Eschalon: Book I Review

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The Writing

This is the area in which Eschalon: Book I does worst. Its plot is both hackneyed and unimaginatively handled. Overused plots can at times be disguised by good characterization, but the NPC comments you read in the game are pedestrian, if competent. The gameworld itself is largely unchanging, so NPCs have nothing new to add once you've exhausted their initial repertoire of comments and worked through their quests. A more important issue is the dialog trees, which are frankly ridiculous. You know the kind:

My phrasing is parodistic, and typical of the way dialog trees are handled in many RPGs. It's unfortunately accurate here, too. There is no attempt made to create reasonable dialog choices. You can accept quests which is what you bought the game for anyway, remember? or reject them, or try to kill an NPC that assists and rewards you. I find this inexplicable in an RPG that shows so much effort placed into building a proper visual roleplaying atmosphere. Reasonable dialog trees should have been created that offered complex, hidden loops, checks to NPC attitude, and NPC comments on items or experiences the player had been through to foster a sense of involvement. Or at the very least, these rotten dialog branches should have been removed, and quests simply given without additional embarrassment.

Fighting the Good Fight

Combat in Eschalon: Book I is simple, straightforward, and effective. There are no GURPS-style attacks on individual body parts, or scaled attacks that bring with them various chances of accuracy, damage, and possible defense. You use a weapon (one of two you can keep ready and switch between with a click), and you're told if your attack succeeded, or failed. If it did damage, you find out how much. I don't have any problem with this simplicity, which was the standard back in the days of third person, turn-based RPGs (always allowing for a few exceptions, like Origin Systems' clumsy but fascinating Knights of Legend). Especially as Basilisk has placed some sneakily effective strategic elements that can influence battle such as the occasional portcullis that can be sent crashing down on the bodies of your enemies, or powerful, friendly NPCs that you can lure attackers back to. Too bad there aren't more, because each outside battle area and every dungeon eventually becomes monotonous. Too many attacks are simple, direct combat situations with one type of enemy, in very similar surroundings. You end up killing two, three or four of that creature, sleeping to regain lost health and mana, killing again, and sleeping again, with few physical puzzles and none that require thought.

Enemies are well chosen and varied throughout the game, but exhibit only moderately effective AI. Some will move back and forth one square on the other side of a fence while you fill them full of arrows, until they die. Archers don't scamper away when you approach them with a melee weapon drawn. There are no signs of enemies supporting one another with spells, as happened to such striking effect in Wizardry 8. Each dungeon is logically and cleverly designed according to a specific purpose, with various areas that make sense in context: so you won't expect to find a library in an ordinary mine. All dungeons are also single level, but the fixed rewards you find (as opposed to the randomized ones) are not out of keeping with what you might figure on acquiring, given the level of difficulty.

Eschalon: Book I Review

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