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Should not have been released

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 6 / 8
Date: October 24, 2001
Author: Amazon User

I purchased this game and assumed it was finished, it was not. I set up my system with a minimal amount of space on C: drive, and this program must be installed on C:. Even if you download the patch, the installer still looks for enough space on C: to install. I wish I could give you a review of the actual play of the game, but like I said I will not be able to play it until Ubisoft puts out another install patch, or I re-partition my system(not likely, either one). Unless you have lots of space on your C: drive (minimum 630 MB), don't get this, you'll never be able to install.

Don't even think of buying this now...

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 6 / 8
Date: October 09, 2001
Author: Amazon User

Game is loaded with bugs. After 5 hours of play can't save without being dropped to the desktop. Installer works only on it's C:\program files\... etc. installs only in the default dir no matter where you set it to. Unplayable at this point. I'm returning mine and wait for a stable release. Yes I would like to buy it again and play it once it's fixed.
Want more ? Go to www.poolofradiance.com "tech" forum and search for "roster". I can't even begin to describe the rest of the bugs, you have to visit their site before buying. That is the best $... advice I can give you all.
Piece of unfinished ....
I'm running AMD 1.33 Ghz ASUS A7MDDR 512mb U160 SCSI drives. Technical field as a profession.
This game is unfinished. UBI SOFT starts to give me a scary feeling whenever I see it on any game box.

UNFINISHED!

not since Ultima IX...

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 5 / 6
Date: October 03, 2001
Author: Amazon User

...have i place such high expectations for a RPG only to receive a game that's barely playable, i got it the first day out but there are now known technical issues with the release of this game. after 2 hours of playing, my saved games were utterly corrupted and the game crashed consistantly back to the desktop. i have to manually delete some files just to be able to play. other technical issues have been raised in various forums that i will not address since i will assume that a workable patch will be available by the time this review is posted; instead i will mention the gameplay itself.

graphically, the game looks nice but it only has one resolution of 800x600 so you see a limited view of your party's immediate area. the pathing AI during combat is horrendous, often taking a longer route than necessary... this sometimes leads to your character running by an enemy, giving them an attack of opportunity against you; this can also negate your ability to attack -- depending on how far you need to move to an enemy, you may or may not be able to attack, taking a longer route even though it initially shows an attack icon means a wasted move. it's also hard to position your character to score flanking attacks. the combat manual is almost too cumbersome, though hotkeying commands help.

i like the point-buy system of generating your character's ability score which is sanctioned by AD&D rules and a very fair way of managing your needs. but your character starting equiptment sometimes doesn't make sense. your characters generally have a range weapon, a bow or sling, but no ammuno... arrows are really hard to find and was not sold by the first trader you meet (i haven't come across another trader/shopkeeper so far), yet most of the orcs you meet will launch arrows at your party.

this game follows 3E rules but pre-determines each character's feats, skills and abilities without input from the player. the characters does not appear balanced, the ranger for instance does NOT have the ability to use dual weapons (no one can) making the class much weaker than other fighter classes; the favored-enemy is pre-selected (at least on level one).

getting to level 2 is fairly straight forward but getting from level 2-3 is TEDIOUS -- it feels like most of the enemies encountered rarely provide much experience points. sometimes the enemies seemed harder to fight because your characters are so weak -- at level 2 your will face shadows and wraiths and only one or two of your party will have magical weapons at that point; once you are in combat mode, there is no way to retreat.

since you HAVE to keep your party together, you also can't send one character to do advance scouting (this oversight will be a huge disappoint especially if you play the multi-player mode).

overall, this feels like an unfinished game that's more of a dungeon crawler (with lower resolution and much less loot) than a true RPG -- the plot line so far is fairly trite. i am just severely disappointed that this game is linked to the excellent gold box series -- maybe it's unfair to make the comparison but if you carry the name Pool of Radiance, you've got to deliver.

Who went wee-wee in the kiddie pool of radiance!?

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 5 / 6
Date: October 12, 2001
Author: Amazon User

I didn't experience any of the technical problems mentioned in other reviews and apparently I should count myself extremely lucky ( I sure as heck won't be uninstalling this game anytime soon, only to lose my OS. Wow, that's some shoddy product). So I will speak only to the game itself. It's terrible. And yes, I can and will compare it to Black Isle's BG and IWD series. How can you not!? If UBISoft intends to compete in the D&D RPG market they need to get their act together. First of all they were oblivious to the whole appeal of the 3rd edition rules - the ability to finally tailor-make a character. At no point in the game play was I allowed to select skills and feats myself. Secondly there is a reason the actual D&D game is turn-based. It has to be. There is no other way for several people and a DM sitting at a table to coordinate accurate combat. The computer which can control the various combatants your characters face should remove the boredom of having to watch 4 zombies mozy on over to your party one by one to attack them. Black Isle understood this. If BG and IWD wasn't your "thinking game", if you were overwhelmed by the pace, then you obviously didn't discover the auto-pause feature for combat. I won't play a game if it's cheap on tactics and strategy, and Black Isle's were so rich with that, with their combat system and numerous spells and weapons. POR for it's attempt at the 3rd edition can't compare. The sounds and music are quite dull. I ordered the collector's edition hoping the soundtrack CD would be as good as the IWD soundtrack that I bought from Black Isle - not even close. The characters lack the flair of BG and IWD. The story is non-existant at times. The playing area is as empty as an abondanded wharehouse. Most of the areas lack enough monsters, or treasure, trinkets, puzzles, secondary characters or anything that might develop the story or mood of the game. That's great if you like walking around aimlessly. The CG images of the characters and monsters if not the spell effects at least showed some effort but they can't save this game. All in all the debut of the 3rd edition rules on computer was a big dissapointment for me.

The Pool is flawed--but not totally.

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 5 / 6
Date: November 12, 2001
Author: Amazon User

I had been expecting this game for over a year. Since I had played all of the original Gold Box games it had been a long time coming. I thoroughly enjoyed the "Baldur's Gate" series but missed the actual turned based combat from the original games.

What UBI Soft put out was something short of ready for consumer use. Believe me there are a lot of bugs! When I first received it I couldn't even play after I initially played the game for a couple of hours, restarted my system the next day and tried to run the game again. To remedy the situation I unstalled the game, restored my (Windows ME) operating system to a previous time before the installation, updated all of my drivers (which were already fairly new), reinstalled the game and finally installed the patch and it works ok. But sometimes the game shuts down by itself. One time one of my characters just disappeared and I was lucky I had saved prior to that since I was getting ready to save again before I noticed he vanished!

The story line isn't as colorful as previous games and the combat can be monotonous. But the graphics and sound are great and they almost make up for the problems.

I personally like the turned based combat but if your expecting something like the other games I mentioned you'll be a little disappointed.

If you like D&D type games then buy it. Maybe by the time the next one's released the manufacturer will learn from previous mistakes and produce something a little better.

Worst game I've bought in two years

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 5 / 6
Date: November 14, 2001
Author: Amazon User

The program crashed several times (after a clean Windows 2000 install) and finally crashed while I was in the middle of saving my game, which caused me to lose my whole game. You have to install the patch from (...) to prevent save game corruption, which gives you an idea of how much QA they did before the release.
Gameplay (stinks) too. It literally puts the word CRAWL in 'dungeon crawl' because your party trudges at a snail's pace compared to the easy, intuitive movement afforded in Baldur's Gate and other RPG's. Boring as hell.
I'd rather spend (dollar amount) in Amazon's Kitchenware section than buy this thing again.

So I must be one of the few who liked this...

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 5 / 6
Date: December 09, 2001
Author: Amazon User

First off, let me say I haven't played a lot of computer RPGs. I have been playing A/D&D (1st, 2nd and now 3rd editions) for 15 years however.

Having said that, I really do like this game. It does follow the 3rd Edition rules quite well for a computer game. There are things missing (no wizards, only sorcerers for example), but most are understandable when considering the differences between computer and tabletop versions (watching your wizard take time to study spells wouldn't be a lot of fun would it?).

The graphics are amazing. Seeing a fireball blast apart a Skeleton instead of imagining it is sweet. Plus, the sound effects are just subtle enough to be heard without being obtrusive.

So if I liked it so much why am I only giving it three stars? The game overcompensates the die rolls in favor of your opponents (I've heard to give the monsters a sporting chance as it were). I have terrible dice rolling luck and my paper-based D&D characters never roll as many 1's as my PoR characters do. I've had to reload the game from before a battle a few times just due to this fact.

Yes, PoR's original installation program won't let you uninstall it. Therefore, download the installation patch that does. Yes, the game does crash occasionally; save the game often. Yes, sometimes it is slow; learn to take life at a more leisurely pace.

Even with its faults, the game has been fun for me to play. My characters are advancing; the storyline is advancing and my enjoyment of computer RPGs has advanced along with it.

Have these people been asleep the last five years?!

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 5 / 6
Date: December 18, 2001
Author: Amazon User

Just about everything they could do wrong...they did wrong. The interface is absolutely awful. The characters move in this pokey slow manner that make you want to scream. Getting at spells goes through a multi level menu. The combat is almost exactly like the old turn based Pool of Radiance from five or six years ago. I take a shot, then you take a shot then he does, etc. Utterly lame. The adventure is completely linear. It gives you no choices and leads you by the nose. Often you don't even have a choice of right or left since the dungeons tend to lead you in a line as well. When you level up the machine decides how to allocate your feats and skill points for you. Please, please, please save your money. Buying this would only encourage them to put out more garbage.

BEWARE:This game will likely NOT work on your computer!

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 5 / 6
Date: December 24, 2001
Author: Amazon User

I was so looking forward to renewing my relationship with Pools of Radiance. Until I actually purchased the game and tried to install it.

Even with THREE patches already issued, the game will NOT install on ANY system with less than 650MB of available space on Drive C: only!!

Now, don't think that you can install it on another drive. The packaged installer will ONLY allow use of the C: drive, and the available patch that you have to download insists on 650MB of available space on the C: drive, even if you want to install the game elsewhere!

UBI sez that new versions are on the shelves, but the version I bought on 12/21 does NOT work. It's getting returned tomorrow.

What a waste of time.

Uninspired

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 4 / 4
Date: November 24, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I didn't hate this game as much as most of the reviewers here, but I must agree that it was a disappointment.

For what it's worth, I've had none of the technical problems that others have described (crashes, lockups, etc.). The user interface is certainly less than ideal, but it's workable. And yes, the load times are ridiculous, but that by itself isn't enough to ruin a game. And the AI is terrible, but there are RPGs with poor AI that are still great games (e.g., Neverwinter Nights).

So what's the problem? It's an endless stream of uninspired hack-and-slash. The puzzles rarely amount to more than "find the right key to open the door" - and you can be sure that the key will be arbitrarily located in a random chest on the other side of the dungeon. Roleplaying is almost nonexistent, and when it does come into play, it's usually pretty hackneyed stuff. You spend most of your time wandering around a gigantic, inconveniently designed dungeon, hacking your way through either ridiculously wimpy or ridiculously powerful undead. Strategy (if you can call it that) ultimately boils down to saving your game before each battle and replaying it until you win.

So while the engine itself isn't a total disaster (though it could certainly be better), the game that they designed for it is. The Baldur's Gate series did the isometric AD&D thing MUCH better, and Neverwinter Nights takes computer-based D&D to a whole new level. Unless you're just looking for a cheap way to kill a lazy weekend, don't waste your money on this yawner.

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