Back in the old age of computing, a marriage was formed between Dungeons and Dragons and computer role-playing games. The first classic games to come out of that union were commonly referred to as the Gold Box Games, named after the pretty gold box the games were packaged in. The first of the series was Pool of Radiance (POR). POR was a dungeon crawl, allowing you to move in first-person 3D, but switching to an overhead view of the field where you moved your characters around and engaged monsters. It was very much like playing Dungeons and Dragons with your miniatures at home. The gold box games did extremely well, and inspired countless sequels at the time.

After a while, D & D and role-playing games lost their popularity on the personal computer. The age of arcade flash came upon us where games started to get faster and faster, and the turn-based strategy games were the first to go. Turn-based games such as Warlords and Ultima sold out to the arcade feeling and became real-time strategy games or action games, and even D & D got a face-lift with Baldur’s Gate becoming more action-orientated with only a pause feature to stop its frantic pacing. Many cried for the older days when you could sit back and take the time out to enjoy your characters, where leveling was an event that marked a noticeable party improvement, and where strategy was dependent upon well thought out plans.

I am happy to say, POR: RoMD represents a full circle in gaming development. The game has taken away the action and real-time reflexes that modern games require and taken us back to a turn-based strategy game that has no rival among current RPGs. If you are a hard-core RPG player and you remember checking your characters' experience points and thinking.. just two more rooms then I can go to bed, this is the game for you.

I know what you are thinking; you are thinking that you have heard a ton of bad press about this game, words such as slow, boring, bugs, and pointless. Some of these words are very true statements about the game. Upon release, many people had expectations that this game would be the next Baldur’s Gate—it isn’t. The game is the next Pool of Radiance. The best indicator I have ever heard to describe whether or not you will like this game is— do you like chess? If you find chess to be too slow, or involving way too much thought, steer clear of POR. If you like forming new strategies and don’t mind waiting for your opponent to make his move, or if the anticipation of your next move keeps you excited, then POR is truly going to be a gem of a game for you.

If you can’t tell yet, I love this game with a passion. No game in recent memory has made me want to play it half as much as Pool of Radiance... okay, well, besides Startopia, but let me start with the bad points, and they all come in the area of this being a very unpolished game. The game was released out the door with a nasty install bug that only allows you to install to the C drive, it also uses SafeDisk which is totally unreadable protection for a lot of CD drives. It took me over an hour to install the game to where I wanted it and to manually remove the protection so I could play. The programmers also knew little about how home users set up LANs, and it was necessary for me to change the IP addresses on my home LAN so that I could play over it. The interface also showed a lack of polish, making actions such as using wands unnecessarily complex. The book that comes with the game is skimpy at sections and the game itself has taken certain liberties with the 3rd edition rules. If that wasn’t enough, the developers tried to defend certain aspects of the game by saying the SafeDisk problems were with older CD-ROM drives (not true), and in one chat I was part of, they stated that the omission of druids was because druids were a worthless class, which definitely is false (yet they included the more than worthless Paladin class).

Now for the good parts of the game. The sound and graphics are wonderful. The character graphics, the paper dolls, and the spell animations are the best I have seen in any RPG. The dungeons start out rather drab, but after the initial 30 hours, they become more colorful and graphically livening. The sound is excellent, too. Many characters have digitized speech, but more importantly, most monsters will taunt you or converse before key battles. Books whine before they are burned, armor chinks as you run through passages, and lightning crackles when you cast the spells. With the exception of a couple of bad voice actors, the sound for this type of game is right on the mark.

The key selling point of this game is its playability. The game is huge. That is really an understatement, too. The first dungeon in the game is larger than most RPGs on the market. POR is the ultimate modern dungeon crawl, you will spend countless hours exploring every nick and cranny looking for treasure, secret rooms, and more baddies to kill. The size of the dungeons comes with a price, a lot of backtracking if you need to return to an earlier position. Multiple stairways between levels and teleporter rooms help in cutting some of the walking, but it can be slow and frustrating at times when you have to go somewhere three levels up.

Finally, this game is about combat. Like many modern RPGs, the plot isn’t one to write home about, and would only fill a couple chapters of a good book. Combat can drag on at times, as sometimes the monsters move a lot slower than you would like them too. After each turn-based fight, you will rest up, recover spells and move on to the next fight. Although this doesn’t sound like fun, the increasing complexity of the monsters and situations you find yourself in, combined with the increasing abilities and magical items of your parties, keeps the game interesting and challenging.

The game also comes with a multiplayer version. I was initially skeptical about the multiplayer version, as it contains no quests—it is just entering random dungeons and hacking away. After countless hours of playing it on my LAN with friends, all I can say is WOW. We swear and curse like sailors and rob each other blind at every chance. It is a very cutthroat approach to D & D, but it is a great time.

So, in the end, how good is this game? Never in recent years have I seen such a diversity of opinions over one game as I have seen in this one. If you are expecting a Diablo clone, or another Baldur’s Gate, you will be disappointed. Action-only fans need not apply. If you are looking for a turn-based fantasy game that you can enjoy for over a hundred hours, this is the best one out there. Personally, I think this game is a huge step back in the right direction, and with a little more polish could have been one of the best RPGs of our time.