Eye of the Beholder Trilogy - SSI RRP œ45.99
                      (RPGs on CD-ROM)

                      Reviewed by MerC

 Glossary : Rex   = (MerC's) Recent EXperience with...
             Dyce = Dialog(ue) You Can't  Extinguish

What you get :
A CD ROM (In a plastic envelope. A CD case would have been nice)
containing arj-ed files for :
            Eye of the Beholder
            Eye of the Beholder ll (The Legend of Darkmoon)
            Eye of the Beholder lll  (Assault on Myth Drannor)
Non-playable demos of Dungeon Hack and Dark Sun.
Rule Books (but not the clue books) and data cards.
Installation instructions

CD ROMs don't seem to offer very much for your money, but this is
often an illusion. Because they are such a compact form of
storage, an awful lot goes into a very small space. No other
medium even approaches 650Mb per unit.  Software houses are making
use of this simple fact : one CD ROM can be produced, packaged and
distributed for a fraction of the cost of the equivalent numerous
floppy discs. However, garbage in, garbage out. If the material is
naff, the medium is irrelevant. If the material is good, the
medium should make it more accessible, convenient and more
enjoyable to play. If RPGs grab you, this CD will take you by the
throat.

The three original games must, I imagine, take up around a dozen
floppies, and this does not include the two (non-playable) demos
of AD&D titles that are thrown in on the CD. Discount houses are
currently offering the CD for around œ29 :  good value for money
when the separate EoB games are œ12 a time from the same company.
Strategic Simulations Inc., who market the Advanced Dungeons &
Dragons titles (quite where TSR and New Horizons fit in I can't
work out) have simply put all three EoB games on the one CD,
exactly as they are. No new levels, no digitised speech, no
additional cut scenes - and no extra cost.

This has four immediate and distinct advantages.

* You get a decent product for a reasonable price. Savings are
passed on to the customer.

* You can install all three to your hard disc (which requires
14Mb) at ftl speed. (Actually, 3mins 34 secs. from inserting the
disc to leaving the Tavern.) Not quite ftl, I hear you say. Well,
no, but it seems like it when you've been used to installing from
n floppies, (where n>4) and it's always the last one that has a
minute glitch towards the very end of a twenty minute procedure.
(Rex : AmiPro). For test purposes I installed all of them three
times on the trot, with not a single hitch. The installation even
identified my not-quite-100% SoundblasterPro compatible
non-default settings. The sound and graphics worked perfectly all
the time.

* CDs cannot be corrupted in the same way as the delicate magnetic
coating of a floppy, so you never have the hassle of a duff disc.
(Rex : Curse of Enchantia :  PC-incompatible format. All the files
had .mac extenders for some reason or other...) The data stays
where it's put. You can come back months later and still find it.
This is not always true of even the most expensive floppies.
Magnetic coating has a tendency to revert to its original state,
even without the odd microgauss of a stray field in the vicinity.
Instead of half a drawer in your disc cabinet, you only need one
slot in a much more compact arrangement. Not an inconsiderable
advantage when you look at the room most of us have on a computer
desk. Even Banx type filing drawers, although better than boxes,
soon fill up.

So what's the down side?  Well, you've bought three similar games,
so you'd better like the format and the way it's presented. RPGs
are not everybody's chalice of potion, and being AD&D, these are
RPG with a vengeance.  Fortunately, you can mostly ignore the
stats and thac0s and just keep an eye on Hit Points. You'd better
have time on your hands. Three RPGs take up a sizeable segment,
real time-wise.  (Actually, EoB never really appealed to me at
first. I just could not get on with those crimson bricks.) None of
the games is exactly young - the archive dates are 1993, but the
first two at least are older than this. Graphics are good to
excellent, as are sound effects. Movement is by flick. There is no
on-line mapping - a major omission.  There is not too much dyce,
(Rex: Legend of Kyrandia - if you accidentally meet Zanthia for
the first time more than once, go and mow the lawn) and cut scenes
are not intrusive. Endings, notoriously underdone in many RPGs,
are nothing special, though that in EoB ll is good, with a nasty
surprise just when you thought you'd won. EoB l can be completed
without exploring all the dungeon, which is a pity. I felt more
use could have been made of the stone implement teleport
arrangement introduced in l in the last two. EoB lll is rather
slow at accessing the HD, restoring games and, more annoyingly, at
casting certain spells during combat. This detracts considerably
from the gameplay, but fortunately does not occur in l & ll.

@~See also MerC's help in the Hints section.


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