Proving that I have lost my mind, I just finished Champions of Krynn: Yet Another Gold Box Edition. This was one of my first RPGs I ever finished, so I have fond memories of it. However, it is definitely an earlier GB game. Mob placement is no where near as good as in Treasures, more on par with Gateway. Itemization is better though, since there are spots with random magical items dropping; you have a chance to get +1 items of types you never see. At least weapons are better. Armor you never really get a significant upgrade unless you are a mage/thief type using no armor, or a Knight (the best armor in the game in Knight-only).
In terms of plot, it builds on the somewhat stronger Dragonlance setting, however, the bad guy's plan, in retrospect, makes no sense.
However, demi-humans aren't useless like in FR-based games. In a FR game of this level range, non-humans would end up losing value outside of this game, maybe the next in the series. Here, Elves and Half-elves at least make good casters of both types. and a Fighter/Cleric/Mage of those races will at least get two full attacks with full casting of both classes. Sadly, Thief remains, as always, all but useless. Traps you can disarm are rare, and locks largely can be handled by your friendly party red mage and knock. My Cleric/Thief will be staying at Palanthas after this, and be replaced with another character come DKoK.
It is a bit on the short side, similar to Gateway. Of course, it was built for systems ranging from the Mighty C64, with it's 320k floppy disks and 64k of RAM (38k after the OS loaded) to 386 IBM 'powerhouses'. I think it took me maybe 10-12 hours, roughly. Of course, I have played through it before, so I wasn't going in blind. I also, as usual with these type games, printed the maps beforehand, so I didn't have to hand-draw them. I also got a little frustrated with constant random encounters, and reloaded a lot of times just to avoid those. I hit the level cap for the game by the end, so I don't think I missed much XP wise. I might even be able to level shortly after entering Death Knights.
Combat varies of course, but your strategy is going to change from Throtl (the first town) to Gargath (the second), and several fights will have even greater differences. There are more than a few fights that will require some reloading if you miss even a single roll or you screw up just one time.
Champions is a mid-range GB game in terms of UI. Fix is here, but you have to manually reload every spell after casting. The engine will never get a usable automap I think. But, even after beating two others in the line recently, and even a aborted start in Pool of Radiance (I can't stand the much cruder UI, after playing the newer GB titles so much over the years, it manages to fall just below the level of still playable to me. There is a conversion of PoolRad and Curse for Unlimited Adventures, though. The bad thing being that you can't transfer from there to Secret/Pools of Darkness).