I have tried out a demo of Eschalon Book 1 (EB1) quite some time ago, and have been quite impressed with it. It was on my to-buy list for a long time now. Suddenly, I saw that there was a 20% discount over at Rampant Games blog. I’ve also been contemplating what game to purchase for this month since my pay had just come in. Conditions were ripe. Discounts and disposable income seem to go hand-in-hand and I simply couldn’t resist.
I find Eschalon Book 1 to be a charming old-skool classic RPG.
The interface looks quite polished for an indie game. I didn’t know that smooth highlighting menus could be so cool. Starting up, saving a game and exiting is also blazingly fast on my gaming PC. Maybe I didn’t expect those from an indie game. Or maybe I’m just too easy to please.
I really like the whole simple graphics enhanced with textual descriptions thing. The graphical view sort of gives me a basic view of what I’m seeing, the “a picture is worth a thousand words” thing, and the text gives a deeper description about what exactly am I seeing. From far, you might notice that there is a chest of drawers that you can check out, but the text below describes it further: “You see a fine hardwood dresser”. Somehow, among certain top-hyped RPG titles, the text seemed to have been shunned in favour of using posh and luscious graphics to describe the view. I’m not against that per se, but there are only so many textures on grass the game could use. Even a graphical feast like Oblivion could become monotonous when the map says you travelled for 100 miles, but everything looks gorgeously similar. Sure, some text would also be repeated. Somewhat infintely. I guess I could give them a break for not having that many synonyms for hardwood dresser. One thing I do like really much is that there are unique textual descriptions when you enter a new area. Since the gameplay is turn-based, you could take your own sweet time devouring every little description it offers.
Character creation in EB1 is a one-screen affair, but be warned, number of screens != complexity. I absolutely love this part of any RPG game I play. You can give any name to your character. Then choose your origin (race), axiom (belief) and class. From these three parameters, a title will be bestowed to you. For your eight character statistics (yes, eight), it is randomly set by rolling a dice, which means hours and hours of looking for that highest combination, if you’re into that kind of thing. You are also given an additional 15 points to tailor them as you see fit. You are also given 20 starting skill points to play around with. Of course, you start with only 1 skill, the one that is given free when you choose your class. To train a skill costs 1 point, and is initially maxed at 5 points. I’m not sure if this is based on your current level, but I am not surprised if it is so, given the nature of this game. “Buying” a new skill costs 3. You can have a small number of highly trained skills, or a large number of poor skills. It’s your call. You also have to choose a generic character portrait to portray you. This is also customizable, as you can place your own customized png file in the game installation folder. Nice! Now I can have my smug mug displayed whenever I go into a conversation!
This game is very heavily skill and stat-based. It seems like everything has a skill associated with it which is in turn, influenced by a stat. A high skill in lockpicking is of no use if you have low dexterity, for example. This could be a good or a bad thing. The good part is that as an RPG game, stats is the bread and butter of its core gameplay. You don’t want to invest stats in a skill, only for it to become meaningless by making the usage that skill into a minigame. In EB1, stats do matter, by giving you a higher chance to accomplish something because you have more points invested in that skill. The bad part is that sometimes, it is not really clear what happens if you were to invest more points in a particular stat. So I have 3 points in “Armor: Light Armor”. Does it mean I can use better light armor? Or decrease the damage I get? The game needs better description of what each skill does, rather than let the player guess. I am also not in favour of the mini-map being stat-based. If you didn’t put any points into “Cartography”, then you’re screwed. No mini-map for you. An in-game map is something we all take for granted these days, so to make it into a skill for the player seems counter-intuitive. The world map is also something you have to purchase, not a built-in feature. So that means parting with your precious gold. I think that turning normal in-game features is a double edged sword: half will be immediately turned off, the other will welcome such a radical change, citing that it “makes sense”.
Another aspect of the gameplay that can become one hell of an exploit is that the loot you find can be random. Certain loot containers aren’t, of course, like dungeon crawl rewards or quest item containters. But the loot of most of the barrels and chests that are strewn across the map are randomly generated. So you can theoretically save before looting, open the container and if you don’t like what you find, you can simply reload that save. I’m not sure if there is a min or max value of the loot that is generated, but I did went from 2 gold pieces to some +1 item that is worth at least 100 gold if I were to sell it. I’m not too fond of this, as I keep doing the save-reload trick to get better items each time I come across a container.
I know I have vehemently proclaimed that I am not swayed by graphics (and I’m not!) but the game could do well to offer a higher resolution than the only 800×600 setting. A larger resolution will definitely be welcome as you will be able to view more of the world or have more dialogs open at the same time.
Having played just a few hours, I can’t really comment much on the story aspect of it. The start is a bit cliché though: you have amnesia and you wake up knowing only your name. However, it never gets old for me, and the main quest line seems interesting enough. EB1 is claimed to be a “story-driven” game, so I’m not sure if you can make effective choices that affects the main story. I wanted to google around for this, but I don’t want to see spoilers.
For an indie RPG, I find that EB1 is a very nice package indeed. The price may be a bit high for some (I did buy it after a 20% discount after all) and I know of a lot of people who wouldn’t touch one bit of a game who don’t have the words “Bloom”, “HDR” and “1920×1280″ on the graphics options. I can already hear the sarcastic “how can you play a 2D game!?” comment if I were to mention this to them. Anyway, for those of you who would like to play a classic turn-based RPG which is heavy on story, choice and stats but still free to roam the world, then you can’t go wrong with Eschalon Book 1.
[Eschalon Book 1]
