Eschalon: Book I

I'm going to treat Books 1, 2, and 3 as a single game for the purpose of this review. By far my favorite aspect of the game is having a whole world to explore. You roam far and wide in a world filled with mountains, forests, deserts, caves, dungeons, creepy crypts, and secret passages, always wondering what's around the next corner. Highly addictive! I like the turn-based aspect of the game. You can go as fast or as slow as you want. If you don't like reflex challenges, this game won't force you to do any. The characters are often interesting. The radical tree-hugger witch made me laugh out loud. The grumpy magic-shop owner: why is he so grumpy? If you snoop around you might find out. Sometimes you have to decide who to trust and who is a liar, which I thought was an interesting twist. The puzzles, while not super-challenging, add some variety to the game so it's not all just monster-killing. The only problem? Book 3 is much TOO SHORT!

Altough it is not an in depth story with a well designed in depth world, the game was fun and kept me awake for couple of nights. For the money it is well worth.

Well ... there's a reason why this game is free ... and even then, I wouldn't recommend it. I've played those old RPGs (Forgotten Realms series on the PC, SNES JRPG, etc) and I'd go back to those games before playing this one again. Very basic, bare linear story plot. Open world concept is more of an annoyance rather than a wonder to explore. Game mechanic is quite awful, their movement mechanic with the mouse is bad. Frustrating terrain that seems to act as a stalling technique to boast longer playing time. Gameplay ... man, is it ever dull and frustrating at times. The world of Eschelon is basically dead - it has no life, game intuition is very low or non-existent. Selling Eschalon as an old school RPG, I felt, is a huge lie, I doubt very much they know what that term even mean. Just not a good game altogether, time better spent playing something else.

For the first adventure into this CRPG it is a good solid title. The quests are fun and interesting. The game play is quite addictive, but you will find yourself camping longer and longer as you level since the combat is quite lethal. The game does help mitigate errors by saving whenever you need, but this can be abused, but that is not to its detriment. You will NEED cartography, Lore, and Pick Locks to really start out. A mixed paladin idea is a good solid idea. I would have liked the ability to retrain as I spent some points in roleplay areas that did not help in game. It can be a min/max type of game, but not unenjoyable. Still Book II looks like they have learnt a few new ideas to help iron out the bugs in Book I.

I love how it replicates some of the Old School aspects of an RPG that I love! The open world is mostly free for you to wander around to your hearts content and having the game allow you to discover things without needing a quest or screw things up because it's not holding your hand is always welcome in my book. I just would LOVE for this game to get a higher windowed resolution, like... 800x600 is too small for modern screen.