that there were way too many pole arms for sale and that some of the monster placement was a bit off but overall it was a great effort at putting the tabletop experience onto a PC. I’m really excited to finally play the rest of the series.
Random Battles: my life long level grind 