Rating: 
Summary: Please spend your money on something else...
Review: ...like Fallout Tactics or Arcanum. This game is terrible. The play control is miserable, and the graphics don't work right. Your characters, even with a fast computer, move across the screen at a crawl. The new d20 features are horribly twisted: you get skills and feats but the game picks them for you. There's no wizard class, a mainstay of DnD. The gameplay is unbalanced, you run into creatures that require magic weapons to kill before you have any magic weapons. This game is a laughable, stupid joke. I may send my copy to the people developing Neverwinter Nights with a clear warning to avoid every mistake SSI/Ubisoft made here.
Rating: 
Summary: There are a couple of reasons to check out this game
Review: 1. The revision of 3rd edition D&D rules. Normally, I have a lot of irks about D&D 3rd edition and its encumbersome rule system. This game almost completely fixes the rules to be more up-to-date with console role-playing standards. Unfortunetly though, the accuracy/evasion system was not fixed, and thus you will find yourself missing 90% of the time. (This is not an exageration, either.)
2. Perfect emulation of D&D combat. This game has managed to perfectly portray every aspect of the combat system found in pen-and-paper D&D. The best way to describe it is "tactical turn-based." Each unit has an initiative, which basically lets you know who goes first, second, etc. Upon reaching a turn, the unit has an ATB gauge which begins to decrease. During this time, you may freely move your unit around the field. After moving, you may perform some sort of action with that unit. The range of movement and number of actions depends on your initiative as well as conditional items such as any previous actions taken in the same round. (Which means that you can sometimes do multiple actions if they don't require a lot of effort on the unit's part - it all depends on what you do and when you do it.)
As far as other aspects of gameplay go, the game doesn't have a whole lot to offer. It just seems like you lead your party to dungeon after dungeon, pointlessly slaughtering whatever might lie in your path. However, I still find this game very enjoyable. Being that the refined rules system blends in great with the fun combat system, it's easy to get pulled in - even though the plot itself is rather boring.
If you're an avid D&D fan, then you may want to check this game out for novelty purposes. If you end up falling in love with the rules and combat system, then you may also want to check out The Temple of Elemental Evil. (Being that it seems to be based on the system used in Pool of Radiance.)
Rating: 
Summary: Flawed but repairable
Review: All I know for certain is what I have read in the instruction book that came with the game. I have installed this thing 4 times (fortunately, I didn't get any of the major problems others have experienced with corruption of OS when I uninstalled - or I should say I haven't noticed any yet), and I have never been able to get it to go past the first screen (selecting between options and play, etc - the main menu). I have installed with their first 2 patches (which are patches for getting the game to install and run - they were still in the process of getting out the first batch of fixes for the gameplay glitches), but they haven't helped. I have read of people having to install older drivers to get this to work. Some people seem to have the lucky combination of whatever it is they need to make this thing run, but there are a bunch of us programmers (yes, I have been programming in the real world for 5 years, I'm not exactly new at this type of thing) out here who can't seem to find that combination. Avoid this thing like the plague. Wait for a while. After the game drops to [a fraction of its current price], maybe UBI Soft will have out all of the patches necessary to make this silly thing actually work. (...)
Rating:
Summary: Can't tell much
Review: All I know for certain is what I have read in the instruction book that came with the game. I have installed this thing 4 times (fortunately, I didn't get any of the major problems others have experienced with corruption of OS when I uninstalled - or I should say I haven't noticed any yet), and I have never been able to get it to go past the first screen (selecting between options and play, etc - the main menu). I have installed with their first 2 patches (which are patches for getting the game to install and run - they were still in the process of getting out the first batch of fixes for the gameplay glitches), but they haven't helped. I have read of people having to install older drivers to get this to work. Some people seem to have the lucky combination of whatever it is they need to make this thing run, but there are a bunch of us programmers (yes, I have been programming in the real world for 5 years, I'm not exactly new at this type of thing) out here who can't seem to find that combination. Avoid this thing like the plague. Wait for a while. After the game drops to [a fraction of its current price], maybe UBI Soft will have out all of the patches necessary to make this silly thing actually work. (...)
Rating:
Summary: Flawed but repairable
Review: I bought this game expecting I was buying a 3-D Baldurs Gate. Boy was I wrong! ROMD seems to be more like a turn-based Diablo II, with plenty of guys to kill and treasure to pick up, but other than that no real substance.The graphics are good, certainly better than Baldur's Gate. You first explore outside of Myth Drannor which is infested with orcs and zombies. The locales outside are fairly intresting, in the first area alone there's a orc camp, dark tower, shop, a hidden shelter for elves, a fountain that heals you, and a strange floating rock that may or may not be a Mythal. However, the most boring part is actually exploring the underground lairs! They're totally bland, with all the rooms looking like any other rooms, except with the furniture rearranged! The encounters differ alot from rescueing friends to defeating a large and powerful foe, but they all have to do with combat. Subquests are little more than treasure hunts, but they are numerous. Talking has no roleplaying to it at all, you cannot intimidate other characters, flirt with them, quite a bit different from Baldur's Gate, all you do is ask them something or tell them something. The worst part of the game is that you can't customize your character! Things like feats and skills are already chosen for you, even the Ranger's favored enemy! Many of the character classes, such as wizards, druids, and bards, are not available in the game. You cannot choose a prestige class. They've eliminated everything 3rd Edition D&D was made for. There is one saving grace, however. Despite the game's many flaws, its combat is nail biting and sometimes intense even though it's a turned based game. Most of the battles require you to be a tactian and it may be fun for strategy enthusiasts. Maybe. I'll give it a two because it is fun for some. Otherwise your playing a game with no soul. It needs heavy patchwork, I can tell you that.
Rating: 
Summary: Pool of Radiance
Review: I have only made it partly through but it seems to be getting better and better. The only drawback to this game is the type of computer system you need to run it.
Rating:
Summary: some will love this game
Review: I personally am enjoying the game.
Despite all the bad reviews, I wanted to try it and I was also tempted to have a D and D module included in the collector's edition. I got it and I found the game is much better than I expected after the recent patch. If you like to see how table top miniature combat game comes to a life to PC, this game is for you and you will love it. It exactly gives you the feeling of miniature combat and I liked it a lot. I do not play miniature combat game myself but have been very interested and this PC game was my answer for it. Combat becomes somewhat repetitive but still many tactical consideration makes each combat a pleasant one. I have noticed that for this game, strategy guide turns out to be very helpful. Otherwise, dungeon is too big and you could easily be lost about the quest that you are following for. In fact, strategy guide is very good and it will add to your D and D collection.
Rating:
Summary: Wait for the Reviews
Review: I purchased this game even though I had some doubts about its quality owing to previous delays. The game was supposed to have shipped in the spring of 2000. I can respect a game company's desire to build a quality game even if it means moving ship dates up, but I also know that businesses frequently put pressure on their development staffs to ship at a certain point even if the game isn't ready so that they can begin recovering their costs. Initial reports indicate that this has happened in the case of PoR. Installation glitches, lock-ups, wipe and re-installs have affected some people. During my own installation, I noticed that it said game files were being installed to the Program Files folder even though I had pointed to a different directory. These small glitches indicate a game that has been rushed to shipment. SSI is already talking about patches for the poor victims of even more serious problems. As for the game itself, I can only say that the initial play has been a little disappointing. The fact that an entire character class, the druid, is not an option in addition to the lack of customization for characters makes PoR pale when compared to Interplay's Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dales series. Graphically, I think PoR is not as good as the Interplay titles. Characters have jagged edges and there are no options for bumping up resolutions and setting anti-aliasing effects in the option menus (I'm running a GeForce 3 card). I think the default and only option is to run in 800 X 600, something I wish game companies would remove as a limitation given the current crop of high performance video cards like the GeForce 2/3 and Radeon. I would rather wait an extra two months for a game and know that I can run it in higher resolutions than get something where the graphics don't make use of the power of the newer video cards. Graphics engines must be able to render in 1024 X 768. I like some of the menuing that they have done in PoR though. The right click menus enable players to quickly get at weapons, spells, and skills without having to go to a separate screen. In addition, the spell effects are pretty cool from what few spells I've used so far. The combat stays pretty faithful to the table top rules, although I don't there are anything like attacks of opportunity. It is turn based and makes use of an initiative system that should be familiar to pen and paper players. In addition, the character movement is more fluid, something I wish BG had done better. I would suggest waiting for a thorough review of this title by GameSpot.com or one of the other sites. Resist the urge to go out and buy simply because you are a fantasy RPG nut like me until you've read some reviews by expert gamers. Normally, I follow this advice, but ... I would have preferred that SSI and Ubi Soft and Storm Front had waited awhile before building PoR, until the 3E rules had been published. I think developers got stuck spending an inordinate amount of time changing the game mechanics as the 3E D&D rules went through their revisions. As a result, I think the dev team lost time modifying game rules instead of being able to continue work an providing for a wider set of features that were truer to the spirit of 3E.
Rating:
Summary: Watch out for software problems ! ! !
Review: I purchased this game when it first came out and had quite a time trying to install it. I have a large d drive but it would tell me there is not enough space for a full install. I had twenty gig left on that drive. It would install only on the C drive even if I told it to install somewhere else. It would put a little file on the D drive and do the rest of the install on the C drive. Then it had problems with the screen resolution, then the characters would not appear on the screen... only the pointers used to guide them from place to place. I wrote the software publisher and they knew it had multiple problems and did not know when/if they would have a fix. I ended up returning it. When I returned it I heard of all the horror stories from other people that installed this game, the worst problem being that it erased the information off the hard drive when it deinstalled itself. Yikes. I would definitely double check that these problems are fixed and then back up your computer before installing. It is too bad for me, since I was very excited to play this game.
Rating:
Summary: I played the original...what a let down. Bad interface
Review: I was hoping to pick up something that would fill the time till the release of DAoC (Dark Age of Camelot), so I went with PoR. Big mistake, the game wants to be a "Fallout" but can't even come close. It has almost no RPG, the first character I came across only speaks the first line of text and nothing else. When you find treasure of any kind there are only 3 graphics: 1.) bag of gems 2.) pile of coins 3.) shield. You would think that with all the delays they would have added more graphics to things. The original interviews said that you could interact with many objects...this is untrue. They said that you could block doors with objects...not in this game. If the game was selling for under 20 bucks then it might be worth buying, but as it is right now...NO WAY. This is just another example of a game company less interested in the product then the $$$. Its too bad to, the original series of D&D games were great.
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