Pool of Radiance Review by Eurogamer

Remove all ads!

(Originally posted by Nazgul)

This is the first negative view that I have seen of the game.

Back in the distant mists of time, before the age of Diablo, Everquest and Baldur's Gate, SSI's Gold Box series was the king of the role-playing genre. Now Stormfront Studios and French publisher UbiSoft are hoping to capture the magic of the original with a new sequel based on the latest 3rd Edition AD&D rule set. We delved into a beta version of the game to find out more...

The B-Team
As in the original, the action centers around the Pool of Radiance, a magical McGuffin which creates a wave of energy that turns anyone it touches into a shambling undead creature of the night. Needless to say, when the old Pool under the city of New Phlan re-activates this is considered to be a Bad Thing™.

Immediately a group of the country's finest heroes is assembled by the mage Elminster and sent off to the ruined elven city of Myth Drannor to discover what has caused the Pool to come back to life. Unfortunately they vanish, and in a fit of desperation Elminster rounds up you and your mates from the local pub and sends you through a magical portal to find out what happened to the real heroes. As you may have guessed, the first party are all dead or missing by the time you arrive, and so it falls to you to uncover what is going on under Myth Drannor and put a stop to it before Phlan becomes uninhabitable.

All of this is somewhat academic though, because the game essentially boils down to a good old fashioned dungeon crawl. What plot there is seems to be rather thin on the ground, certainly in the early stages of the game, and because the city you are exploring is ruined there aren't many people that you will want to stop to talk to. Those of you hoping for a character-led epic along the lines of Baldur's Gate should probably look elsewhere.

Read the rest of the article here.