Champions of Krynn completed!
I finally got some time to finish my playthrough of Champions of Krynn with these Christmas holidays (had an almost 3 week hiatus in my adventuring due to lack of time). I enjoyed the game immensely, but the story did take a turn to the worse by the end. I didn't like the flying castles much and the "hah, we duped you" twist didn't really work, IMO. These superintricate and fiendishly cunning plots, where the enemy's grand idea is to use you to feed false information to your side, but all the while they're still fighting you at every turn trying very hard to kill you - they just don't make any sense to me. So they're actually hoping to
lose the fights against you and planning to lose a considerable amount of troops in doing so? And not just one fight, but hundreds of them? Good plan, buddy, no wonder you lost.
That being said, I didn't find much else to complain about the game. Sure, the UI could have been smoother and there could have been prettier graphics and fancier this and fancier that, but as a game from the 1990 and evaluating it on that basis, it was a blast! Considering how little memory (etc.) the developers had to work with, the game did provide a fantastically varied and full CRPG experience. I was completely hooked from the get-go. I even liked the early parts, when the party-members are so weak that they're killed from hitting a toe on a rock (this used to frustrate me to no end before, but not this time). The middle third of the game was the best, however, both game-wise and story-wise. By then you've uncovered enough of the plot to be immersed by it and the party-members are strong enough to not die from one unlucky roll and there is enough variance in gear and spells (with the mages having a nice repertoire of spells to cast), etc.
If you can stomach the archaic graphics and UI and don't mind doing notes plus mapping by hand, I do enthusiastically recommend this game to any CRPG fan. Krynn is waiting for champions, join us!
As for me, it's onwards to the second game in the trilogy!