Eschalon: Book I

But to be honest, it has a lot of flaws. If I had paid for it, I'd be really pissed and try to get my money back. Just the fact that you need 1000 points just to get to level 1 is a big problem for me. Almost every single game I've played starts you out with easy things to do to build up your character and level up, and ease you into the game. Another flaw, you can't just "find" or harvest spell components, you have to buy them, which brings us to the amount of gold (or lack there of) that you get finding it in chests or for doing things. Yes, you can save the game before you open up a barrel, chest, sack, skeleton or coffin, and if you don't like what you get, reload the save and try again, but this is seriously lacking as well. In most other games, you get experience for doing things and achieving things, This game is VERY stingy about giving you experience points. Another flaw is the map. It shows you where you are and all that, but when you bring up the larger "Whole World" map, it doesn't show you where you are on it. One of the biggest, though, is the fact that I had a thug down to the barest of life bars, hit him 20 times, and he still managed to kill me! For free, it's okay and I'll keep playing when I'm bored and have nothing else to do.

The game is mostly about exploration and killing. There are enough sidequests for it to feel like a proper RPG, but nothing special. As other people have already said, you'll miss A LOT, even with an 80% to-hit probability. IF at some point the combat becomes WAY too difficult, you can try quicksaving before each hit and quickloading if you miss or if you get hit back really bad. Technically it isn't cheating.

This game is fun and pretty addicting. The mechanics are maybe a little too simple, and the story is very basic. Combat as a mage is mostly killing one enemy and running away to rest and regenerate your magic energy. You can beat it in less than 20 hours, though I didn't finish all the side quests. I think the graphics and sound are nice. Since it's free, definitely give it a chance.

The game is good at delivering exactly what we can expect when seing the graphics. It is old-school in design, and very frustrating at times, but overall I enjoyed it. Everything is text based, there are some typos in the text, and the combat is hard, very hard, I died a lot, but wanted to continue the game anyways. The graphics are old-school, but in the end functional and I grew fond of them. All the skills were useful, so I wanted a lot of them, but in the end I was not specialized enough and died a lot. I had to grind a bit and specialize to finish the game. I also saved a lot to avoid encounters at night. Also, it is pretty easy to run out of money. I'd say the game has a balance issue, but it did not prevent me from enjoying it.

The first contact with the game is nice. Graphics are deliciously outdated, character sheet is fine, some more info could be given on the inner workings of the different skills, and the starting point, though tried and tired (amnesia with a look here for the next note type note) always works. Monsters are allright by the obvious old school feeling of the game. However... the story is thin, the world is ... empty. Not as in real forest empty, but as in bad empty. oh a beach. Oh two or three pirates / ship sinkers camp. They attack on sight. Ok... city? 4 persons, 5 dialog trees and that is all. This is more of a turn by turn beat them up with scenario that anything close to role-playing, whether linear and playing an imposed role or open and choosing your persona. Dialogue are poor to say the least, descriptions are mostly absent. You just feel like an NPC waiting for the Hero to come up and make things interesting.