FEEDBACK - almost enjoyed it.

[Rune_74]

Are you serious about being lost? I found it actually pretty easy since once you found an area you could base it off of(like a city) you pretty much new where you were going.

However, as your cart skills improve maybe the world map should show your location....

Personally though t o me its all about exloration and finding new things...I do not want to be able to say hey this is here or look at this before I actually find them...one of the major faults of Oblivion is it had specail area radar:P

[realmzmaster]

Exploration is part of the fun in CRPG's. The cartography skill is part of the fun. You can either invest in it or not. The more you invest the better your map. The first time I played I got by with a cartography skill of 2. Once you activate the Quick Travel menu for each city going from city to city becomes a breeze. When you first start you will get lost trying to find Aridell depending on which way you go. If you go south you are headed to the Salted Coast. Head northeast (The first sealed letter tells you this information) and you will run into a signpost directing you to Aridell. The paved routes help link major parts of the land. The problem is figuring out the compass directions. But the game is setup so that north is at the top of the screen. Exploration is one of the cornerstones of good CRPG's.

[Maximous]

Of course RPG's are all about exploring and questing.

I never found the guy near Salton Sea(?) to give the rejuv flask to.

What I ended up doing a lot was...taking quests...then just stumbling across them.


Two Worlds maps also sucked....a label is better then having to mouse-over.
Black Isle maps were always great.

Kief the Thief's maps were Tough...but the world wasn't all that big either.

Balance.

[Necromis]

not sure how you would stumble on to most quests. Though there are two that are a smidge misleading. You are told pretty much where to find everything you need for the main quests. Now there are some side quests that you will stumble onto, but that is by design. As they are in locations you have to go to on the many quest path.

[Maximous]

First I apologize for my map and quest comment---my shortened attention span comes from playing to much Wasteland and Fallout, which had half as many quests as Eschalon Book 1.

Second, Eschalon Book 1 is a Great Game, the Pro's are monumental, and the con's (if you could even call them that) are so trivial.

[ArkansasIMCista]

Hehe, my only issue with the maps is that I sometimes have trouble locating myself on the automap. With a cart of 9 there's a lot of detail on the automap including small circles that look similiar to the one indicating my location. However, that is a topic for a seperate thread. So now back to the original topic of this thread.

Running the game on a MacMini with the stats below, the only time walking speed is an issue is in the towns. In Blackwater, Bordertown and especially in Aridell, walking speed goes down to the rate of slow molasses, even with the graphic detail set to low. However, that's a minor issue to me, not a game killer. Book I is such a rich and rewarding game that I wouldn't stop playing it just because I walk slow in towns. And other than in the towns, performance is just fine.

Oh, one other note in giving these stats. I played the demo for days before buying the game so I knew how it would run on my machine before purchasing it. Given that, it never even occured to me to look at the system requirements which my Mac apparently doesn't meet.

Machine Name: Mac mini
Machine Model: PowerMac10,1
CPU Type: PowerPC G4 (1.2)
Number Of CPUs: 1
CPU Speed: 1.25 GHz
L2 Cache (per CPU): 512 KB
Memory: 512 MB
Bus Speed: 167 MHz
Boot ROM Version: 4.8.9f1

[macdude22]

The game doesn't run fantastically on G4 processors (though acceptably for most). I have a theory that OpenGL doesn't like the limited 167mhz maximum bus speed on the G4 architecture since there have been no complaints (that I know of) of folks running the game on G5 series CPUs or higher.