Dungeons & Dragons: Ravenloft Series

Old but gold!

At the time that I am reviewing this I have completed Strahd's Possession and am making inroads into The Stone Prophet. I can't stress how good these games are for quite different reasons. Strahd's Possession is a very tight CRPG experience, that makes good use of the AD&D2e game mechanics and Ravenloft setting to try to find something that veered away from being a pure dungeon crawler and into a more balanced experience. Its major downside now is how vanilla it feels compared to a lot of what followed. (From memory of playing this in the '90s) Stone Prophet takes this even a step further, but introducing more varied game mechanics, wild character builds as potential party members, and dialing up a lot of the character interactions to include more puzzle solving. Its major downside is that it leans into some of the worst aspects of dungeon crawling a little too much. Hidden switches and smashing vases has never become so boring. From memory, a lot of the dungeons use palette swapped tile sets and lack a lot of the environmental dressing that was in the previous game so they all start to feel a little samey. It's a still a great game and well worth playing.

Ambos juegos son unos clasicos que intentaban aunar el engine al estilo eye of the beholder con una perspectiva mas semajante a la del Doom. A pesar de que a veces se haga cuesta arriba, las historias son estimables. - Strahd possesion es el mas iconico de los dos, ya que adapta la aventura clasica de Ravenloft al formato digital. Aunque siendo el primer juego de ese engine se notan bastantes costuras. - Stone Prophet tiene cosas mejores pero tambien se hace mas tosco ya que hicieron un sistema de pseudoturnos que te daba mas tiempo pero hace el combate mucho mas lento. Ambos juegos son muy poco jugables sin una guia, afortunadamente ambos la incluyen en el paquete.

Thanks for recent QoL updates. Wouldn't mind more. :)

Interesting story and visuals givin the release date. UI is a bit cluttered and clunky at times. But altogether one of the better handled games of the series. This is the 1st game in the 2 part series.

Neutral review You enter maze dungeons that are like riddles where you have to press something here to open something there, go to another level to find a key to the previous level, avoid traps and kill guardians, fall into pits sometimes, complete dungeons and loot the place. And put notes to the automap to remember what's going on. 41 hours for Strahd's Possession using the clue book. How did I finish this game in the late 90s? A series of hidden buttons in the dungeon under the church, levers located away from doors. At least designers included an automap in these games and opened doors appear. Clues in the graveyard that are so vague that you have to swip the area and try everything to understand what the clue is. Buttons in castle Ravenloft in areas where you are attacked by booby traps and try to pass hastily. Keys in areas behind illusionary walls, when a multiclass character can never reach a level to cast true seeing. Golems that kill your whole party in 2 seconds. Swiches in the catacombs that are so hardly visible a character has to pass a detect ability check to say what to do. Lots of buttons and illusionary walls that you can miss even if you swept a dungeon 2 or 3 times. A Daedalos maze design for every dungeon. Why did this happen in all d&d? Daedalos maze for everything. Although people who buy this already know what is happening and what to expect. For those like me who haven't played Ravenloft for years, beware of the monsters that drain levels. Vampires, wights, even in the last battle Strahd drained some levels. And then I accidentaly saved after the battle instead of hitting the load button which is near. I found out about the missing levels when I imported the characters in Stone prophet. I replayed 4 extra hours, some when I realized this was happening with the monsters in the graveyard. You are allowed only 10 saves slots. If you have a 4 pcs party then the battle XPs split in 4, it is not the total monster's XP for everyone. I knew this in the past but forgot it now and checked it in Stone Prophet. A 2 pc party killing a Troll got 1155 each and a 3 member party 770. Or 4950XP for a Grave Golem, 2475 for 2 player characters while for a 3 member party 1650. Otherwise a multiclass pc won't reach 6th level spells. I finished with 4 pcs with no level drained, I recruited others as soon as they appeared. A pc Paladin 9 level, a npc fighter 9 level , a pc Cleric/mage 8/9 level and a npc mage 10 level. For illusionary walls a 9 level priest can cast true seeing. Or if you scibe the mage scroll you need a 11 level mage. Or you just keep the scroll you found, cast it when you are stuck and it vanishes. Hit points when you level up are dice rolls and you might want to reload the game or remake the starting characters. The music was good only when I entered the fogs and faced the Treants, the sound has random screams and growls playing when you are out, I had them turned off most of the time because it is annoying. It took me 39 hours to finish Stone Prophet reading the clue book many times because I couldn't find a solution. And I have finished this one too in the past. To import you have to use the down arrow and the dat file appears. The characters won't import chests, key rings, sacks, cases, and some items like the +3 rod of smiting. I played only with the 2 imported characters and finished with a 19 level Paladin and a 16/15 level Cleric/Mage. There is a helmet of true seeing in this game and at 5th spell level the Mage at some point finds a teleport scroll, so after searching a dungeon you just teleport and rest. In Stone Prophet you find rune stones for every location, which you take to your inventory, and can teleport you any time at the starting point of a place. You can teleport with the 5th level spell anywhere inside a map or with a rune to a different map. So you can unburden your inventory lets say in the village of Muhar and if you want something later you just teleport there and get it. The GoG version is the same besides that in Steam the 2 games are installed together while in GoG every game is separate. And in Steam you can take snapshots choosing opengl in the graphics settings, I learned this reading another player's review. If you want some comments about Ravenloft as far as I understand (I had most of the products) it started as an adventure like the dracula cult movies. Then other things got in the mix. Strahd was not only able to shapeshift but change the whole land like the myth of the king Arthur when he was sick. Elrod who wrote the diary of Strahd gave him a sin like Cain's, he made a pact with mysterious voices to kill his own brother. Elrod as she writes in the book likes vampire stories and gangster stories. And I think that the original adventure turned into something more dark as people were designing a Gothic campaign setting to include all the cult horror movies. Strahd became the lord who shifted the land to exist in the negative material plane. In the new 5e Ravenloft book there are categories of horror. I don't like many of them, generally I am not a fan of horror movies. I like good weird tales. And I still remember something I read in the internet in the late 90's. A guy that was like the biggest fan of Ravenloft sended a letter I don't remember where, lets say TSR, to tell them about incontinuites and mistakes in the chronology and the events that took place. According to that site the reply he got was in a few words get a life.

A trip down memory lane! Controls will be clunky to new players, but it's exactly the same game I played as a teenager... I forgot how brutal and unforgiving it is. The Barovia theme still gets me, that music still slaps in all it's limited midi glory.

Did this game just stop working for everyone else?

Como Fan de Ravenloft debo decir que este juego es una maravilla, la ambientacion te lleva a esos años de AD&D claro esta el juego es de esa época pero en estos tiempos te da el sentimiento de nostalgia. La jugabilidad (movimiento de personajes) deja mucho que desear si lo comparamos a baldur gate , pero para la epoca que fue publicado el estilo lo hace mas inmersivo y tiene la esencia real de Ravenloft , no en lo que lo han convertido en la actualidad. En su tiempo no lo pude jugar pero ahora me doy el gusto XD

Great