Booooo! What's wrong with +5 blah of blahing?

Seriously though, I've played both of the Buck Rogers games back on my c128 and they were quite good. The basic style was the same as you'd expect from the other gold box games, though general combat was different given the genre. Range combat became the norm while hand-to-hand took a backseat. Mind you, the hand-to-hand could be very effective, so closing to melee range was often advantageous for the warrior-based classes. Spells (both combative and healing) were gone, so you needed explosive weapons to perform fireball-like damage. You typically had a least one, potentially two, medics that I believe would attempt an autoheal after combat. Healing during combat, I think, was limited to object usage (it's been a while though, so I could be wrong).

One of the things I enjoyed about the BR games was that skills played a large part, with things like hacking/programming, communications, medical, and other sundry skills playing a fair part in getting you through the game (something that is virtually non-existent in the other goldbox games). In addition, skills could affect combat, since if you were fighting in a zero-g environment and botched your zero-g skill you'd perform patheticly (very little moment and lots of combat penalties). Ship-to-ship combat was also available (along with necessary skills like piloting and juryrigging), and often left you with the choice to obliterate the opponent, board, or flee.

Btw, finding a +1 sword in Pool of Radiance wasn't special. I just recruited hirelings, let them get killed, then took their stuff... all will Lawful Good! :) Also, I'm pretty sure your equipment was swiped from you when you went from Pool to Curse. Of course, I may be getting this confused since I often would put my characters through the Whitebox "Keep" game (can't remember the full name). As for Secret of the Silver Blades, I never found it too difficult to play early on, as the town gave you rudimentary equipment. Of course, all the enlarge spells proved extremely effective in insuring maximum damage potential, which certainly helped.