Pool of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Drannor (2001)
The sequel to the Gold Box game "Pool of Radiance". This is a classic D&D dungeon crawling RPG, and was the first major release to use 3rd edition D&D rules.
First released
Sep 24, 2001
Franchises
Dungeons & Dragons, Forgotten Realms
Developed by
Stormfront Studios
Published by
Ubisoft Entertainment
Platforms
Mac, PC
Genres
Action, Role-Playing
Themes
Fantasy
Rating
ESRB: M
Releases
- PC - Pool of Radiance:Ruins of myth Drannor (Collectors Edition) United States
- PC - Pool of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Drannor United States
Community reviews
What a bad game!
I'm sorry to start off with a title like this but really, that game was tough to finish. And I am not talking tough in terms of challenges from the rules. I am talking bugs, repetitiveness, bugs and bugs again, bad design, BORING!
Where do I even begin... it is as if the creators wanted to get Baldur's Gate and Diablo 2 together and they failed miserably at both.
And I am talking about bugs... I finished the game yesterday and in one of the final fights, your ally will teleport you elsewhere. The game conveniently makes and Autosave just before teleporting you. Before this teleportation, you had to kill multiple enemies. So here's how it happened for me: I killed all the enemies. Spoke to my ally, he says bravo... blah, blah, blah and just then, I get the experience for killing all the monsters and maybe finishing the quest. This prompts me right away to level up my character. I make choices and then I am finally teleported. To be safe, I save the game here. Ok, sounds bug-free, doesn't it. So I am not sure about the choices that I made when leveling up. So I reload the autosave. Well, this autosave is before teleportation, and there are no enemies left and just this ally. But I can't talk to him anymore... I try clicking on him, going around... nothing to do! I am stuck at a dead end. It's as if his conversation and subsequent teleportation only triggers after you kill the enemies. Finally, I just loaded my savegame after the teleportation. But see how the game makes an autosave that is completely unsuable?
I don't even want to mention Stone Mouth... there's a major bug in my game about this. Luckily it is documented online. Suffice it to say that you can spend 50+ hours going through the game before reaching a point where the game just crashes to desktop as you try to advance in the story. The only way around this bug, as documented online, is to empty the inventory of one of you characters, then use a hex-editor to add the missing stone mouth and then add back all your belongings. Finally, circumvent that place where it bugs all the time and go by another place...
Some of my characters sometimes got stuck in the background. I tried to save and reload, same thing. I can't progress because my character is stuck... HELP!!! The rest of the group can't progress because everybody needs to follow all the time in this game. Even quitting the game and reloading changed nothing. FInally, I had to reload an older save game. And this is mighty boring in a game that is boring from the start.
And I mean this is a D&D 3rd Edition game. Part of the fun is making choices when you level up. But they took that away... Can you imagine!?! You can't pick skills, feats when you level up. Only select your class and attribute point if you get one and your spells. It's not half bad but really sucks. Selecting skills and feats is really important to me. Also the game forces you to level up when you have enough experience. That can happen at a time when you need to leave your computer. You can't save while leveling up. Why not do it as all other games? Indicate that you character has enough experience and let the player click a button to actually level up?
The game lets you get up to level 18 or 19 but limits the maximum level per class to 16. So, if you have mages and sorcerers and wanted those level 9 spells well tough luck. You're stuck at level 16 with those and can never cast level 9 spells.
I think the worst is how long the combat is. When you face say 12 orcs in a battle, you need to wait for all of them to act in real time and they walk slow. Zombies are even worst. The game is so repetitive it hurts.
So anyway, there are few good sides but overall that's not worth more than 1.5 stars!
Where do I even begin... it is as if the creators wanted to get Baldur's Gate and Diablo 2 together and they failed miserably at both.
And I am talking about bugs... I finished the game yesterday and in one of the final fights, your ally will teleport you elsewhere. The game conveniently makes and Autosave just before teleporting you. Before this teleportation, you had to kill multiple enemies. So here's how it happened for me: I killed all the enemies. Spoke to my ally, he says bravo... blah, blah, blah and just then, I get the experience for killing all the monsters and maybe finishing the quest. This prompts me right away to level up my character. I make choices and then I am finally teleported. To be safe, I save the game here. Ok, sounds bug-free, doesn't it. So I am not sure about the choices that I made when leveling up. So I reload the autosave. Well, this autosave is before teleportation, and there are no enemies left and just this ally. But I can't talk to him anymore... I try clicking on him, going around... nothing to do! I am stuck at a dead end. It's as if his conversation and subsequent teleportation only triggers after you kill the enemies. Finally, I just loaded my savegame after the teleportation. But see how the game makes an autosave that is completely unsuable?
I don't even want to mention Stone Mouth... there's a major bug in my game about this. Luckily it is documented online. Suffice it to say that you can spend 50+ hours going through the game before reaching a point where the game just crashes to desktop as you try to advance in the story. The only way around this bug, as documented online, is to empty the inventory of one of you characters, then use a hex-editor to add the missing stone mouth and then add back all your belongings. Finally, circumvent that place where it bugs all the time and go by another place...
Some of my characters sometimes got stuck in the background. I tried to save and reload, same thing. I can't progress because my character is stuck... HELP!!! The rest of the group can't progress because everybody needs to follow all the time in this game. Even quitting the game and reloading changed nothing. FInally, I had to reload an older save game. And this is mighty boring in a game that is boring from the start.
And I mean this is a D&D 3rd Edition game. Part of the fun is making choices when you level up. But they took that away... Can you imagine!?! You can't pick skills, feats when you level up. Only select your class and attribute point if you get one and your spells. It's not half bad but really sucks. Selecting skills and feats is really important to me. Also the game forces you to level up when you have enough experience. That can happen at a time when you need to leave your computer. You can't save while leveling up. Why not do it as all other games? Indicate that you character has enough experience and let the player click a button to actually level up?
The game lets you get up to level 18 or 19 but limits the maximum level per class to 16. So, if you have mages and sorcerers and wanted those level 9 spells well tough luck. You're stuck at level 16 with those and can never cast level 9 spells.
I think the worst is how long the combat is. When you face say 12 orcs in a battle, you need to wait for all of them to act in real time and they walk slow. Zombies are even worst. The game is so repetitive it hurts.
So anyway, there are few good sides but overall that's not worth more than 1.5 stars!