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How good is this game?

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 4 / 9
Date: October 01, 2001
Author: Amazon User

Not sure how good this game is. I haven't even been able to get it to install. I went to the message boards on Ubi softs site and have read nothing but bad post about installing, game play, bugs, and not to mention a post or two about Computers being damaged by uninstalling this game. I would stay away till these issues are resolved. Save yourself the headache.

absolute worst game I have seen for a long time

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 4 / 6
Date: April 20, 2002
Author: Amazon User

This game was the biggest waste of money. It is full of bugs and has a lousy gameplay. Above all, combat is boring and slow - or more like tedious. I very much regret having spent money on it. It is worth no more then maybe $5 or $10 at the most.

Woefully inadequate

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 4 / 6
Date: September 28, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I bought this new (Collector's edition an all) a few years ago.
My PC at the time couldn't handle the graphics for some reason, and rather than return the game for a store credit, I kept it. (Figuring I'd get a decent system one day and play it then.) Fast forward a few years, and while moving from one house to another, I unearthed this "game" and decided to play it. Once in a while I get OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder) on certain things. I start something and just HAVE to finish it, no matter how inane or pointless it may be. This is one of those times. I am a sucker for D&D style computer games. I was spoiled by the likes of Planescape Torment and even the Baldur's Gate saga. But this? About 3 years elapsed from this game's purchase to its actual playing, and I had the benefit of downloading all the patches and fixes to play this junk. The 3rd edition rules ARE a nice new spin on CRPG's, but the storyline and over all setting are just PONDEROUS. I understand the need to have a huge game to take hundreds of hours to beat so you feel like you "get your money's worth", but my god, did I have to kill EVERYTHING in Faerun? Its non-stop hack and slash, with the same crappy looking tile sets and dungeons level after mind numbing level. The game crashed on me numerous times, and certain quests/items I couldn't complete simply because the game forbid me to finish those sections by crashing. The use of gold in this setting in irrelevant, by the end of the game I had half a million pieces of it, and couldn't buy darn near anything worthwhile. Encumberance is also stupid. I mean, I know my guy has a strength of 22, but he can haul 6 full suits of armor and 4 shields and 9 spears, etc... completely unrealistic. Also, one hole in the side of a rock wall is somehow magically able to get you to EVERY level you've ever been to, but you don't discover those passages until AFTER you've cleared the level. I can go on and on about the abysmal game play, the horrid storyline. If you feel the need to play a D&D game and only care about killing 99.5% of all things in it, this is the game for you. If dialogue is purely optional, and indeed irrelevant to the flow of a game, this is for you. In fact, you can have the same conversation 4 different ways and get the same result in 75% of the scenarios. I really blame the gamemakers, they tried so hard to implement 3rd edition rules, they forgot that plot, common sense, and character attributes should actually matter. This piss-poor rendition of Pool of Radiance went for flashy graphics and missed out on everything else. I considered selling my copy on Ebay, but as a service to humanity, I will bury it back in my basement to spare someone else the indignity of having to pay for something like this.

Please spend your money on something else...

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 3 / 6
Date: October 01, 2001
Author: Amazon User

...like Fallout Tactics or Arcanum. This game is terrible. The play control is miserable, and the graphics don't work right. Your characters, even with a fast computer, move across the screen at a crawl. The new d20 features are horribly twisted: you get skills and feats but the game picks them for you. There's no wizard class, a mainstay of DnD. The gameplay is unbalanced, you run into creatures that require magic weapons to kill before you have any magic weapons. This game is a laughable, stupid joke. I may send my copy to the people developing Neverwinter Nights with a clear warning to avoid every mistake SSI/Ubisoft made here.

I played the original...what a let down. Bad interface

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 3 / 6
Date: October 03, 2001
Author: Amazon User

I was hoping to pick up something that would fill the time till the release of DAoC (Dark Age of Camelot), so I went with PoR. Big mistake, the game wants to be a "Fallout" but can't even come close. It has almost no RPG, the first character I came across only speaks the first line of text and nothing else. When you find treasure of any kind there are only 3 graphics: 1.) bag of gems 2.) pile of coins 3.) shield. You would think that with all the delays they would have added more graphics to things. The original interviews said that you could interact with many objects...this is untrue. They said that you could block doors with objects...not in this game. If the game was selling for under 20 bucks then it might be worth buying, but as it is right now...NO WAY. This is just another example of a game company less interested in the product then the $$$. Its too bad to, the original series of D&D games were great.

Watch out for software problems ! ! !

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 3 / 4
Date: January 11, 2002
Author: Amazon User

I purchased this game when it first came out and had quite a time trying to install it. I have a large d drive but it would tell me there is not enough space for a full install. I had twenty gig left on that drive. It would install only on the C drive even if I told it to install somewhere else. It would put a little file on the D drive and do the rest of the install on the C drive. Then it had problems with the screen resolution, then the characters would not appear on the screen... only the pointers used to guide them from place to place. I wrote the software publisher and they knew it had multiple problems and did not know when/if they would have a fix. I ended up returning it. When I returned it I heard of all the horror stories from other people that installed this game, the worst problem being that it erased the information off the hard drive when it deinstalled itself. Yikes. I would definitely double check that these problems are fixed and then back up your computer before installing. It is too bad for me, since I was very excited to play this game.

very experienced gamer

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 1 / 3
Date: October 15, 2001
Author: Amazon User

This is the worst rpg game I have ever played. I have a long history of rpg game playing. I have played this original title on commodore 64 - my thoughts are that the Commodore 64 version was more interesting and better. This game consists of repetition of the same 3 monsters like you've never seen. If you like to not be able to move around in a dungeon except at a very slow walk pace, then you'll like this game. if you like fighting 500-1000 of the same creatures (with very little variation), you'll like this game. If you like your characters to progress slowly (level 2/3 after 11 hours of gameplay), then you'll like this game. I was only able to get to the second dungeon level of the dwarf dungeons after 11 hours of play. It's a much more brain numbing version of Diablo but ALOT slower. If you like to cry from boredom and minimal role playing in your role playing games, just go and kill at an extremely slow pace, then this is the game for you. But if you're like me, who enjoys conversation with NPC's, waypoints, portals, anything other than walking around an overly large leveled dungeons that all look the same, then do not get this game. You will be asking for your money back! Read the reviews on their OWN website under 'General Discussion'. You will see that I am not the only one who feels this way.

From a very disappointed gamer who fell into the trap of Pool of Radiance...out!

Can't tell much

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 1 / 2
Date: December 03, 2001
Author: Amazon User

All I know for certain is what I have read in the instruction book that came with the game. I have installed this thing 4 times (fortunately, I didn't get any of the major problems others have experienced with corruption of OS when I uninstalled - or I should say I haven't noticed any yet), and I have never been able to get it to go past the first screen (selecting between options and play, etc - the main menu). I have installed with their first 2 patches (which are patches for getting the game to install and run - they were still in the process of getting out the first batch of fixes for the gameplay glitches), but they haven't helped. I have read of people having to install older drivers to get this to work. Some people seem to have the lucky combination of whatever it is they need to make this thing run, but there are a bunch of us programmers (yes, I have been programming in the real world for 5 years, I'm not exactly new at this type of thing) out here who can't seem to find that combination. Avoid this thing like the plague. Wait for a while. After the game drops to [a fraction of its current price], maybe UBI Soft will have out all of the patches necessary to make this silly thing actually work. (...)

Didn't work

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 0 / 1
Date: June 22, 2008
Author: Amazon User

I have a brand new computer (2008) and my graphics card would write the characters under the background scenery so I was never able to actually play it. I looked online but wasn't able to find a way to corrent this. Not the sellers fault, just the game software didn't work well.

Flawed but repairable

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 2 / 3
Date: December 07, 2001
Author: Amazon User

I bought this game expecting I was buying a 3-D Baldurs Gate. Boy was I wrong! ROMD seems to be more like a turn-based Diablo II, with plenty of guys to kill and treasure to pick up, but other than that no real substance.

The graphics are good, certainly better than Baldur's Gate. You first explore outside of Myth Drannor which is infested with orcs and zombies. The locales outside are fairly intresting, in the first area alone there's a orc camp, dark tower, shop, a hidden shelter for elves, a fountain that heals you, and a strange floating rock that may or may not be a Mythal.

However, the most boring part is actually exploring the underground lairs! They're totally bland, with all the rooms looking like any other rooms, except with the furniture rearranged! The encounters differ alot from rescueing friends to defeating a large and powerful foe, but they all have to do with combat. Subquests are little more than treasure hunts, but they are numerous. Talking has no roleplaying to it at all, you cannot intimidate other characters, flirt with them, quite a bit different from Baldur's Gate, all you do is ask them something or tell them something.

The worst part of the game is that you can't customize your character! Things like feats and skills are already chosen for you, even the Ranger's favored enemy! Many of the character classes, such as wizards, druids, and bards, are not available in the game. You cannot choose a prestige class. They've eliminated everything 3rd Edition D&D was made for.

There is one saving grace, however. Despite the game's many flaws, its combat is nail biting and sometimes intense even though it's a turned based game. Most of the battles require you to be a tactian and it may be fun for strategy enthusiasts. Maybe.

I'll give it a two because it is fun for some. Otherwise your playing a game with no soul. It needs heavy patchwork, I can tell you that.

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