Dragons of Flame (1989) - MobyGames (original) (raw)

The Good
The game is visibly more colorful than Heroes of the Lance. You start with an overworld view of the map, which does entice you more to explore around.

You no longer have to start a run and press "action" to jump, you just press up+direction, or 7 or 9 on the numpad.

The compass is actually useful this time around, as you can change the orientation you're walking at any time, which allows you to sidestep enemy projectiles. Your movement in this view also moves you in the overworld map.

Combat no longer has hitstun, so you can flee or just walk past enemies. None of the characters is essential at any point, so you don't have to worry about any of them dying. You can also find some allies while traveling, giving your group a bit more of a fighting chance.

Every menu action has a keyboard shortcut, its first letter, such as (I)nspect, (H)ero Select, (C)leric spells, etc.

Something of a funny note, you can't enter Pax Tharkas from the front, but an ally you find near it, Gilthanas, tells you to look for a secret entrance by going through the forest. Most of the videos on YT show people getting to the front of the fort and giving up, even though you can still see a bit of overworld walkable space further west of it.

When you finally enter Sla Mori and Pax Tharkas, enemies you kill stay dead

The Bad
The game did bring a number of quality of life enhancements compared to the previous, but still feels awful to play.

For whatever reason, the action button is no longer ENTER, but '+' on the numpad. Why? To make it worse, none of the manuals clearly label the DOS controls, so it's easy to miss this crucial information, especially as the manual that comes with the GOG version doesn't actually list any of the technical stuff.

The game is faster than Heroes of the Lance, but movement feels sluggish. You can't speed up through DOSBox emulation or Cheat Engine.

The region map which you can see with Q shows the advance of the draconian armies. As time advances, it gets more filled with flames and more enemies spawn in those areas. Other than lagging the "up scrolling" of the map, it really serves no other purpose and can't be reduced.

The game still lacks music and the sounds are the same from the previous game.

Combat might feel worse than the first game. While you hit a lot more often, up to 6 enemies can show up at once and they can destroy you in no time. 2 ranged enemies are enough to take down more than half of your front character's health

The underground exploration of Sla Mori and Pax Tharkas is horrible and it's where the majority of your game time will go. You're walking around a grid map with a very limited side view and identical looking floors and walls, so good luck guessing where you are. To make matters worse, some of the doors you have to go through are hidden/invisible, so you have to (I)nspect the tile. I had to check the Clue Book (thanks, archive.org!) to get an idea of where I was and where I should go, otherwise I'd have given up.

Raistlin's "Detect Invisible" and "Detect Magic" spells are completely useless. A very few select tiles have anything invisible where the magic would work and it's only to get items, while Detect Magic exists only to tell you if any item you can see is magic or not. These two would work much better as means to clue you in on hidden doors.

The Bottom Line
Don't play. If you insist, keep Goldmoon alive and abuse her infinite Turn Undead, which works on every enemy.