WizarDru
Adventurer
Well, I've had a few days to play and consider the first 3E game on the gameboy advance.
My review is simple: It's not NWN. But it's really good. EotB is the very essence of old-school.
To qualify that: the graphics are, of course, quite limited. No true-3D here, folks, this is pure old-school Bard's Tale/Wizardry mazes for dungeon crawling. And it works. Sound is farily limited, but used for effect. The gameplay, however, is very solid.
EotB is, quite literally, the single best implementation of tactical D&D available to date. The game has two main modes: exploration and combat. Exploration is wandering the maze, and you get to use several different skills: Climb, Strength checks and Search among them. There are vendors hidden about (you're under Waterdeep) and you can get healed, raised and equipped there. Characters prepare spells as per the book, have skills and feats as per 3E (and have more skills implemented than NWN, ironically enough). High appraise skills, for example, automatically get you cheaper equipment at vendors. High bluff or intimidates may get you a better chance to talk with an NPC.
Where the game truly shines is in the combat mode. Once you actually enter combat with an enemy group, it switches to a 3/4 overhead view, with miniatures (and that's what the game calls them). The perspective makes movement a little goofy, and you're not allowed as much mobility as we normally use at the tabletop, but it's all sound stuff. My first time out, I got a TPK when testing the game, because I forgot to be careful for AoOs, and my fighter got cut up bad.
Flanking, sneak attacks, AoOs and the like are all here. Use a missle weapon in melee, pay the price. Damage models D&D, with players going down but needing stabilizing or they will die. I cast a sleep spell on a group of kobolds, and accidentally got my front-line fighters in the spell, who failed their saves (you can see saves being made as a green + appears for success on each target, or a red 'no' symbol appears for failure). The two awake kobolds coup de graced my fighters, and then my mages and rogue killed them, and proceeded to CDG the remaining kobolds. Very nice. Turning undead works about as you'd expect, as well.
You only get four classes, fighter, cleric, rogue and wizard...and multiclassing is available, though I haven't tried it yet. I'll have to double-check, but I think the game only goes to 10th level...but that's OK, too.
So far, it's been a blast.
At least, when I can pry it out of my wife's hands, anyways.
My review is simple: It's not NWN. But it's really good. EotB is the very essence of old-school.
To qualify that: the graphics are, of course, quite limited. No true-3D here, folks, this is pure old-school Bard's Tale/Wizardry mazes for dungeon crawling. And it works. Sound is farily limited, but used for effect. The gameplay, however, is very solid.
EotB is, quite literally, the single best implementation of tactical D&D available to date. The game has two main modes: exploration and combat. Exploration is wandering the maze, and you get to use several different skills: Climb, Strength checks and Search among them. There are vendors hidden about (you're under Waterdeep) and you can get healed, raised and equipped there. Characters prepare spells as per the book, have skills and feats as per 3E (and have more skills implemented than NWN, ironically enough). High appraise skills, for example, automatically get you cheaper equipment at vendors. High bluff or intimidates may get you a better chance to talk with an NPC.
Where the game truly shines is in the combat mode. Once you actually enter combat with an enemy group, it switches to a 3/4 overhead view, with miniatures (and that's what the game calls them). The perspective makes movement a little goofy, and you're not allowed as much mobility as we normally use at the tabletop, but it's all sound stuff. My first time out, I got a TPK when testing the game, because I forgot to be careful for AoOs, and my fighter got cut up bad.
Flanking, sneak attacks, AoOs and the like are all here. Use a missle weapon in melee, pay the price. Damage models D&D, with players going down but needing stabilizing or they will die. I cast a sleep spell on a group of kobolds, and accidentally got my front-line fighters in the spell, who failed their saves (you can see saves being made as a green + appears for success on each target, or a red 'no' symbol appears for failure). The two awake kobolds coup de graced my fighters, and then my mages and rogue killed them, and proceeded to CDG the remaining kobolds. Very nice. Turning undead works about as you'd expect, as well.
You only get four classes, fighter, cleric, rogue and wizard...and multiclassing is available, though I haven't tried it yet. I'll have to double-check, but I think the game only goes to 10th level...but that's OK, too.
So far, it's been a blast.
At least, when I can pry it out of my wife's hands, anyways.
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