RPGWatch Feature: Eschalon Impressions

I remember this discussion, Gallifrey. Your experience is exactly the opposite of mine--no matter how many times I replay thinking I'll try a non-charismatic half-ogre strongman, I always end up with a half-elf who can't take the train due to too much magic. It's a unique game--anyone who's at all into cRPG's should give it a spin.

I know I'm going to find out in a relatively short time, but I was wondering about the role of the mental attributes (intelligence, wisdom, perception, concentration), in game mechanic affecting terms.

For example, does high concentration increase your resistance to spells? In D&D, at least the earlier versions I am most familiar with, this role (spell save bonuses) was given to wisdom. So in this game's mechanics what role do wisdom and intelligence play? Etc etc.

(Oh, and thank crikey for the "refresh image" button. I'm a little colour blind and I often find it hard to read the letter you type in)

DhruinAlsoAtWork can't remember the details but, yes, they do have an effect on the resistances and so on. I'm really interested in the speech tags but I haven't seen enough to know if they are just flavour or stat-driven in some way.

Thanks for all the input guys/gals, sorry for the minor derailment

Now available - see the news.

Most excellent. Download ahoy!

Alas, can't play the demo. The game can't create a save game directory in My Documents. I guess on account of I got Russian Windows, so the game doesn't understand this way: C:\Documents and Settings\Rifle\Мои документы (the last two words mean My Documents in Russian)…
So looks like it's unplayable for Russians… And i wanted to play it and write a review for our magazine.

Why not go to the official forums and let them know. I'm sure there will be some workaround possible!!

There is a workaround, unfortunately it requires you to rename your My Documents to the English spelling. I apologize, we did very little testing on alternate versions of Windows. We will try to address this with the first patch.

How about letting the game save in it's home folder, instead of in My Documents? Could be just an option.

Vista compatibility, I believe.

Yes, I know. Could still be an option, though - just not enabled by default.

Alas, can't play the demo. The game can't create a save game directory in My Documents. I guess on account of I got Russian Windows, so the game doesn't understand this way: C:\Documents and Settings\Rifle\Мои документы (the last two words mean My Documents in Russian)…
So looks like it's unplayable for Russians… And i wanted to play it and write a review for our magazine.

maybe this helps:
How to Change the Default Location of the My Documents Folder

Thank you guys, it works now. I just renamed My Documents and it started to work.
As to game. Well, I've already forgot how it was felt to play games like this. Really old school RPG. Rolling stats, turn-based combat, save-load playing to pick locks and get better loot, hehe… And it's refreshing, i'd say. Those new RPGs like Witcher and NWN 2 are great, but sometimes you need to recal something really old, something you liked so much once…

I have the demo now and it's a nice game. I haven't tried many characters out as yet but the attention to detail is really quite good. Yeah, I'm impressed on first impression.

Interesting to see some of the comments, my only real gripe on the half hour or so I've played is that I can't seem to find anything that shows how much experience I've got. Plus I'm not sure of the benefits of some things, what do you get out of hiding in shadows and moving silently?

It sounds like the rogue side of it could be interesting though, I'm giving it a go as a rogue with some high hopes for it, I don't think I've ever really enjoyed a rogue implementation in a crpg so far.

Originally Posted by Benedict
Interesting to see some of the comments, my only real gripe on the half hour or so I've played is that I can't seem to find anything that shows how much experience I've got. Plus I'm not sure of the benefits of some things, what do you get out of hiding in shadows and moving silently?

The experience bar is right under the Mana Points bar. It says Experience and it's gold colored

There's a pretty detailed discussion of "roguish skills" in the manual. Probably worth the read if you're looking at a rogue build.

Don't remember if your XP total is on the main page or the character skills screen, but it took me a bit of searching to locate it even though it's in plain sight. At level 1, you'll see a box that has something out of 1000.

I'm thinking about a D&D cleric type character build, support-type spells and combat skills. We'll see how that compares with the ranger build I tinkered with first.

Originally Posted by skavenhorde
The experience bar is right under the Mana Points bar. It says Experience and it's gold colored

I assumed it was probably blindingly obvious. A good sign for the game that my only initial frustration was that the developer hadn't accurately anticipated my own personal level of myopic stupidity.

Originally Posted by dteowner
There's a pretty detailed discussion of "roguish skills" in the manual. Probably worth the read if you're looking at a rogue build.

Don't remember if your XP total is on the main page or the character skills screen, but it took me a bit of searching to locate it even though it's in plain sight. At level 1, you'll see a box that has something out of 1000.

I'm thinking about a D&D cleric type character build, support-type spells and combat skills. We'll see how that compares with the ranger build I tinkered with first.

Ah good, it's not just me then Looking forward to checking out the manual, it's been a while since there's been anything with any detail to read through and plan around.

To its credit I'd like to try out quite a few builds as they all seem to have some meaningful gameplay advantages. I just need to restrain myself from doing anything silly like loading up so heavily on lock picking, spotting hidden stuff and so on out of fear of missing stuff in the early game that I make a hopeless pansy unable of taking on more than one schoolgirl at once in spite of me being in full chain mail armed with a spiky mace and them having nothing more dangerous than a couple of hair ties to flick at me and then giving up on the game in frustration at how hard the combat is.