Between 1 and 10, I give it 7.5.

I will grade each section not in comparison to modern games, but how it worked or did not work in the game and with respect to the intent of EB 1 to harken back to classic RPG gaming.

Sounds/Music - 7

.........The music never seemed diverse to me, but it sufficed. The sounds are similar. Nothing about the sound or music hits me and sticks with me. On the other hand, I can't say it's bad. So I give it a 7.

Graphics - 7

.......They're 2d-isometric and, while not 3d, they accomplish the task. I found them to be sharp and the animations were smooth. The backgrounds were not million dollar work. I did not feel the graphics were an obstacle to my enjoyment.

Story - 7

.......The story was short and easy, just the way I prefer in RPG's. On the reverse side, there're games like Planescape Torment or Baldur's Gate which have much richer stories and character depth, but since EB 1 is more like Icewind Dale, I do not feel making comparisons is fair, since these games are made for different people. Overall, the reason I can't give the story a higher score is because I felt it was a bit rushed. This is more a fault of the shortness of the game than it's the fault of the writing, I think. I would have liked to have known just a bit more about some of the characters. With some more content, I think I would have been more satisfied. I'm not asking for more story and less combat, I'm just asking for more heads to bash so more story can be told.

Gameplay - 7

........I mostly liked how the game played. Early on, it felt challenging, but I knew so very little about the game when I started. If I were to start again, it'd be a different (much easier) experience. One thing worthy of noting is I never had a lot of money, as I spent so much on arrows and potions. I didn't actually specialize, instead I trained up a lot of skills. My suspicions tell me the game would be perhaps easier if one specialized. Then again, I liked not being rich. Something about feeling pressured...
........There're a few things I want to say about the quests and the (somewhat) non-linear nature of EB 1. You can go anywhere, if you can avoid the enemies and/or vanquish them. You can complete many of the quests in any order just as well. All this tends to make you think on your feet, since the game isn't doing it for you. I myself love these kinds of RPG's because when you think on your feet it makes you think of things you otherwise wouldn't. The downside to all this is that sometimes you will waste time doing fruitless things, not realizing your error. Unless the designers of the game put a lot of thought into intuitive processes and playtest the game to weed out the more frustrating problems that will arise, players are bound to hit walls and because there's nothing to guide them explicitly, possibly surrender to their frustrations and quit the game, for a while at least. I think many moderns games have chosen to turn to popups and explicit directions and/or obvious cues or even hard boundaries that prevent you from wandering or doing the wrong thing (and thus wasting time), but my feeling is those kinds of things shouldn't belong in a game attempting to be non-linear. Getting this right in a non-linear game is nothing easy and all of these issues play into my mind when I decide not to give EB 1 a higher gameplay score.

Replayability - 6

.........Having just finished EB 1 and also after having created an alternate character to my main character previously, I have to say I think the replayability prospects are dim. The content in this game is not extensive. It's not the type of RPG that adds more than it needs and neither does it randomize its environments or quests. This is the kind of game you'll play a few times, perhaps, but it's not something that'll keep you coming back.

Classic? - 7

.........It's hard for me to say this game is classic. If it were classic, it'd have to be pixellated (320x200 resolution!) and 3d (many of them were) and limited to midi-based sounds or music. For that matter, it doesn't even have a difficulty setting, like many classic RPG's did. And is it epically difficult? I honestly only died 4 times in my first run from beginning to end in this game. The only time I felt significantly challenged was early on in the first 10 hours or so, before I knew a lot of things. While I think this game is classic in the sense it attempts to be non-linear and does not hold your hand at every stage, it's more like a modern-take on classic RPG-gaming.

Conclusion - 7.5

.........This game still has some wild moments for the adventurer, even if I didn't give it an 8 or higher score. It's an action-oriented RPG, as opposed to story-driven, so don't expect deep characters or expansive dialogue trees. It's not epic and it's not a million dollar special effects game, but it suffices. It's non-linear, so put your thinking cap on and don't let yourself slip; there're no guard rails. However, this is not perfection in the making, so don't expect genius and do expect frustration here and there. While this game is turn-based and you can play it like it's real-time, don't expect this game to compete with turn-based games because it's apples and oranges. I can't even say the turn-based portion of this game is good, since it has some shortcomings. However, the fact it's a kind of turn-based real-time hybrid is interesting and worth taking for a spin for someone who hasn't tried it. It's a nice deal for $5.99.

Please note: You might ask how I give this a 7.5 and not a 7.0. Well, the fact that a game like this was available in 2007 and is still pulling in money, just makes me get bubbly inside. I also mostly enjoyed the game. Frankly, I'm grateful that indie developers are out there making games which follow their own path, irregardless of the industry bullies screaming at them to stay in line.

My total playtime when I finished was about 77 hours, perhaps including afk time.

Will I get EB 2? Knowing what I know of EB 1, chances are very good I will get it, just to see how it compares to EB 1. If it's anything like EB 1 or it doesn't radically change into something unwanted, I can't see myself not enjoying a good fraction of it.

Want to make an addendum to my previous post.

I failed to mention that there're fatal consequences in this game at certain points that're sometimes hard to see beforehand. Although I only experienced a couple of them, due to the fact I played conservatively and tried to be a well mannered person, these kinds of things definitely were present in classic RPGs and can be the source of a lot of frustration. It's not so much that these kinds of things are frequent in EB 1, but that they can be so maddening when you experience them. For example, in one case, I failed to see the outline of a trap and walked on it and BAM I died. Many traps in the game will kill you, not just hurt you. This probably isn't even the worst example since I could technically see the outline of the trap, even though it was difficult. Bare in mind that a game like this which doesn't try to hold your hand or put rails in the game so you don't fall off cliffs is bound to sting eventually. Even if they put up a sign "Trap here, don't walk on this tile." many players will walk on it anyway and when they do and meet their death they'll think all the pain wasn't worth it and quit the game. In my view, even a well designed area with enough cues to spot things will still kill people because people aren't perfect. This is not to say in any form whatsoever that making a well designed area is not a worthy goal just because it doesn't produce perfect results.

Overall, my judgment of the game took this into account. My overall feeling was the frustration was not large enough to keep me from playing. However, players have different tolerances and some will think things like this don't belong in games. My feeling is when a game is non-linear these kinds of things will crop up and especially if the bar is set higher. It's feasible that trap damage could have been reduced and escape-from-certain-death options could have been made more plentiful, but then I don't think this game would be the same anymore. My opinion is if a fatal problem happens to me in a game and it's completely unpredictable, it's generally undesirable, but then again, when I pickup a game that says it has no hand holding, I kind of expect to die sometimes. The end result is random deaths are not fun and designers should work to make things at least somewhat predictable or foreseeable, but eliminating them completely would probably rip out a huge chunk of the game and make designers too restrained and make the game feel too controlled (too linear). This is because to eliminate them means preventing players from missing predictable or foreseeable outcomes by essentially giving them a modal popup or putting up a hard barrier. No matter how predictable or foreseeable something is players will still sometimes miss it and die anyway, thus producing what to them feels like a random death. You can't prevent that without easing the consequences!

I think this has a lot to do with the nature of progression games. We play progression games to acquire things and build an adventure, but when we die and lose those things, our purpose is somewhat thwarted. But here's the thing: being able to fail adds value to our successes. Too much failure kills the desire to succeed, but some failure can make us value victory more and thus feel a greater connection to the game. I know that's how it's with me and I'm not sure about others, but I agree with the saying "No pain, no gain."

But there's the issue of immersion too, in my case. I generally do not like save scumming. Preferably, I'd somehow resurrect after death. Repeating an older save game makes it feel cheaper and more repetitive. Then again, resurrecting skirts death and if not done right, it also feels cheap. And sometimes I just like permadeath. I've played some single player games without reloading a savegame. It makes you more alert. However, sometimes games aren't made for that and essentially you will die at some point. Basically, and this is especially true for classic RPG's, they were made in an environment where save scumming was common. Nowadays, people play mmorpgs and when they die they resurrect, so this save scumming idea is strange to them. Maybe what we need is a new kind of single player game that doesn't play like an mmo and neither does it make us save scum.

All in all, as stated earlier, I only died 4 times in my playthrough. I was a first-time player. These issues were on my mind. But I'd also like to say that there were moments where I came close to death, but a potion or a heal solved the problem. For example, I fell into a salamander pit and popped invisibility and avoided reloading a saved game. It felt great. Then again, just today before I finished I got squashed by a gate trap. You win some and lose some, but at least I saw the gate trap and hesitated before deciding "What the hell..." I henceforth exploded into a shower of guts, but at least I saw it coming. Why did I go against my instincts?

I'm only a couple of hours in (about 8) so this is first impressions and while I'm still playing I'm not feeling quite so positive about it as you are.

As you say the graphics are basic but functional although I was quite surprised the game was from 2007 as I would have hoped for a few more animations/character. Large parts of the map are quite empty and I don't get that wanting to explore or other things going on that I get in something like Baldur's Gate.

And although it is non linear in that you can generally go where you want its not really free form as there's not enough to do. In games like Gothic and Morrowind I can go collect herbs, components, make a few things and explore. In EB after a while you realised that you might as well get on with the main quest.

I'm also dying numerous times although that's party from learning as I go along and like you there's a lot I'd do differently. For a start putting the first point in any skill seems a waste as you can find/buy a lot of books after a while which give you that first point. The reason this is important (or seems to be at the moment) is that the first skill point costs three XP points (or whatever they are) but subsequent points are a one for one basis so I wasted a lot of points at the start of the game but can't face starting again. Some may call it old school but I just found it frustrating along with the instant death or the diseases I can't afford to get rid of. And the price of arrows!

I am enjoying it but at the moment its a bit of grind - sleep, kill thugs, sleep, kill drones, run away sleep - repeat.

There are some nice touches like the map skill, use of torches. I'm hoping but I don't know that different weapons have different effects on armour/creatures etc but I don't hit things often enough to have worked it out.

I'm only about 1.5 hours into it, and I just hit level two.

When you say "short", how short are we talking? I tend to be very, very slow when it comes to getting through games, so I'm hoping it won't seem short to me.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

If you're having trouble with sleeping and killing and sleeping and killing or you have a disease, try to use the inns. Unless your survival skill is high, you'll be the target of a constant volley of monsters that'll wear you down. There're also wells in a couple places and you can use those indefinitely to restore your hitpoints. This can allow you to avoid sleeping and to reduce potion costs.

Like you say, arrows are pricey. Even with my bad setup, I still managed to beat the game. At every juncture when I was low on gold I'd start to wonder "How do I make more gold?" It happened several times. Each time I thought I was going to run out, but then I'd find something and the gold would go back up again. I actually liked it, since in a lot of games the money is easy to build up. If I had specialized in the bow skill or heavier armour and melee skill, the costs probably would have fallen dramatically.

Another thing I'd recommend is to have some ability to see traps because there're places in the game where you can kill other monsters by getting them to follow you and step onto the traps. I did this several times during the game to make it easier.

Don't worry about the skill points you've spent because you probably can't do much worse than I did. Maybe it'll help you feel better if I say a couple times in the game I hit what seemed like a dead end before realizing there was a way out of it.

Overall, Eschalon Book I is a lot of head bashing crammed into a world that's too small.

One last thing about Eschalon Book I... I had an annoyance with the discrepancy between the ease to switch between the bow and melee and the irritation of switching between bow or torch and shield. This made it hard for me to comfortably use a shield alongside a bow and my torches. I wonder why it was not made to work more smoothly. I also hated the way to select a new spell. I often casted different spells and everytime I'd have to bring up the window and click it and click again. It ended up being cumbersome. Is there not a better way.

Right now I think I'm going to be trying the Fallout games since htey were handed out for free. Not sure whether I will like them or not. It will be very rewarding to play them and get my impressions, since they're famous and I've always wanted to play em.

For the spells you can assign hot keys 1-9.

If you click on the spell icon, select your spell and then your level when you press 'OK' also keep the number you want to assign pressed on the keyboard.

I was playing a warrior but it meant things like heal, cats eyes, lore etc were easy to chose.

The game did actually get much easier after a while. Partly I got the hang of it but also lots of heal potions, spells etc took away the run away, sleep avoid wandering monsters element..

Not sure I'll reply it in the near future as its quite linear in that there's a very limited amount of content. According to the save game I played for about 23 hours (presumably excluding all the early reloads) and I only skipped a few areas where I needed a better magic attack.

Overall I'd have to give it a 7 but with a note about it being great value for money if like me you only paid $1.99.

My main complaint is the somewhat repetitive nature of the monsters but mainly about the lack of atmosphere in the game world. The animation is quite simple and even games like Baldur's Gate had limited weather, flowers, birds flying over head etc. A few more people would have been nice even if they just told you some stories about the war or land - expand on some of the books you could find. The main town, Blackwater, had about half a dozen NPCs in it so just felt very Spartan.

Hope you enjoy Fallout - 2 has the better interface but 1 starts the story (surprisingly enough). tactics is set in the same game universe but isn't an RPG and I struggled with it. The combat system isn't really strong enough for continual squad based combat and the RPG element aren't enough to compensate but its not a bad game, Just very average.

Id like to see how you rate EB2.. im positive you will get more positive scores.. :)

I've bought and downloaded it - just need to find some time.

Does it continue the story from One or is a separate game?

I made the same "error" in Book 1. (Technically not really an "error" as I had no information at character creation time that cheaper ways to get that first point would exist.) It didn't really hurt that much - the game was still for the most part very easy. I did come pretty close to hitting a wall (or at last I had some concern about that happening) where I was diseased and I needed to get enough gold together to buy a potion to cure it. Of course, my reaction after getting past that was 1) work on getting a cheaper way to cure disease (spell/alchemy), and 2) stop fighting so much stuff that can cause disease until either (1) is taken care of or I have enough gold/potions on hand to be able to deal with it. (I ended up buying but avoiding using some "just in case" potions to start out, then once my alchemy was sufficient used alchemy and slightly expensive-to-make potions until much later in the game when my spells were finally strong enough to deal with most diseases. Coincidentally, those particular potions were one of the best money makers in the game once I could afford to sell them rather than hold/use them.) Again, I made the same "starter mistake" of investing points in archery. Once in the game, though, upon seeing the cost of arrows (and the miss rate, and more importantly the fact that shot arrows are 100% "lost"), I skewed my character heavily towards melee and only used archery relatively rarely (softening up a strong enemy before engaging in melee, finishing off one that's running away, and the odd can't-hit-em-with-a-sword ranged enemy), and eventually replaced much of the remaining archery use with damage spells. I don't really like the map skill. It's not easy to put a finger on exactly why, but I think it has something to do with it just feeling like the game is trying to have your character be a "one man party" that has to be good at everything (mapping, melee, ranged, spells/alchemy, thieving) or you get punished. I would rather just hire a cartographer to map out areas for me, or better yet, buy maps. (The game lets you buy a "world" map -- and it's rather cheap too, why not area maps?) It also feels more like it's the developer holding the UI over your head and making you beg for it like holding a treat over a dog. It's not as bad as it might otherwise be, due to the availability of training in cartography, but you will "suffer" until you can afford that training, and even after full training your maps will still suck pretty bad unless you add more skill points (and then they'll still suck pretty bad -- the maps in this game are not very good, they're not detailed, stuff shows up in the wrong color -- how !@$%ing stupid is your character that they don't even know "blue water is blue, not green", they're not annotatable, you can't auto-travel somewhere by clicking on them, you can't look at the map of one area while in another area, you can't see how the areas connect). I think it also cheapens other skills in the game, especially 'arcane' things like alchemy and magic -- why should something as simple as drawing a map require the same order of magnitude of skill points as those? When I played Book 2 I basically said "screw the map" and played something like the first 1/5 of the game with no cartography skill at all (and that was a relief in some ways because no map = no frustration from using crappy map). Only when my own memory wasn't good enough any more did I start training the skill (and only when the game started to get too easy did I start wasting actual skill points on improving it further). Nope, combat in both Book 1 and 2 is on the boring/no-tactics-required side because every weapon (sword/cleaving/bludgeoning/archery/spells) works (and works equally well) on every enemy with very few exceptions. (The dev claims to have improved this in Book 3, but I haven't tried it yet.)

I think "could" is the better word rather than "will". I'm sure there are multiple traps in Book 1 that "could" have killed me if I had stepped on them, but only one that actually did. (IIRC that one wasn't even considered a "trap" by the game engine, which is why it didn't show up as red despite my perception skill. So I was lulled into not looking out for "traps" myself because my character was doing it, and then got nailed by this cheap death, which IIRC was my only death in Book 1.) (fyi, it's "bear in mind"; to carry something is to "bear" it)

Actually, the game does have (invisible) rails to keep you from falling off cliffs. (In both Book 1 and 2, and I would guess 3, there are holes and drop-offs where the game will not let you walk/fall even if you wanted to, not that you'd want to, and I'm not complaining about them because parts of Book 2 would turn into an annoying platformer-ish experience without this "invisible rails" feature.)

(That's not to say the larger point you're making isn't correct.) So you were save scumming in Book 1? Why? I went into Book 1 not really knowing what I was doing, made a number of mistakes, and still only died once (and that was the stupid/cheap "trap that's not a trap so your perception skill doesn't work" trap). You mean like Eschalon Book 1? Because that game doesn't require the player to save scum. I don't understand -- 4 deaths may not be "optimal", but that's not that many. Why would you need to respond to so few deaths with save scumming? (Maybe I'm just not getting your post -- you got a whole bunch of paragraphs about dying and save scumming in an Eschalon thread, but maybe you didn't actually save scum in Eschalon and you just went on and on about it because...???) Good point. In Book 2 (and the latter part of Book 1 IIRC) I ended up not bothering with a shield because it was just too much of a bother switching it around all the time. Besides, your character looks cool exploring a dungeon with a lantern extended forward in one hand and a short sword at-the-ready in the other. (What's a little scary is that I can't remember if the game actually shows the lantern in the main window -- I may have just been imagining what my character "really" looked like while I was playing...)

Unequipping/casting/reequipping is another common sequence that could be streamlined a bit (with some sort of reminder if you forget to reequip and start fighting bare-handed).

I agree that by about half way through (for me) there was very little difficulty so then it became a bit more about exploring and trying new things than farming experience or finding somewhere safe (and cheap) to sleep.

I still don't like games that 'punish' you for not knowing the rules. So next time (if there is one) I play then a lot of the annoyances will fade away and the early game won't be quite so frustrating but I still think resorting to this opaqueness is a poor substitute for good design.

Still haven't started book 2. Maybe once the weather turns....