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In the land where silver dragons appear as beautiful blondes, there's more danger than you could throw a spell book at. For this is Krynn (agynn), the domain of the dungeon masters of TSR/SSI where the adventures go on (and on and on...)

Fear of aging affects games too. Death Knights Of Krynn continues the on-going saga of Dragonlance adventure games begun with Champions Of Krynn. As part of the wider range of AD&D games jointly developed by the TSR/SSI alliance, it's the fifth game based the same player interface and the eleventh AD&D computer product overall. It begs the question, how many people are they still interested in the series? If Police Academy syndrome is anything to go by, people can stomach the same old stuff forever (nobody gets bored of fish and chips).

But Dragons Of Krynn isn't stodge. What you get are three double-sided disks (complete with a quick-start saved game position and a couple of high quality manuals which contain a wealth of information. You control a group of detailed characters; wizards, fighters, thieves and the like, by using a joystick to select moves from Menus.

The initial task the characters have to complete is the successful defence of a friendly outpost from hordes of evil creatures - Draconians - and their allies (these include zombie dragons, skeleton warriors and many others). There are many more tasks to be accomplished as the adventure unfolds and you play out these as a series of encounters or mini-games.

Because of the game's predominant plot and detailed background these encounters are easily related as stories. And that's when you know how much fun you had, when you tell somebody the next day what you played the night before.

Your party's very first encounter in Death Knights is a fight against a skeleton wrecking crew who are almost impervious to your party's magical abilities. You can input an instruction to make the computer play all your moves for you during combat but it's more fun to take control yourself. This isn't too difficult to do. Even if you make mistakes, the system often lets you correct them (though when I thought I'd got it sussed and speeded up my instructions I accidentally got the wizard of the party to detonate a fireball right on top of everybody except the bad guys).

Though there are plenty of fights lined up over the adventure, there's more to it than that: later you might find yourself on a wilderness mission to recover a valuable lost dream that contains some pearl of knowledge. This is high fantasy on computer and the squillions of quests and encounters tweak your imagination glands until they burst. They also allow you to play the game in small chunks which make you think you've accomplished quite a bit, though you've barely scratched the surface. But then, for around 25 quid, you shouldn't really expect anything less.

One last thing though. If you haven't played one of these games before, this one is as good a game of its type as any (it has six difficulty levels). However, if you have bought one before but haven't finished it, why not? I wonder how many people play something like this to the finish. If you can't face another six week tromp through the adventure you've got, you'd be mad to buy another.

On the other hand, this is a great sequel to Champions Of Krynn, really well programmed to give you the best adventure based on the original story it's possible to give. Now, can we have a new adventure next time please? The Dragonlance story is a bit long in the tooth, after all.

Five or six years ago, SSI were famous for an extensive catalogue of historical wargames and fantasy roleplaying (FRP) games, most of which were developed under their own roof.

Their experimentation with roleplaying adventure formats made them ideal candidates when TSR began looking for a company to computerise AD&D. Both companies were used to developing on-going series of games and AD&D itself had its roots in traditional wargaming.

Four years later, the list of AD&D titles has grown to twelve (including the 16-bit Eye Of The Beholder) and SSI have also converted TSR's Buck Rogers RPG. This puts them firmly among those companies which have converted real roleplaying games on computer. SSI have explored several styles on these games as well. Hillsfar was a gladiatorial combat based game. War Of The Lance was a wargame in which you controlled whole armies fighting Dragonlance wars across the face of Krynn. Dragons Of Flame (reviewed in CF1) was an adventure in arcade format that didn't really work very well and Dungeon Master's Assistant Vol.1: Encounters is a game-aid program for Dungeon Masters running AD&D games for a group of friends. (The original game will be twenty years old in 1994.)

But the most successful games in the series have been those using the same menu-driven interface as Death Knights Of Krynn. Pool Of Radiance, the first computer AD&D game ever and the game which also introduced the menu system has now sold over 250,000 copies across all formats!

1. Three disks of superbly programmed roleplay with...
2. ...hardly any disk-swapping!
3. Flexible: play any way you want to
4. Control is easy (and fast once you get used to it)
5. You only need to look in the manual every now and then
6. The Adventurer's Journal is packed full of interesting stuff
7. Mix of gameplay styles to keep boredom at bay
8. Plenty of special missions to choose from
9. You can use characters from Champions Of Krynn or roll new ones when you start a new adventure

1. Disk users only: a bit long-winded