Eschalon: Book III Review
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Because the writing in Book III isn't anything special, its campaign also has some problems. All three games in the trilogy deal with special crux stones, and your goal in Book III is to collect as many of them as you can. The problem with this is that you start the game with one stone (from Book II), you find another stone by mistake, and while you're tracking down a third, the game comes to a sudden and unexpected end. As a result, the campaign doesn't really feel like a campaign. It's mostly just there to provide you with road markers so you have a reason to visit various places in the game world. The ending confrontation is also a bit strange and weak. Basilisk tried something different than the typical battle between your character and the big bad guy, but in my view it didn't work at all, and it concluded the trilogy with more of a whimper than a booming fireworks display.
Fortunately, it looks like Basilisk is going to keep working with the title and add (at least) a free dungeon update, just like they did with Book II. Basilisk also plans to release some sort of modding tools, allowing players to add their own dungeons and more to the game, so perhaps the official campaign will just be the tip of the iceberg for what you do with Book III.
Game Engine
Eschalon: Book III is played using a fixed 1024x768 resolution. You can play it in a window (which is what I did), or you can stretch it out to full screen if you want. The world is gridded, and you're given an isometric view of your surroundings as you move your character around. The graphics are 2D, and they aren't anything special, but they effectively show you what you need to see. Every so often you witness something unique and interesting, like a wrecked ship or a skull cave, but there aren't any ooh or ahh moments visually. Basically, Book III looks like what you should expect from a lowish budget indie title.
To control your character, you use a combination of the mouse and keyboard. Left clicking moves your character, interacts with objects, and attacks using your equipped weapon. If you hold the left mouse button down, then your character continuously walks towards the mouse cursor. The right mouse button casts your currently selected spell. You can map spells to the 1-0 keys, and you can place objects (mostly potions) into quick item slots to make them easier to find and use. The spacebar skips your turn, F2 quicksaves your game, and other keys bring up interface windows for your inventory, quest journal, and so forth. If you played Book II and this sounds familiar, it's because it is. If there's any difference between the interface for Books II and III, I didn't notice it while playing the game. But at least it makes Book III easy to pick up and start playing.
Conclusion
Overall, while the Eschalon trilogy didn't win a lot of awards or appear on many top 10 lists, all of its games have been solid, and Book III is no exception. The campaign might take you 25+ hours to complete, and with all of the options for character builds, and with the fundamentally different ways some of those builds play, that means you might spend 50+ enjoyable hours with the game, which is a good deal at its $20 asking price.
That being said, Book III is very similar to Books I and II, so if you didn't enjoy those earlier games then you won't like the new one, either. But since all of the games are similar, that means you could pick up Books I and II (which you can often find for $5 from online retailers) and inexpensively test out if the series is right for you. I enjoyed the time I spent with Eschalon, and I'm quite sad to see it end.
