Eschalon: Book III

A game series that still shamelessly compares itself to classics like Ultima and Baldur's Gate still fails utterly to grasp what made them great. It's website also slams Diablo as a sign of everything wrong with modern RPGs (which isn't wrong in my book,) but ironically manages to capture everything that made Diablo a shallow loot-grinding click-fest, itself. Enemy AI is still rudimentary, and just runs straight at you. All enemies are still just melee or "ranged", which is melee that stops a little further away. All enemies are just the same enemy with more hit points. Combat from the start to the end of the game is the same; As a wizard, you even use the same basic fire spells, because there's no reason to upgrade! The dumb-as-bricks AI is so easy to outwit, and tactics are so based upon just min-maxing one combat style, you will learn everything you need to know to beat the hardest enemies fighting your first rat in the first sewers. Hint: you regenerate, and enemies don't. You regenerate even while outrunning enemies, and no enemy can run faster than you or cross a map transition. There are also no time limits, you get free stuff for camping, including random monsters who drop loot, and if it ever gets tough, just run away and camp some more! The game also has blindly random loot drops based solely upon CHARACTER level, meaning a random rain barrel outside the local bar has as much chance of having a plate armor as locked chest guarded by traps and monsters at the back of a dungeon. For that matter, random low-level goblins can drop top-level adamantine axes if you camp for more random encounters, and camping generates free loot and EXP. Sure, you CAN explore the nooks and crannies, but why bother, when there's more and better loot to be had just spamming the sleep button? This is a game of boredom more than challenge. It would have been better made procedurally, and you're better off playing a free roguelike game than this.

I played Books I and II and generally enjoyed them. I'm halfway through Book III (11 hours). It sucks rocks. Why? First, it's too hard to do anything. I'm playing as a mage and have to rest for 24 hours game time after battling EACH enemy, just to reload mana. (Contrast that with an ARPG, where you kill monsters by the dozens and still have plenty of HP and MP.) So the routine is: walk a few feet. Kill one monster (hope there aren't two!). Retreat and rest a long time. Repeat. There's too little gold, so I'm deprived of resources. The only damage spell I've gotten so far is Spark, which is really lame. It takes 12 hits to kill anything, and then I'm out of mana. Having to remember food and water is tolerable but in the end, even more drudgery. This is nothing but a grind. Second, there's no plot and nothing to care about. Sure, the setup is a that bad little space alien is trying to take stuff from the other little aliens and hurting everyone else in the process. But we never meet any of them and care less. Calling characters two-dimensional is to insult length and width. I'm giving Book III two stars for basic game play: music, graphics, combat mechanics. Otherwise forget it.

I haven't played the series before and thought I'd give it a try. The game was solid, if difficult, with some really clever puzzles and secret areas to explore. I has just starting to get in to it, though, when suddenly (quite literally) you're at the last battle and the game is over. It felt unfinished.

Excellent game in its own right and a worthy coda to the Eschalon series. The game itself, in terms of game play and game engine, utilizes most of the improvements of the second game and further polishes them. The story is great, but the game does not hold you by the hand in any way. You are actually going to have t use your head, remember what has happened so far and explore as much as possible to make it through. All of the what makes the previous games so special can be found in Book III, such as awesome character creation, tactical combat, an immersive world and a wonderful score. Though, the little annoyances from the previous games are also present, like that unshakable feeling that your character misses far too much, sudden death from unseen traps and back-tracking through expansive wilderness with nothing much in it. Book III also felt a little shorter than the previous games, but that might just be my imagination. Bottom line: If you enjoyed the first two games then you will enjoy BOOK III just as much.