Secret of the Silver Blades, the next entry in the Forgotten Realms Gold Box SSI series, improves in some ways, and stumbles in others. The graphics have improved slightly, now supporting 16 bit colors, the mouse and arrow keys can be used to navigate the menu now, and there's a few new quality of life features like a vault to store your gear. However, the overhead-view open world is gone, leaving the game feeling less like an adventure and more like one long dungeon crawl. Also, like the last entry in the series, it doesn't change up the gameplay formula either. The Forgotten Realms Gold Box games seem to struggle with innovation. Aside from Hillsfar, which was a disappointment in its own way, every game plays functionally the same. This is not necessarily a bad thing, the games are mostly straightforward and always do one thing very well, the tactical turn-based combat. So Secret of the Silver Blades may be lacking a bit in innovation and is even missing a major part of the game that the last two entries had, but it's still a Gold Box game and still is a solid dungeon crawler.

Once you begin the game, your party enters a new town searching for new adventures. The town of New Verdigris is in a beautiful valley surrounded by mountains and a large glacier. When you enter the town the mayor tells you of the current problems they are facing. The ruins have been overrun by a gang of bandits called the Black Circle and the Well of Knowledge has been taken over by monsters. So your initial tasks are to clear the Well of Knowledge and put a stop to the Black Circle. The mayor generously provides your party with some starting items and some platinum to purchase more equipment. Once you clear out the Well of Knowledge, it acts as a central hub that is lined with teleporters, so you can easily return to this location. As you explore through different areas, you will come across teleporters that lead back to the Well of Knowledge. This allows you to easily revisit previous areas that you've been to and to get back to the main town during your travels if you happen upon a teleporter. The Well of Knowledge is also a source of information for the player. You can donate gems and receive hints on where to go or what to do next. This also is an important part of the story as the people that live in the town used the Well of Knowledge as a desperate attempt to call for help to fight against the monsters and Black Circle Clan that has invaded the mines. Once the Well of Knowledge is clear of monsters, you can speak to it and hear its wisdom. Your party must trek through the ruins which is a massive maze that connects New Verdigris, the Well of Knowledge, mines, Black Circle Headquarters, and the castle. It's huge and can be very confusing to navigate. Also, due to its size and the way GBC (Gold Box Companion) maps levels, the GBC automap doesn't map it correctly and becomes almost useless. So the only way to navigate through the ruins is by either mapping it yourself the old fashion way, or using the provided map in the cluebook. Thankfully however, you can find teleporters in each of the main locations so once you get there the first time, you can just teleport back and forward and not have to navigate through the ruins again. There are a few other locations that suffer the same map problem such as the western and eastern crevasses. Again though, this is a GBC problem, not really a problem with the game.

You reach the Well of Knowledge finally and it can grant you hints for the small cost of 100 gems.

As you traverse through these ruins, you must clear the Black Circle Headquarters and then make your way to the mines. In the mines you'll first come across the temple. The temple is illuminated with a glowing light and is one of the few safe havens in the game. Within the temple you'll find an old dwarf named Derf. This dwarf is part of a secret organization called the Silver Blades. He tells you a tale of Oswulf and his brother Eldamar. Eldamar was obsessed with becoming more powerful and turned himself into a lich known as the Dreadlord. Oswulf tried to stop him with the help of the Silver Blades. This led to the Dreadlord summoning an army of monsters to defend himself. The Silver Blades mages then froze the Dreadlord's castle as an attempt to contain him and his army. Oswulf then sacrificed himself so his spirit could defend the castle, as he didn't want his brother to be killed. Years later an organization formed called the Black Circle Clan which managed to start melting the ice around the castle, waking more and more of the Dreadlord's army, and eventually the Dreadlord himself. So now as you found the Silver Blades' hideout, you must join them to help stop the Dreadlord from escaping and wreaking more havoc. So in order to join the Silver Blades, Derf tasks the party with finding the 8 pieces of the staff of Owulf from the mines. When you return with all of the pieces, he reforms the staff and tells you that you'll need it to get past Oswulf's spirit at the castle. Derf then announces that you all are members of the Silver Blades and tasks you with finding and defeating the dreadlord. Your main quest for the rest of the game is to get to the dreadlord's castle and defeat him. Along the way you will meet a few unique characters and fight through many enemies. All of the same dungeon crawling escapades that you would be familiar with from the last two games. The story this time around goes back to a more simple set up than Curse. Similar to Pool, your band of adventurers are just looking for some monsters to fight and money to make. Eventually you get swept up into a larger plot that involves saving the world. It's not going to knock your socks off but it's serviceable and is used as a purpose for all the dungeon crawling and monster slaying.

Combat against the Black Circle Clan.

The combat and progression works the same as the last two games. It's 1st edition AD&D and still has the satisfying tactical turn-based combat system. In Silver Blades you start at level 8 and the cap depending on your character race, is about level 15. So this is a higher level adventure than the previous games. Personally, I prefer higher level D&D combat over low level, at least for older editions up to 3.5. I find that low level combat in games like Pool of Radiance, Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, Neverwinter Nights, etc, leads to a lot of missing attacks and there are few spell options to alleviate that. This is especially bad in a turn-based game like Pool, where it is much slower paced and every miss makes the larger fights feel like an eternity. Starting at level 8 in Silver Blades makes the combat go much smoother, which makes the overall experience more enjoyable. Not to say I don't enjoy a low level adventure in an RPG, Baldur's Gate is one of my all time favorite games, but I feel, in some aspects, AD&D doesn't always translate well into a video game.

In the inner sanctum of the Black Circle Clan lies a huge nest of dragon eggs.

The one and only central town in Silver Blades is New Verdigris. Here you can buy and sell equipment, rest, train your characters, heal at the temple, and access the town vault. The vault or bank, is a new and welcome addition to this entry. Previously, you had nowhere to store your currency and equipment, so you had to just drop stuff on the ground or sell it. Also, since currency has weight in these games, you often end up with too much money to carry. So you only want to keep enough on your characters to train and a little extra to replenish ammo or buy other miscellaneous items, and ditch the rest. Now though, in Silver Blades, you have a vault to keep all of your money and items. This is a very appreciated feature and should have been there from the beginning. The rest of the world, as I have previously explained, is several main locations that are split up between the ruins, mines, and crevasses. The open world of the past two games is gone. Now it's essentially one huge dungeon crawl, with the Well of Knowledge acting as your fast travel between discovered portals. While it is disappointing how much more linear Silver Blades is, the open world was never really the strong suit of the series. The actual interaction and freedom of these games are quite limited even compared to its contemporaries such as; Ultima, Magic Candle, or even more straightforward dungeon crawlers like Might & Magic. The Pools series' (for lack of a better title) real strengths rely on its combat system and being the first official implementation of AD&D rules in a CRPG. However, a small change of pace is nice and the open world, especially in Pool of Radiance, while simple, helped break up the dungeon crawling with some exploration. Even in Curse of Azure Bonds, with its more linear open world, was better than nothing. Now in Silver Blades it seems the devs decided not to implement the traditional open world at all. The reasoning could be because of not enough time before the release deadline or it could be because of a creative decision. Either way it's disappointing to lose this aspect of the game.

Eldamar's spirit is saved and reunited with his brother after you defeat the Dreadlord.

Secret of The Silver Blades is a fun dungeon crawler romp that doesn't do anything new or too exciting. The convenient teleport system with the Well of Knowledge is nice and I really appreciate having a bank to finally store all of my gear and ridiculous amounts of money (which still mostly gets left behind after battles because the game just gives you way too much honestly). The encounter design is pretty solid. Most of the enemies are fun to fight, I do however have my grievances with medusas and the castle guards. About mid way to the game you will start to encounter medusas and basilisks which can gaze at your party and turn them into stone. This can lead to serious problems if you're not prepared. You can counteract the gaze attacks if a character is equipped with a mirror or is wearing silver armor or a silver shield. Mirrors have to be equipped in the weapon slot to work however and silver gear isn't given to you until the end of the game and even then you only get a single armor piece and shield. So the best way to deal with them is to try to kill or disable them before they get your party stoned or hope you successfully roll a saving throw if a character is gazed. The other annoyance being the pesky castle guards. These guys can have over 100 hit points and are highly resistant to spells. The game will often throw a whole army of these guards at you in a single battle which just leads to prolonged fights that feel more like padding than an actual challenge. Other than those few enemy types, I found the game to be pretty well balanced overall. The lack of open world is pretty disappointing however, which leads to the game feeling monotonous when you're trekking through the large never ending crevasses. Still, it may not be the best in the series but it's a solid dungeon crawler.