GB Feature: Eschalon: Book III Review

We’ve already brought you an Eschalon: Book III subsite chock-full of content, but now that all of that information is at your disposal, we wanted to bring you a proper review of Basilisk Games’ latest title, as well. A sampling to follow:

Characters can reach somewhere around level 20 in the game, which nicely isn’t enough time for them to become a master of everything, even if you plan ahead so they visit trainers as much as possible. I played an unarmed specialist in Book III, mostly because I hadn’t tried one yet in the trilogy, and also because Basilisk Games added unarmed weapons (think brass knuckles) to the equipment you can find. Unarmed characters have the best weapon feat in the game (characters gain access to special weapon attacks — called feats — when they reach rank 10 in a weapon skill), and I pretty much cruised through the campaign with my pugilist. But whether that’s because unarmed characters are powerful, or the game is easy, or I just know the engine too well at this point, it’s tough to say.

Finally, before starting the game, you also have to toggle some rules on or off, where the more rules you leave on the tougher the game is, but the better equipment you find, and the more experience points you earn. There are four rules in total: characters need to eat and drink, equipment needs to be repaired, item drops are fixed rather than random, and saves can only be performed when no enemies are around and your character is healthy. Since I was doing prep work for our (soon to be) walkthrough while I was playing, I only had the first two rules on. The rules allow you to tune the game so you can enjoy it more, but they’re not really difficulty settings. There isn’t any way to make enemies smarter or tougher.