Eschalon: Book II

Basilisk games have produced a real classic with Eschalon Book II. The game perfectly balances story driven action with open-world exploration, hack-n-slash combat with intelligent and complex puzzles. The atmosphere is is engrossing with day/night and weather effects, accompanied by a fantastic soundtrack. I still remember being lost deep in a forest at night during a raging thunderstorm, wolves howling around, with only a single torch left, knowing that even if I survived the night I was running desperately low on food & water. Rarely do CRPGs manage to feel so intensely... intense. The story stays largely in the background, and you are free to choose at what pace to proceed, but it still manages to engage and offers many interesting and unexpected twists & turns. While it is true that you can break the balance on subsequent play-throughs, by exploiting certain mechanics, your first encounter is likely to be hugely enjoyable. If you're into expansive single character (non-party) CRPGs with meticulously detailed 2D isometric graphics, puzzle solving and open-world exploration, this is the best-in-genre offering since Divine Divinity, and the best of the three "books" in the Eschalon saga.

If you don't mind tedious slow walk travel system and enjoy a standard rpg story with old school turn-based combat then you will enjoy. Not very different from Book I. If you finished Book I and want to continue the story, then buy this, especially if on sale. Good spell selection. Lots of armor and weapons. Save your coins!

You start weak, and stay weak. Levelling up does very little to strengthen your character and is slow and tedious requiring a lot of XP, yet enemies are very OP and give out little XP. You won't even be equal to even rats until you're at level 5! And some NPCs are just, wow..... they must be level 1000, like the "town guards" for example. You are capped to level 30, and even at that, you are still only an "average strength" character. This was the problem with EB1, and likely is also the problem with EB3. In short, though playable, they are too frustrating and tedious. Go and get the very similar "Geneforge" series instead. They may have primitive graphics, but they are 10x more fun that this. Otherwise the EB series could have been quite good.

It is pretty much basic rpg adventure. Does not match the quality of modern rpg's, but is still an enjoyable game. The only main complaint is the movement system and wish there were better guides on this.

Enjoyable if somewhat in need of better movement and things like "holding a shield means you can't hold a torch." guess they never saw arm strap shields heh