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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In this episode we’ve got a lot of MMO-style content and news. Although we’re not reviewing Wrath of the Lich King yet, we’ve got other subscription based news. This weeks gaming flashback is Defender and this weeks news includes:
:)) ha ha ha … they forgot to buy domains related to the names of their products …
Quite funny though, I wonder what the site will be about.
Jordan, regarding ratings, you should also check out http://www.tigrs.org
Jonah, Dead Island sounds pretty nice. You should try your hand at writing reviews. But with less spoilers 🙂
😛 Jonah, PCs have something that consoles lack: flexibility.
It’s fun to have an episode like that from now and then.
haha, don’t worry Paul, I’d take Star Trek over Star Wars any day as well. Yes, even Enterprise 😛
Unfortunately, that means you STILL aren’t getting any hate mail. You really need to try harder ^_^
Hey guys,I was just listening to the podcast from July 3d and was pleasantly surprised to hear my own name being read up and subsequent comment..I had to rewind that just to see if I had heard right:P As to the 360/PC compability,I was mainly referring to most games coming to PC being console ports these days and thus having their native 360 gamepad controls intact with it..an example of this is FIFA 11 where me and my brother can use both of my 360 gamepads to play 2 player game..as for the WOW counterpoint..touche..but there are ways around that as well,namely Xpadder where you can plot the keys into Xbox/gamepad button counterparts so you can play WoW with it.
However most of the PC games coming out now are console ports and does support especially the 360 pad in particular,what sparked my previous comment was when you were bringing up the conviviality of not having to sit in front of a 15 inch screen..i was just trying to make a counterpoint saying that you for the most part dont have to…sorry for the rant and thank you for including me into a great podcast:)
Nice talk in the beginning. Wouldn’t mind hearing this type of show every couple of months. You guys managed to sell me on Dead Island as well. All in all a great show for just being outtakes.