Dark Queen of Krynn, The Download (1992 Role playing Game)

The Dark Queen of Krynn is the last part in the Dragonlance RPG series using the standard game engine found in the Goldbox series (with slight enhancements).

Evil, after failing two times before, finally tries to defeat Good and conquer the world of Krynn. This time, the Dark Queen herself will take command over the forces of Evil. Her aim is to enter Krynn, which would ultimately lead to the defeat of Good. The party's task is to prevent this.

Characters from Death Knights of Krynn can be transferred.

This game concludes the Krynn Trilogy. This game came out just a year after the second (and two years after the first) game, yet The Dark Queen of Krynn features some improvements.

After successfully fighting the evil forces trying to reign over Krynn, the supreme evil itself wishes to take over the fight. Once again it's time to protect the land!

Again you first need to build up your party, or import it from the previous game. If you prefer to, or haven't played the previous game, you can, off course, create all new characters. Oddly enough, you can only add characters from Death Knights of Krynn (the second game) and not from the first game Champions of Krynn. The way you create new characters remained the same. First off you chose the race, gender, social status and attitude of the character. Next you decide upon the attributes the character has. You don't get to assign points, but you can keep repeating the random distribution until you're satisfied with the attributes the character has (you'll understand what I mean when you start the game). But you do get to choose the looks of the character. The characters are icons that you see while in combat mode and you can decide how they will look like (actually you just get to combine some pre-prepared looks and assign colors to them). This is a fun, but fairly useless feature. It only helps you distinguish your own men easier while in combat.

You can create as many characters as you want, but you can only select up to six (although one is enough). I do suggest you make your party as big as possible, because it does mater in the fights if you are alone or you have some comrades to help you fight the opponents.

So when the adventure begins you start off in a quite little place, where the commander explains the situation for you. Quickly upon leaving the camp you are involved in the first fight. After winning a fight (if you lose it doesn't matter anyway) you get some spoils of war and the party members get important experience points.

As with most RPGs the more points your characters have, the stronger they are! Depending on your choices at the beginning of the game, they also have different skills that will come in handy (from the use of magic, to the stealing skill - but remember, if you selected your character to be lawful, you can't really expect him to steal).

Every now and again you will need to rest. If you're in a settlement that's quite easy (you simply go to the inn), otherwise you need to set up camp first. There are also other buildings in settlements and there you can buy, trade, learn, gather information, etc.

The gameplay remained somewhat similar the first to two games, although the opponents did get tougher. The biggest difference is in the graphics. This game already features the 256 color VGA graphics, which are much nicer to the eyes. The sounds support the soundblaster, yet it hasn't really improved that much (in fact it sounds worse, even if technically more sophisticated). So get going and make sure that this time you really rid Krynn of all the evil!

The game features copy protection questions. You can find the answers to them in the Journal, which is also the manual to the game.

Part of the Dungeons & Dragons games Series

The weakest of all Gold Box games in my opinion, SSI's games based on "Dragonlance" AD&D setting are still decent enough to merit attention by all RPG fans. It is not that they are bad games - I just find the plots of "Forgotten Realms" games more interesting and the gameplay more balanced. Champions of Krynn for example gives no experience to any character who is knocked unconscious in combat - something that not only violates AD&D rules, but also makes the game unfairly frustrating, especially in the beginning when your party is still weak. The three games in this series are Champions of Krynn, Death Knights of Krynn, and The Dark Queen of Krynn. All are worth a look, but don't expect them to set new standards. The best thing about these games is the interesting magic system, which restricts spells according to the character's alignment.

GameSpot's decent short review of The Dark Queen of Krynn goes as follows: "The finale of the Dragonlance gold box role-playing game series, Dark Queen of Krynn took players all over the Dragonlance world, from the sea caves of the Dimernesti to the nether planes of existence. What begins as a lover's quarrel escalates to an episodic war, as the player's party is forced to jump from town to town to fight battle after battle. The adventure culminates in a mission to the nether realms to free the archmage Raistlin Majere (one of the most popular characters from the Dragonlance novel series) from his imprisonment in the Abyss.

Dark Queen of Krynn seemed to have more of an emphasis on combat than did its predecessors. The player's party would battle such ferocities as sahuagin, dark wizards (with the innate abilities of Mirror Image, Fire Shield, and Minor Globe of Invulnerability), and enchanted draconians (who were nastier than normal draconians in that they would explode when killed).

Unfortunately, a handful of bugs compromised what should have been a masterful conclusion to the series. Normally, a character with enough experience points to advance a level through training would have his name highlighted; unfortunately, one bug prevented this display for multiclass characters, so that careful count had to be made of a character's XP if he was not to waste experience points on training for a level he earned some time ago. Other bugs involved inescapable areas, like the teleport room in the Fire Tower or certain battlefields in rooms without doors, in which case the only way to recover would be to reboot."

How to run this game on modern Windows PC?

People who downloaded Dark Queen of Krynn, The have also downloaded:
Death Knights of Krynn, Champions of Krynn, Curse of the Azure Bonds, Pools of Darkness, Pool of Radiance, Secret of the Silver Blades, Treasures of the Savage Frontier, Gateway to the Savage Frontier