I miss old SSI games and all the beauty and wonder they brought me as a child. Perhaps it’s more of the feeling of playing old MS-DOS games and that no worries feeling of playing games all summer long when your parents are out working; no cares in the world but that of the evil dragons and goblins of an RPG world. Secret of the Silver Blades arrived in May of 1990, developed and published by Strategic Simulations Inc (SSI), a company we covered in our gaming history back in TD Gaming Podcast Episode 9.
Secret of the Silver Blades is actually the third in a four-part game series which was eventually packaged in the Gold Box editing of the SSI games. It was a continuation of the game Curse of the Azure Bonds and the first in the series: Pool of Radiance. The cool part of the series was the leveling system where each would let you level to a certain limit just like most modules in D&D games, this game let you get to level seven which means a Mage could use the cool Delayed Blast Fireball spell which was one of my favorite magic spells in D&D (yeah, I’m a dork.)
The graphics were a whopping 16-colors, with slight graphical improvements over the other two prior games. This game didn’t have an overworld map like the others, going full first person for the length of the game. Another great enhancement was the ability to use the arrow keys to navigate menu’s without the need for “hot keys” like older SSI titles, given the game is very much menu-based for combat, equipment and inventory management it was very handy to have the use of those nice little arrow keys.
You create your party and start adventuring in a game engine very similar to all the games before it, so introduction to game mechanics was minimal, you could advance your characters further in level and, most importantly, import characters from previous games. The D&D world is really a character-driven game environment and you grow fond of your characters and understand the best ways to battle with them, importing is key and still, today, is a big part in well done RPG expansions (Guild Wars is a great example). Unfortunately, many games fall short of character import and it kind of blows away some of the magic of an RPG.
One of the frustrating issues with Secret of the Silver blade is the limitation on levels for the Cleric, because they can’t level up past 7 they can’t get the good ressurection spell, only allowed to use Raise Dead which lowers your characters constitution by 1 (much like the traditional D&D rules). However, given its a video game and not a paper-dice based game, the raise dead penalty is annoying, so it was easier to save often and re-load when you died to try again and avoid the penalty. I do recall their being some scrolls or something to get back your constitution penalty… but it’s been awhile I might be making that up.
Anyway, a well done series, classic RPG and helped build a foundation for games like Morrow Wind and Oblivion in my opinion.
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The first demo for Final Fantasy XIII has been
@EA always “growing and morphing”:
Riiight, they convinced me already at the “growing”.
What they didn’t realize just yet is that the bad rep they have will end up being very costly.
Jonah, good point about the fact that hiring is not a news subject.
@Rumor: Microsoft finding new ways to “monetize” Xbox Live
Loved Jordan’s point of view; usually a resume is just a resume. Most people write stuff in their resumes even if they only have a vague idea about the subject.
As for Code Hero, Paul, you don’t know hate mail when it’s delivered to you. There, the second piece of it.
Yeah, hardly anything was actually newsworthy so I’ll just skip the news.
@QOTW: Seeing as Paul is already going to answer with Harry Potter, I’ll go with a less obvious choice. The Inheritance Cycle, 4 books by Christopher Paolini. It has magic in a more complicated fashion and it is much rarer to have magical abilities as opposed to in the Harry Potter universe. It takes place in a Lord-of-the-Rings-esque world and I love them very much. I read the first 3 books about 4 years ago (Yes, I was about 11 or 12 at the time), and it’s a shame that I haven’t had the time to read the 4th one which was released a few months ago.
Anyway, Thursday next week I will be starting my GCSEs and will be having 1 or 2 exams per day, so it will be unlikely that I listen to this podcast, although I will still try my best not to miss it.
magic: the gathe–DAMNIT. oh well i have the game already im sure whoever gets it will enjoy the heck out of it.
my favourite fantasy book is .hack//AI buster its a book about a fictional mmo and you can cast spells in the mmo sooo does that count?
I would love to leave you iTunes comments, but I am firmly of an opinion that Apple is the cancer of technological industry and refuse to let any of their garbage stain my hard drive.
@Halo 4 multiplayer
I love the Halo series. It still has that classic gameplay which allows you to have a firefight with an enemy for longer than 5 seconds. Unlike Battlefield or Call of Duty. I just hope 343 industries won’t change that much. I don’t mind seeing the elites go, although they will be surely missed. Sprint as standard is a good addition. But the credit system sounds fishy. Halo: Reach had a good thing going with their monies. I would much rather see a return of that system than some new COD perk thing.
@EA laying people
Why do we even care? We are gamers! We care about EA’s games. Not how many staff they fire. It’s not like EA will go bankrupt. That tumour is too well rooted in the gaming industry.
@QOTW
I will have to go with Neil Gaiman’s “American Gods”. Best book I ever read. The guy leaks gold out of his pen. He was the one who wrote the legendary “Sandman” comic book series. If you haven’t read “American Gods” then you do not deserve to have eyes. Fact.
The book is about gods imported from the old western faiths (Odin, Chernobog) pitted against the embodiments of the modern age (Goddess of Media, God of Money) in a struggle to win the belief of modern day USA. And one unfotunate man stuck in the middle of it. Brilliant read. Highly recommend.
Halo 4 Details – Not too sure about this. They changed a lot from Halo 3 to Halo: Reach and I wasn’t too fond of the change, I actually don’t know many people who were. Regardless I’ll buy it for the campaign, but if the multiplayer is going to be more like Reach rather than Halo 3, then it will not be a purchase for me.
@Arthur V on EA Layoffs – The reason why we should care is because that is a lot of people to suddenly have no job. EA wouldn’t really suffer from it, but the people that were let go suddenly have no income.
Further Monetize Xbox Live – As an Xbox owner, I have to say that Microsoft is doing a really great job with the system right now. Granted the Red Ring of Death thing was bad, but I’m still sitting on my first Xbox, so I have no complaints. The online experience really comes down to this: you get what you pay for, and you pay for what you want.
QOTW – The Secrets of Droon would have to be my favorite magic series because I read those from when I was 7 till when I was 13, so the book series was with me for part of my young life. They are really meant for kids so I don’t see many of you going out and picking up a copy.
Hey everyone, thank you very much for that Civ key. I’ve been a big Civilization fan since CivII so I will be checking out Dan’s podcast. Also, I will be practicing hard so I can challenge Dan for world supremacy one of these days. Too bad they took the Portuguese civ out of the game, I loved the early naval exploration to get to new shores quickly.
@EA layoffs – I guess we won’t know for sure. One thing is for sure, the increasing number of games being released and increasing costs of development, even companies like EA are under pressure.
Every AAA title takes millions to develop, and I guess budgets and therefore personnel costs need to be adjusted all the time.
@Halo details – never been a fan of Halo myself , but I will be curious to know how this achievement for not killing anyone will work.
@QOTW – I won’t be participating in this one, but I’ll leave my answer anyway: Its not easy though, as I’m a big fan of high fantasy books.
But since this is a gaming podcast, I’ll go with: Wied?min, you go ahead and try to read that!
You will know it as The Witcher by Polish writer Andrzej Sapkowski. Even if you just played the game, you know how amazing that whole lore is. Also Geralt of Rivia is one of the coolest main characters I’ve ever seen.
Also, so sorry for not leaving comments on Itunes but I seriously dislike Apple and their I-stuff.
One more thing, whenever you have lack news to cover, try talking a little bit about the Humble Bundle game bundles. Whats your view on initiatives like these that help independent developers and charity institutions.
Happy Happy Joy Joy
PS: It seems like I can’t paste the Polish name of The Witcher because of the funny character, its Wiedzmin .
@being slapped on the wrist for being an incensitive prick towards others
I suppose Will is right. As an economist I tend to look past such trivial matters like suffering of the common folk. Regardless, such is the time we live in. The current layoff of the EA staff is most likely a result of decisions made in the past few years. People don’t get fired on the spot, since employers are restricted by negotiated contracts/projects.
We have all seen how the gaming industry contracted in the past few years. Many publishers were hit bad as a result. The industry started to restructure to survive. Sega shed people. Nintendo took a pay cut. I expect there will be a lot more job loses in the future.
Hope you enjoy PolyCast as well as this one, jfgen.
As for world supremacy, well, it’s certainly enticing. 😀
@Arthur V – Didn’t mean to come off like I was chastising you, just saying that there are people behind this that are affected, and the company usually still makes millions of dollars. Trust me, if there were a way that I could shut down EA and have only the assholes be harmed by it, I would most certainly do it, but I’m just a man, so that won’t be happening any time soon. Any friend of the TD Gaming Podcast is a friend of mine, and anyone that dislikes EA is a friend of mine as well, so no slap on the wrist for you good sir.