The Drunken Lizard Pub

I try to open this thread just to collect all the reviews about this game.
Here you can find my Eschalon review on Gamespot.com: http://www.gamespot.com/pc/rpg/eschalon ... ?id=523134

Thanks for your work, Basilisk!

Cool, I will post a review there as well when I finish playing the game.

Im gonna be sad when it ends:)

Im at about 24 hours and still have a decent amount to play, I think.

Basilisk, would you consider making this thread a sticky? That way we all can add reviews to any places we find that will allow us to write a review.

Yes. Making this thread sticky could be a good idea. I hope we can help with sales and marketing this way.

Stickied. Thanks guys!

Excellent, once Im finished playing I will give my full write up review. I will post any other reviews I find here as well.

i voted (10 / 10 ) this sublime game as "the best game ever made of all time" in gamespot.

thanks all team.

p.s. i still wait for a patch provide at least 1024x768 res.

I have finished my first run through of the game, here is my official review

Great game. I lost the last 40 or so hours of my life into this game and it was well worth it. If I had to rate it from a scale of 1 to 10 with 10 being the best I would give it a solid 9.

Pros;

- Great atmosphere. The sound, graphics and especially lighting really make the game feel like you are in a deep forest or a deep dank dungeon. I think this is why my favorite part of the game was in the exploration of the world.

- Very stable on first release. I only encountered a few very minor bugs which is a relief for a "just released" game and the support for the game has been stellar.

- Skills. How you build your character in this really matters as the skills you take really do have an effect on gameplay. I started my character and was generilizing a bit too much I think because the game got quite hard in the combat department near the middle so I had to make adjustments. Very nicely done and well balanced I thought.

- Quests. While they are pretty basic they are well written and well layed out without holding your hand in what you need to do. Only thing that could have made them better would have been more choice and consequence where the decision you make affects the outcome of the game later.

- The little touches. There are so many of them in this game. The way you can use a gateway and smash it down on a monster, the way the mist rolls in the Salted coast area, the glow from your lantern are all great. I also especially liked the secret areas and riddles in the game.

- Interface. Very clean and easy to use.

Cons;

- The dialog while definitely not bad, is rather short. I would have liked to have seen more NPC's with some personality and more to say. The cities were rather small so a few larger cities with more NPC's would have been nice. They don't need to be huge, but just a few more the size or blackwater at least.

- Not much background on the world of Eschalon. I know it's an amnesia plot which I enjoyed but I think the experience would have been richer if there was more of this. I will include the manual here as well, I am a big fan of lenghty manuals with things like world lore, various city info, bestiaries etc.....I realized that this is personal preference and the dev's were just trying to get the game realeased.

- The ending area's didn't seem as interesting as the early ones, and the game was a tad on the short side. Seemed like the area's near the giant camp and the goblin citadel were just big empty wastelands and not many intersting things to explore. This might have been on purpose but they weren't as fun to explore as the early areas. I got about 36 hours of fun out of this game, so it wasn't so short that it wasn't worth the purchase.

I should mention the combat as well, I didnt dislike it nor love it so I didn't list it as a pro or con. I thought it was good the way it used the environment for advantages and disadvangates, especially combat lighting was well done. I would have liked to see something like action points where your character could get more attacks as he attained more experience. It works well though and I enjoy it very much.

So all in all, I think this is my favorite game to come out in the last 10 years at least. I have been watching it for quite a while and had high hopes for it and I was not dissapointed. That is not an easy thing to do

Now I hope this is the start of a great series of games

I finished it as well. I really liked the large variety of quests. There were enough monsters to keep my interest in the different critters. There were a large variety of items and graphics for items. I liked the alchemy option for making potions. I was a little disappointed that you couldn't do much more than enchant a few items for making new items. It would have been nice to be able to make some truly unique items where you had to search for multiple unique components to make a very nice item.

I thought the dialogue options were very limited. There could have been a greater variety of dialogues. The books were interesting, but limited. I liked being able to get bonus skill points if you read a book this was a very nice feature. However, you could have also including writing on other places than books, maybe a few in game pictures on walls, like if you clicked on a wall you could see a large picture might have been interesting.

The fighting was very basic use shield, use missile, use sword. There were no special maneuvers. Maybe you should have some options other than just standing their and swinging a sword at your opponent. This gets kind of old fast.

The wide variety of potions was very cool. I didn't play a spell caster, but I found it was too easy to buy elemental or divination spell levels. I very quickly got a bunch of levels of divination which allowed very easy healing for my warrior character. It was a bit unbalanced and made it too easy to win the game.

The maps were very nice to look at. Some of the best maps I have seen in any adventure game. You were very lucky with the graphic artist which you had. They did a very good job.

All in all it was a very good game. Hopefully, the next round of Echelon will be even better.

9 out of 10.

My thoughts are quite similar to the two guys above me, though I give it an 8. A very enjoyable game of which I wish there were more of these days.

As stated, a little light on the dialogue side and the fighting could do with a little more extra's.

Anyway, it isn't an Arcanum, but what is?

Will definately buy the second 'book' if it is as polished and enjoyable as the first. Keep up the good work.

Edit: Just wanted to add that the music was very good too.

I've been playing Eschalon B1 (full version) for a few days now and find it very addicting and fun to play

Eschalon B1 reminds me of another RPG I play, Gothic II, but with a better interface IMHO.

UPDATE:

Finished Book-1 last weekend. OUTSTANDING

I was so hooked that I played into the wee-hours.

My score, 10/10; correction 100/10.

Scorpia posted an excellent and very detailed review on here site.

Her conclusion:

Scorpia wrote:So is Eschalon worth playing? Of course it is. We have to keep in mind this is the first product from a tiny company. If everything had been right, what could they do for an encore?

Seriously, though, the one big flaw is that lack of distinct character classes, which cuts down on replayability. The rest are those niggling points that annoy, but aren’t gamestoppers.

What Eschalon seems most like to me is an early Might & Magic in miniature. A compact, modernized version, with enough to do but not so much that it becomes boring as in larger games.

In fact, this is a good game for those who want to play “the old-school way” without having to slog through a huge world for months at a time. If that’s what you’re looking for, then Eschalon is for you.

Amasius wrote:Scorpia posted an excellent and very detailed review on here site.

Her conclusion:

Scorpia wrote:So is Eschalon worth playing? Of course it is. We have to keep in mind this is the first product from a tiny company. If everything had been right, what could they do for an encore?

Seriously, though, the one big flaw is that lack of distinct character classes, which cuts down on replayability. The rest are those niggling points that annoy, but aren’t gamestoppers.

What Eschalon seems most like to me is an early Might & Magic in miniature. A compact, modernized version, with enough to do but not so much that it becomes boring as in larger games.

In fact, this is a good game for those who want to play “the old-school way” without having to slog through a huge world for months at a time. If that’s what you’re looking for, then Eschalon is for you.

I agree with most of this except for these points;

- The game is too dark. I disagree, I think the fact that it is very dark and you have to use spells and torches to be able to see at all makes the atmosphere much better. I wouldn't change it.
- She mentioned gold being too scarce in the beginning. Again, I wouldn't change this because its hard to come by and this makes gold more meaningfull when you find it.

There is a short review of the game in #162 of the french video games newspaper "Canard PC" (page 10). The review is good, insisting on the old school aspect of the game, comparing it to Arcanum, Ultima and Wizardry.

I loved it. Yeah, it was a little short, but considering all the time it took to program, I can imagine Basilisk and gang had their hands full.

I just finished it and am disappointed there isn't more.

The cities were a little on the small side, I agree with the other guy about that.

Also, a few more monsters wouldn't be amiss.

As far as a more elaborate manual, yeah, I'd like that too, but since this game is on a budget, I don't imagne Basilisk can afford to hire a technical writer to put such an undertaking together.

I would've liked to see party play and first person, too.

All in all, a great game.