E-DnD III
Hm…
It’d been a while since I’ve done one of these things hasn’t it? Still – I have actually got better things to do with my time than play twenty year old video games. Or at least, I did, until today, when all the things I could have done did not seem as edifying as playing Advanced Dungeons & Dragons: Eye of the Beholder on the SNES. You may now groan at the pun.
That’s right, let it all out.
In fact, EotB is not twenty years old, it was released barely sixteen years back in 1990… Ah, it was a heady time, the two ends of the chunnel met, only two years late, Iraqi tanks were rolling into Kuwait, and not so vary many miles away in Saudi Arabia, Azezel owned a Pirated Super-Famicom hardware emulator held together with duct tape (It’d be years until I saw a real made-by-nintendo Super-Nintendo).
As you can see, this is an Official Product – yup – Official. Y’see – some things do change.
Official.
An-y-way…
The lords of Waterdeep wish to purge their city of evil, and who can blame them? Of course, they did sort of build their city on top of Undermountain, so at this point in time there is an element of horse/stable door/bolted etc.Still – it’s the thought that counts, and wouldn’t you trust an oligarchy of masked busybodies to run the greatest city in the world?
Four adventuring yahoos are selected – I think that guy on the throne is supposed to be Piergeiron Paladinson but it’s never explicitly stated. Note how every one of the SNES’s sixteen mighty bits has been strained to the maximum to create those dandy pillars.
Again – it’s not explicitly stated, but I think that this might be an entry to Undermountain. I don’t have a manual for this game, so I suppose that might have helped to clear this up. Still – the nice thing about Hallastor’s party pit is that one has all the amenities of Waterdeep within easy distance, at least, for the first level or two.
Which is certainly why the tunnel caves in right after the party enters the tunnel.
Speaking of the Party, we haven’t met, or even created them yet.
I elect to start a new party.
There is a full character creation system in this game, which is a nice change from the games previously discussed here. I believe that first my party will need some muscle, a Dwarf Fighter.
As you can see, one has the opertunity to re-roll one’s stats as often as desired, but I believe that to do so would be folly, those are some nice numbers. The old boy’s not the brightest Fireball in the fracas but then, what Fighter is? I’ll call him ‘Dori’ since I’m feeling especially original today.
With character creation done with, let us return to that caved-in tunnel.
Yup, still caved in… Still – like the man said, no-body objects to railroading if the view from the carriages is nice and the destination is Awesometown. Besides which, one must forgive a video game these things.
You will recall that in my discussion of Pool of Radiance I bemoaned the textures of the walls – that their identical nature made navigation impossible. Well – in EoB each wall is still identical, but with sixteen bits to work with SSI have managed to create an environment which is not nearly so confounding. Well done chaps.
Similarly, the GUI is workable and not entirely ugly. My big complaint is the cursor. Honsetly, gentlemen, did your playtesters at no point ever say ‘Yo,’ (everyone in the late eighties, when they were coding this started their sentences with ‘yo’ or so I am led to believe) ‘moving a cursor with a digital d-pad is a hard man. Send this thing back – you ain’t done codin’ it dude.’
I have to imagine some-body must have pointed out that cursors and d-pads don’t mix, but he was ignored, possibly because he spoke like an idiot, apparently. Admitedly, hitting the ‘y’ button does allow one to move through the corridors with the d-pad, rather than those little arrow buttons on-screen, but that is hardly an excuse for a bad setup.
Anyway – let’s check our party. Moving the cursor (argh!) over any portrait and hitting the ‘a’ button brings up that character’s inventory.
Then it’s just five minutes hit and miss manoeuvring to place the cursor over the button which switches to the character sheet.
Our gallant party, Dori, the Dwarf Fighter, Fliqe, the Gnome Cleric, Trip, the Halfling Theif/Fighter and Stara the Human Mage.
Incidentally, if you know how to pronounce ‘Fliqe’ both she and I would like to hear from you.
We wander through some ghastly halls for a time and then spy these red things (I later discovered that they are supposed to be Kobolds, but at this point they are known to me as ‘little devil whatsits’)
They did not see me, or if they did, they did not attack. At this point I realised that I had not prepped any spells (I realised this about halfway through instructing Stara the Mage to open fire).
Fortunately, the Kobolds didn’t care that I took nine hours to rest and ready some magic.
Fliqe paralized one of them, and then Stara missed both with her Acid Arrow – then it was down to the lads to go into action. I’d show you some pictures, but the melle portion of any fight lasts a half-second and though I took a dozen screenshots, not once did I manage to capture an actual combat frame.
In a dramatic break from precedence, this review will not end with a screenshot of the game over screen and my saying how welcome that screen is. This is because EotB is actually quite a fun game which I look forward to continuing in the future. It has some problems, aye, but then, which game does not?
Fun Rating 6/10
Ad&D: EotB had serious potential – had SSI only spent an extra month in post-production to give it a workable interface (It’s very simple people! If I do not get to use a mouse then I do not want to see a goddamned cursor!) the game would have been a solid eight out of ten, alas.
D&D Rating 8/10
It’s almost all here. Full 2e classes and races, spells and weapons. Five foot square movement, facing, the works. Those elements of the game which are unfaithful generally are only so because a more faithful reproduction would have done the enjoyability a disservice.
It’d been a while since I’ve done one of these things hasn’t it? Still – I have actually got better things to do with my time than play twenty year old video games. Or at least, I did, until today, when all the things I could have done did not seem as edifying as playing Advanced Dungeons & Dragons: Eye of the Beholder on the SNES. You may now groan at the pun.
That’s right, let it all out.
In fact, EotB is not twenty years old, it was released barely sixteen years back in 1990… Ah, it was a heady time, the two ends of the chunnel met, only two years late, Iraqi tanks were rolling into Kuwait, and not so vary many miles away in Saudi Arabia, Azezel owned a Pirated Super-Famicom hardware emulator held together with duct tape (It’d be years until I saw a real made-by-nintendo Super-Nintendo).
As you can see, this is an Official Product – yup – Official. Y’see – some things do change.
Official.
An-y-way…
The lords of Waterdeep wish to purge their city of evil, and who can blame them? Of course, they did sort of build their city on top of Undermountain, so at this point in time there is an element of horse/stable door/bolted etc.Still – it’s the thought that counts, and wouldn’t you trust an oligarchy of masked busybodies to run the greatest city in the world?
Four adventuring yahoos are selected – I think that guy on the throne is supposed to be Piergeiron Paladinson but it’s never explicitly stated. Note how every one of the SNES’s sixteen mighty bits has been strained to the maximum to create those dandy pillars.
Again – it’s not explicitly stated, but I think that this might be an entry to Undermountain. I don’t have a manual for this game, so I suppose that might have helped to clear this up. Still – the nice thing about Hallastor’s party pit is that one has all the amenities of Waterdeep within easy distance, at least, for the first level or two.
Which is certainly why the tunnel caves in right after the party enters the tunnel.
Speaking of the Party, we haven’t met, or even created them yet.
I elect to start a new party.
There is a full character creation system in this game, which is a nice change from the games previously discussed here. I believe that first my party will need some muscle, a Dwarf Fighter.
As you can see, one has the opertunity to re-roll one’s stats as often as desired, but I believe that to do so would be folly, those are some nice numbers. The old boy’s not the brightest Fireball in the fracas but then, what Fighter is? I’ll call him ‘Dori’ since I’m feeling especially original today.
With character creation done with, let us return to that caved-in tunnel.
Yup, still caved in… Still – like the man said, no-body objects to railroading if the view from the carriages is nice and the destination is Awesometown. Besides which, one must forgive a video game these things.
You will recall that in my discussion of Pool of Radiance I bemoaned the textures of the walls – that their identical nature made navigation impossible. Well – in EoB each wall is still identical, but with sixteen bits to work with SSI have managed to create an environment which is not nearly so confounding. Well done chaps.
Similarly, the GUI is workable and not entirely ugly. My big complaint is the cursor. Honsetly, gentlemen, did your playtesters at no point ever say ‘Yo,’ (everyone in the late eighties, when they were coding this started their sentences with ‘yo’ or so I am led to believe) ‘moving a cursor with a digital d-pad is a hard man. Send this thing back – you ain’t done codin’ it dude.’
I have to imagine some-body must have pointed out that cursors and d-pads don’t mix, but he was ignored, possibly because he spoke like an idiot, apparently. Admitedly, hitting the ‘y’ button does allow one to move through the corridors with the d-pad, rather than those little arrow buttons on-screen, but that is hardly an excuse for a bad setup.
Anyway – let’s check our party. Moving the cursor (argh!) over any portrait and hitting the ‘a’ button brings up that character’s inventory.
Then it’s just five minutes hit and miss manoeuvring to place the cursor over the button which switches to the character sheet.
Our gallant party, Dori, the Dwarf Fighter, Fliqe, the Gnome Cleric, Trip, the Halfling Theif/Fighter and Stara the Human Mage.
Incidentally, if you know how to pronounce ‘Fliqe’ both she and I would like to hear from you.
We wander through some ghastly halls for a time and then spy these red things (I later discovered that they are supposed to be Kobolds, but at this point they are known to me as ‘little devil whatsits’)
They did not see me, or if they did, they did not attack. At this point I realised that I had not prepped any spells (I realised this about halfway through instructing Stara the Mage to open fire).
Fortunately, the Kobolds didn’t care that I took nine hours to rest and ready some magic.
Fliqe paralized one of them, and then Stara missed both with her Acid Arrow – then it was down to the lads to go into action. I’d show you some pictures, but the melle portion of any fight lasts a half-second and though I took a dozen screenshots, not once did I manage to capture an actual combat frame.
In a dramatic break from precedence, this review will not end with a screenshot of the game over screen and my saying how welcome that screen is. This is because EotB is actually quite a fun game which I look forward to continuing in the future. It has some problems, aye, but then, which game does not?
Fun Rating 6/10
Ad&D: EotB had serious potential – had SSI only spent an extra month in post-production to give it a workable interface (It’s very simple people! If I do not get to use a mouse then I do not want to see a goddamned cursor!) the game would have been a solid eight out of ten, alas.
D&D Rating 8/10
It’s almost all here. Full 2e classes and races, spells and weapons. Five foot square movement, facing, the works. Those elements of the game which are unfaithful generally are only so because a more faithful reproduction would have done the enjoyability a disservice.
posted by Anonymous at
11:28 AM
1 Comments:
Man this is classic, I have it with remade graphics on Gameboy.
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