Eschalon: Book I / Why should i play it ? WHY ?

Did you account the dollar decline into it? The game cost me EUR 19.67 which is exactly what shareware games have cost me before i.e vga planets was 20$ way back when dollar value was 1€ = 1$.
Too true... When we were doing our calculations, the dollar was certainly a bit stronger than it is now... :)
Anyway, didn't mean to hijack this thread and would still like to hear recommendations from folks who have played into the game a bit. I could use something besides "The Witcher" (which I am loving a great deal right now) to devote some time to this weekend. Eschalon might be just the ticket.
 
I know I've been foaming at the mouth a bit on this one, but, by Jove, E:B1 just rocks your sox off, imo of course. 15+ hours in and still having a blast and finding new tricks and treats. Easily the best gaming money I've spent in a long, long while. Being somewhat jaded when it comes to cRPG story and immersion, I'm really surprised at how drawn into this world I am. A testament to the craftsmanship and dedication this Thom fellow possesses.

Try the demo. It gave me plenty to go on in making my decision to purchase or not.
 
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WIf Bg isn't going back far enough how about Curse of the Azure Bonds or even further to the good ol days of Commodore 64 with Bards Tale or even a bit farther back to Intellivision with the one of the first mass marketed AD&D games Cloudy Mountain.
Curse of the Azure Bonds was available on the C64. It took about five minutes to load a battle map from my 5¼" drive o_o
 
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I completely agree with this statement and I agree that the man should get compensated appropriately for what he's produced. I'm just wondering if a) the content is superior (story, dialogue, art assets, etc.) than what is available in a free-to-play NWN1/NWN2 module,

I've personally never warmed to the NWN engines, and am not hugely keen on the DND rulesets (although v3.5 isn't bad) so for me a new game set in a totally new IP with new rules to play with and discover more about is always going to be more exciting than another module in NWN.

So far the dialogue's been good, the gameplay interesting and the visual aspects I've enjoyed, they may be clearly of an earlier generation than NWN2 but I find that perspective easier to follow than NWN2 (where I generally end up moving the camera around to imitate that kind of view so it looks crap anyway).
 
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Curse of the Azure Bonds was available on the C64. It took about five minutes to load a battle map from my 5¼" drive o_o

It's been so long I thought it was on DOS...It's like when I first played ultima 3 it was for commodore but I believe by ultima 5 I was using DOS. So I tend to mix them up sometimes. Same goes with the gold boxes. POR or what I called it when it first came out Pool of RAD-ience (I was 12 rad was still cool to say) that came out for the commodore but I believe I played the dragonlance trilogy, hillsfar and secrets of the silver blade on DOS. So they came out right as the commodore was dying and DOS was taking over. Sorry about that...ok now I'm getting nastalgic...gotta load POR after Eschalon.
 
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Was thinking of picking this up. How does it compare with Etrian's Odyssey, which I loved?

It is not as good as Etrian Odyssey ... but it is a solid 10 - 15 hour dungeon crawl with some humor and fun tossed in and a nice turn-based system. Just remember that it *is* a port of a cell phone game!
 
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Proper answer?

Interesting, valid question...and a truckload full of people who instead of answering to the point, go rambling on and on with "Me personally, I'd rather play blah blah blah blah blah blah". Noone cares. The question was, -why- should you play -Eschalon-. A very simple, straightforward question, no? Yeah.


So, my answer...well, I can't really give you one, because I got side tracked with this little beautiful shiny gem called Weird World (Strange Adventures In Inifinite Space 2)- made by an indie company called Digital Eel *goes to make a thread about it*. However, I can tell you that after I played a little and learned a thing or two about the system, I remade my char, and so far I'm having some pretty fun hackin' n slashin' with him, even though he's still lvl1. I made him a fighte..wait, what is that they say? "A picture is worth a thousand words"? :) .... http://img139.imageshack.us/my.php?image=eschalonva6.jpg
(Divination lvl1 for out-of-combat cure spells to save on potions and for Bless, which is probably worth something. . . And fret not, good peoples, Alchemy is definitely going to be picked up soon enough. How do you like this char?.)
So I guess the first part of my answer would be "It's 'fun', or at least has great potential to be a lot of fun...there's actually a lot to be said about simple gameplay, even if that doesn't coincide with most of our favorite games/systems". Hell, look at Magrette...she's build over 12 characters and played the demo over and over (Is your husband a coal miner or something, Magerette? I'll shell out the 25$ if you have like 20 babies or something and can't afford the actual game.).

The second, at least as equally as important reason is... that this is only the beginning, the first part of a 3-part series (as I'm sure you know) and the whole thing looks like a pretty epic experience, not to mention that by the next games we'll be able to choose different races (Infra-red sighted dwarves or an equivalent thereof, anyone? :p) and all that jazz, to name one addition to the system.

In conclusion...I know I'm definitely going to keep playing soon enough...hell, any game that lets me crush a Goblin to an instant death by closing a portuculis on his poor ass is worth at least one playthorugh in my book. ;P
 
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