Pool of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Drannor

The Good
In the 80's SSI released now classic Pool Of Radiance game, which I played like crazy. It has a huge area you can travel while doing various mission which range from finding objects to slaughtering monsters in the slums.

Pool Of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Drannor contains also a huge area you can go through and it is a sort of a sequel to the classic 80's game, while it's been made by a different company. It's not prettiest flower in the meadow but the graphics look okay, while it does look noticeably uglier than Baldur's Gate, which is a game that comes to mind from this one. And that's pretty much all the positives I can say about it.

The Bad
The huge dungeons are the fall of PoR:RoMD. The idea of large area of adventuring sounds good, but the execution lacks badly. Main feeling I got from playing the game is sheer boredom. You just run around the ruins, kill monsters and rarely meet anyone who you can actually talk to.

This could be okay, but the navigation system is so idiotic, it makes the gameplay more of a chore than a treat. While the game has a map, you can't use it to plot your course, nor can you even get the screen roll so far a way, that you could just click directly in the far away spot you want to go. You are forced to take small sprints at a time, as the screen is pretty much locked to your main character.

As a note, the games map system show a button for world map, which I foolishly thought would actually allow you to access a world map at some point. It doesn't. The designers of the game thought that the VERY small area before you enter the ruins is the world.

Other huge minus are the fights. The system works okay, but it all happens so slowly. It's just not fun to wait for all those pesky skeletons or ghouls to slowly walk towards you.

I won't be giving any roses to music neither. There seems to be only a couple of tracks, which are played over and over again. Mostly the game is silent, but it starts to get pretty annoying when the same battle music starts blasting from the speakers for a millionth time.

The Bottom Line
Pool of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Drannor is a pretty mediocre and especially boring Baldur's Gate clone. It really has nothing going for it that would make it a fun game to play. When it was originally announced I recall it having quite a hype, but just like many other games with the hype, PoR:RoMD didn't manage to fill any of it.