Dungeons & Dragons Games Vol. 5: Gold Box - Pool of Radiance (MS-DOS) - Part 2

This week on Super Adventures, I was supposed to be writing about Hillsfar or Heroes of the Lance or something, but I'm not ready to move on from Pool of Radiance yet. It seems that I'm going to be stuck playing these Dungeons & Dragons games for longer than I anticipated, but that's fine... I think.

I just realised that I haven't talked about this title screen yet. 1988 wasn't a great year for video game title screens in general, but I was still surprised by how artless it looks. The pool isn't even radiant! The good news is that there are eight other versions with their own title screens, the bad news is that none of the others I've seen are particularly great either. 

Though I suppose the original Commodore 64 screen did alright by keeping it simple. Plus it sparkles! When it comes to theme music however, I think the Amiga port wins this round (YouTube Link). Especially as the DOS version eventually had its theme patched out.

Alright, if you want to go back to part one, CLICK HERE,
If you want to see the list of Dungeons & Dragons games I've covered so far CLICK HERE.

Otherwise, keep reading, but beware of SPOILERS.

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Previously, in Pool of Radiance:

A balanced team of six newbie adventurers stepped off the boat at New Phlan in search of... well, adventure probably. The rest of Phlan had been taken over by monsters years ago and the heroes were tasked with retaking the city block by block from these evil hordes. They started in the Slums, fighting orcs in the streets and helping themselves to any loot they stumbled across. It was all going well until they met a bunch of trolls that can regenerate health, resurrect themselves, and are generally much better at killing other people than they are at getting killed.

The defeated heroes loaded their last save game and came up with a new plan: to beat this boss encounter they would have to visit other parts of the city to collect level ups and magical weapons. Also they promised some guy that they'd pick up a potion for him, so that's on the list as well.

And now, the continuation:

Okay, I know I have a desperate need for XP, but this encounter is ridiculous. On the plus side, the way they're lined up I can take 8 out with my 3x3 Sleep spells at a time.

Also I seriously need to think about giving Bishop a sword or changing the character order, because she always ends up on the front line and the game won't let use her bow when enemies are standing right next to her. I'm hesitant though, because it will mean manually changing her sprite to match her new weapon. Everything in this game is a hassle.

Oh hey, once I cut through enough of them the rest of the enemies decided to surrender. Maybe the game's not all designed to waste my time. 

Anyway I found the person I need to see to collect this potion and I was asked to type the name of the guy who wanted it! I didn't know this fetch quest was going to be a memory test. It was all worth it in the end though as delivering the package got me enough XP for another precious level up. You don't get to level up many times in this game, so every one counts.

Right, that's all I need to do in the Slums for now, I'm ready to head through the door into the next district: Kuto's Well.

KUTO'S WELL

A wondrous pool you say? Hints of a plot are emerging.

These are some Kobalds I met while walking around Kuto's Well. They seemed less than hyped to see an armed squad approach, so I chose the 'parley' option and they left in peace to return to their families. They even gave a little wave as they left.

Hey, I was told to clear the place of monsters, no one said I had to kill them. It's not like the XP would've been worth all that much anyway. I've stopped picking up enemy weapons now as well, unless it's something that stands out from the usual pile of short swords and leather armour.

I climbed down into the actual well at the centre of Kuto's Well and accidentally headed down the tunnel leading straight to the area boss's lair. So now he's dead, his minions have left, and I've missed out on all those extra fights as well. I got way more XP for finding his treasure though, so it's fine. Man, I'm starting to think I'll be ready to fight those trolls soon. But not yet.

CADORNA TEXTILE HOUSE

I went exploring a little more and found my new least favourite enemy. Ghouls have the 'Hold Person' spell, which works like Sleep, knocking everyone they touch out of the fight. I don't know how to counter that right now, so I'm just going to leave this place alone.

The hike back to New Phlan was uneventful and tedious; the random encounters in these districts had long been killed off, but the maze-like hallways aren't going anywhere. Once I arrived I paid the training school to give me all the level ups I'd earned and decided to hire two mercenaries while I was there. I'm going to take them back to the Rope Guild and I'm going to kill those bloody trolls.

You don't need a screenshot of what happened next, just imagine four very alive trolls surrounded by the bodies of eight inept adventurers.

I've heard that the second-level spell 'Stinking Cloud' is effective against them, so my next goal is to get that. I like it when games let you come up with your own objectives. Though my ultimate goal is to get to the third-level spells and unlock Fireball. After that I suppose I'll just go around casting Fireball on enemies until I've won.

SOKAL'S KEEP

From the Cluebook

I returned to the Council clerk at the city hall and she paid me for clearing Kuto's Well and the Slums, so I guess beating the trolls wasn't even necessary! Then she gave me a new mission to sort out Sokal Keep, so now I am back on track and getting stuff done. (Ignore the map, it's definitely Sokal with an 'a').

The only place the boat will take me is Thorn Island, but that's fine with me. I'm on an important mission to do… uh... damn, did the clerk mention anything about what I'll be doing there? I forget. It's a shame the game doesn't have a journal I can check. I mean it does, I have a PDF of the Adventurers Journal booklet that came in the box, but it's in a random order so I need to know the number of an entry before I can look it up.

I suppose I could check the Cluebook.

Man, look at Wanda's pitiful max HP. Having 14 Constitution is really holding her back.

Anyway. the first thing I found when I stepped off the boat at Sokal Keep was a corpse with some runes written down. You're supposed to use the copy protection code wheel to translate them. Fortunately my Steam version came with a tool to decipher this text, so now I know it says:

LUX
SAMOSUD
SHES?NI

Sorry, I'm struggling a bit with that last one. I can't make out one of the runes.

It seems that the cryptic words are actually passwords to get by the skeleton patrols that rush at me when I'm walking around the fort. Well, one of them is anyway. Unfortunately I chose poorly this time and now I'm in a fight.

This is very bad... for the skeletons. Because I just remembered that my Clerics have the 'Turn Undead' ability, which sends skeletons and zombies into a panic. After all the trouble I've been having in fights recently, it's nice to feel like I'm in a place that's appropriate for my level again. 

Alright, that battle's done and I can use the password to avoid the rest of the skeletons, so I can wander around this keep pretty freely now. I'm gonna go see what's in the courtyard.

"A loud commotion rises from the courtyard. Bashing open the door, a large force of orcs and hobgoblins rushes you.

Bloody hell, according to the Gold Box Companion map I'm either fighting an entire army or a brontosaurus.

I'm too tired to deal with this, I'm really dozing off right now. In real life I mean, though I did just accidentally send my own team to sleep by stumbling with the keyboard commands.

I really wanted this to be a triumphant story of steadfast heroes triumphing over trolls, but in the end it was a tale of sleepy heroes getting one-shotted by a force of orcs and hobgoblins arranged in the shape of a large herbivorous sauropod.

This might be why people caution against giving everyone 18s for their ability scores, as the game apparently adjusts its encounter sizes to compensate.

I have no way to know what arcane calculations are going on in secret, but Stephen S. Lee's walkthrough on GameFAQs says that enemy group sizes are based on your current Party Strength:

"A character's contribution to Party Strength is the sum of:
  * 0.4 * cleric level
  * 0.8 * magic-user level
  * 0.5 * each point of AC below 0 (0 if AC is 0 or above)
  * 0.5 * each point of THAC0 below 21 (0 if THAC0 is 21 or above)
  * 0.1 * current hit points
rounded down to the nearest integer.  The values used for AC and THAC0 are the
ones shown on your character screen."

So according to this, my current Party Strength is...

Name	Race	Class	AC	THAC0	HP	Party Strength
Rogers	Male Human	Fighter (4)	1	13	42	8
Bishop	Female Human	Fighter (4)	-2	15	34	7
Foster	Female Human	Cleric (4)	1	17	27	6
Wanda	Female Half-Elf	Cleric (3)/Magic-User (2)	2	20	11	4
Strange	Male Half-Elf	Fighter (2)/Magic-User (2)	4	17	13	4
Scott	Male Dwarf	Fighter (2)/Thief (3)	5	16	18	4
					Total	33

Huh, 33 doesn't sound like much. Or maybe it's huge, I haven't got a clue.

You can see here how my multi-class characters are trailing behind my single class heroes in levels. Strange counts as a proper Fighter, he can wear armour, use any weapon, and his Strength is 18(90), but Rogers and Bishop have far surpassed him in fighting ability and health.

On the other hand, he can send a group of nine enemies to sleep and shoot magic missiles from his hand, and his abilities are only going to get more ridiculous. So I'm actually pretty happy with my party right now... aside from how they inspire billions of enemies to keep turning up to challenge them.

The worst thing about being attacked by 50 enemies isn't the 50 swords and bows pointed my way, it's having to wait 8-9 turns before one of my dudes gets a go. Every single time.

C'mon game, I don't need to see you shuffling some distant orc to the right and back again, just show me the dozen or so enemies that are relevant to my current tactical situation.

Those ones with the bows are extremely tactically relevant as they can pelt me with arrows while I'm stuck in the open like this. My plan was to get my whole team behind a wall so I only had to worry about the orcs that came around the corner, but that was ruined when the enemies raced over to stand next to my front line units. If I move them away now, those orcs get an automatic free hit. On the plus side the same is true for the orcs, in fact they refuse to move away, so my tough low-AC heroes are holding the ocean of enemies back for now.

I haven't really been using tactics to their fullest in battles, because A: I don't know what I'm doing and B: my Magic-Users have only just learned a second spell. On the plus side, I know Hold Person and Sleep, which are both multi-target 'you just stand there helpless while I kill you' moves, so other spells could be considered an unnecessary luxury. More spell slots would be nice though! The main reason I have two Magic-Users is that I want to cast Sleep more than once a fight.

Damn man, I'm glad those orcs surrendered when they did, as I was almost cooked. It didn't help that I accidentally used Hold Person on my own Cleric/Magic-User and they one-shotted her.

I misjudged the range of the enemy archers as well. I thought I was safe to move my own archers out of cover and into their line of sight to take shots at the orc army. I was not. Things got pretty scary until the orc archers made the mistake of moving into range of my Hold Person spell.

I got 225 experience for that epic battle, which works out as 10 experience per minute. I also got about seven million long swords, which can stay in a pile on the floor I think. Plus there was a note, which has been copied into my journal as entry 57.

I should start signing letters as 'The Boss'.

You're supposed to open your Adventurers Journal booklet, find entry 57, and read what it says, but Gold Box Companion has a handy feature that lets you read the text in the game window like this. These notes I've been finding remind me of the audio diaries you get in more modern games. In fact I think one of the folks who worked on System Shock revealed that Pool of Radiance is where they got the idea.

It turns out that the Boss sent this overwhelming force to stop us from reporting the true situation at Sokal Keep. Joke's on them, I still have no idea what the situation is here, except that I keep running into skeletons. Oh, plus there's some croaking coming from one of the rooms and it's getting louder as I walk over to it.

I braved the louder croaking and found that I faced a force of four poisonous frogs. So I ran away, because I don't have anything to cure poison! Being poisoned right now would be a death sentence.

I didn't run too far though, just far enough to get to a more advantageous sniping position for my archers.

Afterwards my character searched the broken debris to find an old hammer. It's just called 'hammer' but I expect it'll have a +1 or 2 after it once I've taken it to a shop to get ID'd. I could just equip it now but it might be cursed.

I also found a bunch of well-preserved loot behind an illusionary wall. Thanks Gold Box Companion for marking it on my automap!

Funny thing is, I got more XP for this than I did for killing those three squads earlier.

This other room contained a spooky ghost, and when I'd finished walking around every square it came to confront me, asking for a single word.

I took a chance and typed LUX, and that turned out to be the correct password! They told me about a floorboard which concealed a bunch of gems and a few pages of a diary. It talks about the last days of the siege, with the fortress defenders facing an apparently limitless amount of unusually well-organised monsters. The Last Priest of Tyr, Ferran Martinez, had a horrifying last ditch plan to protect them... and they didn't mention what it was.  

Alright I've searched every room except for the one in the middle, so it's time for the boss battle. Or maybe not, who even knows?

Inside I found... a bartender.

Okay I know that he's actually the ghost of Ferran Martinez, the bloke mentioned in the diary! He asked us if the city had been freed and was satisfied with my answer. Then he told me about the sage Mendor, who filled a library full of information about our enemies. Seems like a place I want to check out.

I returned to New Phlan and the harbour master told me that with the fort sorted out I'm now free to take boats to the west, the east, and the north side of the bay. So that's cool.

Well Sokal Keep wasn't a massively rewarding expedition for me, even with the XP reward from the clerk afterwards. Though a couple of characters did earn level ups, so I shuffled my money around so the correct people had enough cash for training and chose a new spell.

Hang on, this means that I have Stinking Cloud now! That's the spell the walkthrough says to use on the trolls in the Slums! Okay, that's it, I'm going back to take on those bloody trolls. I won't have any closure until they're finally dead.

 THE OLD ROPE GUILD IN THE SLUMS, ROUND THREE

I looked up a strategy this time, because I need all the help I can get, and it turns out that the trolls can't actually move close enough to attack my characters as long as those ogres are there, as they're two squares tall and it's a one square gap. That doesn't make any sense in 3D, but that's how it works. Also, you can't see it, but I'm standing on a dead troll to prevent them coming back. You just have to remember where they were when they died, you can't see the body.

Seems like I don't even need Stinking Cloud for this fight after all, I just need enough armour to survive the ogres and enough arrow damage to hurt the trolls faster than they can regenerate... and I'm cutting it close. Focusing my fire would take a troll down fast, but I have to alternate and hurt them equally as if I kill one early and leave it dead too long it'll just spring back to life. It doesn't help that my shots don't always hit.

Oh damn, I actually did it! It's no great accomplishment to kill the trolls at level 4, but I'm still glad I manage to get it done. The Slums are now 100% clear, and every tile has been visited and marked on the map.

Huh, that's all I got for killing the trolls? A couple of +1 magical weapons and some armour. I'm a bit disappointed to be honest.

Well I suppose I could quit now, as I've completed my goal of defeating the first boss fight and I've visited a bunch of places. I think I've got a pretty good idea of what Pool of Radiance is like. Though I'm so close to getting my fighters up to level 5 now, and that's a way more notable number than 4.

PODOL PLAZA

The city clerk wants information about what the monsters are up to in Podol Plaza, but it's up to me how I get it done. There's no quest to get monster costumes or anything like that, I just choose the 'disguise party' option and they make it happen, but it's nice to have options.

Now I can overhear what the enemies are talking about and get the information without a single battle!

Every few steps I encounter another enemy but I can just convince them that we're monsters and they leave me alone.

It did take me a couple of tries to find the correct response though. Turns out that 'abusive' is the one that doesn't lead to a fight and a jog back to the exit to put the disguise back on, and you can just use it over and over and over again. In fact, I'm kind of getting sick of these interruptions now to be honest.

I did get into a barfight against a level 4 fighter and his patrons, but that somehow didn't blow my cover so I'm still good, if a little wounded and short on spells. Can't rest and recover here, the place is crowded with monsters.

Turns out that there was an auction going on in the centre of the plaza, but I decided against pulling a James Bond and making my own bid, so the villain walked off with the prize. I'm being a careful spy and not drawing attention to myself.

Oh damn, the 'abusive' response finally failed with some wandering monsters and now I'm in a fight against 8 ogres! I really hope I can survive this because that is not a sure thing with my party weary and wounded.

Well I won the ogre battle, but now my poor beat-up team is in a fight against 40-something goblins! With my cover blown it's random encounters all the way at this point.

It turns out that my Fighters have a sweep attack that activates when they're surrounded by multiple low-level enemies and they're getting plenty of opportunity to use it here. It looks like two of my heroes are using bows, but the icons have nothing to do with what they're really holding. Units can't use ranged attacks when an enemy's standing next to them, so they're actually using swords right now. I had to go into the 'use' menu, unequip their bows, then equip a sword and shield instead, and that's about the most ingenious my tactics have been in this fight.

I'm so completely overwhelmed that there's literally no room for tactics any more, it's just a war of attrition. Will my health last longer than their sea of low-level monsters?

Apple Macintosh

I just realised I haven't talked about the Apple Mac version yet, with its distinctive monochrome visuals and its footstep sound effects that makes your feet sound like a hydraulic press slamming down.

The game's in a higher resolution with almost three times the pixels on screen, which you'd think would be a good thing. The trouble is that you can only see 6x5 tiles in the Combat View window, versus 7x7 in the PC version. Knowing where units are on the battlefield is absolutely crucial, so you want to see as much as possible. All of it would be ideal. This is one of the reasons why I'd recommend Gold Box Companion even if you love mapping dungeons out on graph paper, because that map window becomes a godsend during battles.

Apple Macintosh

The Mac version has its moments though, like its detailed line art portraits. Don't worry about it overlapping the Message box, you just click on and it brings it to the front. That's because the Mac version has mouse control! The game's designed for keyboard control and the mouse doesn't add much, but if you like clicking on things then it's got you covered. It also has a menu bar at the top to remind you that you're playing a video game.

My DOSBox team actually survived that fight against the 40 goblins by the way, though only barely. And then I made a run for the exit so I could finally rest and recover. 

Man, whoever decided that Podol Plaza should have so many encounters is a cruel cruel game designer. Oh hang on, it was actually my fault, I'd accidentally left 'search' mode on. It helps you find secret treasure but makes random encounters much more frequent. Oops!

I returned to the city hall to report the success of my intelligence gathering operation at the Podol Plaza auction, and the clerk gave me a +3 undead slaying sword to sort out the Valhingen Graveyard! I also got a bunch of clerical scrolls I have no idea how to use or identify.

Oh plus she told me to go meet the Bishop of Tyr, and that the Kovel Mansion is full of thieves and needs clearing out. I'm getting a whole ton of tasks here and once again the game's leaving it up to me to decide what order to tackle them. Well, I've no idea how to get to the graveyard or the mansion, but I do know a bunch of undead ghouls down the Cadona Textile House that will be knocked dead when they see my awesome new blade.

CADONA TEXTILE HOUSE

It's great when you earn a few level ups then come back to a part of the game that was giving you trouble and find that you're able to put up a fight now. In fact, I'm easily a match for the frogs, scorpions and gangs of undead roaming the streets of the Cadona Textile House... well, almost.

The enemies do still have one small advantage: the frogs and scorpions can instakill poison me, and the undead can level drain.

They touch one of my characters one with that level drain and the fight's over, I'm restarting the game. Allies can be resurrected and levels can be restored, but everything I've read about the process makes me think that it's not worth it.

For one thing it's a good job I don't have any pure elves, as they can't be brought back by Raise Dead. Everyone else loses one point of Constitution, which kind of acts like an extra lives count. Meanwhile level drained characters can get all their levels back, but apparently not all of their missing XP. I want that XP, I worked very hard for it!

I checked a walkthrough for this area and it basically said 'It's best to go straight for what you came here for and then leave killing the random encounters until later.'

Interesting, there's a well here that only thieves can climb down. Finally having a Thief on my team pays off!

My first attempt didn't work out great as one of my Fighters tried climbing down and ended up falling straight to the bottom. It's fine, they just floated back out unconscious with a few bumps, breaks and bruises. I guess I had him selected by mistake? I don't know how that happened.

On my second attempt I definitely sent my Thief down there. He fell to the bottom, slammed into the unyielding stone floor and died. What the hell, game? He was a Thief! He was a THIEF!

But the third try worked and I met someone from the Thieves Guild who decided we could work together against a common enemy. They snuck us inside the next bit of the map, avoiding a fight.

Inside I met a prisoner, chained up with locks that even my useless Thief can't open.

Fortunately it didn't take me long to defeat the boss holding the key, and I even got a necklace and potion from it too! I'll be leaving those items alone for now until I've gotten them identified at a shop.

I chose to free the prisoner and he introduced himself as Skullcrusher. He's a chaotic neutral level 4 Fighter with high Strength and he'll be hanging around with my team for a while! It's nice to have a party member with an actual character for a change, as Skullcrusher sometimes comments on stuff as I'm walking around. Like the wall he carved his name into, and a corpse with a crushed skull.

I came home to New Phlan with a quest item: a sealed box, but the guards confiscated it from me at the gate! They apparently didn't trust me with it, even though I skipped every opportunity I was given to open it up and take the treasure myself.

I've also lost Skullcrusher, who's going off to find his boss. It's a shame actually, as the guy was kicking considerable ass once I'd given him some of my magical gear.

WAIT! SKULLCRUSHER JUST WALKED OFF WITH MY STUFF! My broadsword +1! Oh you son of a bitch. Apparently NPCs are very much not there to carry your burdens and will accept anything you give them as a gift that you will not be getting back. Well, unless they're knocked out in a fight. Man, it's good thing I didn't take advantage of his high Strength and give him all the treasures I'm carrying around.

More NPC facts: I've read that they'll take a share of experience, money and magic items. They also increase Party Strength, which means even more enemies during random encounters. You know, after giving it some thought, I think I'll do okay without Skullcrusher from now on. 

Oh, this is new! I went down to the docks to take another boat and now I'm riding a little white horse... wearing different clothes and a wig.

It seems like the whole region is open to me now, so this is probably how I get to the graveyard and the mansion. I can also get to a nomad camp, a kobold cave, and all kinds of places. Okay then, I've got the undead-slaying sword, let's go check out the graveyard!

I don't like the graveyard!

Grabby skeletons was only the first of my problems, as I ducked into a small room and ended up running into 30 ghouls. They're not the zombies that level drain you, they're just the ones that paralyse you and then kill you in one hit.

My first instinct was to admit that I'd made some bad choices and then quit and load an earlier save, but I had to know... could I actually beat 30 of these creatures? 6 of them used to give me trouble, so a couple of screens full of them are definitely a problem. But have I learned enough about D&D rules and tactics to stand any chance here?

The answer is...

Yes, I was able to beat them! Turn Undead is bloody miraculous Cleric ability, even when the undead is packed in too close to really move much.

Not all the ghouls were frightened away however and the ones that were left were absolutely vicious. By the end only my Fighter/Magic-User was left conscious and able to move. But he got the job done; the dude's earned that level up!

Okay, I'm going to risk sleeping in this tiny graveyard room, because I can't fight anything in this state and it seems as likely as anywhere to be safe.

And then I got woken up by another 30 ghouls. I think I've just learned an important lesson about trying to sleep in a crypt.

I read a bit about the graveyard and there are apparently spectres who keep creating more undead over time, so the place actually gets more crowded the longer you leave it. You can find and kill the spectres, but then a vampire eventually summons more of them. It's a surprisingly complicated system for a game like this.

Ah, screw it. I'm going to load a save from before my asskicking, go home to level up, and then import the heroes into Hillsfar. I don't know much about the game, but I'm going to hope that it doesn't make you fight 3 dozen enemies every few steps.


CONCLUSION

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Pool of Radiance was the first proper Advanced Dungeons & Dragons adaptation, but I wasn't expecting it to be 1st Edition. I've never played anything to do with 1st Edition before! I feel like over time the rules have evolved to become a better fit for video games, so this is where things are at their most awkward. A D&D adaptation can be much closer to the source than something based on a book or movie, but there are some weird design choices here that presumably made a lot more sense in their original context.

Speaking of context, I'm glad I played all those '80s RPGs for research, because I really needed to understand the era that Pool of Radiance was released in. I needed to see what the baseline level of awkward game design was at the time.

From the perspective of a modern RPG player, it's hard to understand how the developers were able to play their own game without getting thoroughly sick of its flaws and doing something to fix them. They must have been as frustrated as anyone by how there's no 'rest until healed' option that automatically memorises and casts healing spells. They had to know that fighting 30+ enemies in every random encounter is kind of taking the piss, especially as you have to wait for each of them to take their turn. And it doesn't take a game design genius to realise that when you're aiming a spell or bow, the 'Next' button should first target the next enemy.

What else could I complain about? The game's tiny automap is far from ideal. Having to hike all the way back through an empty maze of rooms to get back home gets old. And having to deal with all those different currencies is unnecessarily awkward, especially when they weigh you down and there's no bank to store them in. (Though to be fair a character's cash is all automatically converted to platinum if you buy something). Oh, plus half the game's text comes in a separate booklet, including things like weapon damage. I can see why Amiga Power's reviewers bounced off the Gold Box games so hard, especially if they were looking at graphics as dated as this in 1992.

On the other hand, it's hard for me to really criticise an RPG for overflowing with text when other games of the time barely had a story, or quests, or anything. Pool of Radiance makes sure to give you clear instructions so you know what you're meant to be doing and actually does some work to establish its setting. It has a more engaging world than even Ultima IV, with different areas having different gimmicks (like the auction stealth mission in Podol Plaza) and its tactical combat is far more interesting to play. Okay battles can take forever, and third-level spells are the best you'll get to play with, but the fights function well enough to be fun.

Plus one thing Wizardry, The Bard's Tale, Might and Magic, Dragon Quest, Phantasy Star etc. all have in common is grinding. You're expected to find a place with weaker enemies and fight them over and over to gain experience and money before tackling the next part of the game. You couldn't grind in Pool of Radiance even if you wanted to, as the enemies are finite. Once you've defeated enough random encounters they stop coming. So if you hit a challenge you're too underleveled for, you have to go somewhere else and play a different bit of the game for a while (or maybe hire some help). Otherwise you just can just get on with whatever you want to do.

In fact I'd put Pool of Radiance on the same list as video games like GoldenEye, Batman: Arkham Asylum, Star Wars: TIE Fighter, The Witcher III etc... as it's a licenced game that managed to reach the peak of its genre. This could've been a top 10, maybe top 3 RPG of all time back in 1988 when it came out. In 2025 the game is a pain in the ass, but thankfully Gold Box Companion can be a literal game changer. 

GBC gives you an automap of the location you're in and an overview of the battlefield, it keeps track of your characters' status and when they're due to level up, it makes getting health and spells back when resting painless, and it even adds a soundtrack if you download the newer version! That's why I wouldn't even consider recommending other ports, especially for systems without hard drives (four seconds of loading every time it wants to show the portrait on someone's character sheet will test anyone's patience). Even if you prefer drawing maps on graph paper you'll probably still appreciate having the tool running, unless you're after a completely authentic experience or you just can't stand playing in a window.

So I'm giving the first of the Gold Box games a gold star, meaning that I wouldn't mind playing it again sometime.


But there are apparently nine of these Gold Box D&D RPGs (ten if you count the original Neverwinter Nights MMO), so I'll see how long my enthusiasm holds as I play the same gameplay over and over and over and over again.

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Next time on Super Adventures, I'm going to be playing another classic D&D RPG! Or maybe I'll be covering something else entirely. I've given you a tiny picture as a clue.

You could try looking up what comes next chronologically I suppose, but that information isn't always easy to find for games this old. I've been going through ancient magazines trying to work it out.

Anyway, what do you think about Pools of Radiance? Did I sell you on it? Have you already played it? Are you looking forward to me playing eight other Gold Box games that are basically identical to it?