Yet another Pool of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Drannor let's play

Summary

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Prologue: technical difficulties

After finishing Divinity: Original Sin 2, I found myself craving for a D&D isometric videogame. I don't feel like playing through the Baldur's Gate series once again and I recently replayed both Icewind Dale games, so what can I do? Neverwinter Nights is out of the question (I tried it a couple of months ago and I couldn't even finish the tutorial) and I want to finish that before giving Neverwinter Nights 2 a go (I don't know why, it's bigger than me). I can't play The Temple of Elemental Evil because I still remember every single encounter from my last playthrough, I need something new and fresh. This means that there's only one possible answer:

Pool of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Drannor.

I know exactly two things about the game:
- it's a wonky adaptation of D&D 3.x;
- it can delete your entire hard drive.

So I hop on the Codex asking for help and my fellow Codexers don't betray my trust (or at least I hope), telling me everything I need to know before starting the game.

I get the game and download everything I need:
- the 1.1, 1.2, 1.3 and 1.4 patches: https://sorcerers.net/Games/PoR2/index_misc.php
- the speed control utility (that should allow me to increase combat speed): https://sorcerers.net/Games/PoR2/index_editors.php

and I begin the installation process. After a nostalgia-inducing mid-installation CD swap, I get greeted by an old friend:

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After the installation, I fire up patch 1.1 (patches have to be installed separately), but... uh-oh, you can't just launch the patch after having already installed the base game: you need to launch the installer, close it, launch the patch executable and then install the game through it. Fortunately, the patch 1.1 executable allows you to safely uninstall the game without erasing your entire hard drive: I use it to uninstall the game and... uh-oh, now the original installer can't start because it still sees some dirty files and only allows me to begin the uninstallation process. To be able to play the game, now I need to go through the original unpatched uninstall, but that could irreversibly erase everything I have on my pc... well, fuck it, my life is worthless anyway.

I click on the "uninstall" button and... everything is fine. Now I can launch the original installer, close it, launch the patched installer and... it won't work because it searches for the CD only in my physical optical disc drive and I mounted a .iso file with a virtual drive. Well, okay, I guess we are going for a clean unpatched installation.

I reinstall the base game and launch patches 1.2, 1.3 and 1.4. Everyone of them ends with a big warning prompt that reminds me never to uninstall the game through the unpatched uninstaller and to always use the 1.1 uninstaller. Well, too late for that. I extract the speed control utility in the game folder and launch the new executable: I'm finally ready to play.

I sit through half a dozen companies' names and there's an intro video with Elminster in it:

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this feels official, nice.

After a quick look at the settings panel (there's a strange bug: my cursors moves at normal speed everywhere except for the settings menu, where it seems under the effects of cocaine and moves at random speeds), I start a new game and immediately begin creating a new character. I need to pick a race, but... what is this?

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what do you mean by "(humans) get a significant advantage when earning experience as multiclassed characters?" There's one of this tip for each race, but non-humans get an "advantage when earning experience as a multiclassed characters" only with certain classes. This looks like the Favored Class rule, but it surely is a strange way to explain it. I alt-tab out of the game and look for an answer online: it's exactly just the Favored Class rule. Okay, let's go back to the game...

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... oh, now it's an horror game. I guess I can't alt-tab to the desktop, lesson learned.

Let's just skip the character creation part for now (we will go back to it in the future). I just want to point out two things:
- there's no gender selection: you just select your character model and that's it. Pretty progressive for a 2001 videogame
- when you hover over your character model in the inventory screen, he assumes an incredible power pose:

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I finalize my party and start a new game. The loading screen is nice, but it takes forever:

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what is this? Pillars of Eternity? *background laugh track*

The game starts with me beating two orcs without understanding what's going on. Sometimes my characters just skip their turns without explanation. With the orcs' bodies still warm, there's immediately a major plot-changing discovery:

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my characters actually are human-like prisms. They also know how to disappear into the ground:

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and the light they reflect has x-rays properties:

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Cool.

I ask for help on the Codex once again and Sharpedge saves the day. Turns out I have to download this thing:

https://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/microsoft_directx_control_panel.html

I launch it, deselect "hardware acceleration" under "Direct Draw" and restart the game for the third time. My characters no longer are prisms: that's sad, but at least now I can play the game without heavy seizure risks.