Eschalon: Book III - Preview @ 3rd Strike

Myrthos

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The people at 3rd Strike have taken a look at Eschalon: Book III and thought it had old school fun, plenty of exploration and enormous depth.

It’s perhaps that depth I described above that made Eschalon the gem people like me came to love. Everything starts during character creation. Gender, race, religion and profession decide what traits you start out with, while you’re free to choose between all of the game’s skills. You’re free to do as you want at this point and while creating a mage-warrior hybrid has always increased the difficulty of Eschalon somewhat, it’s still a perfectly viable choice.

That same ability to choose your own style is present in the entire game. Pretty much the entire world is made available from the start, so wandering into a dungeon or area ages before it could be considered safe, is something that’s bound to happen to anyone who’s keen on exploring.

It’s all very much risk vs. reward and nothing gives the same satisfaction as disposing of a powerful enemy early on, or discovering a carefully tucked away secret. The world is littered with quests, loot and dungeons so there’s always something to discover.
More information.
 
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By serving character creation Eschalon has infinite advantage over Spiderwebs decision of retracting this superb feature in Avadon 2. Boo!

I liked the verbose event log window - whats happening, who hit who - and that you can break down doors with tenacity. Breaking weapons were among the best decisions of Basilisk Games! I hope weapons will wear down in EB3!
 
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By serving character creation Eschalon has infinite advantage over Spiderwebs decision of retracting this superb feature in Avadon 2. Boo!

I liked the verbose event log window - whats happening, who hit who - and that you can break down doors with tenacity.

^this. Eschalon II, between the character creation (custom portraits!) and how the log window really fed your imagination, was such a lovely little rpg. I am excited to see what the third one will bring...
 
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BI liked the verbose event log window - whats happening, who hit who...

I agree. An event window in RPGs should be standard for the most part, unless having such really doesn't fit a particular kind of RPG experience.

Over the last 5 years I've played a number of RPGs where things are said or information is briefly displayed but I miss it because of the action on the screen. This might be because I'm getting older but an event window would really help out old farts like me.

I'm playing Dragon's Dogma right now and really appreciate the pawn history UI screen because the pawns often chatter in the heat of battle sometimes giving important clues that I'd otherwise miss out on.
 
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By serving character creation Eschalon has infinite advantage over Spiderwebs decision of retracting this superb feature in Avadon 2. Boo!

Well, in all fairness, the ability to have a party in Avadon more than slightly compensates for this. ;)

A minor annoyance I had with Book II was the way identification of items worked; hopefully that has been tweaked a little. It became a little frustrating for my fighter to find all of these unidentified healing potions yet be unable to afford to identify them in order to use them. ;) Perhaps learning by "doing" or experimenting (consuming) can work here.

Looking forward to picking this one up - I find the Eschalon games to be a nice casual experience to dip in and out of on weekends or when you can only fit in a short period of gaming.
 
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