Eye of the Beholder III: Assault on Myth Drannor

The Good
Well, this game did allow you to import your already-powerful characters from Eye of the Beholder II, which meant you had a considerable early advantage.

The graphics are generally outstanding, on par with EoB 2 without reusing many sprites. The game adds new character portraits.

There are two great improvements in the combat interface, First, the addition of the all attack button allows all your party members to attack, if they are able to. This saves the player from having to move the mouse to each character's weapon or learn hot-keys. Second, the ability to allow characters in the second rank to make a melee attack with a polearm really allows them to shine, whereas in the first two games they were somewhat useless.

The difficulty, for the most part, has been toned down compared to the merciless EoB2.

The Bad
This game was not developed by Westwood Studios, which had done both the prior games, and it shows.

The plot is barely-existent, especially compared to the previous game. The introduction to this game pales in comparison to its atmospheric predecessor. Ditto for the endgame. The story in the manual has no relevance to the actual in-game events. Unlike its predecessor, there is no connection with the events of the prior games.

This game uses digitized sound effects if you have a Sound Blaster. Unfortunately, once the effects turn on, they're always blaring. You really want to tell the game to shut up, as many of the effects are not pleasant sounding. The game isn't especially speedy, but with the digitized sounds on walking, turning and loading are painfully slow.

The difficulty is incredibly inconsistent. Most of the time, the game is pretty easy, but there are some spots, (one early in the game), that are brutally hard.

There are many high spells available, but as your mages are extremely unlikely to reach the levels to cast them from your spellbook, they are essentially one-time deals.

The Bottom Line
More of the same gameplay. If you like Eye of the Beholder, you will enjoy this game but not as much as you would its far superior predecessor. A beefy system is a must if you want digitized sound.