Eschalon: Book II Review
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EngineFor the most part, Book II looks and plays a lot like Book I. The game is still turn-based, but since enemy and neutral creatures act so quickly, it doesn't feel turn-based. That is, you don't take a step and then wait, take a step and then wait, and so forth. If you just hold the left mouse button down, then your character moves towards the mouse pointer, and Book II seems like a real-time game. About the only time Book II is obviously turn-based is in combat, but this is a good thing. You don't have to worry about clicking like crazy, or somehow target a moving enemy. You can take your time (or not) and attack how you want, and if the phone rings, you don't have to worry about a creature wandering over and eating you while you're otherwise occupied.
One of the complaints about Book I was that combat was too simple. For melee and ranged characters, you pretty much just clicked on an enemy until it was dead, and only magic characters got some variety since they could choose their spells. In Book II, Basilisk Games tried to make combat more interesting, but I don't think the changes had much of an effect. The first change is that you can now choose a combat mode, including normal, power (more damage but less accuracy), finesse (more accuracy but less damage), and parry (which gives a bonus to armor but prevents you from attacking). These modes have their place -- for example, you might switch to parry mode when charging at a ranged enemy -- but I pretty much just stayed with the normal mode.
Then there are weapon feats. Once you advance a weapon skill to rank 10, a special attack becomes available. For Swords, this attack always hits, and it allows you to parry all attacks during the following turn. For Bows, the attack deals 3X damage. When you first get a weapon feat, it takes about 30 turns for it to recharge, but if you keep adding points to the weapon skill, then you can reduce this cooldown to every 4-5 turns. Weapon feats give you something extra to do in combat, which is good, but some of them are too powerful, which is bad. When I played a Bows character, I attacked with the feat, and in the rare cases when that didn't kill my enemy outright, I just retreated for a few turns until I could use the feat again. My Bows character cruised through the game while my Swords character struggled a little, and my Magick User came in somewhere in the between the two.
Finally, Basilisk Games also made some positive changes in the game interface. For starters, Book II uses a 1024x768 resolution rather than the 800x600 resolution of Book I, and this gives more space for everything. The text is bigger and easier to read, the playing window is larger and shows you more of your surroundings, the effects window actually shows you what the effects are (rather than just saying you have Troll Fever and letting you guess what might be wrong), and there are ten quick item slots instead of just eight. These changes are all presented very well, and they make the game more convenient to play. It's always nice when a developer takes the time to create a good interface.
Sound and Graphics
Book II is a budget title, so it's not going to win any awards for sound or graphics. Starting with the sound, there isn't any voice acting at all, and the music and sound effects get the job done without being memorable in a good or bad way. That is, I didn't walk around humming the theme music for the game, but I didn't turn off the sound either.
For the graphics, Book II uses a relatively straightforward 2D engine, where it's clear what everything is, but which isn't going to garner any oohs or ahhs for visual effects. The maps use something like a 200x200 grid, which gives plenty of space for the locations, and since the maps are painstakingly constructed, you never walk around and recognize terrain features or caves that you've seen before. Everything is unique. Book II also has improved lighting effects. You can see this when you walk around and notice colored lanterns, which give some locations an added ambiance, and spells like Cat's Eyes and Gravedigger's Flame are presented more effectively -- and brighten up the dungeons, making them easier to explore.
Conclusion
Eschalon: Book II is definitely a "more" sequel. It has a bigger world, it has more creatures for you to kill, and it has more equipment for you to find. The problem is that while "more" is usually a good thing, it can't be the only thing. For example, while Basilisk Games made the world about 50% bigger, they didn't fill it up with interesting things to see and do. The world is often just a place to grind through enemies, which is fine for an action RPG, but that's not what Book II is.
Still, Book II has some things going for it. You're given lots of ways to build up your character, and the campaign plays differently depending on the weapon that you choose, which means the campaign has good replayability. The dungeons in the game world are also well designed, especially the free Fathamurk add-on, and the game is much tougher to play, especially if you want to accumulate a high score (my best score was 393,166 for those of you playing along at home).
I played through Book II three times, once each with a Swords character, a Bows character, and a Magick User. The game takes about 30 hours to complete, and I generally enjoyed the 90 or so hours I spent with it. Add to that the fact that you can buy Book II (and Book I) for under $10 each, and it gets an easy recommendation from me. Book II isn't perfect; story-wise it's on the simple side, and combat still isn't especially complex, but the campaign is reasonably fun, and the game should work well for anybody out there who likes it when RPGs have numbers, and where you don't just run around killing everything in sight.
