It seems that you're using an outdated browser. Some things may not work as they should (or don't work at all).
We suggest you upgrade newer and better browser like: Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer or Opera

×
Community
General discussionRelease: Forgotten Realms: The Archives(703 posts)(703 posts)
(703 posts)
Pages:
1
5
10
15
20
25
30
33
34
35
36
37
40
47
This is my favourite topic
Posted August 21, 2015
We're casting True Resurrection on Eye of the Beholder and twelve more D&D GoldBox classics.

You are sitting in a tavern. The mighty Wizards of the Coast bestow upon you their greatest treasures: Forgotten Realms: The Archives - long lost relics of an RPG renaissance that changed the face of gaming forever. Today, one of the forgotten grails of gaming history is within your grasp, should you travel to a magical, DRM-free realm known as GOG.com

Eye of the Beholder, Pool of Radiance, Menzoberranzan - the list of groundbreaking RPG classics goes on. We set out on the quest for Forgotten Realms: The Archives a long time ago, and though it was a perilous journey - after years of searching, huge help from our friends at Hasbro and Wizards of The Coast, as well as months of technical work - we get to be freaking excited to sit here and say:
Forgotten Realms: The Archives are available now, DRM-free on GOG.com





The Archives are a set of thirteen D&D GoldBox classics packaged across three collections:
--<span class="bold">Forgotten Realms: The Archives - Collection One</span> features Eye of the Beholder I, II, and III. It's the three and only, the gold-standard in classic RPG dungeon crawling.

--<span class="bold">Forgotten Realms: The Archives - Collection Two</span> features more gameplay hours and secrets than we could ever count - with Pool of Radiance, Hillsfar, Curse of the Azure Bonds, Gateway to the Savage Frontier, Pools of Darkness, Secret of the Silver Blades, Treasures of the Savage Frontier, and D&D: Unlimited Adventures.

--<span class="bold">Forgotten Realms: The Archives - Collection Three</span> features near-infinite replay value and and an important chunk of RPG history with Dungeon Hack and Menzoberranzan.





We are now home to precisely 20 years of digital D&D RPG history - from Pool of Radiance (1988) to Neverwinter Nights 2: Storm of Zehir (2008). You can also complete your personal collection with all the remaining D&D titles on sale at up to 80% off in our early D&amp;D Weekend Promo! Planescape Torment, Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter Nights - they're all here, so head straight to the promo page, or read more about it.






Stream watch:

We'll be featuring lots of D&D classics at Twitch.tv/GOGcom - follow us to not miss 'em or read on for the full Dungeon-and-Dragon-filled schedule below!

THURSDAY, August 20th:
2pm GMT / 4pm CEST / 10am EDT / 7am PDT: Pool of Radiance with Classicor
4pm GMT / 6pm CEST / 12pm EDT / 9am PDT: Eye of the Beholder II with MegapiemanPHD
6pm GMT / 8pm CEST / 2pm EDT / 11am PDT: Eye of the Beholder with Outstar
10pm GMT / 12am CEST / 6pm EDT / 3pm PDT: Menzoberranzan with Classicor

FRIDAY, August 21st:
6pm GMT / 8pm CEST / 2pm EDT / 11am PDT: Curse of the Azure Bonds with Piranjade

SUNDAY, August 23rd:
10pm GMT / 12am CEST / 6pm EDT / 3pm PDT: Dungeon Hack with Classicor
Posted August 21, 2015
As I was too young to have played this in its heyday, can anybody tell if there is a recommended play order for these games? I bought all 3 archives, FYI.
Posted August 21, 2015
avatar
Syphonides: As I was too young to have played this in its heyday, can anybody tell if there is a recommended play order for these games? I bought all 3 archives, FYI.
All the series are independent of each other, and quite different from each other, too, so begin with the one that most appeals to you. The order of Eye of the Beholder 1-3 (1990-1992) should be self-explanatory. Dungeon Hack (1993), Menzoberranzan (1994), Hillsfar (1989) and Unlimited Adventure (1993) are all standalone games without any recommended order. The other six games from Collection Two can be split into two series with the following order:

Pool of Radiance series:
1. Pool of Radiance (1988)
2. Curse of the Azure Bonds (1989)
3. Secret of the Silver Blades (1990)
4. Pool of Darkness (1991)

Savage Frontier series:
1. Gateway to the Savage Frontier (1991)
2. Treasures of the Savage Frontier (1992)

Personally I think the most accessible games from today's perspective (with their caveats in brackets) are Dungeon Hack (random dungeon crawling, no real story), the Eye of the Beholder series (no auto-maps) and Unlimited Adventures (only recommend for playing community modules or creating your own; the demo campaign is not that good).
Post edited August 21, 2015 by Leroux
Posted August 21, 2015
avatar
Syphonides: As I was too young to have played this in its heyday, can anybody tell if there is a recommended play order for these games? I bought all 3 archives, FYI.
If you want to experience them in order. start with Eye Of The Beholder 1 or Pool of Radiance. Though in the case of the latter you can also start with an ostensibly better game like Secret of the Silver Blades.

As a fan of dungeon crawls, I'd say you should definitely play EOTB 1 & 2 and Menzoberranzan at minimum. Pools of Darkness is also good, though again you may want to start with Pool of Radiance if you are interested in getting the whole story.

Dungeon Hack, since it uses randomised content, can be picked up and played at pretty much any point. It will give you an idea if you like the EOTB engine as well. It also includes more roguelike options, such as permadeath. And Forgotten Realms Unlimited Adventures isn't really a game so much as a game builder, though it does come with one complete module to play.

Hope this helps!
Posted August 21, 2015
avatar
Syphonides: As I was too young to have played this in its heyday, can anybody tell if there is a recommended play order for these games? I bought all 3 archives, FYI.
If you like turn-based games, just start with Pool of Radiance and go in order from there - Curse of the Azure Bonds, Secret of the Silver Blades, Pools of Darkness, Gateway, Treasures of the Savage Frontier (consider Hillsfar optional, as that one is more of a character trainer than a full-fledged game). There were some wrinkles in the later RPGs but Pool of Radiance is generally held to be the most innovative title and the others just iterated on it. (If you look at the overall Goldbox release dates, you'll see how quickly they cranked these out.)

If you prefer real-time dungeon-crawling and previously enjoyed Grimrock, go with Eye of the Beholder. The games in the third bundle are nice to have but the primary attraction of these releases is the first two bundles.
Posted August 21, 2015
Nice nice nice!!! An instabuy on all three packages! Thanks a lot, GoG!!! :)
Posted August 21, 2015
avatar
golani79: Oh nice .. I was just thinking about Eye of the Beholder the other day and voted for it on gog.com - now its here :)
Yup, those wishlist votes actually do make a difference :D
Posted August 21, 2015
avatar
PetrusOctavianus: But playing the DOS versions is swifter (no emulating disk swapping) and more convenient.
avatar
Kirben: All the Amiga ports of the goldbox games could be installed to hard disk (or hard disk image) for quicker access, with no disk swapping required.
Heh, easier said than done when using an emulator...

avatar
lostwolfe: he's always pretty thorough, which is one of the reasons i like him. i don't remember which game it was, but i remember watching him set up systematic tests and was blown away by how much he knew about the game.
avatar
DoctorPirx: Indeed. And you can have very fruitfull discussions with him about Gold Box mechanics. :)
He certainly knows how to max out all stats and hit points...
Post edited August 21, 2015 by PetrusOctavianus
Posted August 21, 2015
avatar
Syphonides: As I was too young to have played this in its heyday, can anybody tell if there is a recommended play order for these games? I bought all 3 archives, FYI.
As I've been saying the the thread, the good games are:

- Radiance - not accessible, terrible interface
- Curse - not accessible, terrible interface
- Eye of the Beholder 2 - reasonably accessible, rather hard
- Gateway - reasonably accessible, reasonably easy
- FRUA - to play community content, you should learn the ropes, have a good grasp of how stuff works and what to expect.

For what it's worth, the stories in the "series" are standalone, even though characters can be transferred between installments.

So my advice is to start with either
EotB 2 (a single-dungeon-crawler with environmental challenges / puzzles, like avoiding traps, noticing hidden switches, managing food, looking for keys and picking locks, etc), or
Gateway (a campaign with an overland map and multiple bare-bones mazes with no puzzles and rare scripted challenges) -- from there you can progress to FRUA custom modules or the badly-aged (but great) Radiance and Curse.
Posted August 21, 2015
A minor thing, but I noticed Pools of Darkness doesn't have a typical GOG icon (a round icon with a cover picture), instead it just have a square GOG logo.
Posted August 21, 2015
avatar
Ghildrean: A minor thing, but I noticed Pools of Darkness doesn't have a typical GOG icon (a round icon with a cover picture), instead it just have a square GOG logo.
Where do you see this?
Posted August 21, 2015
avatar
Ghildrean: A minor thing, but I noticed Pools of Darkness doesn't have a typical GOG icon (a round icon with a cover picture), instead it just have a square GOG logo.
avatar
JudasIscariot: Where do you see this?
I have installed Pools of Darkness using Galaxy and found that both "Launch Pools of Darkness" and "unins000" files have different icons. Didn't try the offline installer.

EDIT:
Tried the offline installer. It uses the correct icons, so it only happens with Galaxy.
Post edited August 21, 2015 by Ghildrean
Posted August 21, 2015
Gog should really approach The Internet Archive and tell them to take down the Eye of the Beholder games which they have playable in dosbox on their site.

Internet Archive is very dodgily "archiving" "abandonware" but quite a few of the titles they have are for sale, EOTB as mentioned, plus Commander Keen series, Wizardry series, Master of Orion 1...

I don't know if it's worth it for gog to go after abandonware sites in general but The Internet Archive is a more "official" site I suppose, and since gog is now the publisher of EOTB it might be worthwhile.
Posted August 21, 2015
I know a lot of these games let you export characters to other games. Does anyone have a complete "map" of all the games you can export from and import to?

Thanks!
Post edited August 21, 2015 by whozeduke
Posted August 21, 2015
avatar
Leroux: I don't have much time to beat the big drum for it right now, but I'd still like to draw some attention to the most underrated game of today's releases:

Forgotten Realms Unlimited Adventures (FRUA)

While this might not seem like much on first look, compared to the others, it's actually the Neverwinter Nights of the 90's! This game alone is worth the asking price for Collection Two, as it gives you access to tons of free and high quality community campaigns for hundreds of hours of story-telling and turn-based combat entertainment. Just take a look at this "Hall of Fame" list that I compiled for the FRUA community (and that's only the modules that I officially approved of!). If you're a fan of the Goldbox games or the old Pen-and-Paper modules, this may very well turn out to be a real treasure trove for you. If, on the other hand, you fear these games might be dated, I urge you to reconsider and try FRUA at least. Even if you can't get into the Goldbox games (like myself), FRUA still has a lot to offer to you. It uses the most advanced engine of them all and the community modded it to be much more versatile, allowing for enhanced graphics and even different genres than standard Forgotten Realms fantasy. There are also Ravenloft and Planescape modules, for example, but even sci-fi and superhero modules. The FRUA community is still alive after 22 years, btw, it's small, but one of the most welcoming, helpful and friendly communities on the internet, possibly even more so than GOG.

Check out some random screenshots below of how modded FRUA can look like.
Thank you for your recommendation. I have a question, and it sounds like maybe you're the one to ask. Several of the modules you recommend say in their documentation that they require something called UA-Shell. I've found that program, but if I run it ask instructed, I get a message that (filepath) cannot start or run due to incompatibility with this version of Windows (Win7 64bits). Do you have any idea how to use this thing with the GOG version, if it needs to be used?
Posted August 21, 2015
avatar
IAmSinistar: Sooo, GOG. These are flat priced. Is that by design, dare I hope? Or something that will change once all the hoopla dies down?
Would someone from GOG care to elaborate on that? :)
Pages:
1
5
10
15
20
25
30
33
34
35
36
37
40
47
This is my favourite topic
Community
General discussionRelease: Forgotten Realms: The Archives(703 posts)(703 posts)
(703 posts)