Pool of Radiance

aka: Pool of Radiance: A Forgotten Realms Fantasy Role-Playing Epic, Vol. I
Moby ID: 502
DOS Specs
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Description official descriptions

Located on the northern shore of the Moonsea in Forgotten Realms, Phlan was once a flourishing trade city. However, lately monsters began settling in it, gradually turning whole districts into ruins. Only New Phlan remained under human control, but its inhabitants are afraid to venture into the monster-infested areas. In order to clean the nearby Barren River and rebuild Phlan, local authorities spread rumors about alleged riches hidden somewhere in the city. A party of adventurers, attracted by these news, sails towards Phlan and accepts the quest.

Pool of Radiance is the first adaptation of the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons role-playing system in a computer game format. In the beginning of the game the player can use a pre-made party of six characters or create each of them from scratch. Six races (human, elf, dwarf, gnome, halfling, and half-elf) and four classes (fighter, cleric, wizard, and thief) are available. The player can tweak the attributes of the characters and assign a moral alignment to each one.

Exploration of the town and hostile areas (dungeons) is viewed from a first-person perspective in a pseudo-3D world. Enemy encounters are random and take place on separate isometric combat screens, where player-controlled party and enemies take turns fighting each other. Experience points are awarded for defeating enemies, and characters level up after having accumulated set amounts. Fighters gain more attacks, thieves become proficient in backstabbing, while clerics and wizards can memorize more spells to cast before they need to rest. Non-human characters can also "multi-class" (learn the abilities of another class) when leveling up.

The NES version was substantially different from other versions. It removed references to the Adventure's Journal and some of the more complex features of the computer versions, like different currency units. Battles were significantly reduced in size, the graphics were overhauled and redesigned so that the game could be controlled with a control pad, and music was written for it. A randomly generated dungeon feature was also removed.

Spellings

  • プール・オブ・レイディアンス - Japanese spelling
  • 光芒之池 - Chinese spelling (simplified)

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Credits (DOS version)

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Scenario created by TSR, Inc.
Game Created by
  • SSI Special Projects Group
Programmers
Additional Programming
Artists
Additional Art by
Music
Sound Effects
[ full credits ]

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 78% (based on 24 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.6 out of 5 (based on 99 ratings with 9 reviews)

An oftentimes irritating, but nevertheless rewarding experience

The Good
Despite the extensive "bad stuff" list below, I really enjoyed the game. It has a unique pen-and-paper feel to it – different from other classic romps of the 1908s (Wizardry, Bard's Tale, Might&Magic) as well as from modern cinematic RPGs. Everything is conducted as if it was an actual tabletop AD&D campaign: the monsters' pictures are straight from the Monster Manual and so are their statistics as well the items and money they drop; money comes in different coins to be carried separately until you exchange them in a shop; you get classic random encounters in the wilderness with the possibility of stumbling into monsters' lair with some extra items often being found inside; many situations you come across while exploring feel as if they were presented to you by the DM, you get all sorts of info, council proclamations and tavern tales that are "noted" in the paper "Adventurers Journal" (to save the game's memory); you get to use a code wheel to translate elvish and dwarven runes; and at the end of the game your characters can even vote what to do just like real players (not that it isn't obvious, but it's a nice touch). It has to be remarked, however, that such a strict adherence to pen-and-paper AD&D resulted in all sorts of issues and problems (see below), because a computer game governs itself by its own rights and certain liberties and adjustments should be made (as the Infinity and Aurora games showed). A strange but beneficial option is to maximize each character's statistics after creating them (making them all 18 or the racial/gender top limit), allowing you start out with a bunch of uebermenschen.

In spite of its many shortcomings, PoR is really riveting and over the time gains an epic swing with your party fighting giants and obliterating the whole armies. The plot is intriguing and mutifold as not every major foe you'll fight will be related to the main big baddy (side quests are obvious now, but not so much back in the day). You'll experience politics, treason, war and romance (well, OK, no romance) and explore quite a fragment of the Forgotten Realms' Moonsea region. The tactical battles were a novelty at that time and they stood the test of time pretty well, being challenging but fair and (mostly) intuitive. Apart from that, I liked how the game handled the character's icons that are completely modifiable according to your imagination of what the armors and weapons the characters utilize look like (at least their colors); you can also choose a "head", but the selection is somewhat limited.

The game is fun. It's really, really fun and rewarding. So don't get discouraged by "The Bad" section.

The Bad
Well, a lot. First off, the game is overridden with small but pesky bugs and interface issues. It uses a strange main menu system that is combined with character creation and character training in a training hall, the result being that some changes you apply have a small chance of becoming global and irreversible, apparently at the game's whim. Also, if you remove some characters of your party while in a training hall and quit the game, there is a good possibility that you won't be able to add them again once you load up. If your multiclass characters exceed the amount of XP needed to gain a level but don't train until they gain XP needed to advance to the level after that, they might be cut down in experience when they attempt to train for any class (e.g. a fighter/thief is legible to train for level 5 of thief but waits until he can train for level 5 of fighter, which needs much more XP, and in the meantime he collects enough XP to become a level 6 thief; if he tries to train as a thief, the amount of XP will be so reduced that he would be again unable to train as a fighter). All that said, I used DosBox for running PoR, so maybe originally there were no such glitches (speaking of which – the game's installation process can be such a pain in the butt that some folks were unable to launch the thing at all; it may depend on which version you manage to obtain – I had the Forgotten Realms bundle from 1997 or so and it installed and ran it under DosBox flawlessly). As for the interface, it could have been better. I can get used to not using a mouse (although in 1988 they could have thought of implementing the option), but I hate it if I have to make my way through a number of sub-menus to memorize spells or change weapons readied. Every time you want to cast a spell off the scroll or use a wand you have to actually go into your inventory, unready your weapon (and in case of scrolls also a shield), ready the item you want to use and USE it. Then, you must remember to ready the weapon and shield again, because the icon representing your character in a battle doesn't change to inform you that you're trying to bash and bruise your enemies with e.g. a scroll parchment. Quite a few times I had fought several battles with no weapon or shield readied before I realized the fact. Memorizing spells is a tiresome process that you have to repeat from the scratch every time you rest. There is no way of presetting spells to memorize like in later D&D games, nor is there a possibility to show what spells you still have memorized while you are choosing from the list; you need to first see what spells are left, remember them and then go to the memorizing screen and choose those that you recall are missing – sounds boring enough? In some areas – usually in the wilderness – you have no access to the overhead map, and since there is no automapping, you have to draw one yourself (which I hate with passion). Oh, and to load the game you have to quit it, because it can be done only from the start menu (it is also possible to load in a training hall after you've removed all the characters, because you basically come back to the main menu then). There is also a stupid copy protection that requires you to use the code wheel EVERY time you start a game (in other words, every time you must load it); fortunately it is easily removed with a proper patch.

Then, there are a lot of dull limitations, some of which are connected with the licensed RPG system (AD&D 1st Ed.). Only humans can advance infinitely, other races are capped on different levels (excluding thieves). This isn't such a great problem in PoR (there is an overall level cap), as it is going to be in Curse of Azure Bonds where the discrepancy between humans and non-humans can reach even five levels. Moreover, the game doesn't throw enough at you to let all your characters reach their maximum level by the grand finale – you will have to do A LOT of tedious random encounter battles to gain enough XP. Secondly, halflings and gnomes are totally useless, being able to become only thieves or warriors; thieves are generally useless as there is no stealing or hiding in shadows in the game, backstabbing is severely limited, every locked door can be bashed open by a strong character (and you would be silly not having a human fighter with 18/00 Str in your party) and traps are few and far between. You will need only one thief, preferably multiclassed with a warrior, for which you'd rather choose a dwarf as he can be stronger than a halfling or a gnome. Female characters get penalties as to the maximum strength and no bonuses to make up for it, so there is no reason to have women in your party at all (bummer). Only humans and half-elves can be clerics, and only humans can exceed level 5. Only fighters can use ranged weapons other than darts (meaning there is no bow for your single-class thief and no sling for your magic-user or cleric). The good thing in all this mess is that your multiclass magic-users can throw spells in armor, and your multiclass clerics are not restricted to bludgeoning weapons (so you can have a fighter/cleric/magic-user with a plate mail and two-handed sword, casting fireballs). Oh, and there are only four classes in the game, although if you use the hex editor, you'll see that there were supposed to be more, but they were inexplicably left out.

There is a lot of useless stuff in the game. Some plot-related actions you can perform yield no results whatsoever (like purifying the vampire's coffin). There are too many polearms that differ little form each other; all bows deal the same amount of damage (no matter whether short or long composite). Some items have no purpose, like the ring of feather falling (there is one situation in the whole game when you actually fall from somewhere and it didn't save my character anyhow) or holy symbols of various gods to be bought in shops. There is an infamous case of a manual of bodily health that is supposed to raise a character's condition but simply doesn't work (or, as some sources point, it DOES work, but doesn't kick in immediately, only after you’ve completed another quest; needless to say, there is no information on that to be found in the actual game). Rings of protections don't work together with magic armors (yeah, I know it's the AD&D rules' fault, not the good folks from SSI, but still). You're given many AD&D spells, but a lot of them are totally useless in the context of the game. Why "resist cold" if you never get attacked with frost? Why "cure blindness" if you never get blinded? Why "protection from good" if you are unlikely to ever battle good creatures? "Detect traps" is only good if you have no thief in the party, "burning hands" deals a laughable amount of damage (ONE hit point per level of the caster), "shield" doesn't seem to do anything if the magic-user has already a low armor class, "animate dead" does not let you create zombies and skeletons at will, but only zombify a fallen party character or an accompanying NPC, "invisibility" sometimes fails for no reason, "bless" does not affect characters who are already in the melee, "strength" is less useful than "enlarge" even though it is one spell level higher etc., etc. Some cleric spells double as mage spells, but even the official cluebook suggests employing only the cleric versions to save the precious magic-user spell slots – so what's the point of introducing the mage versions at all?

Some other spells are a bit overpowered: "hold person" and "stinking cloud" very often affect even high-level (human) enemies and allow you to kill them with a single blow (where is the dramatism, if a buccaneer captain with 110 HP, a longsword +4 and plate mail +3 can be incapacitated with one lousy second-level spell and slain with one stroke). You have to be careful about the maximum range of each spell and calculate it yourself, because if you attempt to throw one and it turns out that the potential target is too far away, you have no choice but lose the spell completely (the game does not allow you to backtrack and save it for another occasion). You also need to figure out the exact effect area of area spells like "sleep" of "fireball" as there is no exact info in any of the game manuals or even in a cluebook (trial and error with a fireball can be a painful experience). Also, the area effect of other spells is given in feet, as in the original pen-and-paper game, instead of squares, which would be much more sensible. Quite a few aiding spells like "bless", "invisibility 10'" or haste" have a very limited 1-square area of effect; the problem is that at the beginning of a battle your characters don't stand next to one another, and even if they do, the two rows (of three characters each) are a little tilted so that no such spell can encompass all six characters. You need to manually move your characters next to each other, and often before you finish, the enemies are already pounding at you, rendering bless only half-effective (no characters in melee can benefit), haste too late (kicks in only the next turn after castes), and invisibility useless (it stops working after you try to fight, and there is little more to do if you are already next to the opponents).

A some point of the game you'll stop collecting money at all, because it weighs and encumbers your characters. You can exchange coinage for precious (and light) jewelry, but it takes up space in your backpack, and if you try to sell it again, you'll get only half the price you paid. Not that it matters, because there is nothing to spend your money on! During the game you'll acquire tons of it, and there are no magic items, spell scrolls or even stupid potions to purchase in the town. Everything you have to gain while adventuring. The only things you will need money for is training (1000 gold every time) and healing in temples. Never before had I shunned 15000 gold pieced I got after battling a group of giants, simply because I had nothing to do with it.

You can hire NPCs to help you, but you have no control over them in battle and if you give them some equipment there is no way of taking it back. The battle AI sucks anyway. The most idiotic aspect is if a character has a melee weapon that can be thrown (hammer, hand-axe or spear). The first thing AI will do is throw it at the nearest enemy (even if it’s a powerful +3 artifact) and then proceed with fighting with bare fists. This is a huge problem if you want to temporarily give the AI control over your party in a tedious battle against weak foes.

Generally speaking, the game doesn’t tell you much. I'm fine with he fact that most of the plot is conveyed via a printed "Adventurer's Journal" due to memory limits (during the game you are given entry numbers to read in the book); but why so little info on the actual gameplay? Magic weapons and artifacts are not described at all, with the latter being sometimes obscure in purpose, and the former being degraded to "+digits". There is too little background information provided aboutto specific areas– this is fixed only in the cluebook that, of course, did not ship with the original game back in the 1988 (so I count it as a downside). The ending is anticlimactic and fails to actually explain the whole deal with the pool of radiance; you're not even treated to a written outro text in the "AJ", just informed that you can play on if you wish (what for?). It is ridiculous, given how much paper was wasted to false journal entries and non-existent council proclamations (I take that it was supposed to prevent gamers from reading the "AJ" before prompted by the game – a diabolical masterplan indeed).

The Bottom Line
Get it if you have the chance, it's really worth your while. But it can be quite demanding on your nerves sometimes.

DOS · by Lukasz Gorski (11) · 2009

Great game.

The Good
Well, most everything. The game starts out with you creating a group of adventurers, I don't remember how many you can create, but you can create alot. You then explore in a first person veiw. This veiw has good graphics, for the time. Then you fight, when you find bad guys, from a isemetric veiw. You move around and attack. It works well, even compaired to things like "Balders Gate", mabye even better. Thats basicly all you do. That may not sound like alot, but it is. Theres lots of challenges and things to do.

The Bad
Makeing your figure in battles look the way you want is sorta hard. The use of a code wheel, those things are annoying and this is exactly why.

The Bottom Line
lots of fun. Buy it.

DOS · by Wolfang (155) · 2000

An excellent first edition AD&D simulation game!

The Good
The turn-based combat sequences make it easy to plan a strategy for fighting, and you can find some very useful magic items even in the easier areas. Plus the ability to "put together" faces and bodies for the character give the game a more "personalized" feel.

The Bad
The 8-bit Nintendo version had a somewhat less detailed game but focused more and gameplay and gave some better magic items. The army you face at Sokal keep in the PC version, for example, is a tough battle, but in the NES version you could at least get a magic item that helped...not so in the PC game. And it would help if the PC version would actually SHOW you which monsters have been affected by the spells you cast.

The Bottom Line
Definitely worth your time to take a look. While not on a scale with Baldur's Gate and the like, it certainly does make an enjoyable experience. A true classic.

DOS · by Cryptic Wizard (2) · 2002

[ View all 9 player reviews ]

Discussion

Subject By Date
Are you sure there's a PC-88 version of this game? RetroArchives.fr (709) Jan 26, 2022
CCS64 loading Ossie1972 Jul 20, 2010
Manual? SharkD (425) Feb 23, 2010

Trivia

Adaption

This was the first Advanced Dungeons and Dragons (AD&D) game ever created by the software developer Strategic Simulations, Inc. (SSI). AD&D was originally a popular fantasy role playing game system developed by a company called TSR, Inc.. SSI adapted this role playing system to the PC in 1988. Pool of Radiance was also first of the many AD&D games to follow that are set within the Forgotten Realms. The game was so successful that it caused TSR to write a novel based on the story in the book.

In the same year, SSI released two more of these newly developed AD&D PC games: Heroes of the Lance and Dungeon Masters Assistant Volume 1: Encounters.

Copy protection

This game used 2 forms of copy protection: Code Wheel lookup at start-up and a Journal to read important text passages.

Cover art

The game box's cover features a painting by artist Clyde Caldwell, also used as the front cover to the 1989 novel of the same name as well as to the 1988 RPG module "Ruins of Adventure" inspiring both.

Monster portraits

Many of the monster illustrations of the Macintosh version can be found in one of the AD&D 2nd edition accessories, the Monstrous Compendium Volume One.

Other ports

An Atari ST conversion was advertised, but is generally considered vaporware, the strongest indication probably being the lack of an import option of Pool of Radiance characters in the sequel (Curse of the Azure Bonds) which the other versions offer.

A port for the Apple IIGS was also advertised, solid evidence that it was released has yet to emerge.

Awards

  • GameStar (Germany)
    • Issue 12/1999 - #49 in the "100 Most Important PC Games of the Nineties" ranking

Information also contributed by Indra was here, Pseudo_Intellectual, William Muir and Yakumo .

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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Tony Van.

PC-88 added by Trypticon. Amiga, Commodore 64 added by Rebound Boy. Macintosh added by Andy Voss. PC-98, Apple II added by Terok Nor. NES, Sharp X1 added by Unicorn Lynx.

Additional contributors: Unicorn Lynx, Indra was here, Jeanne, Trypticon, Patrick Bregger, Rik Hideto, ZeTomes.

Game added December 1, 1999. Last modified March 12, 2024.