Eschalon: Book I

love the secrets and challenge

This game is useless garbage. People who were too lazy released this piece of junk as a retro game. It's not a retro-style game; I've been playing games for 30 years and this is definitely not one. It's an outdated and flawed piece of junk. It's not entertaining, just annoying. The game is about trying to find the path where you won't get killed. You kill four enemies, then sleep for two days, and the process repeats. It's boring and impossible to have fun with. The four hours I spent playing it were wasted; it's not even worth it for free.

Yah.

Game doesn't work. Tried running in every compatibility mode. For some, it doesn't even pull up the launch window. For others, it pulls up the window but has this horrible crackling sound, and even then pressing the launch button just closes the entire thing. And others, it opens the launch window, no sound problems, but launch button closes everything again. Yeah, I am not wasting any more of my time tracking down a solution for this game.

Eschalon Book 1 is a classic fun game with old school graphics, music, and gameplay. The worldbuilding is detailed and interesting, and fed to you through conversations with vivid characters, fascinating letters and charming books. The non playable characters are believable and interesting, and I enjoyed chatting with them. I liked talking with them just to learn about the game's world and history, and different religious beliefs. Even the cities and towns feel unique, as they each have their own history and culture. Eschalon makes you feel like you entered another world from a bygone era. The gameplay is challenging and creative, and I enjoyed how you can create your own character with their own job, religious beliefs, cultural background, strengths and weaknesses. Watching my own character develop their skills in combat and magic was rewarding too. I liked how you can choose to use hand to hand combat or far range spells to combat opponents. There's plenty of quests and missions, which is a plus. Some of the missions can be cancelled or left incomplete if you do them incorrectly (I think one quest was cancelled when I made my character sell a book. But that's my fault, not the game's). The beautiful, soothing music also adds to Eschalon's charm. Plus the old style graphics don't bother me at all. I find them endearing in a way.

It's a nice little time killer. Not a super deep riveting story, but simple & enjoyable old school experience. Somewhere between Ultima 7 & Diablo I.