Dungeons & Dragons Games Vol. 8: Gold Box - Curse of the Azure Bonds (MS-DOS) - Part 1

Developer:

SSI

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Release Date:

1989

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Systems:

DOS, C64, Apple II, Amiga, Mac, Atari ST, PC-98

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This week, it's my first Super Adventures game of 2026: Curse of the Azure Bonds! 

The game came out in 1989, which means I've still got three more years of Dungeons & Dragons games left to get through before I've finished the first decade. That doesn't sound so bad, but this is the point where they begin to get abundant.

Strategic Simulations Inc. had the licence at this point and their tactic to increase game sales was to give people more games to buy. They released an average of six D&D games a year, half of them proper Gold Box RPGs.

To make things more straightforward, or more confusing, the Gold Box games alternated between three different series. Well, three plus the Neverwinter Nights MMO. And the Buck Rogers games I suppose, but they're something else.

Anyway, this is A FORGOTTEN REALMS Fantasy Role-Playing Epic, Vol. II, which makes it the second volume of the Pool of Radiance saga. It's also a sequel to the novel Azure Bonds so there are two sagas intersecting here. Though you'd be forgiven for thinking it was an adaptation as it has basically the same name and the same cover. I know most/all the early D&D games used recycled art for their boxes, but they were taking the piss a bit with this one.

I'm going to play the game for a few hours, probably spoil a bunch of early twists for you, and show off screenshots. I won't be playing enough of the game to form a proper informed opinion (ie. all of it), but I'll try to hang in there long enough to get what it's doing.

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I'm still playing the Steam version of the games by the way, which I'm only telling you because it gives me an excuse to show off the launcher and the box art in the background. The woman with the boob window is book protagonist Alias and the green gentleman in the back is Dragonbait. That's about as far as my knowledge goes I'm afraid, as I never read the books and I don't really feel like crawling down a Wikipedia rabbit hole.

Like with Pool of Radiance I've got a full set of documents here (well, aside from the novel). It also has the option to run Gold Box Companion. The game launches in a DOSBox window and then the tool attaches a map to the side of it.

There's also an 'Import progress' button, which would be really tempting if I had any characters worth importing. My Pool of Radiance heroes had only reached level 5 (about 18,000 XP) because I quit halfway through. I earned some extra XP for one of them when I brought them into Hillsfar, but then I forgot to save. So that was a huge waste of time.

Also the weird thing about Hillsfar is that it doesn't let you import or edit a character's appearance. So if you bring a Pool of Radiance (or Curse of Azure Bonds) character over to Hillsfar and later export them to play on Azure Bonds, you also need to copy the original save file over to keep their look. Otherwise they're just set to default.

When you start the game up you get the option to watch a demo, which is more like a teaser for the game.

There's some nice art here, but once it's started you're stuck watching it, there's no way out. You have to sit through a whole battle! I'm just going to reset the game and start making some characters. I didn't want spoilers anyway.

Pool of Radiance (MS-DOS)

Here's what Pool of Radiance's character creator looked like.

You start off by choosing a character's D&D race, class, alignment etc. then you choose a picture for them by cycling through different heads and bodies, and give them an icon. Repeat five more times for a complete team.

Each character has six ability scores, but this is 1st Edition D&D so female characters have a lower strength limit than males. That's the only thing your choice of sex seems to affect.

And here's Curse of the Azure Bonds. They've basically just changed the frame. Though they've also gotten rid of the portrait, which was probably a good choice. I'd assume most people were playing the game on a computer without a hard drive and waiting a few seconds for it to load every time you open a character's inventory isn't fun!

Hey new characters start with 25,000 XP in this. I definitely made the right choice to make a new set of six heroes. Even if it does mean planning a new party from scratch and making sure I have a good mix of classes with suitable ability scores.

I also need to keep in mind that the level caps for demi humans are going to be an issue now. 

Characters finish Pool of Radiance around level 8, so it wasn't the end of the world back then that dwarves can only reach fighter level 9 and elven fighters max out at level 7. But Curse of the Azure Bonds raises the overall cap to 11-12, so everyone's going to be falling way behind the humans. Well, unless they're thieves, or elven magic-users.

The obvious solution is to only pick humans, but then you miss out on multi-classing! A human can never be a fighter/magic-user/thief or whatever, so all the fun combinations are off-limits. Though they can dual class this time, switching to a second class once they've gotten everything they wanted from their first one, at the cost of returning to level 1. You could probably make a really powerful character like that, if you know what you're doing (starting with the right ability scores for both classes helps).

Oh, the devs have made one other improvement to the character creator: they've expanded beyond the four core classes by adding rangers and paladins. And I'm absolutely going to make one of each, as I want something new to play with.

Damn, they haven't done a thing to improve the character icon editor. My biggest issue with it is having to cycle through colours for every body part, for two different shades. And the colours aren't even in order!

I could suggest ways they could've improved this, but I don't even have to.

Amiga

Because the Amiga port demonstrates it for me! You click the body part and then a colour from the palette, it's so damn fast by comparison. They didn't even need to move the icons around to make room for the new buttons as half the screen is empty space.

Oh, plus it has mouse support! The PC version isn't quite there yet; it's keyboard or nothing.

After doing a bit of research, I've decided to make a dwarf fighter/thief, because fighters can make use of a dwarf's 19 max constitution to get extra HP, and they have a bunch of other advantages that will remain useful long after the character hits the fighter level cap. I'm also bringing a elven fighter/magic-user, because a strong mage who can use any weapon and wear all the armour isn't likely to be a liability in a low-level group. It means they'll always be a level behind on their spells though. 

Everyone else is just going to be a boring human with a boring single class.

The story begins with the heroes waking up in an inn with none of their enchanted Pool of Radiance equipment and no recollection of how they got sparkly magic runes on their arms.

I don't know what I imagined the azure bonds looking like, but it wasn't this; their skin's lit up in glittering lights like the Las Vegas strip. I haven't seen a magic glowing tattoo this flashy down someone's arm since the days I flew as a TIE Fighter pilot. Hey if this their sword arm then I guess they must be left handed. 

Anyway, I left the room and ran into the innkeeper, who explained how we got here. 

Well she explained it to the heroes at least, off screen, and then they wrote it into their journal as entry 31. So we're doing this again.

Gold Box devs liked to offload a chunk of text to the Adventurer's Journal booklet so that it didn't take up space on the disks. Or perhaps it was memory space they were more worried about, as the game was designed for a Commodore 64, and the '64' part is how many kilobytes of RAM it has. Commodore were bragging.

Fortunately Gold Box Companion lets me read the journal entries inside the game window, so I know that it says:

"You we brought in by a group in red robes. They said they'd found you on the road, near death. They paid for your rooms in advance, so you can stay as long as you'd like. You had those tattoos when you came in, but I've never seen anything like them. Filani the sage could help you though. You should go see her, two blocks north."

Okay, I need to find Filani the sage, I should note that down. It's a shame that the journal's in a random order and I can't actually use it to keep track of what I'm doing.

The innkeeper mentioned that my room has already been paid for, so the first thing I'm doing is going back to bed. I need to rest a bit and memorise spells from my spell book to have them ready in battle.

I've started off at level 5 this time, so there's a bunch of new spells in my grimoire that I haven't tried before and the game has absolutely zero intention of giving me a description. I should study the manual, but I can't be bothered right now so I'm just going to grab 'sleep' a few times to fill my level 1 spell slots and 'stinking cloud' for level 2.

Alright, now I need to find Filani. Also the innkeeper mentioned a weapon shop, so I'm looking for that as well.

Here's what the game is like when you're walking around. The town graphics haven't changed much since Pool of Radiance, though the street's got a texture now, so that's new. I'm not seeing all these crowds the game talks about though.

Finding Filani the sage wasn't a huge challenge, as this town only has one main street and the only thing popping up to harass me as I explore is descriptive text. It's going to get very old if the game keeps stopping me every few steps to make me acknowledge another block of writing. I don't want to press <ENTER> to continue, I just want to walk down the bloody road. 

Gold Box Companion is back doing its thing around the DOSBox window, giving me an automap and character info. The game does have its own tiny map, but Gold Box Companion's map starts blank and updates as you go, so you can tell where you've explored and even add notes. It's the fun alternative to graph paper!

We're in Tilverton, by the way. I checked a map and it's just down the road from Phlan (Pool of Radiance) and Hillsfar (Hillsfar), so it makes sense that the heroes would come here next.

Damn, Filani wants half my money before she'll tell me anything! I'm not giving her half my funds, I need that money to buy weapons and armour.

Oh hang on, I can just pop over to the weapon shop first and then come back to offer half of whatever I have left. I'll not be checking out the pub along the way this time, as I got enough of an ass-kicking in the first game.

Wow, I assumed that they would've trimmed the equipment list down, dropping weapons which have no actual difference in stats, but nope this shop seems fully guisarmed. Plus it still doesn't tell you the damage, or how much money you have. You're expected to find that information out yourself.

I'm just going to buy basic long swords and bows for everyone who can equip them, which includes my fighter/magic-user. In Pool of Radiance I assumed I'd need separate melee and ranged characters, especially as you choose a weapon their icon will be holding during character creation.

But it turns out that you can stick a ranged weapon into everyone's backpack and switch when it's appropriate. There are no weapon speciality points or skill trees or whatever to worry about.

Anyway, I paid Filani her money, and she gave me important information about the azure bonds on our arms. Which I can find under journal entry 38.

There, you can read it yourself if you're interested!

Basically, the heroes are wearing magic symbols from five different groups, none of them good. We're looking at an evil alliance of evil alliances.

I headed back out to finish mapping the street and encountered a group of royal guards. They told me that the road was closed because the royal carriage is coming soon. So that's pretty cool! I decided to check out what's down the other end of the street instead.

But I somehow ended up next to the royal carriage anyway and I'm still waiting to see these crowds the game talked about earlier.

Though maybe it's better there's no witnesses around right now as it turns out that the heroes have been Manchurian Candidate'd. They're unable to resist a magic compulsion to attack the royal carriage!

The carriage got away but now I have to deal with the royal guard, who have somehow gotten the impression that we're assassins. Look at all this plot that's going on! The other game wasn't like this. 

Though these tactical battles play out exactly the same, with each character getting a turn to move and then attack. Trouble is that I don't want to kill the royal guards! I need to get out of this situation, preferably without letting them stab me in the back when I disengage.

Oh, I have a sleep spell memorised! That'll hit a 3x3 block of units and if I'm understanding the manual my level 5 characters should be immune to it. I also have hold person, which may freeze up to three targets of my choosing, if I'm lucky.

With the guards all asleep or paralysed I was able to send my heroes running to the edge of the screen to flee from the battle! No one killed, no XP gained, no loot collected. Though the party was sent directly to jail regardless. The guards were in such a hurry they didn't bother to take our gear.

THIEVES' GUILD

A few hours later my party was broken out by the thieves' guild, who took them to the Thieves' Guild! There the guildmaster told us that the Fire Knives have the king's daughter in their hideout, hoping to lure him into a trap. 

Man, I wasn't expecting all of this story. It's like playing Final Fantasy II after Final Fantasy... except here the core mechanics are basically unchanged. Maybe Wing Commander II after Wing Commander would be a better example, with all these new NPC portraits I'm also getting.

I was allowed a moment's rest to re-memorise the spells I'd cast in the last fight, and it turns out that I still have to select them all manually. Gold Box Companion adds the option to automate the process and I'll see how long I can hold out before I just use that instead.

Oh no, we've suddenly been attacked by other thieves!

Well I successfully missed everyone with my stinking cloud spell. In my defence, I had no idea what the range of it would be, or what squares it would affect, as the game gives you no indication whatsoever. On the plus side, the cloud seems to be sticking around for a while, so that'll act as a trap for any enemy dumb enough to try wandering through it.

I appreciate all the new portraits, but it would've been nice to have a larger range of combat icons as well. Half of these characters on screen are my allies and half are enemies, but there's no way to tell them apart! 

It makes me really appreciate Gold Box Companion's combat view. With this I can see at a glance who the bad guys are, how much health they have, and if they're awake. I'm definitely getting a better experience now than players did back in 1989.

With so many enemies and allies in this fight I'm getting a proper demonstration of how front lines work. If you're standing next to an enemy, neither side can step away without getting hit by a disengagement attack, so you can put up a wall they won't slip past. 

Meanwhile the ranged characters are free to do their thing from the relative safety of the back row. Though they're not actually ranged yet, as I need to go into the inventory, unequip their sword and shield, and then ready their bow instead. It doesn't cost a turn, but it's extra hassle I don't need.

If I was feeling really tactical I could move my thief behind an enemy and follow up another character's attack with a devastating backstab. In theory. I don't think I've ever actually pulled it off. In fact I'm struggling with regular attacks at the moment, as everyone is missing every turn. Seriously, it's kind of ridiculous.

The friendly guildmaster gasped and died, but he left me with something new for my journal: a map to the hideout in the south! Or maybe to the guild in the north, I'm not actually sure where I am right now. All I know is that I'm about to do a sewer level.

There's an attack still going on and everything's in chaos, apparently. Lots of yelling from the distance, I've been informed. I'm going to have to take the game's word on that as I can't hear anything and every room I find is empty. That's fine though, as I need an empty room to rest and recover from that last fight and I don't need anyone interrupting my sleep. I know, I'll save first just in case.

Oh no, I ran into a random encounter before I could rest. And these jerks are using stinking cloud against me! At least I'm getting an education in how it's done properly. The fun part is when they slaughter my best fighters in a single hit while they're gagging and helpless. Well, they change their status to 'dying' anyway. If I'm quick enough with one of my infinite bandages I can upgrade them to 'unconscious' and avoid losing them.

I said earlier that combat is exactly the same as in the last game, but that's not entirely true as this feels slicker. In Pool of Radiance you have to press 'M' before moving a unit, while in this you just move. You can press the direction keys to run straight into an enemy and then tap one more time to attack them. Cutting down the unnecessary button presses was a good move... and I could really use some good moves right now, because I am in trouble.

Hah, the enemies just lost their nerve and ran away! Critical morale failure. They could've won that fight as well, I was in bad shape. Now I'm walking away with no health and a ton of XP.

Fortunately my cleric is still conscious, which means I get to use the brand new 'Fix' command. This automatically casts healing spells until your whole party is at full health, which is a massive improvement from having to rest, memorise healing spells, cast healing spells, rest, memorise healing spells, cast healing spells etc. I still have to worry about being interrupted by bad guys, but I got away with it this time.

Alright, now I need to make sure I've got all my missing spells re-memorised and switch everyone back to melee weapons. Hang on, I just realised that I've got two rangers. I thought I'd made a ranger and a paladin. I wanted both the new classes!

Well I guess I've got something to look forward to in the sequel then. You can actually swap in new characters any time you visit a trainer or load your game, but I don't want to.

Oh damn, I was not expecting to be attacked by a room full of monkeys! These Fire Knives have powerful allies. 

At least they're probably easier to hit than the assassins. I'm so sick of "You attack Fire Knife... missed. Fire Knife attacks you... missed!" over and over. Whose great idea was it to fill the first dungeon in the game with ninjas who have 18 dexterity? I can't even cast sleep on them any more as they're too high level for that.

I could just switch on the autopilot and let the computer deal with this mess, but that's more for cleaning up once victory is inevitable. The AI's not going to know to break an enemy magic-user's concentration when they start casting, or to focus fire on the most wounded unit to take it out of play quickly.

Now it's dogs! At least they're dumb enough to charge at me through my stinking cloud spell instead of waiting for it to dissipate. It's got a good chance to disable them and then I can kill them in a single hit, freeing up space in the cloud for the next dog to come over.

The game's actually putting in the effort to explain all these unusual enemies I'm facing. I just walked through a room filled with empty monkey cages, for instance. You can't ever see any of it, it's all described in text, but I'm usually looking at the Gold Box Companion automap anyway.

I've found the Treasure Room! I gotta say, that Selina's doing a great job of picking locks. She's much better than my Pool of Radiance thief. And if she ever fails to pick a lock, then it's a job for Clark and his 18(00) strength.

It's funny seeing the Tilverton streets on the other side of the map; it makes it feel like half of the city is taken up by the Thieves' Guild. And most of the Thieves' Guild is just empty rooms, without loot or battles. Though I've hit the jackpot with this vault: my characters picked up a deep red Ioun stone, magic-user scrolls (that I don't know how to use), potions, a sword, armour... I can't wait to get this haul over to a shopkeeper so they can ID it and tell me what it all is!

The game made a point of telling me that's safe to rest here, which is appreciated. In Pool of Radiance I'd often get woken up by a horrific number of orcs if I tried to rest and recover, but here it's less about endurance, and I can rest and heal up all over the place.

Alright, where is this passage leading to next? Oh no, it looks like I'm finally here...

THE SEWERS

Bloody hell, not trolls! They recover health and regenerate from death so I can't chip away at their health one at a time like I usually do. Not without moving someone to stand on their invisible corpse afterwards so they can't get back up.

I barely managed to beat these guys the one time I met them in Pool of Radiance, and that was by taking advantage of the level layout to prevent them from even reaching me, so I'm not sure how I'm going to do this. 

Hang on, I just remembered! The Pool of Radiance walkthrough said use stinking cloud in the troll fight, that's why I memorised it in the first place. I never actually tried casting it in that battle, but let's see how this group of trolls likes it...

Damn, that was actually really effective against them! It would've looked even more effortless if Ivy hadn't struggled to switch to her staff sling for that cruel blow. You have to unequip their melee weapon before equipping the ranged weapon. And their shield too.

The survivors got 2800 XP from that fight, pushing some characters across the level up line. Unfortunately I need to go see a trainer to actually level up, and I'm in a sewer right now, so that's going to have to wait. Unless I run into the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and their mentor Splinter is around.

Oh wait, hang on, there's a secret Thieves' Guild trainer here! You can spot the hidden door if you walk around with 'search' mode on. Alright, level ups for everyone with full XP bars! Assuming I can afford it; it does cost money each time.

I've always wanted to walk into a secret underground training facility full of ninjas or whatever and do some secret training. It's just a shame I can't see anything in here except for walls and the occasional door. He's a pretty great trainer though, as he can teach fighting, healing, magic and thievery, levelling up anyone from any class. He must be the fabled fighter/cleric/magic-user/thief/paladin/ranger class.

Levelling up is one of the best times in an RPG, as you get to improve a character's stats, unlock new skills and bonuses, and forge your own custom-built hero. You can't do that in this though. The game doesn't even tell you what numbers just went up! The only thing you ever get to choose are the spells a magic-user adds to their spell book. Also I guess you can choose to dual class, but level 6 isn't really the time.

Uh... there's a guy standing here in the sewers, asking me questions. I have a feeling that only one of these answers is the correct one, but I can't remember if I've even heard of Princess Nacacia. She sounds like someone this guy would like so I'm going to say I owe allegiance to her.

Hey it worked! I'm through to the next area.

I've been finding a few of these 'choose your own adventure' situations where I have to make a choice. Like one time I walked into a room full of whirling blades, and I had the option to either walk into them, wait a bit, or walk away. It turned out that my first instinct of 'waiting a bit' served me well there. Thought I kind of want to know what happens if you do just walk into them. Maybe they were illusionary!

I also freed a dude from his torturers, hoping he'd join up with us as an NPC, but nope.

Oh damn, I didn't expect to find the room we got our tattoos in so soon. This is the evil lab where they turned my team into magically brainwashed assassins. Like Wolverine, except with glittery ink instead of indestructible metal-coated bones.

I'm only getting half the story from the message box though, as it keeps telling me to check my journal for further information. I've got entries 26, 27 and 29 to look at now. I'll do it later; I'm trying to focus on the game right now.

Hey it's the captured princess, along with the sneering leaders of the Fire Knives. I bet we've got a lot to talk about, so I'm going to have to remember to read journal entry 11 at some point.

Whatever happened here led to a fight against the Fire Knife leader and his many minions, and bloody hell there are a lot of them. I'm glad I saved and healed right before this battle, but I'm still feeling underprepared.

Wow, that was a long drawn out brawl. I managed to survive until there were just five of them left, but they survived until there was none of us, so that's a pretty conclusive victory for Team Fire Knife.

I really tried to use all the tools available to me. I had my magic-user cast that useful spell he has, stinking cloud, but they interrupted him during casting and it was lost. I lost my second shot by cancelling it when I realised he was standing out of range, so that was all my useful magic gone.

Without my magic-user giving me an advantage it turned into a brawl and they clearly had the advantage in numbers. I did cast 'prayer' to give me a boost to my THAC0 (chance to hit), but I didn't notice any fewer misses.

Damn, that was my first real failure in the game. Turns out the game over screen hasn't been improved at all; this is one thing Hillsfar unambiguously does better.

When some people lose a boss fight, they want to jump right back in and have another go. Personally I just want to quit this and take a break. I've been walking around a sewer for what feels like hours and I need to go do something else.

I'm not feeling like the fight would go any differently the second time to be honest, as my team is far from formidable and I can't just grind to get them up to spec as I've used up all the random encounters. I can't even switch to easy mode, as the game doesn't have difficulty options. I could try resting a bunch of times and see if an enemy attacks the team while they're asleep...

Hang on, my characters already have enough XP to level up! The game kept that bloody quiet. And exploring every room has gotten me enough money to pay for it as well. Alright Fire Knives, you're getting your rematch... eventually. Once I've had a rest in real life.

TO BE CONTINUED

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Next week: more of this! I've come to terms with the fact that these proper RPGs are always going to need two parts. Especially the ones that trap me in a sewer for the first few hours.

But you don't have to wait a week to leave comments; if you've got something you want to say right now then go for it. It's boring if I'm the only one doing all the talking.