Eye of the Beholder II: Summary and Rating

           

Eye of the Beholder II: The Legend of Darkmoon

United States

Westwood Associates (developer); Strategic Simulations, Inc. (publisher)

Released in 1991 for DOS, 1992 for Amiga, 1993 for FM Towns and PC-98

Date Started: 2 January 2018

Date Ended: 6 February 2018
Total hours: 43

Difficulty: 3.5/5 (moderate-hard)

Final Rating: 40

Ranking at Time of Posting: 231/282 (82%)

      

Eye of the Beholder II is a generally-pleasant but sometimes-uncomfortable fusion of Dungeon Master-style real-time gameplay and Advanced Dungeons and Dragons rules. It isn't significantly better, worse, or even very different than the first Eye of the Beholder, but of course both games were released in the same year and there wasn't a lot of time to change things. Because of that, as I wrote this entry, I found myself wanting to simply cut and paste entire paragraphs from my Eye of the Beholder summary. Here are two that still work nearly unchanged:

       

I'll say right away that Eye of the Beholder is not a better game than Dungeon Master, and if it rates higher than Dungeon Master on my GIMLET, we'll know that the GIMLET is broken or I rated the previous game too low. What Beholder gains through NPCs and better quests, it loses in fundamentally worse character development, combat, magic, and puzzles. I'm sure it's possible to blend Dungeons & Dragons rules with an action dungeon-crawler, and Beholder is an important step in that direction, but it's not the destination.

          

But let's not start with too many negatives: Beholder is still on the "recommended" side of the divide. From the opening animation . . . it promises and delivers a solid dungeon crawl that lasts just about the right amount of time for its content. The puzzles tend towards too easy . . . which is regrettable, but better in my book than games where the puzzles tend towards impossible. I enjoyed the process of mapping, carefully annotating certain squares for later return and investigation, and methodically uncovering the mysteries of each level.

          

But I note that in my Eye of the Beholder summary, I took a look at a speedrun and found someone who finished it legitimately in 8 minutes. That wouldn't be possible with the sequel. The developers quite literally tightened the maps, making it impossible to avoid many of the monsters that you could simply dart around in the original. Moreover, many of these unavoidable foes are quite hard and require at least most of a living party to defeat. The record for #2 seems to be nearly 2 hours, which is practically an eternity compared to the original. The player cheated by maxing some character statistics and all hit points, too.

      

No matter how much you plan, there's no way around this guy.

      

After I finished, I consulted the game's official cluebook to see what I had missed. Some highlights:

• I missed a few items, mostly trivial, because I didn't deliberately fall down every pit.

• There was a secret corridor in one of the dungeon levels that I didn't map, but it doesn't seem to have had anything it. It was just an alternate way to get around.

        

Almost this entire level is made up of pit destinations that I didn't map.

         

• The cluebook is quite blatant about supporting the combat waltz. On dealing with mind flayers, for instance: "Engage it in melee, swing once or twice, dodge, and then prepare to swing again." Similarly, with beholders: "Always try to attack a beholder's flank." Finally, at the end: "Remember, it is better to nickel and dime a powerful opponent to death rather than try to fight him face-to-face."

• There were two locations with resurrection ankhs off the main level. I don't know how I missed that. Each is capable of 3 resurrections, so I could have had 6 instead of just 3.

• I missed a Ring of Feather Falling in some niche.

• I could have gotten unlimited Spheres of Fire from a niche near the end.

• The cluebook places Insal the thief on the penultimate level. You're supposed to encounter him "if the party freed him from his prison on catacomb level 1." I didn't find him despite freeing him, but he wouldn't have had the stolen items anyway. I can't believe I just blithely let that long sword +5 go without reloading.

• Fighting my way through all of those mind flayers would have rewarded me with a crystal ball and "visions of the party's past and/or future." There aren't even any cool items in the mind flayers' chambers!

           

I loaded an earlier save and ran past the creatures to check it out. This wasn't really worth it.

            

• The Amulet of Life would have resurrected a character. The Amulet of Death, if used, would have killed a character.

• The Starfire Scepter would have indeed protected me from Dran's attacks. I'm skeptical whether it would have protected enough to truly be useful.

       

I'm a little annoyed it didn't clear up some of the item mysteries, such as why I found a stone cross so close to the endgame.

Finally, as an anonymous commenter noted, if you try to close a door in the dragon's path, he actually plows through it, breaking it. It doesn't slow him for a second.

           

Oh, yeah!

          

Without reference to the first game, let's see how close the GIMLET gets. I think it will fall somewhere between I and Dungeon Master.

1. Game world. Darkmoon tells a decent but not spectacular story. It's a little goofy that the big bad's name is an anagram for "dragon danger," and its attempts to tie to the first game are forced. However, I like that you encounter Dran at multiple points along the way--that he seems like a growing menace rather than just an endgame afterthought like Xanathar in the first one. Then again, the first game had a slightly more interesting world with the Drow and dwarves occupying the dungeon. I'd say it's a wash. Score: 4.

       

Frequent encounters like this kept a sense of tension throughout the game.

       

2. Character creation and development. AD&D 2nd edition allows for satisfying but not amazing character development. You get some hit points, maybe an extra attack, maybe a new spell level. This is all good, but games with skills and perks do it better. You don't gain many levels during this outing--not unless you grind a lot--and it feels like the game could be beaten by the starting characters. Getting a new spell level is always fun, but it just doesn't seem crucial here the way it does in other games.

There are no plot reasons to change up your selection of races, sexes, classes, or alignments, but it would be fun to periodically try the game again with a challenging party combination, like all mages or all clerics or something. Score: 4.

3. NPC interaction. I always like games that let you find new joinable NPCs while the game is in progress, but I was a bit disappointed that they didn't have more to their stories or more to say. At the beginning, it seemed like some of them would have plot-related dialogues or their own personal quests to complete, but this idea fell apart fast. You don't even get speeches from newly-resurrected NPCs the way you did in the first game. Score: 3.

4. Encounters and foes. This is a category that improved from the first game, I thought. The enemies are more interesting here, with a variety of strengths and weaknesses that factor into combat tactics. Non-combat encounters were more plentiful and offered some basic role-playing options. I also thought the puzzles were more challenging and more interesting, rising to Dungeon Master quality in a few locations. Score: 6.

        

Role-playing options like this were a welcome addition to the game.

        

5. Magic and combat. Also slightly improved. The higher-level spells offered more advanced options in combat and spells in general seemed far more necessary here than in the first game. As much as I defended the "waltz," I like that it failed in so many places, since you face a lot of enemies in narrow corridors and the developers slightly adjusted the enemy AI. The final level and the absolute necessity of bobbing and weaving around the enemies was a little disappointing, and I'm mystified at the lack of certain AD&D spells--"Resist Cold," "Resist Fire," "Enlarge," "Fire Shield," "Globe of Invulnerability"--that might have made a face-to-face fight possible. Nonetheless, the overall improvements to the magic and combat systems were steps in the right direction. Score: 5.

6. Equipment. The "Improved Identify" spell did wonders for this category, although I was disappointed at the relative weakness of items found in Darkmoon in comparison to the first game, and I don't feel like I ended much more powerful that I started. I also wish the game had been clearer as to the distinction between quest items and non-quest items, and while it's nice to know the names and pluses of items, we still lack any true statistics or descriptions of the inventory pieces. I also think the developers missed an opportunity to enhance replayability by randomizing some of the item locations. Score: 4.

        

We're sure bringing a lot of junk into the third title.

         

7. Economy. Still none. I know that some of you will say that the game doesn't need it, and that the absence of an economy isn't the same thing as a "bad" economy, and so forth, but I maintain that my experience would have been enhanced by a little stall in the forest area where I could sell excess goods and buy rations, potions, and scrolls, and perhaps save up for a few high-value magic items. Score: 0.

8. Quests. There's a clear main quest, but Darkmoon lacks the side quests of the first game as well as the special level quests. It only has a few side areas. Score: 3.

9. Graphics, sound, and interface. The graphics are superb for the era, even more detailed than the first game, and both sound effects and ambient sounds were top-notch. On the other hand, I had more problems with the controls than the first game. When you're frantically clicking around in combat, the proximity of the weapon icons to the character's name, which moves his position in the party, is more than mildly annoying. I also didn't appreciate the frequent freezes in the middle of combat while I was trying to swap equipment or open spellbooks. I can't remember if these were present in the first game, but if so, they didn't bother me as much. Overall, there was a little too much dependent on the mouse and too little on the keyboard. Score: 6.

10. Gameplay. When I started playing, the game felt very nonlinear, but what seemed like multiple choices for staircases, doors, and portals soon collapsed into a fairly linear experience, far more so than the first game. I also wouldn't call it very replayable, except (again) to try challenging party combinations. On the positive side, the level of difficulty and length of play were both perfect, although keep in mind that I say that having imported my characters and their equipment. Score: 5.

That gives us a final score of 40--one point lower than Eye of the Beholder! That was a surprise. But looking over my review of the first game, it makes sense. While I appreciated the encounters and combat more here, Darkmoon gave up some elements--including better NPC interaction, a couple of side quests, and a less-linear approach--that led to an accumulation of 1-point losses.

Even with my usual caveats--40 points is reasonably good on my scale, less than 20% of games have achieved it, etc.--this rating is bound to be controversial if you love this style of game. Before you comment angrily, please reflect that a near-perfect dungeon crawler in the Dungeon Master style is not the same thing as an excellent computer role-playing game generically. My GIMLET is naturally designed to produce high scores in the kinds of games I prefer, which include a full set of RPG features (including an economy), meaningful character development, tactical combat rather than action combat, and lots of role-playing choices, side quests, and nonlinear gameplay. I do agree that Eye of the Beholder II is a good exemplar of its particular approach.

            

Were separately-sold Day 1 cluebooks as controversial in 1991 as Day 1 DLC is today?

           

Scorpia reviewed Darkmoon in the April 1992 Computer Gaming World. (I note with some amusement that the same issue has a review of Bloodwych, which I played nearly 6 years and over 200 games ago. That highlights how little progress I'm making.) It's not one of her better reviews, full of spoilers and going into unnecessary meticulous detail about a handful of enemies. But she agrees with me on the interface issues, quoting a friend in saying, "It's only real-time for the monsters." She bemoans the freezing that accompanies spellcasting and swapping equipment. She also complains about something that I didn't think to complain about but was a problem nonetheless: the need to use the mouse in combat and the keypad to move forces you into an awkward position in which your left hand is on the right side of the keyboard, meaning that your arm is either at a weird angle or you're off-center from the computer monitor. Overall, it's clear that like me she prefers games that eschew manual dexterity for more cerebral combat tactics.

She talks about the improved ending, contrasting it with the "drop to DOS" ending of Eye of the Beholder, which I've read repeatedly and absolutely isn't true. Yes, there's more of a cinematic here, but I didn't think it was so much better than the first game to deserve extra points. In the end, though, I find it hard to disagree with most her final paragraph:

         

Overall, Eye of the Beholder II: Legend of Darkmoon is a more substantial game than its predecessor. There is more to do, a bigger variety of critters to fight, and a larger area to explore. Graphics are a bit finer than in EOB I. Sound effects are about the same. Some of the problems with the earlier game (poor ending, lack of save positions) have been fixed, although the combat interface remains a sore point. If you enjoyed the first game, you will definitely like this one.

         

Dragon gave the game 5/5 stars despite having some complaints about the lack of an automap and support for all sound cards. Again, I have to note that a magazine dedicated to tabletop role-playing seems to praise everything but tabletop-style mechanics in its reviews of computer games. Nonetheless, the review by Patricia Hartley and Kirk Lesser does a good job evoking some of the more visceral elements of Darkmoon, which I experienced but perhaps didn't blog enough about. There is a wonderful sense of anxiety as you creep down a corridor, not knowing what to expect around the bend, wondering where those mysterious sounds are coming from, hoping that something hasn't respawned in the corridor behind you, literally jumping out of your seat when something attacks you from the rear. As much as I love the Gold Box titles and prefer them to Dungeon Master-style gameplay, I do admit that they generally lack this delightful trepidation.

If you want to get angry at a review while still agreeing with its score, check out the July 1992 Amiga Computing. This is easily the worst-written review I've ever seen in a gaming magazine. With only six precious columns, the reviewer wastes 3 of them blabbing about everything but the game, and not even making sense in his extraneous dithering. He expresses contempt for the entire RPG genre, bemoans that there are too may RPGs out there, describes Eye of the Beholder II as more of the same old thing, and then inexplicably says, in the final paragraph, "On balance, Eye of the Beholder 2 is the best RPG around." Where did that come from? He bases his opinions, judging by the five screenshots, on the first 10 minutes of the game. Every time I think I've gotten used to the lack of journalistic quality in 1990s Amiga magazines, someone manages to lower the bar even further.

Darkmoon is so well known, of course, that there are plenty of modern takes on the game, too. Corey "Dingo" Brock offered a retrospective in 2011 on Hardcore Gaming 101. He makes a good point on the relative ease of navigation in the sequel, with fewer teleporters and redundant stairways and more hints about secret door locations. My particular approach to playing and mapping doesn't really favor those changes, but I can see why some players would prefer them. He also notes the increase in encounters with role-playing options. In contrast, I can find nothing to agree with in GameSpy's brief description of the game in a 2004 history of RPGs. There were times that the game was difficult, but it did not feature an "insane level of difficulty." And I guess I'm just jaded from modern games, but most reviewers seem to be far more in love with animated introductions and conclusions than I am. I mean, I suppose I prefer a cinematic to plain text, but only barely. I'm more interested in the quality of the story than the way it's presented, and while watching the mages cast lightning bolts at Darkmoon until it vanished was cute, it made about as much sense as Khelben's ignorance to the danger posed by Dran Draggore. 

      

Did they send it back in time!?

          

Unfortunately, I read ahead in Brock's review and noted some of the problems with Eye of the Beholder III: Assault on Myth Drannor (1993), but that's on the other side of a lot of fantastic 1992 games. It's somewhat ironic to see the failure of the third game blamed on Westwood Studios' absence from game development. The company started out shaky ground with titles like Mars Sage (AKA Mines of Titan, 1988), BattleTech: The Crescent Hawk's Inception (1988), and Hillsfar (1989), all of which produced more than one moment of baffled rage in my reviews. But I have to admit they improved their game for the Eye of the Beholder titles, and I look forward to seeing if the upward trend continues in the Lands of Lore series (1993-1999).

And with that, believe it or not, we are at last done with 1991. It only took 2 years and 9 months. We'll have the retrospective coming up next, but I can tell you the "Game of the Year" nominees right now: Disciples of Steel, Pools of Darkness, Might and Magic III, Fate: Gates of Dawn, and I'll make a case for Eye of the Beholder, but don't get your hopes up.