Pool of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Drannor

aka: Black Adder, Pool of Radiance 2, Pool of Radiance II, Pool of Radiance: As Ruínas de Myth Drannor, Pool of Radiance: Ruiny Myth Drannor
Moby ID: 5072
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Description official descriptions

An homage to the DOS-based Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Gold Box game Pool of Radiance, Pool of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Drannor returns again to the worlds of the Forgotten Realms.

Although the game begins in the city of Phlan, which was reclaimed in the previous game, the majority of the action takes place beneath Myth Drannor, once a beautiful city of peace, where men, elves, and dwarves could live in peace and harmony, which is now in ruins.

Despite its visual similarity to contemporary games that utilized real-time combat (such as Baldur's Gate), the game features a strictly turn-based system, similar to those implemented in Gold Box games. Orisons and Cantrips, straight from the then new Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition rules, have been added. The game features new character classes and races such as Barbarians, Monks, Paladins, and Half-Orcs. Clerics and Sorcerers can cast over 100 spells. The Dungeon Master communicates all important findings and events throughout the game.

Spellings

  • 光芒之池II之剑与魔法的传说 - Simplified Chinese spelling
  • 光芒之池:迷斯卓諾遺跡 - Traditional Chinese spelling

Groups +

Screenshots

Promos

Credits (Windows version)

208 People (160 developers, 48 thanks) · View all

Game Design
Special Effects & Interface
Multiplayer Engine & Gameplay
Graphics Engine
Animation Engine
Gameplay Engine
Pathfinding & Collision Systems
Dialogue Engine
Interface Engine
Tools
Additional Programming
[ full credits ]

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 63% (based on 36 ratings)

Players

Average score: 2.5 out of 5 (based on 29 ratings with 5 reviews)

Second that opinion: AD&D in the Gutter. This game is Blasphemy!

The Good
Uh...that's a tough one. Well I do admit that the background graphics are very good, although when you see your characters move, you can see something went wrong...hahaha

Although I do "sense" what the creators of this game were "trying" to achieve, they didn't do a very good job of doing it....(sigh)

The Bad
Ahh...my favorite part, the don't likes of the game.

OH MY GOD! Should start this statement...what were they thinking when creating this game. I don't know about you, but the technical requirements are of this game is a little heavy, I couldn't see the intro (do you need a 3-D card? I'm not sure).

These guys have stuck a dagger to the Pool of Radiance Legend straight in the heart. I can say that the creators of this game are more interested in finding a market to sell, that creating a good game. You can see that they put a LOT of effort in the graphics, but that's all the effort they did put.

The battle engine is a down right insult. Never in my life time have I found an RPG so IRRITATING. The menu's are so hard to use, that mouse pointer doesn't seem to go where you want it to go.

The characters are very rigid, in moving. This you'll find out when fighting the bad guy. Its kinda strange that you can actually lose the fight because your character can't stop moving when you're telling him to attack...AAARRGGGHHH!

That's enough insults, I'm sure you get the picture. Be sure to find a good shrink after playing this game....hahaha

The Bottom Line
Its blasphemy. Don't even think of getting this game.

Windows · by Indra was here (20756) · 2006

Unplayable

The Good
er...

The Bad
Having thus dealt with "The Good", let me turn to "The Bad".

Recommended system requirements are a Pentium III 500MHz, 128M of RAM, an 8x CD-ROM. I have an AMD XP2000, 256M of RAM, a 64M Nvidia GeForce graphics card, and, like everyone else nowadays, a 52x CD-ROM. I had at first done a medium-size installation (845M). My hard disk kept thrashing, its red light on for minutes on end, getting nowhere, the mouse pointer dead and frozen. Once in a blue moon the mouse would wake up and allow me a click. Then more disk thrashing. Eventually I did a full install, which took so long that I was more than once tempted to abort it, so persuaded was I that it had frozen up. Eventually I could start playing. This time there was no disk thrashing. The CD-ROM did not seem to get accessed either.

Yet everything was sloooooow. Movement like wading through thick molasses. The mouse pointer hopping about, making weapon selection a nightmare of pixel hunting with your mouse never quite where you want it except by sheer luck. Right-click on a character. It opens up a microscopic menu. Think of it as a mini-arena where to hone your mouse-taming skills. I wonder what it would be like with the minimum system requirements: a Pentium II 400MHz with 64M of RAM.

And it's dark in there. There is no gamma-correction to adjust, so you just have to crank your monitor's brightness right up to its maximum to see anything much.

Inside dungeons you can usually tell your characters from the background, but in the open where the background is typically meadow and stuff with a more complex texture than flagstones, they blend with it.

Combat takes forever. With four heroes engaging a party of three orcs, count on half a minute for every round. The interface is at first incomprehensible. But once you've figured it out it becomes another exercise in pixel hunting and mouse taming, and waiting for your selected hero to act. When it is the orcs' turn you wonder what the dumb beasts are day-dreaming about. Hey, I'm here, right under your snouts! What are you waiting for to deal me that lethal blow?

The Bottom Line
I had thought that I had scraped the bottom of the barrel with "Dungeon Siege, Legends of Aranna". It appears that there are more barrels, each with a deep bottom. And this is one of them. It is unplayable and thus, in legalese, "not of merchantable quality". In plain English: if you have had the misfortune of paying good money for it, be it even as little as a few cents, you are entitled to return it and demand your money back.

Windows · by Jacques Guy (52) · 2004

You can call it a "playable disappointment"

The Good
I was actually thrilled by thinking that Pool of Radiance coming back to life, I enjoyed previous Pool of Radiance, so I thought it would be something as good plus the multiplayer...

The Bad
The combat system is horrible translation of old engine into year 2001, using items or spells is a real pain with that menu system, the quests somewhat plain, and overall game is a disappointment on many levels. I will not mention that it runs way too slow on my P4 with 512 ram and ultra graphic card - first time I actually could feel I need upgrade.. or maybe its just game. The manual (at least from the normal edition) is way too small and confusing.

The Bottom Line
Don't go for it, until it hits around 29.99 price barrier. There are really better rpgs now on the market - like Wizardry 8 for example. It just feels at times like Diablo, but with hindered combat system and just again, plainly slow. Its playable anyway, but if I were you, I'd wait either until it goes down in price or someone gives it to me as present.

Windows · by Marina Shoykhet (6) · 2001

[ View all 5 player reviews ]

Trivia

Bugs

The first US version of this game was a technical disaster: not only that the installer accepted no other drives than C: - one could live with that although it's a sign of sloppy programming - the uninstallation program would accidentally erase some core components of Windows 9x, rendering the system unusable after rebooting. Because of this, the game was withdrawn and re-released with a fixed installer. This delayed the German version too.

Cover

Both the game box artwork and the cover illustration of the tie-in novel are by renowned fantasy illustrator (Gerald) Brom.

Inspiration

The game follows a November 1, 2000-published novel of the same name by Carrie Bebris, both the computer game and the novel sharing a common source of a pen & paper RPG module from Wizards of the Coast.

Awards

  • Computer Gaming World
    • April 2002 (Issue #213) – Coaster of the Year

Information also contributed by Entorphane and Pseudo_Intellectual.

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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Jeanne.

Additional contributors: Unicorn Lynx, phlux, JRK, chirinea, Wizo, Paulus18950, Patrick Bregger, firefang9212.

Game added October 5, 2001. Last modified February 29, 2024.