Eschalon: Book I Reviews

I can only recommend this game to people who are extremely patient, forgiving of an uninteresting plot that has been done countless times, want to play either as a mage or fighter, and have absolutely nothing else to do with their time. The majority of the time I played this game, my character was walking. Endlessly walking and walking and walking. There are a few fast travel points in the game world, but only a few, and you will frequently find yourself fast traveling back to town to heal or sell items only to spend ten minutes walking back to where you were. Enemies and loot don't respawn, so the trek back is just boring. When night falls, everything is pitch black, and unless you have a light source, you end up blindly clicking around hoping that your character is moving somewhere. You can't just wait for night to end, because time only progresses when your character moves or performs an action. You could try resting to skip through the night, but if you're in a confined area when night falls, you might not have enough room to pitch your tent. There's also a chance that you'll get ambushed by bandits while you're resting, which is really a problem when you rest in order to replenish your health and mana. You can't use maps unless you put points into the Cartography skill. One point in Cartography lets you draw crude outlines of trees and buildings. Five points in and you can finally draw roads and water. Unfortunately, your maps don't retroactively update when you put more points in Cartography. You have to walk over the same area again to redraw the map. If you use a potion or spell to temporarily boost your Cartography skill, once the effect wears off, the fine quality map you had becomes overwritten by the crude map representing your actual skill. In other words, in this game, Cartography isn't the skill of drawing maps on paper. It's the skill of memorizing maps in your head. It's not viable to make a character who uses a bow and arrows as their primary weapon. Enemies take a large number of arrows to defeat, causing you to constantly go back to town to buy more arrows. This means that you're constantly broke, as well as annoyed that you keep having to fast travel to town and then walk back to where you were. I completed the game using a mage type character. In the beginning of the game, mana recharges very slowly, and fights with minor NPCs take at least ten minutes to finish. Fighting in this game involves kiting around an enemy waiting for your mana to recharge before you can cast another firebolt, hopefully killing the enemy so you can get on with your life. Kiting is necessary because you only get so many health potions in this game, resting might cause you to get ambushed, and fast traveling to town to rest is annoying on account of how long it takes you to get back. When your stats are high enough to support a reasonable mana recharge rate, combat is still boring. I ended up doing the same thing every time - apply buffs, close in on enemy, swing axe until it's dead, repeat. Cast a healing spell if I lose health. I'm only speculating that it's plausible to use a fighter type character to complete the game. When magic isn't involved, fights are basically statistical matches. If you have better stats and equipment than your opponent, you'll probably hit harder and more often than they will and win the fight. So a fighter is probably destined to either win or lose every time they enter combat. A fog of war covers each section of the world map, and you have to walk through every square inch of it to see what's hidden beneath. You never know where anything worth investigating is until you've wasted lots of time slogging through empty space. Locked chests and doors can be broken into with your weapons. I actually like this feature, but there are a couple of problems with it. The first problem is that in many situations, your weapon will only inflict 1% of damage to a locked chest or door per hit, and your weapon loses durability as you use it. In other words, you could spend two minutes trying to break through a chest and lose your weapon only to find an inferior item within. Magic can also be used to break through chests and doors, but since mana recharges over time, you're always guaranteed to be able to break through a locked chest or door if you spend enough time pacing back and forth waiting for your mana to recharge so you can keep casting destructive spells. There should really be an option to tell your character to keep doing that until they've broken through, and skip that amount of time. As it is, it's just an enormous waste of time. Another mechanic of the game I liked is how light affects hit chances. If you or an enemy is illuminated, they're easier to hit, and if you or an enemy is in darkness, they're harder to hit. It's possible to position yourself so that an enemy has to stand partially in light, while you're concealed in darkness, thus giving yourself an accuracy advantage. The time progression mechanic (time moves when you move) is also pretty cool, and lends itself to better strategic planning during fights (even if it's just figuring out the best way to kite around an enemy). It also lets you take more time to think about what your next move is, or even take a break. But these few positive notes aren't enough for me to consider recommending this to anyone. I personally wish I had those 49 hours of my life back. I could have been doing something better. Like reading. Or knitting. Or wrestling an alligator.

Eschalon is being marketed as an old-school role-playing game inspired by the classics. This is an adequate description of the game, but unfortunately the game does not succeed in adequately copying all the good qualities of the classics that it is inspired by. The game does have it's strengths for sure. Character creation is very detailed and let's you create the character you want to play by choosing such things as race, class, skills, the region where the character grew up and the character's religion (or lack thereof) and all of these choices make a difference. Another strength is in how the turn-based system works. When you move or perform any action time flows. When you don't time stands still. This means that the game can have as high or low a pace as you want it to have at any given moment and that it moves seamlessly from a high to a low pace and vice versa. There is no waiting, e.g. for enemies to complete their turn, and you can also take as much time as you need to think before acting. The game has a reasonable amount of optional side-quests, different items to find and different regions to explore. The graphics are nothing special, but entirely adequate. The music is quite good. So far, it all sounds pretty good. Where does the game fail, then? Unfortunately it fails at the most important thing for this kind of game. Combat! What is wrong with it? It doesn't require any skill. You control a single character with a rather limited repertoire of combat actions, mainly slashing/bashing, shooting, or burning the enemies, The same is true for the enemies. This would be okay in a Diablo-like action RPG where the fun and the challenge comes from the high pace. But for a turn-based RPG this is not adequate, combats should require some strategic thinking and since here they don't fighting enemies becomes a dull routine matter. Since much of the game, like with most RPG's, consists of fighting this is clearly no good. All in all, Eschalon is an old-school turn-based RPG with a couple of good qualities which is unfortunately dragged down by dull combat. I wouldn't really want to call it a bad game, but there are plenty of better games in the genre (although Eschalon beats many of these games in some respects, only not where it really matters) that I would recommend over this one.

I mainly played this in offline mode which hasn't logged my extra hours (would be around 47). It took me 27 hours to complete the game completing all side quests I could find. Eschalon: Book 1 is one of the few Old School RPG games to hold my attention from start to finish. The game is quite simply hard at the beginning, but the difficulty eases off the more you progress your character. The story and writing are good, it has its own unique charm that I find really appealing. There are a lot of secrets to find in this game, some hidden puzzles and other little easter eggs that encourages you to keep your eyes peeled. Honestly I wish there were more games out there in this genre. I know Old School RPG's will always be obscure, but they're simply fantastic. I'll be playing through Eschalon: Book 2 and 3 when I get the time.

Finishing this game took me 34 hours. Was that good time? Definitely yes, I spent a great time with that. But that doesn't mean that every player will like it as I do. First of all, you must be real RPG fan, and what is most important, you must be old-school gamer. Because this game is true old-school RPG with very poor animations and weak graphics (as for today). But if you're ok with that, you will like it. It has good story, turn based combat and high difficulty level. VERDICT: If you're old-school RPG fan, this is what you need. If you're modern RPG fan but you want to try something classic, this is good choice. If you're not a fan either of RPG and old-school, you shouldn't even read this, that might harm you. Like this review? Consider to join [url=steamcommunity.com/groups/GoodGamesGR#]Good Games Giveaways & Reviews[/url] group and maybe press big sexy "Follow this curator" button on our [url=steamcommunity.com/groups/GoodGamesGR#curation]curation page[/url] to read more reviews and win free games.

I bought the trilogy of this at 50% off and I'm still playing the first FREE episode after more than 14 hours. Totally engrossing, it has blown me away. Yes the graphics are dog turd but the gameplay and story progression together with the large open world put the majority of more modern RPGs to shame. Also the difficulty and balancing are spot on and I am told by reliable sources that Eschalon only gets better with each chapter. AAA developers could learn a lot from this. Highly recommended.

Playing this trilogy for the second time through. While not graphically superior to any RPG of late, this game franchise has one of the most involved story lines you could ever ask for. Seriously deep character development are coupled with a world that you will completely get lost in. The story will take you through a lifetime of betrayal, friendships and evil that will leave you speechless. Any fan of RPG's will be right at home here with a D&D style interface, Ultima style spell books and some of the most memorable adventures I have personally ever been a part of. Every second of this game drips with pure love from the developer whom I can only assume is an even bigger nerd than I am :)

[h1] “Aha! A back entrance to the infamous dark tower! And better yet, the door appears to be slightly ajar as if it were not properly closed the last time someone used it. It seems this is my lucky day. Riches here I come!” [/h1] Eschalon: Book 1 represents a classic RPG experience with a turn-based combat system and great love for detail. In addition it provides a decent character development system and well-done soundtrack for the depicted locations. The only shortcoming of this game is the relatively slow-paced gameplay. [i] Trivia: [/i] The developers of the Eschalon series kept this project a secret for a long time, believing most game developers release too much information about their products, spoiling the game when you eventually play it. [i] Achievements: [/i] The game has no Steam achievements.

(Before I get going, I'll say that Book 2 is much improved and although I'm only a few hours in, I can probably recommend Book 2. Writing is more polished, graphics feel fresher, and controls feel more responsive. Book 1 isn't necessary to play or understand the story of Book 2.) Slow paced and feels more like a shallow copy of old school CRPGs (hey, that *looks old-fashioned*, or, nobody does *that* in RPGs anymore, let's put that into Eschalon) rather than capturing the deep magic that made old school CRPGs worth reviving (as in "why did they do that, and does it still make sense? If so, let's put it in and modernize it just a bit"). Don't get me wrong, I like turn-based (Western) CRPGs, love Spiderweb Games (Exile through Avadon even), and I even fire up one of the top roguelikes now and then (Nethack, ADOM, dwarf fortress, Cataclysm DDA, etc.), and Eschalon Book 1 falls flat by comparison. I've played Ultima 4-8, Wasteland, Fallout 1-2, Baldur's Gate, Arcanum, and I've probably played other awesome turn-based overhead CRPGs that I can't remember. I'm sure I've played some clunkers too, but I felt I had to put up this negative review if only b/c I cannot figure out why so many people seem to like this game enough to recommend others play it--the hype for this game, from "pro" reviews and players, makes me wonder how many of those even played a quarter of the games I listed up top. Eschalon Book 1 is a passable timesink, but do yourself a favor and fire up an actual classic or one of the better old-school-style titles this side of 1999. Even if it's cheap, there's still your time to consider--a playthrough takes about 20-40 hours depending on how OCD you get on doing quests and leveling up, and much of that will be spent slowly walking your single toon around obstacles since there's no click-move. As for the plot, it's pretty straightforward w/o any real interesting twists, the writing is passable, but there's no real drama, tension, or even humor. There's *some* sure, but most of it is rather flat and just something to check the box. Now, nobody ever came out and said this was a "love letter" to old-school CRPGs, but much of the marketing kept hyping up it's old-school-ness. To that I respond: 1) actual old CRPGs did it better, 2) some of those old CRPGs are still playable now, 3) newer CRPGs in old-school-style have also done it better. If you read this and still played the game, no problem, even if you found you liked it enough to at least *want* to play it *a second time* (how many Yes-recommenders honestly think they'd *want* to play a second time? That's not even *actually* playing it twice, but just *thinking* about it?). I'm not saying I know all for everybody. If you played it and didn't like it, then at least know you've not gone crazy considering how many reviews recommend it. If you have yet to play it, seriously, track down and play the other names I've dropped first, then maybe you can at least be so busy putting in the hours into those that you won't even have to think about Eschalon.

So, I don't have a lot of logged hours on this game on Steam, but I bought it on DRM-free CD a decade or so ago and beat the crap out of it at the time, and have since replayed most of it as one of the few offline games my garbage laptop can support. If you like turn-based, story-heavy RPG's that also support indie game development by small companies, this one's worth the price. The game does have some limitations, but it's D&D/Diablo-esque (if Diablo were turn based), where you can pick your stat upgrades, talents, etc. There really are a lot of ways that the game can be "broken," and borderline cheat your way through once you learn how the mechanics work, and it's easy to make mistakes during character development that make the game harder. You can also save-scum your way through, both to get drops, and to basically loot every thing ever. It's easy to miss out on great loot by making wrong conversation choices. In any case, it's generally fun, it's expansive, and there are a lot of ways to play it, so I do recommend. It does hold up to the test of time.

In a nutshell, Eschalon is a standard 2D single-character fantasy western RPG. ("western RPG" here means "opposite of JRPG") Eschalon is solid. It's not exemplary, it's not bad. It's the kind of game that would metascore in the 70-75 bracket, filled with games that are worth your time if you're a fan of the genre. The story is cliche; save the world by finding the macguffins and slaying the big bad. That doesn't necessarily make it bad. It's not memorable, but it works. For the most part, combat in Eschalon is a game of numbers and dice. I played a magick user, and for the first half of the game, all I had was a basic single-target spell. The outcome of a battle essentially boiled down to how many times I could cast it with what mana I had, how many turns it took the enemy to close to attack range (which is melee for most enemies), and how many hits both of us could survive. Later on, I got a few area-effect spells, which added a small layer of strategy, though numbers and dice were still the dominant factor. The first half of the game was extremely tedious as a magick user. Mana regen is very slow to start, though you can build for quick regen after a few level ups if you eschew everything else. There is a rest function that causes time to pass more quickly, but it can still take as long as a minute to fill back up. Health regen works the same way, and I have to imagine it's just as tedious for melee-centered characters. Basically, playing Eschalon Book 1 felt like playing a much, MUCH smaller Elder Scrolls game. That's just me though; your mileage may (and probably will) vary. THE VERDICT: Eschalon is a solid RPG that will entertain an RPG fan for about 20 hours. It's not the best game out there, but it's not the worst either.