Pool of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Drannor Demo

Some of the earliest video games were role-playing games, mostly because it was pretty simple to implement the idea of fantasy worlds and magic mostly through text and simple graphics. However, game developers started to put more and more work into them, only to finally decide to incorporate the Dungeons & Dragons rule set into the mechanics and use simulated dice rolls to decide events.

Pool of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Drannor is combat-oriented role-playing game that’s actually a sequel to a much older game, called simply Pool of Radiance. While the first installment came out in the 80s and was contemporary with the likes of A Bard’s Tale and Might & Magic, Ruins of Myth Drannor features three-dimensional characters and a variety of other massive improvements, albeit the environments themselves are still in two dimensions only.

The isometric perspective is practically a must in the genre, but that doesn’t mean it is not possible to cock it up in some way and make life difficult for the players. The game at hand gets it right, though, while the rest of the mechanics are also quite familiar for the genre. Hence, you start off by creating a party and making sure that you have everything you need before storming off into the first dungeon.

Speaking of which, you will be in combat mode for the greater part of the game, since the story is barely discernible and none of the characters have enough charisma to make an impression on you. However, the combat itself is pretty neat, especially since the game uses the third version of AD&D, which was quite an achievement at the time.

On the other hand, you might have a very difficult time enjoying the experience, given the fact that the title is riddled by bugs, incompatibilities and design flaws that make it almost impossible to go from start to finish without stumbling into a crippling error of some sort. You can mend the problem with patches, but it is quite obvious that the job was not finished and the product is by no means complete.

Beside the fact that it lacks any kind of story and the plot is incredibly boring, Pool of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Drannor is not even enjoyable when it comes to combat, since everything is broken and there are too many bugs to make heads or tails of the situation. You can still have a bit of fun with it in shorts bursts, but the overall effort is definitely not worth the trouble.