Pool of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Drannor

My first inkling of trouble came before I even received the game. See, Ubisoft had said they would send my review copy out as soon as the game shipped. Launch day arrived and I had no game. I started to hear outrageous rumors that the game�s install program had major bugs and in some cases operating systems were being deleted if they tried to uninstall it. A quick call to Ubisoft revealed that they were holding review copies until such time as a patch was released. I was also told that only 10 people had their hard drive wiped clean so it wasn�t such a huge deal and that if I did get a copy before the patch it would be OK� as long as I didn�t try to uninstall before patching it. Hmmm�sounded like damage control to me. Nevertheless, I wasn�t going to pass judgement on a product I hadn�t even seen yet.

My copy arrived on a Friday afternoon and I eagerly anticipated a long weekend of crawling through the dark, dank corridors of Myth Drannor. Installing (with the patch) went without a hitch and I started up the tutorial. Within minutes the game froze. OK no big deal, I tried again. Same thing, froze again. To make a long story short, I spent the weekend on the phone to tech support, downloading drivers and scouring a tech support forum, all to no avail. By Monday I still couldn�t get the game to run long enough to even finish the tutorial. I really wanted to play this game. So, I actually spent the better part of a week fiddling with my computer trying to get the game to work. I ended up doing a clean install of Windows, downloading all new drivers, installing a beta copy of Direct X, installing patch number two (this fixed a corrupted save game bug) and disabling my modem. This allowed me to play for about 15-20 minutes before freezing. So, to get through the game I had to save every two to three minutes and reboot a lot. But hey, I could at least now play. Although, saving and rebooting this often killed any chance of becoming immersed in the game world.

The plot is pretty flimsy and has something to do with a new pool of radiance appearing in the ruins of Myth Drannor. You�re sucked through a portal and need to seek out the pool, kill lots of nasty things, and save the world from evil. The story never becomes interesting enough to care about and is just a cheap excuse for crawling through a bunch of uninspired dungeons. None of the few NPCs you meet have anything more interesting to add and interaction with them is fairly limited. Some of them will join your party if you ask, and you will need them as you can only have four at the start of the game. But sadly, I only let them join me because I needed them in combat, not because I liked them or found them particularly interesting. All the characters, including the ones I made, seemed two-dimensional and I felt no real attachment to any of them. Don�t go looking for the deep involvement of Baldur�s Gate II because you�re not going to find it here.

This is the first computer game to use the new 3rd Edition rules of Dungeons & Dragons. I�m not so sure this was a good idea, because the rules were being developed at the same time that the game was being made and it is obvious that concessions had to be made. Such as, for some reason one race (gnomes) and two character classes (druids and bards) were excluded. I can only surmise that the rules pertaining to them weren�t fully realized in time for the game designers to include them.

One of the nice things about the new rules is the inclusion of new abilities, called feats, which the players choose as they level up that help to individualize their characters. For some reason though players of Pool of Radiance have no choice about which feats their character chooses, making them pretty much useless and uninteresting. Baldur�s Gate II: Throne of Bhaal incorporated feats into the game, letting players choose which ones they wanted when they leveled up. This made leveling up fun and I�m not sure why the Pool of Radiance developers wouldn�t have followed this lead and given the player more control over their character�s development.

Gameplay consists almost completely of dungeon crawling and combat. This wouldn�t be so bad if it wasn�t so agonizingly slow and mind numbingly repetitive. Combat is turn-based and with the nicely 3D rendered characters I felt it was very reminiscent of maneuvering miniatures around in pen-n-paper D&D. What I didn�t like was the slow character animations and clunky menu interface that slowed every encounter down to a crawl. Also there wasn�t a whole lot of variety in monsters so that by the time I killed my 100th Orc using the same tactics I used to kill the first 99, I was pretty much bored. This does not mean that all the fights were easy. Quite the opposite is true at the beginning of the game, where I felt I was running into critters way too tough for my lowly party. I mean come on, no level 2 party has any business trying to take out a Naga.

One bright spot in the game that I particularly liked was the inclusion of a DM (dungeon master). Text, meant to represent the DM, would pop-up every so often describing something such as a smell, a change of temperature or an unexpected feeling a character might experience. This reminded me of long ago Saturday afternoons spent role-playing with friends. It was a wonderful way of adding to the atmosphere of the game.

The graphics, while not awe-inspiring, were nice to look at. The outdoor areas are richly textured and interesting although most of the game is indoors. The music and sound effects were also well done. I�m sure I would have enjoyed both of these things more and been able to sink more into the atmosphere of the game if I hadn�t had to reboot every 15 minutes.

I really wanted to enjoy this game. But the more I played the more I found myself bored and disappointed. Its uninspired dungeons, two-dimensional characters, repetitive gameplay and frustrating technical problems make this one not worth the time or the money.

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