Dungeons & Dragons Games Vol. 10: Silver Box - Dragons of Flame (MS-DOS)

Developer:

U.S. Gold

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Release Date:

1989

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Systems:

DOS, Amiga, Atari ST, C64, ZX Spectrum, CPC, FM Towns, PC-98, NES

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This week on Super Adventures, I'm checking out the next Dungeons & Dragons game on my list: Dragons of Flame. Though you don't need me to tell you that, you can see it yourself on that beautiful title screen up there.

Dragons of Flame was the second of the 'Silver Box' Dragonlance games... or maybe the third. I did the research for this, I tried to pin it down, but it was released so close to War of the Lance I really don't know which comes next. At least I can be sure that it's the second chapter of the story that began in Heroes of the Lance, and that it's by the same developer, U.S. Gold.

I also know that the game was ported to many of the same systems, though not quite all of them. Fans with 8-bit machines like the MSX, Master System, PC-88 and Sharp X1 would've had to upgrade to see what happened next. Either that or bought the novel, Dragons of Autumn Twilight. It did get a ZX Spectrum port though! In fact this was the second and final D&D game released on the computer, and on the Amstrad CPC as well. I'm experiencing the end of an era here.

Okay, I'm going to put the game on and see how far I get. It's probably short, but it's probably also really difficult, so don't get your hopes up.

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Oh, there's the proper title screen! Kind of. They forgot to put the title on it, and it only flickers on screen long enough to for players to perceive it subliminally, but it's definitely a scan of the cover art.

Right now it seems like every D&D game has borrowed its cover art from an earlier project and this is no exception. But this time they took it from the Dragons of Flame adventure module for the tabletop game, so I'll let them off.

I tried messing with the DOSBox settings and restarted the game a few times, trying to get the picture to stick around long enough for a title to appear on it, but I had no luck. Oh, I should mention that I'm playing the Steam version of the game, which comes in a pack called Silver Box Classics.

I'm starting to think there's no character creation screen in this game, but that's fine as I've already got every possible character type in my party to begin with. There's a wizard, an elf, a dwarf, a woman...

Hang on, I recognise those eight faces. I couldn't name any of them, aside from Riverwind, Tanis and Goldmoon, but this is my crew from Heroes of the Lance! 

Heroes of the Lance (MS-DOS)

Heroes of the Lance is a side-scrolling action-adventure with slight RPG elements, where you navigate a maze of hallways, switching between your eight heroes to use their abilities.

It took me way too long to realise that when you reach an archway in the background you don't step through it into the next room, you rotate the camera 90 degrees so now you're travelling down the passageway that continues through that door. It's like playing Fez or something.

I actually finished Heroes, so my team has just picked up the Disks of Mishakal from Xak Tsaroth and now they're on their way to the ancient fortress of Pax Tharkas. They also defeated the ancient dragon Khisanth using the blue Crystal Staff, but that hasn't stopped the evil Draconian Hordes at all, so I need to pick up my pace. 

Hey, this is new. Heroes of the Lance was entirely side-view and underground, but now we're a little dude walking around the landscape. It looks more like Ultima or Dragon Quest. Or maybe Zelda 1.

I've been given two clear instructions: race south, follow the road, but there isn't a road here! There is a bridge up up there however, and I did start off facing north, so I'm going to ignore everything I was told to do and go straight for the most interesting thing on the screen.

I like that they gave the hero diagonal frames on the overworld, that'll be handy when I'm swerving to avoid the green monsters wandering around everywhere. It seems that when I run into something the game changes back into a side-scroller, so I got it wrong earlier - it's actually like Zelda 2! 

Zelda 2 was a 1987 NES game though. How do these graphics compare to a 16-bit platformer from 1989?

Shadow of the Beast (Amiga)

This is from a different system, Amiga instead of PC, but Shadow of the Beast was considered to be one of the most visually impressive games of its time. It looks better in motion, with its multiple background layers scrolling at different speeds to give the feeling of depth as you walk. Dragons of Flame doesn't even have a background right now (though the walking animation is quite good).

Anyway, the good news is that I think I've found the road, so I can start making progress. First though, I need to check what that message from the mysterious materialising character said; it flashed up on screen too fast for me to read.

This guy wants me to head in the wrong direction to find a cache of weapons. Well, I've already ignored the game telling me to race south, so taking a short detour further north can't hurt. Well, unless the advancing Draconian Hordes beat me up. See, this is why I need better weapons!

Heroes of the Lance didn't let me replace my starting weapons, it wasn't really an RPG, but if I can get my hands on some magical +1 blades this early in the game I'll probably have an easier time. A +1 bow and some +1 arrows might help too. I dunno, I never really used archery in the first game. I just hit people with a sword when they were hostile and froze them with a web spell when they were shooting sparkly things at me.

So theoretically that experience should carry over and I should be able to jump right in where I left off.

Yeah, this is basically how things went for me in Heroes of the Lance as well.

You might be wondering why I kept sending them all leaping off the same cliff like lemmings. Well first, lemmings don't actually do that, it was a hoax. Second, I thought it'd be funny. Also, I didn't want to continue playing with one of my heroes permanently gone. I accidentally threw Goldmoon into a pit at the start of Heroes of the Lance and then found out later that you need her staff to beat the final boss.

Hang on, who was that last guy? He's not part of my team! Is he the mysterious materialising NPC I talked to? Did he just invite himself into my party?

I started a new game and headed north this time in search of weapons, though this tree maze I've found myself in is leading me back down again. Video games using trees as barriers is kind of weird when you think about it, as when has a tree ever blocked someone on foot? You just walk around them, they don't grow that close together!

I've been trying to choose the smartest routes and get my timing right to slip past the green monsters patrolling back and forth, but I think I've hit the point where I'm going to have to walk into one of them and start a fight, as there's no other way forward.

Bloody hell this is even worse than I expected! The enemies just teleport in and swarm you.

The trees aren't teleporting in though, that's me changing the view angle. In Heroes of the Lance you can turn the camera around at doorways, but there aren't any doorways out in the wilderness so the game lets you do it any time you want. I have no idea why.

You might be wondering why I'm just running around instead of attacking any of them. I'm wondering that too! I'm holding down the attack button I used in Heroes of the Lance and pressing in different directions, but it's not working this time. I've tried pressing a bunch of buttons without any luck.

I managed to bring up the menu at least!

Here I can heal my team, cast spells and save the game. Hang on, where's the save option gone? Don't tell me I can't save any more!

Oh, never mind the menu scrolls down to reveal other options this time. Anyway, I can heal my team, I can even bring dead characters back (as long as they didn't touch a lake and literally explode), but it's not necessarily a good idea. For one thing the first game only gave me a limited set of charges to last the whole game and I don't know if the situation's changed here, but also I'm pretty sure that every resurrection costs the target a point of constitution, permanently. So characters get less healthy each time they're brought back, until they run out of points and just die.

Okay, I'm going to get back to pressing buttons and hopefully one of them will make my dude swing his sword.

Damn, did I just press the 'Blow up the world' button? What's this I'm looking at?

Oh, it's a map! I love having a map. It doesn't actually show me where I'm meant to be going, but if that fire is representing the enemy taking over the land then I guess the game wasn't lying when it said 'race south'.

I won't be going there with this team though! I'm going to restart again and see if I can find somewhere quiet to practice with the controls.

I managed to jump up to a place the monsters couldn't reach me and now I can just hang out and relax. There's a button to go back to the overworld map, but I'm in no rush. In fact something about this place is making me feel like putting Terraria on instead.

The Steam version of Heroes of the Lance didn't come with the manual, but this game does, so I've been browsing through it, learning a bit about the characters and the setting. But it doesn't mention a damn thing about the controls! It seems like you need to hunt down a quick start card for that.

The good news is that I've managed to do this guy's ranged attack and lob his spear. I even managed to find it and pick it back up again (honestly, I'm not sure how this weapon is any use in combat). The bad news is that my issues with the buttons is getting worse. Sometimes I'll reset the game and some of the keys don't seem to work any more. Maybe it's a DOSBox problem, I don't know.

Man, this really isn't working.

I've read some advice which suggests using ranged combat when you can. I don't know how you'd even get that far away though. The enemies just rush in and form a blob of death around you; they've got no respect for personal space.

I'm sure there must be a knack to it, people have actually made actual progress in this game, but I'm tired of fighting with it so I'm turning it off. But there are plenty of other ports and a lot of them probably even look better. 

I know, I'll try the Amiga version! Even if it turns out to be just as bad, that'll at least rule out my DOSBox settings being the problem.

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AMIGA VERSION

Amiga

Oh here we go! I knew the Amiga wouldn't let me down. Much better music too.

The in-game graphics look very similar to the PC game, but I'm fine with that. I just want a version that works right and I can attack enemies in, and this seems to have me covered. I just hold down the fire button on the joystick while holding in a direction and the sword gets swung.

Amiga

Man, that's a bit rough for the first fight in the game The sword worked though, kind of! I also got to use the spear on one of them.

The main difference from the DOS game I've noticed is the enemies swarm in a bit slower, they give you a bit of room, and there's a pause whenever a hero dies as it loads in the next character.

In retrospect what I should've done in this fight is cast 'web' or 'sleep' or something on the troll to temporarily take it out of the battle while I dealt with the enemies on the right. Heroes of the Lance lets you cast spells from the pause menu and I'm sure this works the same way. 

Out of curiosity I checked what magazines thought of the game and they were actually pretty positive.

Even the Gold Box-hating Amiga Power was nice to it, writing that the game was "almost instantly playable" and "an excellent introduction to the new bread of fantasy RPGs". I think they must have been havin' a loaf.

Alright, once again my party has been wiped out, so I need to restart.

Amiga

Are you serious right now? I can't restart the game because I don't have a properly formatted save disk? I don't want to restore a save I just want to start again from the beginning!

Is there's no way to abort this screen? Am I just trapped in this loop forever?

Well, the Amiga version wasn't going to work out for me anyway. Having to swap from the game disk to the save disk and back again every time I wanted to save would've driven me mad. What I need is a simple, streamlined, user-friendly version of this game with no messing around, no save disks, and no ambiguous keyboard controls. You just put it on and it works. 

Hey, didn't this get a NES port?

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NES VERSION

Famicom

The NES version of the game has cutscenes, with dialogue and everything!

Unfortunately it's actually a Famicom version, as it was only released in Japan and I never managed to learn that language. I could use Google Translate to get the gist of it, but there is a lot of talking here. Way more than I expected.

Famicom

The overworld is entirely different now! They took out the roads, the tree maze has become a path with some trees along the side, and it's just a lot less interesting in general. 

Without the maze it's easier to get past patrols, I just walk forward. But they've taken away my ability to walk diagonally so it's overall harder to dodge enemy encounters.

Famicom

Oh, this is a lot more civilised! I can actually fight the enemies without being swarmed. Sure they still found a way to chip away my health, by exploding after death, but I feel like this is something I'll learn to avoid. Eventually.

This time these battles feel more like typical RPG encounters, where you fight a couple of enemies and then you're immediately back out on the field. I don't get to stick around and spin the camera. I'm making a lot more progress though, heading south toward the fortress like it told me to in the DOS game.

A FEW BATTLES LATER

Famicom

Alright, this has to be the place! It's either a fantasy fortress or a space rocket launch site, and either way this is where I want to be.

I just wish I could understand what's going on without having to check a translation.

Famicom

This isn't a fortress! Why am I suddenly in a snow level?

I know I'm missing a lot of the plot by not knowing the language, but I expect that I'd still be missing a lot even if I did. These Dragonlance games feel like one of those licenced tie-ins aimed at fans who already know the story and characters. I mean, nobody played Batman: The Movie and came away with any real understanding of what happens in that Batman movie, it was another tie-in product like the action figures and the Happy Meals.

Well, I know the routine at least. Go south, fight monsters when I can't avoid them.

SOON

Famicom

Is this the fortress? It's definitely a dungeon with dungeon music and tough enemies that take more button mashing to kill. Trouble is that it's also a maze.

The game's switched back to Heroes of the Lance mode where it's always side view and I can change the camera perspective at doorways. Which means I either need a map or a fantastic memory, as the only difference between the hallways is how many doors they have, where the pits are, and where the lamp on the wall is located.

A FEW CORRIDORS LATER

Famicom

Hang on, have I walked around in a circle? No, that's a different background... I think. Man, this place is giving me serious deja-vu. The enemies all come back so they're no help. (Especially those dragon men from the first game that fire magic at you and dodge backwards when you try to hit them, I hate those guys.)

I did glance at a map online but the sight of it was so hostile to my human brain that I don't even know if it drove me mad or not; no one should ever have to map out a maze as 20 horizontal strips. I'm mostly just a bit bored and miserable I think. If I was truly insane I'd want to keep playing.

Hey, I know, I'll look at a Japanese computer version instead! What I need is something with top of the range graphics and a hard drive for saving.

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FM TOWNS VERSION

FM Towns

Oh damn, that is beautiful. I think that has to be the best title screen. The Amiga/Atari ST image is also very nice, better in some ways, but this has the title on it. And they all win when it comes to music because it's not being played through the beepy PC speaker. I think this might have CD music actually.

The Fujitsu FM Towns computer came out in 1989, with a fast 32-bit 386 processor, custom graphic hardware and a built in CD drive, so it would've been the most powerful system that the game was ported to. It's a real step above an Amiga 500 or an old EGA PC.

Okay, I'm not messing around this time, I've formatted a save disk and set up a hard drive, so wherever this game wants to save I've got it covered. I need to be able to just press 'save' and get moving again.

FM Towns

This is new! Okay, the Famicom version also had an intro cutscene with lots of text, but it didn't have art like this. I think Goldmoon is supposed to have blonde hair, but whatever, close enough.

This version of the game has something else the Famicom game doesn't: an option to switch the language from Japanese to English! I think those are your only two choices, but it's good enough for me.

FM Towns

Oh. Well, that's a bit of a disappointment after all those high-res 640x480 images.

Why is the overworld so bland and empty and different? Where are all the enemies and NPCs? And why can't I move diagonally! I guess this has more in common with the Famicom game than I expected.

I guess I'll try walking into this building, seeing as the other versions didn't have them and it's right next to me.

FM Towns

The buildings have wisdom to share! So they're basically serving the same function as NPCs, except they won't join my party. Hang on, this is the same message I got at the start of the PC game. Man, I never did get those weapons.

Alright, that's it, I'm going to find some mountains and I'm going to find some weapons. That's my goal and I shall not quit until I have achieved it.

FM Towns

I feel like the map's completely changed, for the blander, but there are still a few half-assed mazey bits. This swirling path leads to a box and it better be something good in there, because I had to walk several steps to get there.

The thing about this version of the game is that I'm only able to walk a few steps before I have to pay for them with a random encounter. The enemies don't appear on the overworld any more but it turns out that they are everywhere and they're unavoidable. Games like Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy have enough range to their randomness that you can hear a bit of the overworld music sometimes, but this is more like Breath of Fire II with how relentless its encounters are.

FM Towns

On the plus side, the combat is much better than it is in the PC and Amiga versions, or more manageable at least. These encounters have never felt more like fighting game stages. Enemies tend to die in a single hit and once I've killed two or three of them I'm instantly returned to the overworld.

The game's basically a cross between Final Fantasy and a crappy Golden Axe at this point.

The trouble is my nemesis is back, that bastard dragon man who fires magic at me, and he's just as much of a pain as he always is.

I can jump over his hadoukens if I'm lucky, sometimes I can even even kill him without taking a hit, but the dude explodes when he dies and I'm never lucky enough to jump away in time. Even when I do well I lose health! Yeah, I know, I should probably cast magic back at them, but it doesn't come free.

All these little failures are adding up and it's really draining my cleric's charges. I could just cast 'web' on him each time, but that would drain my mage's charges. I've read that you can move Raistlin the mage to the front and let him get hit with magic to recharge his staff, but the dude's so fragile I'd rather not risk it. Also if he gets charged up too much he explodes.

In Heroes of the Lance I'd save before every new corridor and reload if I ended up making a mess of things, but I'm not going to retry every random encounter until I get them right, I'd be here forever. In fact encounters are so damn frequent that I'm already here forever! It's taking all the joy out of exploration. I'm 15 minutes in and I've killed 109 enemies. That's one enemy every 8 seconds.

And what the bloody hell is this thing? A boss fight?

I found a giant orc-looking thing earlier and assumed he was a boss fight at first too, as I lost three dudes within the first few seconds of panicked button mashing. I would've tried casting magic, but one of the guys I lost was Raistlin. Fortunately it's a lot harder to lose Goldmoon the cleric, as Riverwind jumps in to take her place when she's low on health.

Anyway, turns out it wasn't a boss fight, enemies like this show up sometimes just to bring a little joy into my day. 

17 BILLION RANDOM ENCOUNTERS LATER

FM Towns

I've just realised that my hero's 'facing north' sprite is just the 'facing south' sprite rotated 180 degrees. That doesn't even make any sense with this camera angle.

Well I went up north looking for weapons in the mountains and I found nothing, so that's a pain in the ass. But there are mountains here too, and there's a box, so that's close enough. All I want is a +1 long sword for someone who doesn't have one yet, or maybe a spear that comes back once you've thrown it.

FM Towns

A pouch and 10 red arrows, great. How about giving me 200 arrows, then maybe they'd last a couple of battles.

Anyway that's my quest to find the weapon cache done. I'm sick of having to awkwardly zig-zag through forest mazes because I can't walk diagonally, I've had enough of this stuttery movement, and I can't take these random encounters any more. They interrupt you every 1-3 seconds like a YouTube advert and you don't even get XP for them so they're entirely bloody pointless.

ZX Spectrum

Okay I still have the C64 version to try, along with the Amstrad CPC port, the ZX Spectrum version, the Atari ST version, the PC-98 version... actually I think I've seen enough.

Instead of trying to find the good version of this, I'm going to move on and try to find the good version of something else.


CONCLUSION

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Here's some behind the scenes info for you: when I'm using DOSBox I map 'record video' to the 'numpad +' key, as it's out of the way and easy to hit. When a game starts I tap that button and then never go near it again, as that would stop my recording. This has worked out pretty well for me over the years, because no reasonably designed game would ever use numpad + for the main action your character performs repeatedly during gameplay. Anyway, that's why I couldn't find the attack key.

The '80s were maybe not the greatest decade for side-scrolling action adventures. NES and arcade games were figuring things out and leading the way, but a lot of other developers were still stumbling. Even the graphically stunning Shadow of the Beast was a pain in the ass to actually play. So I can't be too mad at Dragons of Flame, because it is definitely of its time.

The game looks like an RPG at first glance, with NPCs telling you to go find new weapons etc. But it turns out that everyone's already got good weapons and NPCs are mostly there to temporarily replace your heroes when a bunch of them die before you can react. There's no XP to earn, no choices to make, and no shops that I'm aware of. There are no random encounters either... unless there are. It depends on what Dragons of Flame you're playing. The ports are varied enough to have their own positives and negatives, and complaints I could make about one version don't necessarily apply to another. But they all echo the flawed game design of the original lead version, which echoes the flawed design of Heroes of the Lance.

The funny thing is, I've beaten Heroes of the Lance, I know how to play that, but this still confuses the hell out of me. What are you even supposed to do when enemies spring out of nowhere and swarm you? Abuse the infinite use 'turn undead' spell and paralyse them? Buy the cluebook and do whatever it says in there? Whatever you do, the combat is never much fun, it never gets you anything, and yet every few steps there's another enemy waiting for you.

Also, when I played Heroes of the Lance it took me forever to figure out that using doors didn't put you in the next room, it changed your perspective, and they've pulled that trick on me again here. I didn't realise that the top down overworld and the side-scrolling action stage are the same place. I mean, you know that river I jumped into? That's the same river I saw on the overworld, I'd walked over to it. You can walk all the way to the fortress in side view! I mean, theoretically. I never tried it.

This makes it even more of a shame that you don't get the overhead view in the dungeon maze where it would really come in useful. The side-scrolling fortress section is even more of a labyrinth of identical tunnels than it was in Heroes of the Lance, and if you're not mapping it out yourself or following a guide you'll never find anything in there but misery. Rotating the camera in a 2D game is not a bad idea, I really liked how it was used in Fez, but here it's only used to make things more confusing.

The game's not all bad though. I did like the title screen! (Not the PC title screen though, that was terrible. And I haven't even mentioned the sound...)

I've said before that I've got no plan to rank these D&D games, but it was so easy this time that I figured I might as well:

1. Gold Box RPGs (with Gold Box Companion).
2. Heroes of the Lance.
3. Intellivision games.
4. Hillsfar.
5. Dragons of Flame.

My advice is to read the novel instead. It's called Dragons of Autumn Twilight and covers the plot of the first two games. I've never read it myself, I haven't got a clue what it's like, but it has to be better than this.

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But maybe you've got a different opinion on Dragons of Flame. If you think I've got the game all wrong, let me know in the comments below. If you think I got it all right you can let me know that as well.

Or you could take a guess at what the next game will be. Maybe it's D&D, maybe it's not, you'll have to tell me.