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Back to development

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 3 / 3
Date: July 07, 2002
Author: Amazon User

Let this be a lesson to all game companies: Take your time and develop the game fully. Rushing it out the door to take advantage of the hype results in a bug ridden game that ends up in the budget bin faster than the speed of light. Do not buy this unless you are prepared to be frustrated and send it back.

If you want 3rd Edition DnD, buy Neverwinter Nights

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 3 / 3
Date: July 13, 2002
Author: Amazon User

This game was not what they hyped it to be. It was supposed to use rules from the 3rd Edition pen and paper game which it does to an extent but the characters are not only made pretty much for you (whoopee you get to change the name) but you can only have like a total of 4 saved at one time. I was so disappointed in this game that I stopped playing before completing the first dungeon. If you are a Dungeons and Dragons fan, don't waste your money on it.

Ultimately Disappointing

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 3 / 3
Date: August 08, 2002
Author: Amazon User

I was looking forward to this game--a real D&D 3rd Ed game. It started out fun, for the first few days. However, I soon realized that I was playing the same game over and over again, in different, but very similar areas with higher level players and monsters. I will say that I really enjoyed the graphics and the combat system. Magic is prety cool as well. And the outside areas of the game are fun. But this is mostly an underground dungeon quest and the dungeons are essentially the same. I finally reached a point where I was bored stiff and quit playing. I never finished the game, and I had been playing for weeks. I started with eager anticipation, ended up extremely disappointed in the almost endless repetition of the game.

Where's the plot

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 3 / 3
Date: March 25, 2002
Author: Amazon User

The designers of this game seemed to have forgotten the storyline in their rush to create as many bad guys as possible. All the rooms are the same, and the game quickly becomes five levels of find orcs, kill orcs, find aombies, kill zombies. The entire game is spent in battle, and only in the last half of the game do you get to go somwhere outside and different. Overall, the plot is weak and you just battle, rest, battle, rest, etc. the sorcere's ability is nice, since you don't have to memorize specific spells, and its always nice to blasta group of drow with a wand of cone of cold, but the game is very underveloped and patch dependant.

A decent D&D game, but with serious problems

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 3 / 3
Date: February 28, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I purchased this game a few days ago, and here are some initial thoughts.

Cons: For those who play the PnP D&D game, this PC version is lacking. First, in character generation, while you get to pick race, class and stats, there is no opportunity to pick skills or feats. The skills and feats are given based on the class you pick. Also, there is no option to play as a wizard; only the sorcerer is available. It seems this was done out of laziness on the programmer's part. In combat, there is no option for charge attacks, which means that if you are out of range for a melee attack, you are screwed and just have to deal with it. There is also no option for the other special attacks, such as bull rush and trip attack, but if there was at least a charge attack I could deal with that. Also, unlike Temple of Elemental Evil, there is no path drawn on the floor to show distance allowed to move without losing the action part of the turn. Rather, there is a little icon that pops up on the cursor showing if the movement is within distance or not. There doesnt seem to be an option for dual-wielding. The characters move entirely too slow, so going back to some place you have been and need to return to takes forever. The menu for casting spells and using skills is entirely too small, and so makes taking these actions tedious. I know this game is 3.0 rules, and I dont know if they are different from 3.5 in this regard, but my ELF rogue cannot equip a longsword or a longbow. I know these are not rogue feats, but they are elf racial feats. Thus, I am stuck with a little 1d6 shortbow for my long range fighter.

Pros: Like ToEE, this game is turn based. Also, the game does run 3.0 rules. The game is not all that bad; it is DnD, and there's plenty of loot and experience to gain. Contrary to what some other reviewers have said, this game is not impossibly difficult. The first part of the game involves killing orcs, which only have one HD, an AC of 14, and at least in 3.5 rules, have a CR of 1/4. Considering there are 4 party members, and the usual encounter has 2 orcs, this is not bad at all.

How much can you slow the action in an RPG?

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 5 / 8
Date: April 29, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I have owned this game for quite some time but because I was involved in playing several other RPG's I just got around to trying it and boy was I dissappointed. This has to be the slowest game play ever. If you don't mind playing 30 minutes to kill one monster (maybe a SLIGHT exageration) then this games for you. I played for several hours and never made it past level one (and I didn't die). I will be archiving this game in my trash can never to be mistaken for something I might like to play again.

Not half bad.

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 4 / 6
Date: January 24, 2002
Author: Amazon User

Dispite some of the reviews which nearly had me believing this game was not worth buying, it is a very good game. You need the tutorial if you are not familiar with RPG's but if you work with the interface you can figure it out on your own. Although your skills and feats are picked for you, they are apropriate for your given class. No stealthy paladins or witty barbarians like I had originally thought. Attributes are not rolled(which I personally don't like anyway) but chosen by you. You get a limited number of bonus points and you have to distribute them wisely your self. Unlike Baldur's Gate where you usually rolled a weak roll and had a very limited number of points to spend you then rolled a weekend away and gave up. In this game it's much better. Your bonuses for certain attributes are clearly given and in the manual you can find all the info on a given attribute, not just a vague discription.
They gameplay is also good but the interface can give you carpel tunnel syndrom. In combat you must right-click on your characters to give special orders and sometimes you cannot click on the right one until thier time is up. This can usually be solved by spreading everyone out. I usually put one fighter in front of a monster(S) and one beside, not both in front like they always tell you in these games. Monsters won't go after your mages until they finish with your fighters who are attacking them(usually). Attack the attacker.
Graphics are gorgious and so is the sound. Despite what people are saying, I like the sound, the ambience is very good and the music isn't that bad. The magic effects are beautifully rendered(with the proper graphics card). Hotkeys would have been nice for these extra features like special attacks and magic.
The character to NPC interaction is also very good, the voice acting is not that great but not heard much either so it's not a problem. Your responses/questions to certain things affect how people treat you, however this is mostly an action RPG and fighting and exploring are your prime concerns. No spending all day in towne saying "heya, it's mee, Imoen!-wanna buy-a duck?!"

EVERYONE ELSE IS WRONG!!!

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 7 / 15
Date: October 24, 2001
Author: Amazon User

Caveat Emptor

Let the buyer beware!

Pool of Radiance has been shredded by the masses. People who don't believe in the death penalty want to kill the people at UBI Soft. Why? Well, that is a good question.

First off, let me say, this game has some serious issues right out of the box, which, in my belief are the fuel for the fires of irritation which seem to consume most all of the reviewers. Apparantly, Ubi was in such a hurry to get out this game which has laid dormant for so long, they forgot to do adequate beta testing. To worsen things, there seems to be some squabble between the producers (Ubi soft) and the developers as to whose fault it is. Without being privy to that knowledge, the most logical culprit is Ubi soft, since most of the game code was written litteraly years ago. Besides, one of the quirks was no uninstall program, which is definitely UBI's fault.

Anyway the major problems are: no uninstall, strange problems with corrupted data on the game saves, not enough 3D hardware support, and a crash near the end of the game. These problems will be addressed by patches, which today 10-23-01, there are two which fix the (1) unistall and the (2) game save corruption. The third "mega" patch, should fix all the other technical problems folks are whining about, like 3D support mainly, and other errors and bugs.

Perhaps, since there are so many bad problems with this first release, they will rerelease the game with all the fixes in there.

I hope so.

The above bugs are why the game received four stars, and not five.

Folks say that PoR has slow battles. Yes, they are slow. They are turned based, sort of like playing an RPG with dice, except, they are not THAT slow, and they are not at all boring. The graphics are fantastic, and the weird stagger of zombies and ghouls and ghasts gives you the creeps--which couldn't happen if they all ran to meet you, or if they just appeared. The folks that say game play is slow, don't bother to offer any solution as to how a turned based game could have quicker combat. And, personally, I love combat! The more time I spend in combat, the more fun I have! It is tactical turned based combat, like X-Com, which was one of the best games of all time.

So, if you think this game is real time, read the box. It is just turned based. So, if you hate turned based games, don't buy this game.

They say the interface sucks. Well, I for one, didn't have to read the manual to figure out how to play the game. That to me says the interface is intuitive, at least for weirdos like me. If pull down menus annoy you, don't buy this game. Otherwise, it is pretty much just like Baldur's Gate or Icewind Dale. The only difference is they have more stupid icons. Now, is that really that difficult to use?

BTW, I am a Baldur's Gate/Icewind Dale fanatic!

The third edition rules are much better to me than the second edition, because they are more logical. They are more difficult to understand in a lot of ways (unless your name is Spock), but they add much more dimension to the game.

There are some discrepencies between this game and the actual third edition rules, but that is because the rules weren't solidified when they were making the game. However, the rules they have are fair, balanced, and very interesting.

The dungeons are huge! There are interesting puzzles, interesting bits of D&D lore, traps galore, undead crawling from the cracks, and even undead orcs and lizardfolk! I mean, there are some very creative situations you will run into down there that add to the feel of a real dungeon crawl. The fact that they have a dungeon master really really really adds to the aura of those old days of dice and graph paper for those real RPG'rs out there.

I mean, sure all this stuff is trite when you come down to it--that's why they call it lore! But it is the unexpected creativity you see, the interesting stories, and the fun new character system that I really enjoy. Sort of being immersed in a whole new world of ahhhhh......

If you have better than a Voodoo 2 card in your system and the most up to date driver, you shouldn't experience many problems theoretically. I can only speak for myself--I have run it on my home 1.7gHz Dell with a GeFore 2 Ultra and the new WHQL driver from NVIDIA--the game really runs well on that setup. Make sure you have the latest WHQL driver on your system, since there is no tweaking program for video. And if you don't understand the above paragraph, I wouldn't buy the game at all. At least not until they have more 3d support.

So in conclusion

Don't buy this game if:

-your impatient
-you don't have a connection to the internet
-you have an old computer with poor specs
-you like second edition D&D rules only
-you like real time games
-you hate pull down menus
-you are easily annoyed by crashes and bugs

Buy this game

-you love the new 3rd edition rules

-you love huge dungeons
-you love great graphics
-you have a nice fairly new graphics card with a new driver
-you have decent specs on your home system
-you want an immersive world with a rich story line
-you know how to download a patch and install it
-you are patient
-you don't care what others think

Some will love it-but you need a guide

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 5 / 9
Date: February 19, 2002
Author: Amazon User

I personally am enjoying the game.
Despite all the bad reviews, I wanted to try it and I was also tempted to have a D and D module included in the collector's edition. I got it and I found the game is much better than I expected after the recent patch.

If you like to see how table top miniature combat game comes to a life to PC, this game is for you and you will love it. It exactly gives you the feeling of miniature combat and I liked it a lot. I do not play miniature combat game myself but have been very interested and this PC game was my answer for it.

Combat becomes somewhat repetitive but still many tactical consideration makes each combat a pleasant one.

I have noticed that for this game, strategy guide turns out to be very helpful. Otherwise, dungeon is too big and you could easily be lost about the quest that you are following for. In fact, strategy guide is very good and it will add to your D and D collection.

bad

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 3 / 4
Date: November 05, 2001
Author: Amazon User

too bad 1 star was as low as I could go

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