I have about 30 hours into the game at this point, and overall I'm enjoying it, but there is one negative issue that stands out as very frustrating. I'm not sure if the to hit roll percentages that show up on the screen during combat are incorrect, or perhaps there is an issue behind the scenes with the way they're calculated, but quite often I find myself in battles where the screen says my to hit % is say 63% and the creature I'm fighting is at 21% and it will hit me over and over again while I miss repeatedly. If it was just here and there I'd chalk it up to bad RNG luck, but at level 10 and around 30 hours it has happened consistently during my entire time playing. It feels broken. Was just curious if anyone else had similar experience.

Otherwise I've enjoyed the game , especially considering I got it for free quite awhile ago. It's unusual in my crpg experienvce in that there is no easily discernible way to grind some experience in between quests that I can tell other than just resting repeatedly and hoping to be ambushed. I've enjoyed the storyline though, the alchemy, and world exploration. Hopefully I can finish it up soon and post a review.

like many similar games, usually the rolls in the game aren't correct, there are many games where such rolls are not what you see on the screen. Either they were programmed wrong, or they were programmed correct but the visual numbers you see don't show all the information. Believe me, MANY games are this way and are often proven incorrect or bad.

This game is the same, the number you see are just a general range, they are not correct based on my own personal testing on the numbers shown. So yes, it isn't you. You'll find battles where in the dark you have 40% chance to hit and they have 20ish chance, and they will outhit you. I've tried to disarm a trap just today that had 30% chance to disarm, and after a horrible sequence of tries that amounted to having to try 26 tries to finally succeed, very annoying.

Thankfully this basic game is easy to fix with those numbers you see and aren't hitting, etc. Since you can save at any time in the game and savescum, that is the process you can do to make sure you always are doing fine. Save before a fight and if it just doesn't go your way, reload and try again. You can savescum doing anything. Save before a fight. heck, save before each opponent. Heck, save before each SWING or CAST and savescum how much or little you like. Savescum before the death of humanoids to have them drop loot bags, savescum the loot bags to get nice items.

You get the idea. Yes the numbers aren't correct but there are ways around that.

I'm not sure about the numbers being incorrect.

When looking at the text log, you'll often see that you (or your enemy) is affected by (partial) darkness or suffering from a penalty due to a long-range attack. This will modify the "raw" to-hit probability.

When it's dark, and you fight with a torch/lantern and/or gravedigger's flame active, the spot where you are standing will be (among) the brightest on-screen, so your enemies will most probably profit from standing at a darker place than you.

Use the cat's eyes and/or predator sight spells instead, and make the enemy follow you, so that it stands near a light source, if possible, while you are standing in a (slightly) darker place.

Note that being silent or hiding in shadows does prevent you from being noticed, but your first successful attack will cancel out this, so you must walk away immediately until the effect is in place again. Those effects let you strike first only, nothing more.

I'm not usually a rogue type of player so I didn't attempt any hiding in shadows, but I definitely used the ligh vs. darkness to my advantage as often as I could once I figured it out. I still felt like the percentages displayed on the screen didn't match the actual gameplay, but it didn't stop me from enjoying the game. I've been lazy about getting back to playing anything in 2024 so far, but Eschalon II is defintely on my list to play this year from my backlog.

Then you can try the things you normally don't: in Book II there are trainers for most abilities, and money shouldn't be a problem late in the game.