Customer Reviews

Dungeons & Dragons: Eye of the Beholder

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

First off I am new to the GBA and have been a PC gamer for 20 years. I played the original EOB on the PC so I can't help but compare it a bit.

The game plays very well and offers a good amount of 3rd edition D&D rules, but it assumes you already know and understand those rules so be ready.

The graphics are pretty much like the original, which is nice. I like the fact that they decided to go for the isometric view for battles, it works much better on a tactical level. The sounds are nice too.

There are only a few monsters that you fight but the battles are fun. The puzzles aren't so hard that you can't figure them out with some effort.

All in all I very much enjoyed this game. I only have two complaints. One is that is is too short. Now since I'm new to the GBA maybe this is par, but it only took me about 14 hours to finish the game. That doesn't bother me too much since I think it will be fun to play through again with a different party. My other complaint is a major bug that I experienced. At some point about half way through my two front characters all of the sudden had Armor Classes of over 100. This is not possible with the armor and magic items in the game yet no matter what I did I couldn't get the ACs to go back to what they should be. This made the game too easy because basically those two characters could never be hit by any monster. This is a pretty glaring bug that should have been found in development.

So.... my recommendation is that if you like D&D and you know the rules.... and you want a nice little dungeon romp.... this is a great game to get. If you're not too keen on D&D you may want to think hard about whether or not you're going to buy it.

I originally played Eye of the Beholder for the SNES and never got too far in it. This gameboy advance version was almost identical to that game with the exception that when battles were engaged you were switched to an 3d overhead view. I went through this game over the weekend and was disappointed in how short it seemed. Total play time from start to finish was about 7 hours. Eye of the Beholder had a total of 10 or 11 levels. With a party of 6 adventurers I still had about two characters reach level 10 experience.
At some point one of my characters had an AC of 145 after he acheived the 6th level. Even though I was wearing lots of magical items the cumulative AC should only have been about a 29 or 30. What I disliked the most was that no experience or treasure was awarded after I beat the final level. The game quickly ends and the credits roll. I got jipped. This was the first game I bought for the GameBoy Advance and I only wish it could have been longer.

I just beat this game and it only took me about 6 or 7 hours to complete. I have played previous versions of Eye of the Beholder on PC , Super Nintendo and Sega CD platforms, and although the GBA version is a completely new game, most of the types of puzzles and traps are very similar, which probably allowed me to beat the game a little more quickly than people whom have never played any version of EotB. Even so, I can't imagine anyone taking more than 8-10 hours to complete it, and once you beat this game you will have pretty much seen all there is to see and probably have no desire to play through it again. Not to mention the graphics and sound are way below the Gameboy Advance capabilities, and are not much better than the original EotB game that came out for the PC over a dozen years ago. Plus a really poor ending is like a final slap in the face. So for it's price tag I cannot recommend buying this game as it is way too short, and has little replay value. I will admit I enjoyed the game, as it is moderatly challenging and fun, but it was over way too soon, and it's poor graphics and sound keep it from being a serious contender in todays RPG market. If you can rent this game, I recommend doing so, as it will be fun for at least a weekend.

Firstly: this is not a game for everyone.

If you were a fan of the old AD&D Gold Box games, then this game is a must-have. If you play for graphics (and if you do, what are you doing on the GBA instead of the DS?) then this game will probably strike you as a little bland. Graphics and sprites are both fairly basic (there are three or four wall-types and at one point I couldn't tell if I was fighting lizard men or shambling mounds -- based on how little damaged bladed weapons did, I'm assuming it was a shambler), but this remains a diverting little dungeon-crawl for fans of the old school.

It isn't too involved (you won't be up 'til three in the morning working on the same puzzle like you can be in most the Final Fantasy series) and some people will be able to clear the game in one or two sittings, but I for one love both the immersive feel of the first-person view and the fairly simple combat interface. Overhead views are good for seeing what's around you, but the in-game map serves the same function. Turn-based combat and the nature of the interface both mean that you won't strain your thumbs trying to mash out complex command-sequences in real-time. You have time to sit back and think about what you're going to do.

The rules are more 3rd Edition than Gold Box, but not hopelessly complex to people unfamiliar with the 3rd Edition (although some of the included skills and feats DO seem a little pointless to include in a straightforward dungeon crawl -- Diplomacy?!?! EoTB was like the original Dungeon Hack, for the Lord's sake).

The game deviates from the original Eye of the Beholder on a few key points. The one I noticed most was the lack of a hunger-gauge in camping, which means no aimlessly questing around for iron rations before you can safely camp. (Having a cleric starve to death while researching Ressurection spells was something of a bummer in the original. And, yes, that actually happened to me once.) The 3rd Edition rules I already mentioned (feats like Improved Initiative and Concentration are musts in combat, and skills like Disable Device and Intuit Direction make non-combat play far smoother).

Random encouters also seem a lot less common in this version of the game than they were in the original, which is a double-edged sword. You can camp with relative certainty that you won't be interupted (except in a handful of "Hot Zones"), but the scarcity of random encounters makes it hard to level-up quickly. I offset that by routinely camping in the Hot Zones I detected in order to essentially force random encounters. Combat is more Gold Box in style, which I enjoyed because it was familiar, but the sprites representing monsters are so similar that you can have trouble telling a drow soldier from a drow mage or cleric (an uber-important distinction when trying to figure out who to eliminate first).

There are one or two things that I might have changed if I designed the game (the uniformity of the walls and sprites, etc), but overall it was a wonderfully diverting way to spend a couple of weekends. And it definitely brought back wonderful memories of a simpler age in gaming.

Clunky. Horrible graphics and sound. And it was not fun. I've played a lot of RPG's and this one was a royal stinker. It didn't even try to use all of the GBA's abilities. And the battle system was a nightmare. If you're looking for a good RPG pass this one. There are much better games out there.

I am currently playing this game on gba. I know the original version (on amiga and pc), and based on the reviews here on amazon, people said it had a map and isometric battle; i decided to give it a try ( i paid $25 for it).

(1) there are minor bugs in the map system such as it went up-side-down (!) a few times (no i was not drunk, it WAS upside down) the cursor goes astray. Not a show stopper though.

(2) the essential game killer here is this: you can rest after EVERY combat, with no food / drink problems (in contrast to the 2nd edition version) so your party will always be maximally prepared (you can always save so you do this after each battle) with all the spells prepared, and you will NOT EVER be disturbed in your sleep - the bad guys simply wait for you to be slaugthered, giving indeed the game the very short life span of 8 hours.

(3) apart from level 1, the maps are very different (you can look it up via a simple internet search, it won't spoil the game) compare the original eotb maps with those of the gba also published; gba maps are too simple.

(4) the story line is weaker than that of the original: the teleportation puzzle of the dwarven/stone etc keys as i remember them is gone, and the rest is simple battle, which gets a little pointless, because all the rooms look all the same. Not a show stopper either.

(5) in battle you are given a random setup of your figures, and the figures can NOT move around each other. Which means every character must have bows in order to reach an enemy but those in front will lose a full round re-equipping. The setup of who goes in line # that is too complex and i always wind up having the figthers in the back. This really IS very frustrating.

(6) i know dnd 3rd as well as adnd, and what the dice do in this game in battle is just way too weird - far too often a miss with a fighter with a dwarven waraxe +1 on a simple skeleton. Far too often a fumble with a 3rd lvl mage with combat casting, trying to cast a magic missile (!);

(7) some spells are completely irrelevant. finding 2+ level in your spellbook is a pain in the a*s.

Nice but not the real thing, it's a nice to have, nothing more. My advice, rent it, because you WILL finish it in one free saturday (promise). to the makers: It's fine to change a game a bit, but it has obviously not been tested. in my opinion this type of marketing is a Shame!

To enjoy this game, you'll have to be a D&D player, because there's no explanation of what "Simple Weapons" are or whether a +2 Half-Plate is better than a +1 Full-Plate or all that. But you'll have to not have anyone to play with, because this is essentially tabletop D&D with an automated DM--and not a very inventive one, either, having you hack and slash through one foe after another with little strategy. The relative strengths of video gaming compared to tabletop gaming aren't exploited either, with graphics one step up from Zork, scarce and low-quality music, little plot, and no sidequests or other attempts at building a full world. Then there's the matter of how user-unfriendly the game is--you can't switch characters while changing inventory, you can't check a character's HP during combat when it's not their turn, you're never told what enemy special attacks actually DO . . . In sum, borrow, don't buy.

Traditional Gamer - See " Golden Sun" for more information. I"m sorry but this game this jusn't cut the muster with other games on the market. The game is slow and the combat system terrible. I've played D&D hundreds of times and if you like the game, you'll like this game. For me go elsewhere for enjoyment.

This is a truely great game, you do not need to be in to the D&D roleplaying game to like this. In the beginning you have to make a team or choose the premade characters for a team (dont use the premade characters they only have the search ability). The actual game has pretty good graphics and cool dungeons. When exploring you get a first person 3-D view. In battle the screen switches to an overhead view. The battle system is a little hard to get used to and your characters miss the opponent a lot on the beginning but when you get used to it you can use techniques such as flanking and cornering your opponent. I gave the educational rating a 4 becaus its a time consuming video game that is not made to be an educational toy.

I highly recomend this game to anyone that enjoys strategy based role-playing games.

If you're a fan of the D&D computer games, you'll instantly know what I'm talking about. This isn't so much Eye of the Beholder. It's more like the old Golden Seal games. I haven't gotten very far, I'll admit. But so far, I'm not all that impressed. There is an automap. But it moves. And there's no compass in the "first person" view, so it's easy to get lost.