Gold Box SSI's Gold Box Series Thread

[jaylittle]

I love the Gold Box games. Has anybody here ever actually finished the final battle sequence in Pools of Darkness? Out of all the Forgotten Realms games, that is the only part I've never completed. That is truly an insane battle sequence. Of course after that I've read there is a special challenge dungeon written by the devs that is even more insane.

I never could click with the Krynn games. I beat Champions of Krynn for the first time recently, but I wasn't able to make much headway with Death Knights of Krynn. Maybe it's because I grew up playing the Forgotten Realms Gold Box games, so finally finishing them multiple times had a special significance for me. It's funny that when I was a kid/teenager - I used to think Pools of Radiance was the worst of the FR Gold Box series. Now after playing through it, I consider it to actually be the best.

My own real annoyance regarding the Gold Box games is the insistence on what I assume to be stupid DnD 2nd edition rules. I hated all of those low-end level limits when it came to non-human races paired with non-thief classes. What a load of shit. I also hated how certain extended classes were not part of Pool of Radiance so that if you wanted to play your characters through all 4 FR games, you had to stick with the basic classes. Sadly, you couldn't dual class a fighter into a paladin or a ranger as you were limited to multi-class combinations already available to non-human characters.

One of these days I'll make a kickass module for Unlimited Adventures though. One of these days...

 

[Zakhal]

Ive played pool of radiance, hillsfar and got stuck in curze of azure bonds. There are som really though battles that I simply cant win or escape. Ive been looking at restarting it with an early save for like year now.

 

[Cray]

Has anybody here ever actually finished the final battle sequence in Pools of Darkness?

I did, pretty much all luck & some reloads. Most of the gold box games were that way.. team to get a turn & throw a fireball first won most battles.

You didn't miss much with the ending! "Ok, so now we'll make everyone forget you just saved the world. Good job!"

You can turn down the difficulty to make things easier. It's in rest options - basically only involves the monster hp, but also some attacks. Lightning spiders in Treasures of the Savage Frontier for example do like 40 damage a shock/gaze a turn on the hardest, but only 12ish on easy mode. And a group of 6 of them is a random encounter right after you get out of the first city......... silly devs. Gateway started you off against basilisks with stone gazes if you stepped in the wrong direction.

Tips to winning gold box battles:
- Fireball. Shoot the mages first. Ice Storm is good as well if it's a close quarters fight.
- Hold Person & Stinking Cloud will let you kill affected characters in 1 hit. Sleep too, but only at low levels.
- One of the high level cleric spells is really, really useful. Blade Barrier? Most of the others suck & they're better off pretending to be fighters.
- There's insta-death spells and other stuff. Abuse them if you're stuck, the enemies will.
- Get used to reloading.

One of these days I'll make a kickass module for Unlimited Adventures though. One of these days...

15 years too late! Do people still use that?

 

[Jasede]

I only played Pools of Radiance. It was fun, but a bit clunky with that guidebook and whatnot, though I loved the wealth of material.

Tell me, what's the best Goldbox series to start out with?

 

[Ammar]

I only played Pools of Radiance. It was fun, but a bit clunky with that guidebook and whatnot, though I loved the wealth of material.

Tell me, what's the best Goldbox series to start out with?

Opinions differ on that. I like the Krynn Series best because it has the most important comfort features even in the first part and because I like the setting and the books, the bad poetry excluded. It always seemed a bit more plot-heavy than the other's as well. But there are also lots of people who liked the Krynn Series least.

 

[mondblut]

I love the Gold Box games. Has anybody here ever actually finished the final battle sequence in Pools of Darkness? Out of all the Forgotten Realms games, that is the only part I've never completed. That is truly an insane battle sequence.

I don't remember it being all that hard. Maybe because of 39/40 dualclassed characters :D Final sequence of Gateway to Savage Frontier was much harder. A sequence of several battles without an opportunity to rest, memorize and even save... and you were capped on pretty low maximum level too.

My own real annoyance regarding the Gold Box games is the insistence on what I assume to be stupid DnD 2nd edition rules.

These are 1st edition rules, in fact. And they weren't out of place in pen and paper... but of course, in a computer game pitting you against scores of dragons at once, limiting half-elves to 5/6 was kind of silly.

One of these days I'll make a kickass module for Unlimited Adventures though. One of these days...

I remember at least 2 or 3 attempts to remake POR in FRUA, and at least one was finished and pretty praised. I was mostly out of FRUA scene by that time already though.

***

Ive played pool of radiance, hillsfar and got stuck in curze of azure bonds. There are som really though battles that I simply cant win or escape. Ive been looking at restarting it with an early save for like year now.

If you mean the infamous battle against beholders, drow lords and some other nasties, that was an optional encounter, and there was some dust of disappearance likely placed in game entirely to be handy in this very event.

***

You didn't miss much with the ending! "Ok, so now we'll make everyone forget you just saved the world. Good job!"

That's pretty much how the novel Pools of Darkness ended, too. Tyr made Phlan forget it was stolen by Marcus. Pretty anticlimatic allright.

15 years too late! Do people still use that?

Well... a few do. Although the community dwindled a lot in past 5 years, particularly after NWN was released. But it was very strong in late 90s.

 

[octavius]

I love the Gold Box games. Has anybody here ever actually finished the final battle sequence in Pools of Darkness? Out of all the Forgotten Realms games, that is the only part I've never completed. That is truly an insane battle sequence. Of course after that I've read there is a special challenge dungeon written by the devs that is even more insane.

I don't remember it being that hard, but then Darkness was one of the few Gold Box games I only played once.
I couldn't solve a riddle so never got to try Dave's Challenge. :-(
My English was not very good then and it was before I knew what Internet was.

I never could click with the Krynn games. I beat Champions of Krynn for the first time recently, but I wasn't able to make much headway with Death Knights of Krynn. Maybe it's because I grew up playing the Forgotten Realms Gold Box games, so finally finishing them multiple times had a special significance for me. It's funny that when I was a kid/teenager - I used to think Pools of Radiance was the worst of the FR Gold Box series. Now after playing through it, I consider it to actually be the best.

I think Pools of Radiance to be the best designed, but techically (worst graphics and programming) of the Gold Box games.

My own real annoyance regarding the Gold Box games is the insistence on what I assume to be stupid DnD 2nd edition rules. I hated all of those low-end level limits when it came to non-human races paired with non-thief classes. What a load of shit. I also hated how certain extended classes were not part of Pool of Radiance so that if you wanted to play your characters through all 4 FR games, you had to stick with the basic classes. Sadly, you couldn't dual class a fighter into a paladin or a ranger as you were limited to multi-class combinations already available to non-human characters.

Yes, it was extremely annoying to learn that your multi-class characters made in PoR could not advance in later games.

There are FRUA versions where you can take a party including Paladins and Rangers through both PoR and Curse. Secret of the Silver Blades is IMO by far the worst designed Gold Box game and really not woth playing again.

 

[Saxon1974]

Another thing I noticed that I like about the C64 version (At least of Gateway) is that the monsters are animated, where in the dos version they are prettier but static.

You will want to turn the game speed up though or the C64 version moves too slowly.

 

[jaylittle]

Another thing I noticed that I like about the C64 version (At least of Gateway) is that the monsters are animated, where in the dos version they are prettier but static.

You will want to turn the game speed up though or the C64 version moves too slowly.

Yeah but a quick look through my C64 disk image collection tells me that the Goldbox games there are multi-disc, multi-sided affairs. That's a bit of a pain in the ass, is it not?

 

[Saxon1974]

Another thing I noticed that I like about the C64 version (At least of Gateway) is that the monsters are animated, where in the dos version they are prettier but static.

You will want to turn the game speed up though or the C64 version moves too slowly.

Yeah but a quick look through my C64 disk image collection tells me that the Goldbox games there are multi-disc, multi-sided affairs. That's a bit of a pain in the ass, is it not?

it's a bit of an annoyance, but not enough that its not worth playing for me. It's not constant disk swapping and once you have the toggle keys down its no sweat.

 

[Keldryn]

Ah yes, memories of playing Pool of Radiance on my C-64 just came flooding back to me. I loved that game in the summer of 1989; between PoR, Bard's Tale III, and Wasteland, I didn't see much sun that summer.

Returning to New Phlan... Please insert side 5... (disk drive chugs for a minute) Please insert side 7... (more chugging) Please insert side 3... (more chugging). Okay, I'm back in the old town section, take two steps..."Hobgoblins charge screaming!" Please insert side 8... (chug, chug, chug).

Damn we were patient in those days. I would go insane having to endure that now.

I played Curse of the Azure Bonds after that (transferring my party over, after running them through the mediocrity that was Hillsfar), and that was about all I could take of the Gold Box games. You see, in the summer of 1990 I played this game on our shiny new 286 called Ultima VI: The False Prophet. My concept of what a CRPG could be like was irrevocably changed, and I just couldn't go back to games like The Bard's Tale or Pool of Radiance. I tried Secret of the Silver Blades, but it was a boring hackfest. I tried Champions of Krynn because I liked the Dragonlance books, but it bored me as well. Gateway to the Savage Frontier sounded like it added a lot of new features, but when I tried it, it felt prett much the same as all the others to me.

Come to think of it, Ultima VI wrecked a lot of older CRPGs for me. It changed how I thought about electronic games and that was when I knew I wanted to make computer/video games.

 

[Erebus]

I've played Champions of Krynn and Dark Queen of Krynn. The first one was okay, although it really didn't look very good on my old Armstrad 1512 with CGA and no hard drive. I liked DQK better and replayed it quite a few times.

DQK's main quality is probably its interesting and often original settings (my favorites were the aquatic city, the citadel of the gnomes and the tower of fire). The fights were nice too, although some opponents were deadly (the beholders were the worst, but the enchanted bozaks and dark wizards were a lot of trouble too). I always took two pure mages to have Delayed Blast Fireballs as soon as possible. Best spell in the game (unfortunately, dark wizards, enchanted auraks, liches and several others have them too...). On the other hand, I've found thieves to be rather useless, even with the backstab (their one useful ability).

You don't get to make any meaningful choice (and some of the minor choices you can make don't have any actual consequences at all). On the other hand, you have reasonable freedom of movement during a large part of the game.

There aren't a lot of interesting NPCs, although you do meet Takhisis herself (she'll squash you like a bug if you draw too much attention to yourself) and Raistlin (who shouldn't be stuck in the Abyss according to the novels, but there you find him).

 

[Skankster]

I got out an oldie the other day and have been having a playthrough of it. It is an old SSI RPG, Bucks Rogers: Countdown to Doomsday. I bought it and played it back when I was a kid and had a blast, and am surprised at how much I am enjoying it now. After this I will take the second game, Matrix cubed, for a whirl.

If anyone is knowledgeable about these games, does anyone remember if there was going to be a third game?

If anybody enjoyed the SSI goldbox games, or merely enjoys a good oldskool RPG in general, I recommend it strongly. There are deeper RPG's, but few that are just plain enjoyable as this one (or most of the goldies to be honest).

 

[Trash]

All I know is that Buck Rogers: Countdown to Doomsday had a Sega Genesis version that's pretty cool as well. Matrix Cubed was at least as great as the first and offers and even bigger solar system to explore. After these two however I believe SSI stopped with their trademark goldbox games, dunno if they ever had plans for a third in the series. Have fun playing them, they remain to this day some of the most fun I ever had with rpg's.

 

[muds_animal_friend]

...does anyone remember if there was going to be a third game?

The second Buck Rogers game was the end of the Gold Box era and the dark age of CRPGs was just around the corner. There may be some fan made Buck Rogers FRUA modules though. There are extensions/hacks to FRUA for different settings like sci-fi. Try "Forgotten Realms: Unlimited Adventures" on google.

Ah... the good old days before all these snot-nosed young pups and their fancy pants "NPC interaction" and "dialog trees". :wipesatearfromhisrheumyeye:

 

[Skankster]

Buck just joined the team. I forgot all about how kickass he was (is), and with him I am basically wiping the floor with pirates, robots and other various things on the pirate ship.

They sure don't make them like this anymore, especially the combat system. I have to say that with perhaps the exception of Pool of Radiance (the original), the Buck Rogers games are the best of the Goldbox games, at least to me.

Sci-fi RPG's, especially space RPG's, have had a bums rush in many ways. We have a few Star Wars games that were ok space operas, and the new game out, Mass Effect, which is a touch mediocre. The main thing is the sheer difference in the number of people that worked on these games and the 10 or so that created the BR games.

This game easily stands up to later games, especially the mechanics and battles, though none have really incorporated actually space battles and exploration. I remember having one as a kid that did both, I think it was an Origin game but I cannot remember the name of it.

Edit: The Sega version has less in it. It has better graphics but less actual gameplay, character options and skills.

Will check out the FRUA modules later on.

As an aside I checked out SSI's games over the years.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_St ... Inc._games

Check out 1990. This is just from one fucking company in one year! Damn I miss the old days.

Last aside: Found the game I played when I was a kid. It was called Space Rogue, by Origin. Damn good game.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Rogue

 

[JarlFrank]

This game easily stands up to later games, especially the mechanics and battles, though none have really incorporated actually space battles and exploration. I remember having one as a kid that did both, I think it was an Origin game but I cannot remember the name of it.

Planet's Edge?

 

[Skankster]

Nah, just got it. Thanks for the effort though.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Rogue

It had space travel like Elite, or so the youngers might recognise it, sort of like the X games. When you hit a planet or space station or whatever, it changed into top down Ultima-ish exploration.

 

[Ebonsword]

I never played the Buck Rogers Gold Box games back in the day, but I've always been curious about them.

Are they readily available? Such as in one of those "12 RPG Classics!" collections like had the Bard's Tale games?

 

[Skankster]

Only copies I have seen were on the shelf as a kid and the ones I have here. You may have to aquire them in another fashion, and the manuals are at replacement docs. I know this because I cannot find my matrix cubed logbook so had to download it.

 

[Squeek]

I played the Sega Genesis version and remember enjoying it a lot. Talk about simple! The space combat? But I had a smile on my face the whole time. I wouldn't mind owning one of those needle guns, either!

 

[LCJr.]

I never played the Buck Rogers Gold Box games back in the day, but I've always been curious about them.

Are they readily available? Such as in one of those "12 RPG Classics!" collections like had the Bard's Tale games?

Very readily available.
http://www.abandonia.com/en/games/23884/Buck+Rogers+-+Countdown+to+Doomsday.html

http://www.abandonia.com/en/games/23885/Buck+Rogers+-+Matrix+Cubed.html

I never finished Countdown to Doomsday. Always seem to run out of steam around Venus.

@Skankster Have you played the MegaTraveller games?

 

[Trash]

I played the Sega Genesis version and remember enjoying it a lot. Talk about simple! The space combat? But I had a smile on my face the whole time. I wouldn't mind owning one of those needle guns, either!

Give me that plasma launcher any day! :D

 

[MisterStone]

Space Rogue... bleh, I remember playing that game for an hour or less, then returning it to the store for a refund. What a horrible waste of an opportunity. Elite + ultima-style gameplay would have been sweeet.

Speaking of space themed RPGs, could someone tell me about Mars Sage/Mines of Titan? It looks kinda cool, kind of like Wasteland in spaaaace. Is it worth playing these days?

 

[Flux_Capacitor]

Speaking of space themed RPGs, could someone tell me about Mars Sage/Mines of Titan? It looks kinda cool, kind of like Wasteland in spaaaace. Is it worth playing these days?

I played Mines of Titan a fair amount way back (on the Apple II, as I recall). There were a few things that I liked, but overall, the game is kind of meh. Its playable for a while, but don't expect anything mind-blowing.

If you're looking for an interesting world to explore with tons of quests and interesting NPCs, this probably isn't going to be what you want. There are really only three types of locales (city, planet surface, mine shafts) and are all generally pretty uninteresting. I don't recall doing much on the planet surface, except a lot of aimless wandering and some fighting. I remember one quest on the surface to simply find some object, but that was about it. The mine shafts were the 'dungeons', and mostly were just long, tedious walks around various tunnels. The cities had a few somewhat interesting events, but it was mostly about grinding for experience and cash.

On the plus side, I liked how they handled character generation. You start off with a pre-generated character (who you can, and probably should, dump early). To add new characters to your party, you walk into a bar, and request recruits from various backgrounds. If I remember right, the prospective party member then gives some details about their experience, and more or less which skills they have. Unfortunately, in the end, it doesn't matter a whole lot, since everyone can learn every skill.

The computer terminals are also kind of cool. They can be used to read some about various bits of information about the game world. Its also possible to hack into the system for various items and details, read job postings (quests), and read some emails. It a simple text menu system, but I felt it worked well for what it was.

Combat will probably take a while to figure out. As I recall, its phase-based, from a top down view point. Once issues for a round are ordered, the actions are played out in a real-time kind of way until the next round. Its extremely likely you'll cause significant damage to your own party members, since you are hurt by friendly fire. Normally I don't have much of a problem with it, but, well, you'd probably need to play the game for a while to understand what I'm talking about. Not that it matters much, as you can easily get decimated by the enemies (watch out for agents and hit-men).