When SSI was selected to create the first official AD&D CRPG series, many people were ecstatic. SSI was known back in the day for heavy strategy games and the model that the Gold Box series would employ was similar to another game SSI produced called Wizard’s Crown. In the future, I might write up a review for that game but for this review, I want to focus on the first of the Gold Box series games.
The Gold Box series put you in a first person 16×16 (if I remember correctly) style interface where you could have a party of 8 on the right hand side. Combat was partly based on the “strategic” engine that Wizard’s Crown would use where you had your characters taking up a space on a screen and would be limited in movement depending on various factors such as armor and your carrying allowance, etc. similar to the way AD&D rules were used on a table top miniature scale. A third interface would be used outdoors where you had a world map and could click on unlockable locations to travel from place to place (well, at least in future Gold Box games).
Either way, Pool of Radiance was the prototype for roughly 9 games in this style. Because it was the pioneer, there were a great number of limits such as class selection, abilities and the dreaded level cap. Also, despite claiming to employ the AD&D 1st Edition rule set, you didn’t really get to use many abilities from books like Unearthed Arcana, making the game feel more like basic D&D for the most part.
They did have the basic races and allowed multi-class combinations in the first episode, but you were only permitted the standard fighter, magic-user, thief and cleric classes. At that point in time, dual classing wasn’t available. On top of that each class had its own level cap which was further compounded for demi-humans. However, because the game itself had such a low level cap, there really wasn’t a need for high end min-maxing that you would see in later iterations of the series.
I recall when this game was first released it was heavily praised, especially in Dragon (naturally as Dragon was a TSR ran publication). Yet the game itself had mediocre graphics even for that time and almost no innovation on the role playing aspect. There really wasn’t a lot of puzzles and the vast majority of the game was extremely combat focused with the other aspect being able to map an area correctly.
Also, the game was pretty overtuned. I recall vividly my frustration when I lacked the funds to purchase proper gear then later entered the Slums only to be slaughtered by a group of orcs and trolls. Considering that my characters were mostly level 1 with poor equipment, facing a troll at that point was near suicide. Also, orcs were numerous and carried bows that would eat your mediocre hit points up at that stage.
But the game wasn’t as bad of a grind compared to other RPGs around that time. The low level cap meant that you weren’t expected to squirm around for experience in trying to hit a lofty high level. Even being a triple multi-class wasn’t as baneful around those levels.
Because you could use floppy disks in those days (5 1/4″ for those who want to research a history museum), there was a funny little trick where you could hire 2 NPC followers, sleep them in an easy fight (say against kobolds or goblins early on), then one shot them and acquire their equipment. Since AD&D used to count gold and magic items as experience on top of killing monsters, you could pool your magic items onto your NPCs, save them before doing this trick, then reload them once you killed them off and gained a significant amount of XP. On top of that, you’d get their magic items (there was a 4th level fighter with a +1 2-Handed Sword and a magic user with a +1 Ring of Protection). A few cheesy fights with this trick and you would easily out level the first few starting zones.
However, that was the magic to me about games like this. There were always ways to cheese the game to empower yourself. And you pretty much had to just because the content was never designed with an update patch in mind. Back then whatever you purchased was THE product and could be beneficial and a nightmare depending on what bugs were shipped with it.
I know these days there are emulators and updates to allow these games to play on modern systems. But I miss using my joystick and C64 with the floppy disk in some ways. Sure, the floppy disk was horribly slow and swapping disks was always painful. Yet I miss the old days where games weren’t about being online all the time and not grinding for months or years even.
My only regret with Pool of Radiance was that I never finished it. I think I might’ve finished only one or two of the Gold Box games for one reason or another. I don’t know if I’d want to play some of these ever again just because I remember how painful the game play could be. Yet there’s always that nostalgic factor where you’d wonder how you would replay this type of game.