Customer Reviews

Pool of Radiance

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I played this game very recently--after Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter Nights, IceWind Dale, Arcanum, etc. and after getting over the initial discomfort of the yester-year technology, I became totally immersed in it. It took a short time for me to get used to not being able to turn around. The game ranks very high on my list of favorites. I liked it much better than Icewind Dale--which became overly boring. I'm still reluctant to stop playing it eventhough I already beat it and am just roaming around doing nothing. It is role-playing in the truest form, which is almost impossible to find in computer games. You get penalized for backing up from an enemy, you can't just walk a million steps and take a thousand actions and have all day to take your turn. If you're really a role-player it's a must have!

The only negative is that it crashed often (you must save alot)--I was running it on XP with directX9.

It starts off a little slow but once you figure out the run option it improves quite a bit. This is good D&D goodness. If you're not into Dungeon and Dragons this may not be the game for you. I took forever to finish off the final boss not realizing you need a special sword and how to get that. In fact it was many years before I finished the game! Paldins rule! I believe the game won't let you finish without using a rogue to open one door. Bit of a waste of a slot in your party. Ha, ha. Yeah don't expect to finish the first time through. I certainly didn't.

this game is fun at first, but a few hours into it, it crashes, and even with the patch that was supposed to fix that problem it started crashing sooner and sooner. lost most of my game and finally quit due to frustration.

Pool of Radiance has all the makings of a great RPG at first. The graphics are nice, the quest seems long, the DnD system is there, the battles have an old school turn-based setup bound to be fun. Then it goes and gets itself killed in the details.

Most cripplingly, you cannot choose half of your character's abilities: feats and skills. This is an amazingly horrible idea, and for the life of me I cannot imagine why this decision was made. Character customization goes out the window any further than race, class(es), and stats. The game picks the rest for you. Might as well rewind 20 years to FIGHTER THIEF MAGE CLERIC, because that's all there is. Oh, good, the computer chose Skill Focus: Disable Device for my Rogue. Hooray.

This alone might be surmountable were it not for a sluggish and lousy control system that bogs down the actual battles to being just kinda tedious. Giving a single command requires several different categories of actions be perused just to cast one stupid little Magic Missile. It becomes tempting to make 4 Fighters just to speed the game play up by click click clicking.

The plot looked likable enough even if nothing special, but between the lack of character customization and sluggish battle system I just couldn't stay interested for more than a few hours. Pool of Radiance just has nothing going for it to counter its gaping flaws.

This is the game that caused my to buy a C64, and later my first PC- a 386SX-25. I loved it, and the other titles in the series. Several other games used the same system, and I also enjoyed them.

Too many of the reviewers seem intent on comparing this to a "modern" game. The graphics are simplistic, the interface and controls are clunky, the character creations choices are limited, and there are few classes available. My response is "So what?". The game was released over 20 years ago!

This is the first in a series of 4 games that bring the table-top pen and paper D&D to a screen near you. It is not an Action game, it is true RPG. You must think and plan your every move, and pray for a good dice roll. It's taken time and effort, but I have completed all games in the series with a mixed group- 3 fighters/rangers, a mage, a cleric, and a thief.

Although you are able to roam at will as an adventurer, the quest line is pretty straight forward- Do this...you do it...OK, now do that. For a game that fits on a 1.4MB floppy, it gave me hundreds of hours of entertainment.

Before complaining about how it works in XP, please remember this is a native DOS game. I have not tried this version ported to the later Windows versions. I have the 5 1/4 floppies for C64, the 3 1/2 floppy for DOS, and 9 games on a CD for Windows 3.1. The farther you get from the native environment of the game, the more bugs you are likely to find. I still keep my old machines around, just to be able to play these games at their best.

Pool Of Radiance is a perfect Role Playing Game. The users that have problems with it (and like games like Baulders Gate) are click festers. They do not want to think about what to do they just want to click and go. Role Playing games are meant to be turn based so that you can accurately control your party. In real life, and I have been in real life combat, a team does not just rush in and hack away. Each person makes decisions based on what they are confronted with and what the rest of the team is doing. If you just hack away you end up dead. I love to play the dice version of D&D and this is the closest thing I have ever seen to it on a computer. Temple of Elemental Evil is ok. but compared to the graphics of Pool it sucks as well.

I unfortunately bit and spent the 6 bucks on this, and if I had my way, I would send it back to get it. If you have played Baldur's Gate or Icewind Dale, take my word for it and stay away.

This is literally the worst game I have ever played in my life. And I have played alot of games. I hope the person who made this game is living out a very terrible existance right now. This game is worthy of the bonfire. Onto why this game is the worst thing since the holocaust.

Gameplay(negative infinity)- Let me begin the gameplay review by first saying that the game is impossible to beat. Now onward. There are to few ways to customize your character, not because of the small amount of race and class options, but because any class besides barbarian or fighter is useless as it will not complete the first 5 minutes of the game. You start out in the middle of nowhere in some wood for no apparent reason. After bashing 1 or two random orcs heads in and acquiring a password you enter the level 1 cave or should I say RPG hell. Let me tell you that this game does not have a quicksave feature. Let me compare the first level cave to the first part of baldurs gate so you will understand. Imagine spending the first half of baldurs gate punching super powerful godlike rats that kill you at candelkeep. This my fellow gamers, is the first level cave of Pool of Crap: Ruined Game. Enter the first battle when you enter the cave. Let me start off by saying that you will most likely not survive your first attempt to kill the foes, or the second, or the third, or fourth, etc.

Basiclly this is the worst game ever made, and isnt worth a pile of cow crap. The only fun part of buying this game was when i took it out of the computer and snapped it in half, and proceeded to flush it down the toliet.