A look back at: Pools of Darkness

First of the year. It took 24 days, but I get caught up being bored and doing my own advanced college work when no one is looking, still churning through one Pokemon ROM hack while at the same time working on walkthroughs of other game ROM hacks (there's now four for SMB2 on my main walkthroughs page), but I also churn through other series that I've had to deal with and Pools of Darkness is the fourth out of five Pool of Radiance games. Again, franchise in a franchise with strategy RPG mechanics that have remained the same with each game. Slightly better graphics! Freakier sound effects! That's what the developers have decided to ensure the game didn't feel more like an expansion pack to the others.

Yet overall, the gameplay is largely similar, but I guess slightly better than Secret of the Silver Blades. This is largely in part due to the game actually having more than one overworld, and you can navigate freely on the overworlds (though of course there are random encounters, what you do is your decision in these cases). I of course import my characters and their stats, plus equipment hold over. Neat, until I horrifying find out that the game still is quite difficult despite this. Dragons always terrify you. Those annoying spiders and their instakill poison are there. Bane's minions have magic resistance. Fireball and Delayed Blast Fireball, as great spells as they are, are often not useful due to fire monsters taking a lot of precedence. And don't even get me STARTED on the unfairness that is the finale of this game. Yeah, no in-between rests for three or so battles, one of which has the beholders with multiple instakill gaze sets. Even the walkthrough I was using this game to complete with gave up at some point and changed the difficulty setting, while a Youtube video I watched went with a "tire out the enemy until enough turns have passed" cheese strategy. I was obviously quite exhausted with this nonsense, and didn't even bother to try Dave's Challenge as a result. Note to creators, I know you want the best of the best beating your post-game challenges, but when you have exhausting finales for the main game, it's very likely that I'm not even gonna bother with the postgame.

But I guess despite that I did enjoy what I did. A hub dimension where you go around, doing major quests in that dimension to unlock the way to the other dimensions (one of which being a giant god's body) and defeating one of Bane's lieutenants in each one feels a lot better than a game that didn't even have a true overworld. And these overworld have sidequests and side characters meaning that there is usually something worthwhile to do if you deviate from the main quest.