Eschalon: Book I

From a '20 years perspective, this is not a good, but if you like the retro feeling, it is a good choice. I love that the automap is only active if your character has mapmaking skill. The better the skill, the more accurate is the map. Unfortunately the combat is very simple. The magic system not smooth. I did not finish it yet, but I enjoy playing with it.

Its like an rpg for beginners, closer to diablo than a crpg. Love the art style, reminds me of some lucas arts flash games of the 90s. The music has like a mysterious tone and the atmosphere is dark and bleak. Addictive .

This game already got me hooked on the character creation. Real classic vibes. The movement and combat feels so good with RTS in an open world. The pacing is nice. I've only done one "quest" but im already attached to the story. And i can already tell i'll be hooked for a while with all the diffrent skill options and ways to go about things. Recommend it if you like classic RPG and RTS.

You know how in RPGs your character becomes overpowered in late game, or some skills simple put suck, or it is to linear or to free? Well, this game blends it all together perfectly. It is like they had a thousand hours betatesting to make sure the game flows. It is not an epic game, like Baldurs Gate, however, like Baldurs Gate it flows. Now, the graphics are not the strong side of this game, however, in Eschalon II it looks a lot prettier.

The developers claim it is "old-school" "like Ultima" and is "better than new-school trash like Diablo" (which isn't even in the same genre as this), but there's no real comparisons, as there is none of the depth of Ultima in this game, and frankly, if Diablo were turn-based and single-player only, with no extra depth added, it would still be more robust than this game. (And I say that as someone who hates clickfest RPGs...) As far as I can tell "old-school" is just code for "lacking originality", because it fails to grasp why the older games were good games. This game pretends to have deep choices, but what it really comes down to is that you make a character and min/max a weapon skill or magic (wizard or cleric magic, real original,) and then start killing things. Most other skills are of marginal importance, except for stealth, which, when upgraded high enough, makes you invincible because the AI is too rudimentary to find you. AI is the critical downfall of this game. There are no enemy wizards or special ability users, nearly all enemies are melee fighters whose AI consist of moving straight up next to you and attacking until someone dies. (The others are "archers" that stop 3 spaces away, but are otherwise the same.) It uses an I-move-you-move turn system with no speedy enemies, so you can literally win every fight by out-walking the enemy and abusing regeneration. The "plot" is paper-thin. Bad guy wants 4 magic orbs. Yawn. Also, they put some woman on the logo, which is strange because it's impossible to play a woman in the first game for no comprehensible reason. It's essentially the most rudimentary roguelike done wrong without even the advantage of procedural content. If you are at all interested in this game, go play a roguelike, many of which are free or cheaper than this, and modern roguelikes have graphics. I presume most players of this game don't realize roguelikes nowadays have graphics, and that's the only reason they play this game.