Eschalon: Book II Review

Jay Is Games reviews Basilisk Games’ indie RPG sequel Eschalon: Book II. It offers a few points of criticism, especially on the mechanical side, but it positive overall, with no score given.

Not much has changed on the surface; Eschalon is still a top-down isometric turn-based RPG that encourages you to go out there into the big open world and explore. Go on quests, find treasure, level up, and kill or be killed. (Although for the first little while it’ll probably be the latter.) There’s not much of a tutorial to be had, but a few minutes of fiddling around is enough to learn the ropes. The game is controlled with the mouse, and you simply click and hold to move your character in that direction, or click on something to interact. Whether that interaction is friendly or the sort of thing that involves an arrow through the back of one’s head is entirely at your discretion.

If you’re hoping to continue on as your character from the original game… well… you can’t. Not really, anyway, even though everyone assumes you are that person. You have to start over as a fresh level one hero, and while this makes the game more accessible to newcomers, it might be a disappointment to players who had expected to import their old character and face off against even bigger challenges. Members of the fairer sex may be happy to see the game allows you to create female characters this time. Of course, no matter what, you’re stuck with the same mannish brown-haired character sprite. I call her “Maude”.