Graphics and Sound

Graphics and Effects

Pool of Radiance now uses a 3D engine. The screenshots look 2D, but similar to Nocturne and your average console survival-horror games, you're seeing 3D characters over 2D rendered art. The 2D background art is fantastic. It reminds me a lot of Planscape Torment (one of the best RPGs ever!) in quality and style. The city of Myth Drannor has a lot of character - all of the buildings have the feeling of hundreds of years of decay with glimpses of the beauty that once was. Unfortunately most of the game is spent in dungeons, so you don't see this wonderful artwork, save for the occasional loading screen. In the dungeons it looks like the designers used a Cut and Paste Dungeon Creator Kit (tm). Everything looks like the same dull, boring brown bricks underground. They should have spent more time designing outdoor areas, which they can obviously do well.

I like PoR's graphic engine for a few reasons. Historically when you change a weapon or armor on a character in a computer RPG, they all look the same. A long sword looks like a short sword or a scimitar, etc. In PoR every weapon and armor type has a different model. You can actually tell the difference between a Half-Plate and a Full-Plate. Unique items all have their own model as well, so when you find the one-of-a-kind club made from a stone glolem's arm, you see your character holding exactly that.

Not The Pool, but a pool

Ormyrr skeletons

Lightning bolt

The animations of PoR are both good and bad. Attacking animations are great - gone are characters swinging at thin air when they should be contacting an enemy. The engine places models at correct distances to avoid this. There are animations for each type of weapon as well. You wouldn't swing a two-handed broadsword the same way as a dagger. Monks also have multiple hand-to-hand (or foot-to-face) attacks. The spell animations however, are bad. They don't jump out of the screen or do much beyond your average multi-colored light show. Most of them consist of a glowing sphere growing around the target. Offensive spells, normally the bread and butter of special effects, just suck. Take the 8th level cleric spell "Firestorm" for example. You'd expect a high level spell like this to show the heavens opening up and fire raining down with the wrath of gods. But in PoR all you get are orange blobs falling down like a teddy bear just threw up on your screen. Final Fantasy this is not.

The engine really forced my computer to chug. I'm running a modest 1Ghz Thunderbird with a GeForce2, and at 800x600 I could only get 15 frames per second. This wouldn't be a problem in most RPGs, but it's a big problem in PoR because the mouse pointer can only refresh as fast as the framerate. A mouse with a 15Hz refresh rate is one of the most annoying things you can experience on a computer, and one of the major problems with PoR's interface (more on that later).

Maps are huge

Firestorm

Nagas arn't nice

Sound

Moving past graphics, the musical score in Pool of Radiance is great. I can tell the composers spent a lot of time creating ambiance music that truly fits very well with the game. The only thing I can knock the soundtrack for is that it should be on more. Not having sound while you're trekking across a dungeon is rather boring. Classical music and fantasy RPGs have always worked well together, and PoR is no different. If you pick up the collector's edition of PoR, you'll get the soundtrack on an audio CD.

The sound effects in the game are slightly below average. I can't remember any sound effects off the top of my head, so they're obviously forgettable. There are times there should be sound effects, but there are none. When you strike an enemy it uses the same sound over and over. The least they could have done is create sounds for different weapons striking several surfaces. I doubt the sound of hitting a skeleton with a mace sounds the same as an arrow piercing armor.