Dungeons & Dragons Games Vol. 20: Eye of the Beholder (MS-DOS) - Part 2

This week on Super Adventures, I'm playing the rest of Eye of the Beholder.

(Click this text for PART ONE, or this text for the LIST OF DUNGEONS & DRAGONS GAMES I've played so far.)

The game was originally for MS-DOS, Amiga and PC-98 computers, then made its way to the Sega Mega CD and SNES a few years later. So for once no one involved had to think 'But how do we get this to run on an old 8-bit Commodore 64 in 64 KB of RAM?' Even the game it borrowed its gameplay from, Dungeon Master, was a 16/32-bit Atari ST title.

The Atari ST was left out this time, though owners were likely used to that by now. It got two more Dungeons & Dragons games this year, Curse of the Azure Bonds and Shadow Sorcerer, before being dropped entirely. This was technically the second and last D&D game for the Mega Drive/Genesis too, with the Mega CD release coming out after the Sega exclusive Warriors of the Eternal Sun.

Anyway, I'd give you a spoiler warning about all the story I'll be playing through, but it's not really that kind of RPG. I could give you a warning for new dungeon tiles though, as I'll be delving deep enough to see all the art.

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Previously, in Eye of the Beholder:

A min-maxed party of four adventurers have been sent below the city of Waterdeep to find the evil that lurks below and destroy it. But it turns out that Waterdeep's sewer system is unusually extensive, in fact it's one of the largest mega-dungeons in the Forgotten Realms, and they're not the first to come down here. They've discovered the bones of adventurers sent before them, scattered in between all the monsters and pressure plate puzzles. So they put them in their bags and carried on.

Fortunately on the fourth level down they actually found someone still alive! A dwarf fighter called Taghor, who had been wounded by the drow elves who also roam down here in the dark. But by the look of the webs sealing off the stone hallways it's not the drow I need to be concerned about right now, it's all the giant spiders.

(I'm not going to show the giant spiders, don't worry).

And now, the conclusion:

It's pretty obvious that there are spiders creeping around behind the walls, I can hear their weird creaking sounds. 

The spiders aren't actually all that tough when I find them, Tahani has slain a ton of them by throwing her banana dagger, but if they get one lucky hit then someone's getting poisoned. I can't cure poison, so once I see someone's name turn red I only have a little time to find an antivenom potion or they will die.

I can save and load at any time, but exploring dark corridors full of one-hit-death-sentence spiders that can pop out from around any corner never really gets any less nerve-wracking.

The bad news is we got poisoned, the worse news is Taghor died!

My some miracle I actually stumbled across two antidotes at the end of a tunnel, the only two I've ever found. Unfortunately three of my team were poisoned and the dosage for these cures is 'the whole bottle'.

In a lot of games a situation like this would give me an excuse to quit and do something else, but I think I'd rather keep playing. So that's a good sign. I am going to be loading my save though, as I don't need to deal with him losing a point of constitution or whatever the penalty for raising the dead is in this.

Though his inventory still works and he couldn't hit anyone with his axe from the back row anyway, so even dead he's continuing to serve his only real purpose on the team: an extra backpack. I need the space for all the potentially useful junk I'm accumulating. Any of these rings I'm picking up could be magic, plus I've found a mysterious stone sceptre to go with my stone dagger.

I've been seeing these weird switches on this floor. This one's connected to one of the three pits blocking the path on the right, there's no mystery there, but I've no idea what the others are for. Well I guess two of them will get rid of the other pits blocking the path and I'll certainly test that theory when I actually find them. I'm lucky that I have the All-Seeing Eye automap to keep me updated, while players back in the day would've had to... I dunno, run back here every time they pressed a switch? I'm starting to see where Hexen learned its tricks. 

(Incidentally Hexen got remastered recently and now it actually points you to where you're supposed to go, so that's cool. Hopefully Hexen II next! And then can we finally have a release of Heretic II?)

Anyway I eventually found more doors and keyholes and picked up an axe called Drow Cleaver, which is obviously the ideal weapon for Taghor. He can't have it though, I'm keeping it. I just wish I knew what damage it did. Is it a +1, a +2?

There are more mysterious carvings on this wall, which look like a sceptre, a ring, a dagger etc. and I just happened to find a bunch of items that match those descriptions...

Nope, dragging them onto the carvings didn't work. I guess I'll just keep carrying them around then.

The room next door was more useful, as it's apparently a storeroom for cure poison potions! I found that a little late maybe as I'm basically done with this floor, but there could be other spiders later so I'll hold onto them.

I also found a shelf with a sign next to it saying "Oracle of Knowledge". Okay then, if it's such a fount of information then why do I have to go check the internet to learn what it does? It apparently identifies all my items if I stick an Orb of Power onto it, so I guess I'll have to do some backtracking later. After this and all those Gold Box games I'm really starting to miss Baldur's Gate's 'identify' spell.

FLOOR 5

I found a sign here saying "Greed will be your downfall" and now the next room has loot lying around on the floor. I dunno, seems a little bit suspicious, I think I'll leave it where it is. 

In fact I think I'll walk right around it.

Oh I see what the trick here is now! Pits are opening up behind me as I walk, so if I step off to get treasure I can't step back again. 

Sticking with the path got me some plate armour, so my main fighter is down to -1 AC now. In Dungeons & Dragons, AC measures how tough you are to hit, not how much damage you resist, so that's got to mean she's less likely to be poisoned now. Unfortunately it provides no defence against the game being a dick.

I saw a pressure plate in front of me, so I decided to play it safe and threw a rock onto it. Nothing happened. So I stepped forward and fell down to the next floor! Or maybe just another part of this floor? I don't even know.

FLOOR X (6?)

Okay, I didn't expect to find an actual character just hanging out in a dead end.

He's even got dialogue, and there are pages of it. Well I was waiting for these D&D games to just put the text on the screen instead of making me look up journal entries, so I guess I got what I wanted! I would've gotten even more on the Sega CD version as it features voice acting and close-ups. Not great voice acting, but lines like "Well, rented redeemers..." weren't making it easy on the actors.

I've learned that Xanathar is the evil that needs to be purged from Waterdeep. Fortunately there's a weapon down here that can defeat him: the magical Wand of Silvias. It's made from a beholder's eye stalk, so it's literally the eye of the beholder! Kind of.

After he'd finished monologuing, the dark-robed mage suddenly blasted me with magic. I started clicking my attack icons in self-defence, and then he disappeared. I'm not sure I beat him in a fight or if he was just scripted to leave, but I guess either way he's not an immediate problem any more and I get to pick up the loot.

I thought my dwarf fighter was going to be entirely useless in the back row, but then I remembered that I'd picked up a bow! And now I'm on my hands and knees picking up arrows after every fight. Every fight I decide to use him in anyway. Maybe it's best if he goes back to being useless.

There's a hallway here guarded by a pressure plate trap that fires darts at you, Indiana Jones style. So I kept walking back and forth on it until I'd collected all the darts, and repeated the process on all the other traps until I found the treasure at the end: an adamantine dart! Great, I'll put it in with all the rest.

I did discover that if I put them in a character's belt (the three squares on the bottom right of the inventory) then they'll switch to them automatically once their current weapon has been thrown. And that's why I also have a video of me picking all my darts back up after a fight.

Bloody hell that's a lot of birds, and they're still coming.

Well, that's not what you want to see blocking your only way out, right after saving the game. This floor seemed to be going pretty well until the bird man army arrived. I wonder if they're mad that I took their egg. It was just lying there in a dungeon, it wasn't in a nest or anything!

This level has some massive hallways, wider than any other floor so far, and I think I'm starting to see why. There's lots of space for evading their 'magic missile's here, or for using sneaky side-stepping tactics.

It doesn't seem like I'm going to be able to handle these guys in a fair fight right now. I used all my own 'magic missile's, my 'Melf's acid arrow's, my throwing daggers, everything, but there were still enough of them coming around the corner to kick my ass. They can even survive a 'fireball'. I tried breaking out 'hold person' as it's been a big help in the Gold Box games, but it either didn't do anything or didn't last long enough for me to notice.

Well running away from the bird men wasn't as good a tactic as I thought. Every door here has enemies behind it! Door after door of birds.

It's still my best plan though, so I'm going to load my save, rush back to wherever Tahani's magic throwing dagger landed, and then run off to find the stairs out of here.

You know what the most frustrating part of this is? It's the pause whenever someone fires off a spell. It doesn't matter if it's their spell or mine, I have to wait for the spell effect to finish before I can start clicking on things again. I'm frantically trying to do something but the game will accept no further action until the firework display is over.

I don't get this, I've found the exit stairs, but they just brought me down here to an empty basement on the same floor. There are two doors down here, but they're both locked  from the other side. I'm a bit stuck to be honest.

Hang on, if you mentally overlap this floor I'm on (top left triangle island), with the room I came from (the bit directly underneath), then those holes in the floor line up with the areas behind the two doors. I'm supposed to fall down!

Behind the doors I found some keys. They're always appreciated, but only really useful when I have a lock. Hang on, I just noticed that a lock appeared in a room I've already visited! This automap is a bloody lifesaver, I'd be stuck without it.

Alright, I'm done with the bird floor.

FLOOR ???

Oh, hello!

The good news is that I've reached the third dungeon tileset. The bad news is that there are three drow waiting for me at the bottom of the stairs and they want a bribe. I don't have any money though! The most valuable thing I have is an axe called Drow Cleaver and I think I'll need that for cleaving through drow.

I chose to attack and the drow immediately started paralysing my characters! Fortunately I immediately turned around and ran back up the stairs to the relative safety of the bird man floor. A bit of rest sorted out the paralysis and I took the opportunity to have cleric Chidi memorise some 'remove paralysis' spells for next time. He's level 7 right now, so he's not the noob who couldn't cure poison all those many floors ago.

The doors down here creep me out, especially with the sounds I can hear on the other side. It's like I'm about to walk into a boss fight or something. Or, more likely, a small room with a scroll on the floor for a spell I already have. This place is full of scrolls, and sometimes pressure plates for surprise fireball traps. It's not being as tricky as previous floors though.

Well, I've got the key to open it, but I'm gonna go find another door to open instead. I'm always scared that I'm going to use my keys on the wrong doors, run out, and make the game unwinnable. It hasn't happened yet, but I'm going to need to get a few spare keys in my inventory before I can feel more relaxed. 

On the plus side, none of the drow I've been fighting have paralysed me like that first group. Maybe it's just because I now have the space to use my special move of taking a step back when I'm waiting for my weapon cooldowns to finish, instead of just standing still and taking hits.

I found some drow boots too, so that's some more mystery equipment for my inventory. Maybe they do nothing at all, maybe they'll disappear in sunlight like other drow gear and leave someone's feet bare, the game's not telling me.

This is the third one of these blocked doorways that I've found so far. Each of them has had a different engraving missing, and I've been taking that as a clue for what object I should be using with it. Unfortunately nothing's worked yet!

What's missing on this one? A dagger. Hey I've got a stone dagger! I found it ages ago on floor two. Lucky I held onto it really

Okay, I'll try dragging the dagger onto the door frame.

It's a portal! And it leads to a room full of portals! They're really showing off here with the flashy animation.

I found a portal hub like this in Secret of the Silver Blades as well, though it was useless to me until I hiked to the destinations on foot and activated each portal from the other end. Here all I need are the stone symbols.

Further on I found a shelf with a sign next to it saying 'Oracle of Devouring'. So it's like the Oracle of Knowledge upstairs, except it eats things? I looked it up and it turns out that's basically true, as it consumes Orbs of Power. Seems like I'm better off just taking a portal back to the other Oracle shelf when I want to identify things.

These drow floors seem more interconnected than the other places I've been to, as I'm going up and down stairs all over the place. It's not like a dungeon in a SNES RPG where the route splits and you go the wrong way for a bit to get the treasure before coming back, this is an actual maze.

I'm getting the hang of this place now. I got past a puzzle needing me to donate a sword, armour, food and an arrow, and I was able to slay the dubstep displacer beasts without much trouble. No longer will their intense bass reverberate through these dungeon walls.

This creature's called a Rust Monster, apparently, so that's a bit of a red flag. I don't want rust anywhere near my metal gear. I tackled it cautiously and suffered barely any damage, so it seems like I'll be able to handle them.

Hang on "Eleanor has lost her plate mail"? What the hell? The poison spiders were a concern, the paralysing drow were a problem, but this is an actual crisis! I suppose I should be grateful it at least told me. If I'd walked away clueless and saved the game before noticing my armour had been eaten I would've been pissed off. And also very confused.

Though I did find another suit of plate armour a few minutes later so it wouldn't have been a huge setback. Came with a free set of bones and a paladin's holy symbol.

FLOOR... SOMEWHERE GREEN

I dropped down another hole in the floor and found myself in the next zone with a mantis waiting for me.

I don't think I like these paralysis mantises, I definitely don't like the scary sounds they make. Luckily I was already prepared with 'remove paralysis' spells due to those drow earlier. There really aren't that many encounters on each floor either, compared to a Final Fantasy or a Pool of Radiance at least, though I'll be resting frequently to top up my spells because I don't want to push my luck.

This is "Xanthar's Outer Sanctum, Mantis Hive" apparently, which puts me on floor 10 of 12. Though the game's such a twisty maze of pits and stairs at this point that I doubt I'm 10/12ths of the way through. These later stages haven't got as many fake walls or tiles that spin you around, as they're confusing enough as it is. Just hallways and enemies and dead ends and scrolls I don't need. I did find a scroll of 'cone of cold though! It'll be great when my mage levels up enough to be able to use it.

LEVEL 9: LOWER REACHES OF THE DROW

I've found a scroll of 'raise dead' for my cleric! I'll finally be able to do something about all these skeletons filling up my inventory and free up some room for keys. Clerics can't learn spells from scrolls like mages, they just automatically know more of them when they level up, so this is a one-use-only spell.

Nope, not working. It seems like 'raise dead' can only be cast on my own party members. So maybe carrying all these sets of bones with me around the dungeon wasn't actually the smartest move.

The smartest move would be to find an Orb of Power so I can identify all these wands I've been collecting. Any one of them could be the Wand of Silvias I need to defeat Xanathar. Or a Wand of Fireball, that would be good too.

It wouldn't be a D&D game if I didn't eventually find someone chained up in a dungeon. Hang on, I need to quickly check the wall of text I got from the other dwarf, Taghor, to see if I was supposed to be rescuing this guy.

Alright, Taghor did mention Prince Keirgar earlier, but all he wanted from me is to bring him back to his dwarf buddies, so rescuing Keirgar isn't actually on my to-do list. I'm obviously doing it anyway though, assuming I don't need to find a key first.

It turns out that Keirgar also wants to return to the dwarves, to warn his people that the drow were framed by Xanathar's minion Shindia. Also they shouldn't keep looking for the dwarven ancestral city, because Xanathar has moved in. Basically the message he wants to relay to the dwarves is "Don't fight the drow, don't assault Xanathar."

Well, the guy's welcome to join my team of brave adventurers, but I feel like someone should tell him that what we're mostly doing is fighting drow and assaulting Xanathar. I can't tell him myself, I don't have dialogue options.

Wow it's all going on in this room. First the prince and now Xanathar's sidekick. Though why does the interface keep trying to nudge me into killing everyone? It's the closest I ever get to NPC interaction.

The Sega CD version has more voiced dialogue here and after hearing it I'm pretty sure Shindia is the villain who has lines in the intro. Though she realises she's outmatched and surrenders immediately, telling us that the cure to revive the dwarven king is on the floor below, in the room with the levers. I don't think that narrows it down as much as she thinks it does.

We can't ask her any more though, as she slips away when we get distracted. I guess she'll be back... or maybe not. I never did see that dark wizard again, so I'm presuming we actually did kill him.

FLOOR 4: UPPER LEVEL DWARVEN RUINS

Look look, I found an Orb of Power and put it in the Oracle of Knowledge and it's telling me what all my stuff is! It doesn't tell me how much damage it does, but this is +4 and +5 gear, so I'm going to assume that it's enough. It's kind of weird to be finding stuff this powerful during a short expedition into a dungeon, especially as it's a low-level game with two sequels!

I stopped bothering with the secret special quests after a while, I think they're more for people doing a second playthrough who already know the game inside out and want something new to do. But the +5 Chieftain Halberd I got for taking all the bird man eggs to their nest was definitely worth the extra hassle. As was killing all the bird men in order to get the eggs. Lots of XP on that floor. 

If I'm going to be coming back to this room to identify things in the future, I might as well start dumping stuff I'm not using to free up some inventory space. Like all of these potions and scrolls. They're just too awkward to switch to in a fight without having a hotbar. I'm sure it's like Elder Scrolls and they'll all still be on the floor when I come back.

FLOOR 5: DWARVEN RUINS AND CAMP

I went down the stairs back to floor 5 and used a dwarven key I found in my inventory to open up one of the doors. This turned out to be a good choice, as this is where all the dwarves are hanging out! It's so weird to see so many NPCs standing around in this game.

Armun here is full of information that I've worked out or looked up on my own at this point, like how the portals work and how to activate the Oracle of Knowledge, so I'm thinking I should've come here much earlier. He also has a mission for me: to rescue Prince Keirgar! He knows a dwarven warrior called Dorhum who is eager to join up and help save the prince.

The thing is, I already have enough dwarven fighters in my team. There's Eleanor, Taghor, and of course Prince Keirgar. In fact, I continued my conversation with Armun and he was delighted to see that I'd rescued the prince!

Anyway I got a stone medallion which will activate the Oracle of Knowledge portal, so that's handy. I really need to write down where all these go.

Aha, this dwarven cleric is how I bring the bones of fallen adventurers back to life.

Each of them had their gear and armour lying next to where they fell, hinting at what their class was in life. Unfortunately the gear didn't come with name tags, so this list of names doesn't help me identify them at all! Oh man, I don't know. Can I see some stats? What I really need is someone who's not a dwarf or a fighter, if that's even possible.

I checked a walkthrough and it says that Tod's a thief, Anya's a fighter, Beohram's a fighter, Tyraa's a ranger, and Ileria is a cleric. So two fighters and an outdoors fighter. The cleric sounds good, but the developers apparently entered her stats in the wrong order, as her prime requisite, wisdom, is 9. That's not just terrible for a cleric, it's worse than every other NPC!

I decided to resurrect the ranger just for the fun of it, seeing as it doesn't cost me anything, but she is a lot less positive about the whole thing than I expected. When I told her I didn't actually need her help, she replied:

"So you resurrected me just for the fun of it. Sure, go ahead. Go. Fine with me. You do what you want. Me, I'm finding my own way out of here..."

I was kind of hoping she'd just hang around in camp in case I wanted to add her to the team later, but she says she's going! I didn't even have the option to tell her we've all been trapped here due to a cave-in.

Unfortunately the cleric is very tired from his other job of trying to wake the dwarven king from his poisoned slumber, so if I want to resurrect anyone else I'll have to keep playing for a bit.

FLOOR 7 - UPPER REACHES OF THE DROW

My team has all their protection buffs on right now, as I'm facing Skeletal Lords and an enemy dressed that nice has to be a threat. They're not actually that much of a challenge, especially as they don't eat my armour or poison me, but Jason's already lost half his health and my healing spells are basically placebos, so I'm taking it seriously.

Alright, the skeletons are dead, but the way out of here is blocked with a row of locks, so I need two jewelled keys and two drow keys to continue. Wait, I'm missing a jewelled key!

What the hell do I do now, I've already double checked all the rooms here. Do I set All-Seeing Eye to display items on the map and then backtrack through every floor until I find it? Do I just give up here and consider it a good run? Why is this game such an absolute pain in the ass sometimes?

Oh never mind, the key was in my inventory the whole time, right there with all my other keys. Yay!

You know, maybe it's time I took a break. I've been playing for hours straight, and I'm a bit tired now.

The characters just needed 110 hours sleep to recover their health after those skeletons, but I'm running on a little less right now.

I actually beat this record a few rooms later, after finding myself locked in a room with a bunch of hell hounds biting my heroes from all sides. Taking 5000 fireballs to the face in a trapped hallway on the way there didn't help.

FLOOR 11: XANTHAR'S OUTER SANCTUM, LOWER REACHES 

I found two messages in this hallway, one saying "Leave no stone unturned", the other saying "Alignment must be true". Well I've got all kinds of alignments, like Chaotic Good, and Neutral Good, so I'm sure one of them has to be true.

There are actually three nested square-shaped hallways, each with a switch. When I press the switch it disappears and another switch appears on the next wall along. It just goes round in a circle until it's back where it started and nothing happens.

Wait, I've figured it out! This puzzle is so much easier when you've got a map that updates to show you the position of the switches. Alignment must be true... they need to be aligned! This opens up a hallway to one quarter of the map, and then when you're done exploring there you flick the three switches and open up the next quarter.

Weirdly the hulking monsters on this floor are kind of harmless compared to what I'm used to, without any of the nasty status effects or equipment destruction. So it's been a pretty relaxed level, with lots of tiny secret switches to hit.

Oh crap, that's a mind flayer! Shit, shit shit.

Just like that all my team is paralysed including the one who has the magic to un-paralyse people. I hope they haven't been level drained or something as well.

Weirdly you can still run around when people are paralysed. It doesn't really make any sense, but then neither does opening a door and immediately losing because an enemy froze your whole team. Fortunately I was able to run far enough away to rest without being disturbed and this got everyone unfrozen.

Then I came up with a new tactic to reliably defeat mind flayers: run at them and hit them as fast as possible. It's not as graceful and elegant as the side-step technique, where you just step to the side and then attack while they're walking back into view, but it's faster and feels more like actual gameplay.

FLOOR 5: DWARVEN RUINS AND CAMP

Hey Armun, I'm back to see the cleric again.

Hang on, did he just say I saved their king? Oh damn, he's giving me the Wand of Silvias for it as well!

I must have found that potion that Shindia mentioned without even realising what I had. It's lucky I noticed that the name of it was 'dwarven healing' and thought 'different name, better hang on to it' as else I would've dropped it with all the others in my store room.

In my defence, I've picked up a lot of potions in this game and I completely forgot that I was supposed to be finding a cure for the king. The game doesn't have a quest journal, though I suppose there's nothing stopping me from writing my own:

1. Resurrect some more bones.
2. Kill Xanathar with the Wand of Silvias.
3. Escape somehow.
4. Watch ending cutscene. 

 

I found some mage bones in the lower floors so this time I've resurrected a character who'll actually be useful in the back row!

Turns out that Kirath has the same taste in fashion as Tyraa, which makes sense I suppose. Putting all the characters in resurrection robes means less art to draw.

The game asked me which of my six characters I wanted to drop, so I kicked the prince out, seeing as these dwarves are his people and we've completed his quest by saving his dad. He left without a single word and all the stuff I'd given him appeared in a pile on the floor.

Oh no, Kirath's spell book is empty! Damn, now I need to go find all those scrolls and teach him everything from scratch and... oh wait, I'm an idiot. He knows a bunch of spells already, he just hasn't memorised any of them yet. I should go to my scroll pile anyway and see if there's anything he doesn't have.

And it would be cool if Tahani could level up enough to use her 5th level mage spells. I gave her 'cone of cold' ages ago and she still can't use it.

Alright I picked up another portal key on my last expedition, so I'm going to see where it takes me.

FLOOR 12 - XANATHAR'S INNER SANCTUM

Oh, wow, this is fancy. This is what the ancient dwarf city looks like?

First thing I did here was touch the wrong switch and it blew up Tahani, so the wallpaper's gotten a little scorched. It's fine, being able to save anywhere means that it's only a minor inconvenience that your team can just die by trying buttons.

I had another opportunity here to solve a puzzle and sacrifice some of my items by placing them onto pedestals to make a thing happen, so I finally got rid of my potion of strength! I'm sure something important or interesting happened because of it, but it wasn't anything obvious so I'm moving on.

Man, I get very nervous when I see treasure stacked up like this. It's suspicious enough when it's just one potion on display, but multiple items is a real red flag. What's the catch? Are the items getting pulled out of my own inventory when I take them? Or is it just a 'lost and found' pedestal for all the important items I've left behind? Knowing this game I'm thinking it's probably something bad, so I'm leaving it.

I am flicking all the switches I find though, because they teleport me to the next area. Or they shoot fireballs at me, it's a lottery.

Oh damn, I've found the eponymous beholder from Eye of the Beholder! Hang on, didn't I meet this guy in Doom? I've definitely fought them in Baldur's Gate and that was a mess. They shoot various kinds of magic out of their many eyes, so unless you're immune to all of the spells, you don't want one looking at you.

It's really not clear what I'm meant to do here except immediately lose half my team to his attacks. The amazing Wand of Silvias seems kind of ineffective, like it does nothing at all. But then it didn't come with instructions so I'm probably just using it wrong.

Xanathar didn't have to try too hard to wipe my team out, especially when I accidentally backed everyone up into a spike pit. At least now I know what happens when your party dies: the game quits straight to DOS like Pool of Radiance!

Anyway, I switched to plan B and just hit him.

And that's the game done after 10 hours. Turns out I didn't even need the Wand of Silvias, as hitting him was all it took.

I don't think I'm over-levelled, I only just unlocked the final spell level for my mage. In fact, this guy is the first and only creature I've shot with 'cone of cold'. I don't think it did much though, except freeze the game for a moment while the sparkles did their show.

This is all you get for the ending by the way: a bit of text and then you're kicked out to DOS. Personally I'm not bothered as I have no preconceptions about how a DOS RPG should end, I never finish the things, but I do know that reviewers weren't impressed.

Funny thing is, Westwood did make a proper ending for it, but it would've taken another disk and that was considered an unreasonable cost when so few people would ever finish it. At least Amiga, Sega CD, PC-98 and SNES owners all got to see it, so it's only PC players like me who were left out!


CONCLUSION

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Damn, that's the third Dungeons & Dragons game I've finished so far, after Cloudy Mountain and Heroes of the Lance. Which is three more games than I expected to beat.

I'm surprised whenever I finish any game, but I'm doubly surprised that I managed to beat Eye of the Beholder! Not because it's known for its difficulty, in fact I've seen people accuse it of being one of the easier games in its genre, I've just had this game for years and never gotten anywhere in it. 

Part of the reason the game is criticised for its lack of challenge is because when you meet an enemy group you can just step to the side, turn to face where you'd been standing, then hit them when they move into view. I rarely bothered with this dance though, because a: I couldn't be bothered to lure enemies out of the narrow hallways, and b: I wanted to feel like I was playing the game properly. Honestly it was still kind of easy (outside of some difficulty spikes) and I never had to use a single one of those health potions or cleric scrolls I'd been collecting. I just had to make sure I didn't get hit by the enemies that poison you, paralyse you, or permanently destroy all your best gear. You can save any time, and if you can get enough distance from enemies you can rest any time as well.

When I was a kid I assumed I was missing something about the combat, that I didn't get it, but the truth is it just kind of sucks. They give you a keyboard shortcut for everything except attacks, so it seems like the challenge comes from frantically trying to bullseye the tiny weapon icons with the mouse cursor whenever their cooldown ends. It's a game about keeping plates spinning, and you're the one who has to pick up all the mess once everything's fallen. Having to recover every arrow individually after every fight can put anyone off being a sneaky archer. Oh also there's apparently a bug in the game that makes arrows do 1 damage, so there's that too.

But even though combat is a main ingredient, this is really a game about finding keys, solving teleporter puzzles, spotting fake walls, hitting hidden switches, and just generally navigating a massive labyrinth. I played Secret of the Silver Blades a while back and that's also got a giant dungeon with a portal hub, but it's practically empty, with nothing to look forward to but random encounters, while this is filled with things to find and figure out. Plus it gave me some proper anxiety over using keys. It probably would've been less stressful if I had brought a thief; I certainly didn't need to bring my own dwarf fighters.

I'm not sure how much the classes really matter to be honest, as the game's apparently less than 100% faithful to AD&D rules. Boots and pendants definitely seem entirely pointless. Running it through ScummVM apparently brings it closer to the rules (like making arrows do proper damage), but then you miss out on using All-Seeing Eye.

I always recommend playing the Gold Box games in DOSBox so you can use the companion tool's automap, and I'm going to say the same thing about this. It's a fast and mischievous game that likes to teleport you around without giving you coordinates, so having a proper automap to fill in is a game changer. It also shows you what changes when you flip switches and step on pressure plates, which is really bloody helpful when the game is being tricky. Though DOS players do miss out on having an ending, and you get sewer ambience instead of music.

The Amiga version is actually a good alternative, though not the original port. Fans have created an AGA modification which has all the port's strengths (great sound effects, mouse and keyboard controls, an ending), and none of its weaknesses (low colour visuals, lack of a map). I haven't tried it myself, but it looks identical to the PC game's VGA graphics to me.

Then there's the Sega Mega CD game, with improved animation, a (limited) map, (bad) voice acting, and a CD soundtrack by Yuzo Koshiro and Motohiro Kawashima that sounds like it was written for a cyberpunk RPG. You can play this with gamepad and mouse, but it's less comfortable than using a keyboard.

The PC-98 version is basically the PC game with worse colours, though it has its own soundtrack, this time by Yuzo Koshiro and Yuji Yamada. If you want names to be in a higher resolution and all the text to be in Japanese, this is the one to go for.

And then there's the Super Nintendo version, which has the worst controls, miserable music, low resolution visuals... it's not a horrible port, it even has mouse support, but it's just not very good by comparison.

There is one other version though... I mean aside from the unreleased Lynx port, and the Game Boy Advance remake.

Commodore 64

I'm talking about the homemade C64 version that was created by Andreas (JackAsser) Larsson and friends in late 2022!

Look at these bloody graphics, it's incredible what they've been able to pull off on the old 8-bit system, in 64 KB of RAM. I only played it for a few floors but it seems like everything's in there, working as intended. Even the mouse control and the inventory. Even the intro sequence.

But the really good part is this:

Commodore 64

It has a proper readable automap similar to the Amiga AGA port that comes up when you tap 'M', complete with icons for pressure plates, trick walls, doors, stairs, and switches. And it's a dual monitor game, so you can stick this onto the side of your main screen, just like using All-Seeing Eye with DOSBox. Honestly, this is not the worst way to play this game!

Anyway, Eye of the Beholder feels like it belongs to a different era to the Gold Box and Silver Box games... even if it actually works fine on a C64 and it's heavily inspired by a game that predates them all. I can't really say it's a revolutionary game and a crucial stepping stone on the way to Ultima Underworld and Elder Scrolls when its biggest innovation over Dungeon Master is more colourful bricks. On a technical level it's still all right angles, flat floors and grid-based movement, just like the Gold Box RPGs. But it's intuitive enough and frictionless enough that you can skip being frustrated with the interface and get into being frustrated by the levels and combat instead. And honestly, I think I'd have to rank this as my favourite Dungeons & Dragons game so far. (Sorry Champions of Krynn.)

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Coming up soon on Super Adventures, a whole bunch of Gold Box games! In a row! Unless I decide to play something else to break them up a bit. Check out the clue image on the left, let us know what you think I decided to play.

Also, if you've got your own opinions on Eye of the Beholder, you're welcome (and encouraged) to share them in the box below. It's your last chance, as I won't be writing about this for a third time.