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Hell's bells, where's Mark when you need him? A freak shift in the Earth's magnetic field caused this game to be accidentally given to me for review, the world's all-time least knowledgeable Dungeons & Dragons expert. Pages and pages of manual blurb about 'Champions Of Krynn', 'A Dragonlance Epic. Vol. II', 'Knights Of Solamnia' and all sorts of other guff flew straight over my head as I attempted to bludgeon my way into this forbidding-looking game. (There's a serious point in here – it doesn't seem to have occurred to SSI that someone might buy this game without any prior knowledge of the series, and there isn't much here to help them work out what on earth's supposed to be going on. For those who do know what the game's all about though, documentation is pretty comprehensive and impressive).
Running up against a particularly unhelpful copy-protection system didn't improve matters any either, so it was with great trepidation that I eventually (one reload later) found myself starting the game. And boy, was I in for a surprise.
After the endless pages of info and instructions on character attributes, weapons, movements and spells, what I quite definitely wasn't expecting to discover in the end was a game remarkably similar in concept to a geriatric 8-bit classic by the name of Chaos (by Laser Squad author Julian Gollop). Now that's simplifying matters somewhat, but all through playing Death Knights Of Krynn I just couldn't shake the feeling of deja vu. You can tell this is a serious D&D game though, because it's not as user-friendly, making you hack through several menus before you actually get to make a move. Not only that, but when you hit an enemy (or get hit by them), the message telling you the result of the attack flashes up for the briefest possible instant, making it impossible to know what's happened unless you put the game on its slowest stetting. Difficulty is a bit on the high side as well – my party were slaughtered many times by the first band of baddies they met without there seeming to be much I could do about it at all.

You could argue there's not much point in my reviewing at all, and I'd tend to agree. Dungeons & Dragons aficionados will disregard any of my criticism as coming from a non-expert – which is fair enough, sort of – and non-fans aren't very likely to have this game high on their list of possible purchases anyway – unless this was a 90 percent game (and it's clearly not even for D&D fans) they'd probably just look at the mark, see nothing to change their minds, and not bother to read any further. So really, I could pretty much say anything I like at this point and no-one would notice. I believe there are many inherent deficiencies in an over-centralised media system, baby. See?

Ahem. The fact of the matter is – and it pains me to say it, it really does – this is okay if you like That Kind Of Thing. The release of Eye Of The Beholder makes it redundant in every meaningful way, but that won't put off diehard fans, and neither could anything else I might say.
STUART CAMPBELL

The sequel to SSI's highly-regarded Champions Of Krynn, Death Knights brings the fantastical world of Advanced Dungeons and Dragons to life. Set in the Dragonlance universe, the game opens with the player invited to celebrate their victory in the first game. As the partying begins, news reaches the village regarding a proposed attack by the vile Lord Soth and his ranks of undead minions. Thus party temporarily postponed, the battle to defeat Soth begins.
The game drops the player straight in at the deep end or, to be more precise, the Gargath Outpost. It is here that most of the ensuing battles will be fought, and from the safety of the Commander's Office, specific orders can be given. Within this area lurk a number of strange characters, including the man-eating Dread Wolf who will let you get to grips with Death Knights' many spells. However, because everything is set within this area, there's a lot of needless treking back to the office for fresh orders – and this is just a waste of time.
Death Knights features the usual wealth of banks and taverns where money, gossip or recruits can be collected and temples where wounds can be healed – for a small fee of course.

For the all-important battle scenes, complex strategies and bluffs can be made by switching players and positions using the mouse. Therefore, characters of better experience can be placed upfront and the weaker taken from harm's way. Even so, despite the beginner's level, Death Knights of Krynn may still be a little over the heads of new AD&D recruits. The abilities of key groups vary, too, with Knights and Rangers particularly effective during hand-to-hand battles, whilst the Clerics and Mages fall back with their spells and potions.

Death Knights is a massive game with a series of enjoyable and deep quests. Although most AD&D games suffer from relatively poor graphics when compared to the likes of Eye of the Beholder and Chaos Strikes Back, many of the locations especially drab and this reduces the atmospher immensely. In all, a game for wise and cunning AD&D fanatics.
Fiona Keating