viperfdl: It depends what one considers 'good'. At first I thought it was kind of underwhelming because of the unintuitive controls and the high difficulty by today's standard. But the longer I play the more I get used to the controls and doesn't approach PoR any more like a lenient, modern game. So now it starts to be fun.
AndreeaB: Thnaks :) maybe i will give it a try
I haven't played Pool of Radiance (except for loading the game and playing a bit with character creation, including (with the help of a hex editor) creating a third gender character and discovering that the game would let me raise the character's Strength to 100), but there are a couple flaws that could negatively affect one's enjoyment of the game:
1. Healing is a pain: The only healing spell you get is extremely weak, resting heals very little, and there is no shortcut; you *have* to keep casting your absurdly weak healing spell, resting to recover your spells, and keep casting them over and over again. (I'm not sure whether you have to re-select the spells each time.) Fortunately, this problem was fixed later in the series, with better healing spells and a "FIX" command that automatically heals your characters and rests your party.
2. The game is sexist; female characters are strictly inferior to male characters. Specifically, female characters are not allowed as much Strength as male characters, and female characters don't get anything to balance out this disadvantage. (This bothers me so much that I am willing to cheat around this rule if I ever get around to playing the series.) This problem was *not* fixed later in the series.
3. Not so much an issue in Pools of Radiance, but later in the series racial level limits come into play, making non-human characters useless by the time you reach Pools of Darkness. Basically, it's as if they included options, but don't actually want those options to be used.
KiNgBrAdLeY7: I accidentally killed my main in hardcore though (forgot to back up the save folder)
Why are you playing in hardcore if you're just going to subvert that by backing up the save folder? Why not just play in a mode where you don't *need* to back up the folder?