Just finished a replay of
Pool of Radiance on Gog using the Gold Box companion.
I love this game, I really do. It was one of the first crpgs I played and a gateway to D&D.
It's showing its age of course. Some of the fiddly bits are annoying, but these are largely fixed with the GBC, which allows a quick recall for spells rather than having to manually select them at every rest, and also a "fix" command to heal party members (which was added into later games in the series). It also allows you to get around the racial level caps that meant non-humans became useless in later games.
There's a beautiful simplicity to the set up. You arrive in the city of Phlan to help retake areas from monsters. The different areas - the slums, Kuto's well, Mendor's Library, Valhigen graveyard - have different types of quest allocated to them by the clerk of the council. Wear disguises and take part in a monster auction, find lost books, clear out the undead etc. Some of the areas are complex, but the GBC has an automap if you don't want to break out the graph paper.
When I first played it, many years ago, the point where you finally open up the world map was jaw dropping. This opens up an overland section for exploration outside of the city, with further quests and hidden areas.
Eventually the quests lead you to a bigger evil of course, as is the usual way! The plot is fairly basic but satisfying.
Despite the different quests, most of the game comes down to a lot of combat. This is where the game really shines for me, although there are some minor annoyances. Combat is quite simple but fun, with a good range of enemies and spells etc. You do sometimes come up against 99 kobolds or similar though, which turn into long slogs of killing stuff with no real threat. And then, if creatures panic and run away, they can get trapped in different areas of the map and you have to track them down and kill them to move on. On the whole though the fights - such as the ambush at Sokol Keep, the final battles, the early fights in the slums, the undead etc - that are challenging and memorable more than make up for it. And wiping through piles of enemies with a fireball never gets old!
I mean, I love it, so there's definitely rose tinted nostalgia going on here. But it's worth a go if you haven't tried it yet and don't mind 30+ year old graphics and gameplay. I'm planning to take my characters into Curse of the Azure Bonds next and make my way slowly through the whole series - happy days!
