Dungeons & Dragons Games Vol. 4: Gold Box - Pool of Radiance (MS-DOS) - Part 1

Developer:

SSI

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Release Date:

1988

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Systems:

DOS, C64, Apple II, Mac, PC-88, PC-98, Amiga, Sharp X1, NES

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This week on Super Adventures, I'm back with another Advanced Dungeons & Dragons game. In fact I've finally reached the first of Strategic Simulations, Inc.'s legendary Gold Box RPGs: Pool of Radiance! Or to give it it's full name, Pool of Radiance: A Forgotten Realms Fantasy Role-Playing Epic, Vol. I.

I'm still learning about Dungeons & Dragons, but one thing I already know is that it features a multiverse of campaign settings made by different creators, like the Forgotten Realms and Planescape, and... other ones. For AD&D's first decade the default setting had kind of been Gary Gygax's Greyhawk, seeing as he co-developed D&D and co-founded its publisher TSR, but he'd just been forced out of his own company so using that would've been awkward for all kinds of reasons. So Pool of Radiance takes place in the newly introduced Tolkienesque medieval fantasy world of Forgotten Realms, a place I actually know pretty well from games like Baldur's Gate and Neverwinter Nights. That's about as far as my nostalgia goes though I'm afraid. I never played the D&D Gold Box games, I've got no fond childhood memories of them, and I haven't acquired a tolerance for their ancient interface.

I did play a bunch of classic '80s CRPGs recently though, which you can read about in my previous article. Basically what usually happened was that I spent a bunch of time doing the research and putting together a decent six-character party, and then they all got wiped out on the first floor of the dungeon. Or they died on their way to the weapon shop. One time they were killed on the front step of the adventurers' guild you start off in. One time they were attacked inside the building. '80s CRPGs really hated their players.

But I'm sure Pool of Radiance will be different. This will be the one I actually make some progress in!

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Oh damn, I didn't expect the Steam version to come with this fancy launcher. I know that a lot of people don't appreciate extra launchers in their Steam games, but this seems very useful. It's got links to open the documentation, including the cluebook which was sold separately. Plus it shows off the box art in the background! It also shows the other SNEG-published D&D games I own on Steam, even though I'm only running Forgotten Realms: The Archives - Collection Two, so that's clever. (Don't ask me why the earliest D&D games are in the second collection).

At first I looked at the '720p' box and thought 'Nah, I'm playing this full screen!' but that doesn't actually work for this game. Not if you want to use the Gold Box Companion with it anyway, as it attaches to the side of the DOSBox window. And I do want to give this tool a try, as I've heard it's really useful.

I've heard a lot about these Gold Box RPGs actually, and to be honest that's the reason it's taken me so long to try them for myself. You see, the Amiga magazines I read really hated these games and tried to talk people out of playing them.

Amiga Power were known for being a bit dramatic with their scores, but when Treasures of the Savage Frontier gets 34% and Pools of Darkness gets 22%, that's usually a sign that something's gone very wrong. And Secret of the Silver Blades' score of 8% apparently makes it the 26th worst rated game in the magazine's history.

Multiple reviewers from different magazines described the Gold Box games as being painfully slow and only of interest to fans of the tabletop game, who'd be better off just playing that instead. The phrase 'could put newcomers off the genre for life' came up more than once. But I'm not a newcomer to RPGs any more, so I think I'm safe to give this a try now.

Hey, this is the first D&D game with any kind of character creation! It's also the first with a party of characters that all come into the fight together instead of most of them waiting outside the dungeon. My Cloudy Mountain team were basically just extra lives.

Though creating a team of six heroes was pretty standard for computer RPGs of the time. You do it in Wizardry, The Bard's Tale, Might and Magic... probably another really obvious one I've forgotten. The game comes with a pre-generated party so you can just skip straight to the action, but I've got to see what the character creator's like! Even if it does mean opening up the manual and the Adventurer's Journal PDF, plus GameFAQs, a D&D wiki, some forums... you have to do the research for this.

First choice seems pretty straightforward: do you want your character to be short, tall, or have pointed ears? This will affect their ability scores and give them certain bonuses.

It's a little more complicated than that however, as different races have different level caps, so if you make a Half-Elf Cleric they'll hit level 5 and that's it, they're done getting experience for the rest of the game, and the three sequels. A character wouldn't get much further than that in Pool of Radiance anyway, it's an amazingly low-level game, but that's still not what you want.

Here's an simpler choice to make, though again there's a catch: this is a 1st Edition AD&D game, so female characters have a lower maximum Strength than males.

This is really unusual for RPGs in my experience, as pretty much everything I can think of gives you the same range of stats for male and female characters. Though the weird part to me is that you get nothing to balance the penalty, like a higher max Dexterity or something. There is no benefit to making a character female, it only makes them weaker.

I'm still going to do it though, because I want to.

Next you get to pick their class, and there are only four base classes in this game. Even Final Fantasy had more than this (barely)! The sequels added Paladin and Ranger, which are extra varieties of Fighter, but this sticks with the basic healer, warrior, wizard and rogue archetypes.

Though the list gets significantly longer if you're making a demihuman (basically anyone who isn't human), because they can multi-class. That means the experience they earn is split between two or three classes simultaneously. You get a very versatile character at the price of them always being a level or two behind the others.

Humans can't multi-class, but they can dual-class, which switches them to a new class and resets their level to 1! But once they get back to their original level they regain all the benefits of their previous class. See what I mean about needing to have the manual open? The game ain't telling me any of this.

There's also an alignment system which is just... whatever. Everyone on my team will be good, moving on.

Oh by the way, I'm selecting options using the Home and End keys as the game doesn't support mouse controls and it won't even acknowledge the arrows keys right now. It's very retro.

You can tell that the game came out in the '80s, its given my fighter a headband and mullet. Though this is actually a pretty cutting edge feature as I've only found one other '80s RPG so far which gives your characters portraits, Dungeon Master, and in that you're just selecting heroes, not making them.

I already know from playing Baldur's Gate that the AD&D ability score system is a bit weird, and you have to hit certain thresholds for them to have an effect (eg. a Cleric needs wisdom 17 to get all their spells), so I need to keep re-rolling the virtual dice until I get the numbers I want for my build. Or I could just use the modify option and edit them manually. It seems that the average total points is about 84 so I'm going to play fair and keep my numbers in that range... okay maybe a little higher. 

This Fighter is going to need high Strength for their THAC0, Dexterity for armour class and Constitution for health, and he's the party leader so I'm giving him Charisma too. 18 is usually the maximum for a stat, but fighters can go into the percentages for Strength, with numbers like 18(75) being even better.

2nd Edition Strength chart

This means I get to reuse this graph I made when I wrote about Baldur's Gate II! The two games are based on different editions of D&D but I think this is basically what I'm dealing with here.

Oh, THAC0 tells you what number you have to roll 'To Hit Armor Class 0', so the lower it goes, the more chance that you'll roll a good number and your blade will strike true. Similarly, the lower your armour class, the less chance of receiving a blow from your enemy. And that's all I need to know, as this game's not even going to acknowledge the existence of dice.

I always assumed the term 'THAC0' was a remnant of D&D's wargaming roots and players had gotten too used to it to switch to something more intuitive. But it turns out that it wasn't even in 1st Edition! Not at first at least. They apparently introduced it in the mid '80s, so it was something that even old school D&D players had to get their head around.

Next I get to change the portrait and it turns out that you can choose the head and body separately, plus the art isn't locked to a character's race or sex so you get all the combinations to pick from. This is actually good as you only get about a dozen choices to cycle through and things like the purple robes are pretty androgynous. The bikini not so much, but I bet it has great armour stats.

I haven't looked into whether you can import your own portraits, but I'm going to go and assume you can't. You also can't change the skin tone. That depends on the port you're playing.

I think the Commodore 64 was the lead system for this one, so the other systems have their own distinctive versions of its art, with the Amiga showing off its advanced graphics by adding shading.

You also get to create an in-game icon for your heroes. I've seen this kind of thing in earlier games, with Black Onyx letting you chose the head and clothes for little figures that appear on the HUD and Wizard's Crown letting you pick the weapons held by your troops, but this may be the first RPG to let you properly customise your character sprites.

The way it works is that you select each part of the sprite in turn, their arms, weapon, hair etc. and cycle through all the colours until you find the one you want. Then you go into the Color-2 menu and do it over again for the second shade. Cycling through colours is about as tedious as re-rolling stats until you get the result you're after, except you have to do this 12 times over. Per character. You could just skip the whole process, but then everyone will look like the dude in the blue tunic at the top.

You also have to select their head and the weapon they're holding. You'd think the icon would just show what they actually have equipped, especially in an RPG where it's important to be able to tell a unit's role at a glance, but nope!

One down, five to go.

I jumped right into making this guy without any idea what the rest of his team is going to be, but now I'm thinking I should put the brakes on, get some paper and do some party planning. What classes do I need? What weapons will they wield? What ability scores will they need to be effective? I need melee characters, ranged characters, backups in case someone gets knocked out...

This is so much easier in modern RPGs where you make one player character and then recruit companions as you go. Plus they get to have personalities and dialogue and stuff! No one I make will ever be as interesting as my crew in Mass Effect, Dragon Age etc.

Hey the game has the same screen layout as Wizardry/The Bard's Tale, with the first person view in a tiny window on the left. Unfortunately The Bard's Tale had better looking graphics than this two years earlier and Dungeon Master looks way better than both of them.

My party of newbie adventurers was met at the docks by Rolf, who's been appointed by the council to spend a couple of minutes dragging us around the city on a mandatory tour. Though he somehow managed to avoid telling me about the inn, the shops, or anything about the plot. Some RPGs force you to endure a unskippable intro, others drop you into a city without any guidance and go 'okay, have fun!' This has just managed to do both.

Okay to be fair it's given me way more direction than any earlier RPG ever did, as Rolf did show me where the temple, city hall and training schools are, but the game's in first person so I've no bloody clue what route we just took.

Fortunately with Gold Box Companion active I get an automap bolted onto the side of DOSBox window that shows me exactly where I've been! This thing makes all the difference for me, making it far easier to navigate the maze of streets. It's just a shame I can't add notes to it telling me where the doors lead to like I could in Ultima Underworld.

Hang on, it turns out that I can make notes on the map! The label only appears when I hover the mouse over it, but that's good enough for me.

The game actually does let you switch from 3D view to a map of the current area, which was a very uncommon feature for the time. Unfortunately it's not an automap that fills in as you walk around, and it shows the whole 16x16 block at once (well, 11x11's worth of it), so you can't use it to check where you haven't been yet. Also it's tiny and doesn't have doors marked on it, so I am very grateful that Gold Box Companion exists to replace it.

I'm thinking back to other RPGs I've played, wondering how the developers could've done this better with the technology of the time.

Final Fantasy (NES)

I've always appreciated how Final Fantasy's overhead view and tiny shops make it easy to find your way around. This is the direction the D&D games themselves eventually went in, with Baldur's Gate having a similar perspective.

You can also see that the shops are labelled with icons, so you can tell at a glance what they're selling. It's definitely preferable to Pool of Radiance's identical doors, and was a big help when I was getting the Warriors of Light geared up for their quest.

Oh damn, I just realised: I need to get my team geared up for the first quest! I nearly walked off into a fight without buying any weapons. I'll go check city hall first though, seeing as I know where that is. Hopefully my level 1 team can make it down the street without being murdered by gnomes, which is what usually happens to me in games like this.

Okay, so I need to go west to the Slums and clear out the monsters, got it.

Hang on, so the guy at the docks showed me the town hall and suggested I should go here, then the city clerk gave me clear instructions, with directions. This is amazing, I've finally reached an RPG that TELLS YOU WHAT TO DO!

We're in the city of New Phlan, by the way, which I hadn't heard of until now. But I looked it up and it's in the Moonsea region, way to the east of the Sword Coast, where Baldur's Gate takes place. It's nice to get the chance to visit parts of this world I've never seen before, even if the graphics are a bit primitive. Plus Phlan was actually lost to monsters years ago, so it's not really a tourist destination. Though the New Phlan Council has a plan to take back the ancient city one block at a time by the means of recruited adventurers such as ourselves, so it's perfect for RPG parties seeking fame and fortune.

Alright  I'm going to try all the unmarked doors in this small civilised area of town until I find someone selling weapons, because that's a perfectly normal thing to do. Also if I can find an inn, that'd also be handy, as my Clerics and Magic-users will need to rest to memorise the spells they started with.

Well I found the tavern, and it's an entirely empty featureless room with no furniture. They don't even have music in here. Though the city guard materialised instantly when I tried to camp and get some rest.

On the plus side I did get an opportunity to overhear Tavern Tale 13. They apparently number them here in the Moonsea region, so you can just get out your Adventurers Journal and look up what it is you heard. Okay, they're saying that a master thief has set up a training facility in the old city. That's good to know.

I just assumed that all these old CRPGs had you looking up paragraphs of the story in the manual, so I was a bit surprised when I played all those classic RPGs a couple of weeks ago and not one of them did it. I know Temple of Apshai expected players to read the numbered room descriptions back in 1979 but it seems like the concept didn't really catch on. Until now.

Some people say that this is actually a clever anti-piracy feature as you need the manual to understand the story, but the game comes with a copy protection codewheel so I think they were just saving a few kilobytes of disk space or RAM.

I found a weapons and armour shop a few streets down, though what the hell is going on with these names? It's cool when a game throws in some variety, but I came here with swords, bows and maces on my shopping list and I don't even know what I'm looking at here.

It doesn't tell me what damage they do or what classes can equip them, or even how much money I have! I know that was normal for the time, I just don't understand why. Computers are really good at storing and displaying numbers. Though I suppose there's nothing more authentically D&D than having to look up a table of numbers in the book. 

Alright, long swords are one-handed and do 1-8 damage, so I'll just go with that... if I can find them. Then I'm heading to the Slums to deliver violence to the evils that inhabit the streets. I never did get my rest to memorise some spells, but that's fine, I'll just have my Magic-Users throw darts or whatever.

"You have entered the monster-crawling slums of Phlan. Small, ugly things scurry from beneath your feet. In the distance, an alarm sounds."

Look at those 3D graphics - this is even more sophisticated than that Intellivision game from five years earlier! Though it still doesn't have music when I walk around, just a 'tap tap' sound for every step.

I'm surprised it took me so long to run into my first enemy, I actually made it through a few doors, but they're here now and it looks like they're going to solve my sword problem for me. If I win this battle there'll be plenty for everyone.
 

Oh damn that's a lot of Kobolds.

I'm not surprised to see the game has a tactical combat system, I remember that from playing Buck Rogers: Countdown to Doomsday (one of the few non-D&D Gold Box games), but I don't actually remember how to do... things. I mean, where's the attack button?

Aha, I've figured it out! Every character takes a turn individually and if you move them into an enemy they'll attack them. You can also press 'Q' for Quick if you'd rather let the computer control that particular character. It's like playing co-op with someone who knows what they're doing!

Well, we didn't lose the fight. Though we did lose poor Scott! I don't know if it's even worth continuing now, as he might be permanently dead.

I haven't sped up the text by the way, it disappears just as quickly when you're playing. It's not really ideal as there could be useful information there about whether my weapons are effective, but I don't feel like turning down the battle speed in the menu. Funny thing is, it's not a side effect of emulation, the game was like this at the time as well. It was designed for 8-bit computers like the C64 and Apple II, so a 1988 PC or Amiga has far more power than it needs.

Not that 8-bit systems were holding it back, as this is SSI's successor to Wizard's Crown, possibly the most hardcore and complex tactical RPG of its day.

Wizard's Crown (C64)

I hadn't heard of Wizard's Crown until I started doing research for these D&D games, but it turned out to be exactly what you'd expect an RPG made by a famous wargame developer to be like.

Instead of Move, View, Aim, Turn, Quick, Done, there's <, >, 2, 3, 4, A, F, I, Q, R, T, V, W, Z, and a ? command to tell you what all the others mean. You use the number keys to move, though you have to face the right direction first. Facing is important as you want your shield pointing toward your attacker to deflect blows and avoid injuries, which lead to bleeding (though axes can break your shield). You can heal a character if you have the first aid skill, though only if you're carrying bandages. 'A' is attack, but if you want to kill, then that's what the 'K' button is for.

Wizard's Crown's battles take forever, everyone's a white stick figure so you can't tell who anyone is, and I didn't have any fun with it. Pool of Radiance has far more readable and appealing graphics, and its streamlined gameplay puts the focus on your tactics instead of slowing things down with unnecessary complexity.

Huh, I have to type in the amount of money I want to pick up? For every type of coin individually? What?

I've discovered that you can just press '9999' and it'll automatically put in the highest number, but that's still weird and awkward. I've never seen a game do this before. In Final Fantasy it just says "You've won, here's your loot" and you press a single button. Plus it plays a nice little victory fanfare. I miss music.

Finding 700 identical swords on the ground is giving me flashbacks to playing Baldur's Gate though, so I've definitely been here before. And there's always a point in RPGs where I stop trying to pick up everything and only take the valuable loot, but I'm not there yet.

Alright, that's one fight down, let's see what the Slums has for us next.

And then I got wiped out during fight #2.

I'm not even slightly surprised to be honest, because this happens every time I play a classic RPG. They don't want you to go off and have fun, they want you to grind until your numbers are high enough. Also I don't know what I'm doing yet, so that doesn't help.

Alright, the game gives you multiple save slots on the camp screen and it lets you camp anywhere, so I could just continue from before the fight. But what I'm going to do is start again, and this time I'm going to get a sheet of paper and properly work out what weapons each character should be holding to suit their class. I got the impression some of them weren't actually using a weapon at all and I need to fix that.

SOON, BACK AT THE SHOP

YOU HAVE TO 'READY' YOUR EQUIPMENT FIRST BEFORE THEY'LL USE IT.

Bloody hell, how did that not occur to me? I suppose I assumed it worked like Dragon Warrior, and the items I bought just replaced whatever they were previously using.

This time I used the 'Pool' command to give everyone's money to Rogers to hold, 580 gold, so he can buy all the gear in one go. Though this does mean that I have to transfer each of their items from his overloaded inventory by selecting 'Rogers', pressing 'V' for View, 'I' for Items, 'T' for trade, and then selecting the other character. (You gotta remember to press 'T' before 'I' or else you'll trade money instead).

It's definitely not the slickest inventory system I've seen in a game, but it could be worse. In fact it is worse if you're playing from floppy disk as there's a four second loading delay whenever a portrait comes up. Which happens every time you go to someone's inventory.

Alright, that's my weapons and armour sorted out (properly this time). Now I need to figure out how to get a room at the tavern so I can learn some spells.

SOON, AT THE TAVERN

Okay, here's a tavern tale of my own for you: I walked in and got a message saying that someone had tried to pickpocket me. It asked if I wanted to do anything about it. I said 'yes'.

I didn't realise that the thief had 33 buddies ready to back him up. The place is literally wall-to-wall packed with thieves! The game's been pretty quick in battles, I haven't had to wait for the AI to process its move, but it's going to take a while to cycle through all of these guys.

Looking on the positive side, I did learn a few things from this hilariously one-sided fight before being obliterated entirely. I've learned that if one of your guys is standing next to an enemy and you walk away, they get a free hit. I've also learned that downed characters can be stabilised by using the 'bandage' option, leaving them unconscious but alive. Most of the RPGs I've seen from the time weren't so merciful.

Okay it turns out that inns are different to taverns and that's where you need to go if you want to rest in town without the city watch complaining.

Now my Cleric and Magic-User can acquire some spells for their arsenals. The game uses a Vancian magic system, which is surprisingly uncommon in RPGs. Final Fantasy 1 comes close with how it lets you cast a number of spells from each spell level and recharge them by resting, but in this you have to pick specific spells in advance. And there are no infinite-use cantrips, so when they're not casting one-use spells, mages are just rubbish Fighters.

Strange only has the one slot and four spells to pick from, so I gave them 'Sleep'. I've played enough Baldur's Gate to know that Sleep is my friend. Which is true in real life as well.

I'm not sure this game is my friend though, as it turns out that it doesn't automatically re-memorise spells you've cast the next time you rest. You have to memorise every spell manually, every time. Worse, Clerics don't automatically cast their healing spells on rest, so you have to cast 'Cure Light Wounds' to get a bit of health back, rest to memorise the spell again, and repeat until all characters are fully healed.

Fortunately Gold Box Companion provides a miraculous solution, for those that wish to take it. 

These are features that were added in later Gold Box games, so from a certain point of view it's just patching Pool of Radiance to match its sequels. From another point of view it's blatantly cheating. 

I want to see what the game originally played like, so I'm going to ignore temptation... for now. But it seems to me that if the team manages to get eight hours uninterrupted rest somewhere without monsters waking them in the night, then there's no harm in pressing the buttons afterwards and getting my spells and health back without the messing around.

Alright, I'm geared up and rested, so I'm heading back to the Slums for round 2.

THE SLUMS, SECOND ATTEMPT

And this dude can have some Sleep as well.

It turns out that enemies are a lot easier to fight when they're unconscious, especially as they die in one hit. I've got two Magic-Users armed with Sleep and the spell hits a 3x3 grid, so depending on where the enemies are standing I could incapacitate up to 18 of them in just two moves.

I'm not keen on the way you aim spells though (or arrows), as when you press 'Next' it cycles through every bloody character on screen, friend and foe, until it reaches the one you want to hit. It's better to just press 'M' for 'Manual control' and move the cursor yourself. Then press 'T' for 'fire at Target' and let them take the shot. It does not mean 'Target the enemy', don't press it when your own guy is highlighted unless it's time for them and everyone around them to take a nap.

I think the 'Next' and 'Prev' commands are probably more use for people without the Gold Box Companion automap, as these featureless grey battlefields are big enough for enemies to be lurking way way out of sight where you'll never find them. Or black, if you're playing on a Tandy machine.

MS-DOS Tandy Graphics

If you read my last article, I talked a bit about the Tandy 1000 IBM compatible, which had its own special graphics hardware inherited from IBM's failed PCJr. Though it has the same colours as the PC's EGA graphics and the game looks basically the same, except with grey and black flipped for some reason.

Why am I suddenly talking about the Tandy? Two reasons. First, despite its improved graphics and sound, the original model had a 4.77 MHz 8088 processor, same as in IBM's very first PC. So when the Pool of Radiance box says that it supports IBM PC, it literally means the computer called 'PC'. You can play this on an IBM Personal Computer model 5150 from 1981 and as long as it has 384K RAM it'll run just fine. Doesn't even need a hard drive (though it really helps).

The second reason is that the DOS port doesn't support sound cards, but it does support the Tandy's sound chip, and it's a big upgrade over PC speaker. It even gets you a bit of music during battles... in earlier versions of the game (don't ask me why they eventually patched the music out). If you're playing the Steam release of the game you get Tandy sounds enabled by default, but DOSBox will happily support them wherever you get the game from as long as they've been turned on, and I'd recommend doing that. Unless you find PC beeps nostalgic.

NES

The game was released on nine different systems but they're all basically the same as far as I'm aware... except for the NES port. (I accidentally typed 'Game Boy' under the picture at first, but it's a NES game I promise.)

You'd think that an 8-bit computer game would transfer well to an 8-bit console and it is actually pretty close. It's not entirely fully featured, I was only able to bring a party of five heroes out and they faced far fewer opponents, but I was able to navigate the streets of New Phlan and reach the weapon shop by memory. I also had to pick their weapons by memory, because it still doesn't tell you what damage they do!

It does feel a bit constrained and reduced, but the trade-off is that the interface had to be a bit less awkward in order to work with the gamepad. Plus you can still save your game everywhere, you can still move diagonally, the fights play out the same, and it even shows you what tiles your AOE spells are going to hit! That's a feature the DOS version could use.

Hey my Thief successfully picked a door lock! Nice job Scott, you did it.

I think I need to switch to the charismatic Rogers for this next bit though, as there's a guy in here and he wants to have a conversation. The game's even given me dialogue options, kind of. Should I be meek or abusive?

The guy asked me to go to the old rope guild in the southeast, speak his name 'Ohlo', and pick up a potion for him. So I have an actual sidequest! This is different. I've mostly just being going from room to room, smacking orcs up to now.

See, look at all those doors I've come through to get here! I'm not looking forward to going back through all of them to get back to town. ([1] is the exit to town, [2] is the dude who wants the potion. The green arrow is where I am right now).

Wait, that says I've received 1173 experience points; I'm used to getting 20! I just walked into a cupboard with search mode on, found a bit of treasure, and got more experience in one go than I have from all the fights up to this point! There are yellow bars underneath my character icons now, I can level up... just as soon as I've hiked back to the trainers in town.

Training costs money, but I think I can afford it now, as I've also found:

Electrum 1000
Gold 92
Platinum 50
Gems 4
Jewellery 2

I'm literally overloaded from money. My pockets are so full of cash I can barely move. My wallet is so fat that I'm at an actual disadvantage in combat. But I'm sure I'll be fine.

Oh crap, now I really am at a disadvantage. I just came out of a fight that's left with me with three characters unconscious, including both my healers, so there's no one to wake them up. I don't need to lose my team on the way back to get my level ups!

I've heard that you get 1 HP back for every day you sleep, but first you have to reach somewhere that's safe to make camp or else you'll just end up woken up by orcs. Some rooms seem to be safe after you've cleared them out, others aren't.

On the plus side, my best Fighter only having 1 HP isn't necessarily a hopeless situation, as he also has 1 AC. This is the THAC0 era of D&D, where an enemy has to roll to see if their attack can even get past my armour, so I could theoretically take hit after hit without any damage at all. Until one unlucky roll finishes him off.

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (PC)

I did it! I successfully brought my heroes home for rest and level ups, so now I'm ready to see what kind of level up system this has. Do I get to increase their attributes? Can I select perks or unlock a new branch of their skill tree? Will it let me put points into weapon proficiencies or enhance my thief's abilities?

The answer is no, the game doesn't have any of that. Numbers go up and then you're done, with the most obvious number being hit points. Rogers went from 8 to 21! Though Magic-Users do get to pick a new spell for their spell book. At least that's what I've been told, they're not quite there yet.

If you have foreknowledge about the magic scrolls lying around the city you can optimise your choices by picking spells you know you're not going to find fairly soon as loot... but I'm entirely clueless.

LATER, IN THE ROPE GUILD BUILDING AT THE END OF THE SLUMS

Alright, I trained my single-class heroes to level 2 and I got them some +1 magical gear. Turns out that when you're selling piles of weapons to the merchant you should pay attention to the prices you're getting. If a sword is selling for 1000 gold instead of 1 it's probably worth paying to get it identified first.

My upgraded team has been kicking ass all over the twisty corridors of the old Rope Guild building. I beat so many random encounters that they actually stopped appearing. And then I reached a gang of trolls.

Trolls are really tough, immune to Sleep, and when they die they just resurrect with full health. Not that the last one's been much of a problem for me, as it's my dudes that have been doing all of the dying. I just got annihilated here.

A non-linear game like this runs the risk of having wild shifts in difficulty as you walk around, but making the first boss in the game perhaps the toughest fight was certainly a choice.

Oh, it seems that "destroyed" is the official technical term for what just happened to my party here.
 
C'mon game, this is the first quest! I just want to get the Slums done so I can move on to the next area. Though now that I think about it, there isn't anything actually here that's stopping me from continuing on. I could just walk through one of the doors leading into the next district and leave the trolls until I'm a higher level.

Wait, there is something stopping me, I just remembered: I need to get that dude his potion from the southeast of the map. It's the least I can do after I broke into his house.


Okay this is awkward, I'm at the end of the article and I'm not ready to stop playing yet. My plan was to cover multiple games here, like I did with the last three parts, but that's clearly not going to happen. So I suppose Dungeons & Dragons Games Vol. 5 is going to be more Pool of Radiance. Yay.

TO BE CONTINUED, I guess.

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Next time on Super Adventures, I'm playing more of this. There's no point in keeping that mysterious really, as this would be a terrible time to take a break and play something else.

(I already took a break last week to play some co-op Necesse, that's why this took so long. Don't expect a review from me, but I thought it was decent enough for a top-down Terraria clone, and if you're into games like that then it's worth a look.)


Anyway, if you want to talk about Pool of Radiance, classic RPGs, or I guess top-down Terraria clones, then you're welcome to leave a comment in the box below!