Review Elwro's Eschalon 2 Evaluation

[Elwro]

Tags: Basilisk Games; Eschalon: Book II

While travelling through the world of Eschalon: Book II, Elwro learned the hard way that if you love a puppy, you must let it go and not sell its pelt to unscrupulous shopkeepers.

There are a few well done locations (Port Kuudad has its fair share of secrets) and quests. For example, to cut a long story short, a dwarf asks you to steal a puppy from a big wolf. You are told to bring exactly one puppy and leave the rest in the den. You will be tempted to take more than one, because they are valuable and you could certainly use the cash. You are told that something bad will happen if you take more than one puppy... and let me just tell you that it does happen. You have to weigh this consequence against your heavier purse. A real choice, a good quest.
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Read on for his full review.

 

[Andhaira]

Nice review. I intend to buy this puppy when I have the cash.

Btw, you really need to changeyour avatar Elwro, it offends my Muslim sensibilities.

 

[Felix]

Shut the fuck up andhaira.

 

[Zed]

You should cut down a bit on the use of parentheses to create a better flow. Otherwise a great review.

 

[ortucis]

I want to buy it but I am saving up for Dragon Age 2 + DLC's.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

Too many monotonous blocks of text. Needs better formatting.

 

[Elwro]

I wrote it during too many sessions with too much time between them, it seems.

 

[Saxon1974]

Nice writeup Elwro, I like these games quite a bit and I think the dev has only scratched the surface of his abilities....

Already bought the game but have not had time to play through all of it yet.

 

[Jaesun]

I want to buy it but I am saving up for Dragon Age 2 + DLC's.

You should just kill yourself now, it would be a lot easier.

 

[jazzotron]

I want to buy it but I am saving up for Dragon Age 2 + DLC's.

You should just kill yourself now, it would be a lot easier.

NO!!! I wanna see an LP of that shit!

 

[ortucis]

I want to buy it but I am saving up for Dragon Age 2 + DLC's.

You should just kill yourself now, it would be a lot easier.

I want to but I am saving up for Mass Effect 3 + DLC's.

 

[Konjad]

Start saving the world and kill yourself indeed

 

[Darth Roxor]

I lol'd at Piekny Roman

 

[Elwro]

:D I made many more screens, if anyone's interested: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1554329/Eschalon2scrns.zip

 

[denizsi]

One thing you haven't talked about (or maybe did so in your review of the first game) is the interface. How things work, is it intuitive, is it comfortable? I recently tried to play my first Vogel games and the way interface worked (like diarrhoea) immediately put me off. Now I'm only struggling to play Nethergate only because of the setting and I find the MQ interesting so far.

 

[visions]

Didn't see anything wrong with the interface in the first Eschalon, definitely not as clumsy as in Nethergate (either version), doubt that they've made the interface in the sequel any worse.

 

[Elwro]

One thing you haven't talked about (or maybe did so in your review of the first game) is the interface. How things work, is it intuitive, is it comfortable? I recently tried to play my first Vogel games and the way interface worked (like diarrhoea) immediately put me off. Now I'm only struggling to play Nethergate only because of the setting and I find the MQ interesting so far.

I don't have time to respond in greater detail, but I'm pretty sure I covered the interface in the review of the first part. Short story: it doesn't kill the game. The first thing you'll notice is the unwieldy walking system. Instead of "point&click&walk-to-destination" it's either "press w and then move your mouse, the character will continuously walk and turn after the cursor" or "press LMB for the character to walk one square in the given direction". If you click on a chest 2 squares away, your character won't walk towards it and open it. I've no idea why they did it this way, but one can live with that. Other elements of the interface are pretty slick; you can also bind various spells with various levels to keys. I'd like to have more slots for defined outfits and iirc the alchemy interface is a bit clunky regarding scrolling, but overall the UI is OK.

 

[torpid]

Aside from using lighting and some destructible environments, the game seems inferior to Spiderweb games in every way, for roughly the same cost: single-character game, bland combat and empty-feeling world. I'll demo it anyway since I'm in dire need of isometric novelties t_t Let's see how it goes.