Random Review: Eschalon: Book I

Product:  Eschalon:  Book I
Genre:  Video games  [technically, it’s a computer game, but I don’t care to differentiate as far as blog categories are concerned]
Rating:  Five out of five alchemy ingredients
Recommended for:  People who like old-school, turn-based, stat-heavy RPGs

Sorry this review is late – the holiday threw me off my usual schedule.  (And my grateful thanks to the fallen on this day.)

Basilisk Games is an independent PC game developer.  I learned about Eschalon:  Book I thanks to a review from Shamus Young.  It’s an old-school, isometric, turn-based, stat-heavy RPG, like Morrowind or Diablo; if you liked those games, you’ll enjoy the nostalgia of playing Eschalon.

If, on the other hand, you have no idea what I’m talking about, but you did think last week’s description of role-playing games sounded interesting, Eschalon:  Book I is a great place to start.  You begin with a character creation screen.  An aspect of RPGs I didn’t mention last week is that your character is typically described by a collection of attributes and skills.  It’s really not as intimidating as it can seem at first glance; all they (RPG developers) have done is assign numbers to certain qualities, and a character’s “score” in a given stat or skill is the basis of determining whether s/he succeeds at a given action.  For example, suppose you want to take the action “attack the goblin”.  Your character has a number that defines how good he is at attacking.  The result of a die roll is added to that number, and the sum is compared to the number that defines how good the goblin is at not being hit.  If your character succeeds at hitting the goblin, then he gets to do a certain amount of damage that is also defined by a number quantifying how good he is at dealing damage and a die roll.  (It’s a little more complicated than that, but when you’re playing a computer game, you don’t do any of the computations.)

So, you decide what kind of character you want to play – anything from a virtuous knight to a chaotic mage to an evil thief – pick your skills and assign your attribute points accordingly, and start the game.  As with many games of the isometric RPG era, you have lost your memory, and awaken in a small hut with nothing but basic equipment (a dagger, a couple health potions, etc.) and a cryptic note that starts you off on your quest.

I liked several features of Eschalon:  Book I, particularly the heavily story-based nature of the game, the openness of the game world, and the flavor of the world – you can easily believe that the characters have lives beyond selling you stuff and offering you quests.  My most major peeve was the sheer randomness of outcomes; one giant wasp might almost kill my character, while the next might not be able to even touch him, despite the fact that the wasp and my character have the exact same stats in each battle.

I highly recommend Eschalon: Book I for anyone who enjoys old-school RPGs.