Eye of the Beholder

The Good
The MUSIC was terrific, it created the PERFECT ATMOSPHERE from the very moment you started to create your party. The PLAYABILITY was great, obviously you can´t compare it to a modern game but at the time it was awesome. Good and functional GRAPHICS.

The Bad
Well at times the games would get a bit difficult, specially if you didn´t have a hintbook. Luckily magazines proofed to be most helpful. I probably have to blame this game not only for giving me a sort of "RPG-fever" that lasts until this very day. but also for making it harder for me to overcome a mild case of arachnophobia.

The Bottom Line
It was probably the second RPG I ever played on a computer (Amiga 500) and it opened my eyes to a fantastic world. The atmosphere was just binding thanks to the graphics and the music.

The Good
Eye of the Beholder provides a real-time, 3-D dungeon crawl that does a good job in creating a claustrophobic dungeon atmosphere.. The VGA graphics are good and the sound is adequate. There is a wide variety of monsters, treasure, and puzzles to find. I also enjoyed being able to increase the party size by resurrecting the bodies of adventurers found throughout the dungeon.

The Bad
While the graphics for the dungeon walls and the creatures are good, there is little additional graphical detail throughout environments. This causes all the rooms and hallways to look alike after a while. Early in the game, combat presents little challenge and consist mainly of clicking attack over and over. Later fights, however, have the potential to be more challenging. Unfortunately, due to the real-time nature of the combat, even these battles can become trivial affairs in which the player can avoid damage by sidestepping before opponent attacks. Using missile weapons can be a pain as each rock/arrow/dagger thrown has to be picked up again. I found myself ignoring the back row characters so that I wouldn’t have to pick up every arrow after each encounter. I also found identification of items to be difficul,t and without a hint book, I would likely never been able to identify anything.

The Bottom Line
EOB is moderately entertaining albeit with a few flaws. This game should appeal to those who enjoy hack and slash first person RPGs and don’t mind the step-by-step movement found within. The lack of an auto-map can be a plus or minus depending on the player’s love of graph paper. Overall, an adequate dungeon romp with lots of loot, lots of levels, and minimal story.

The Good
- the gameplay is absolutely fluid, the controls are mouse and keypad only are easy to handle. There are no speed problems even on modern machines.

• the graphics were outstanding for the time being, one of the early VGA AD&D games (the first if I'm not mistaken), although there's not much animation. This is especially true when compared to other RPG's of that style from that time (Bloodwych, I'm looking at you...)

• this is also the first AD&D game that uses 2nd edition rules - all the "Gold Box games" still used 1st edition.

• the atmosphere really makes you feel as if you're in a dungeon. You might walk around a corner while some monster blasts you from behind and you won't find out until you're almost dead.
  
  The Bad
  - well, there's no real adventure part. It's kill monsters, draw maps, find out which keys fit where. Storyline is typical "kill the bad guy" and not much more. And the ending is horrid - after you geek the beholder, there is some text about how you've saved everyone and went back home safely. Also, you cannot save the game after you've killed the big guy, so when you import your party to EOB2, technically you import the party that didn't finish the game. Ooh well.

• there's only one save option. Thankfully they'd fix this in EOB2, as well as other little nitpicks.

• no auto mapping, although I have to admit that I had a lot of fun drawing my own maps.

• monsters are pathetically easy to kill if you're skilled at using both mouse and keyboard: whack the monster by mouse-click, then step back using the keypad before the monster can retaliate. Repeat till it's dead.
  
  The Bottom Line
  Still, a damn good game. A must have for every AD&D gamer, and if you ever want to play the even better sequel (EOB2 - Legend of Darkmoon) you ought to beat this game in order to import a good party with it's share of magical items etc., especially seeing how tough EOB2 is you need all the beef you can get.