Average Playtime: 1 hour

Eschalon: Book I

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About

Eschalon: Book I is an old-school role-playing game that will take you across massive outdoor environments and deep into dozens of sprawling dungeons as you seek to uncover the mystery of who you are. It features a tile-built, turn-based game world where the result of absolutely every action is rolled, calculated or statistically determined. Hundreds of items and dozens of creatures await your discovery in this classically inspired RPG.
  • A tile-built, turn-based game world where the result of absolutely every action is rolled, calculated or statistically determined. Strategy is paramount to success; careful skill management, equipment selection and magic usage will win your fights, not rapid button clicking. We are very pleased to say this is not another "action RPG".
  • Hundreds of items and dozens of creatures await your discovery. A combination of randomly generated treasure and carefully hidden goodies means that no two games will play the exact same way.
  • Unlimited character development style: Choose from 24 unique skills to make the character you want and 8 base attributes that affect your character's every action throughout the game. The game world does not scale or adjust itself to match anyone's play style, so the ease or difficulty of the game is directly related to how successful you are at developing your character.
  • Combat plays out at your pace. Eschalon: Book I features a turn-based system that allows you to roll through combat as fast or slow you want...make it fast and furious, or analyze every option for maximum advantage.
  • A non-linear storyline means that the game world is open to explore as you desire. Follow the storyline or don't...it's up to you. Just be careful where you go and who you choose to trust- the world of Eschalon can be a deadly place for an inexperienced adventurer.
  • An epic adventure that you must face alone...a single-player RPG carefully designed to feel like the great old school RPGs of the past such as Ultima®, Might & Magic®, and Wizardry®
Platforms
Metascore
75
Genre
Release date
Developer
Basilisk Games
Publisher
Basilisk Games
Age rating
Not rated
Website
http://basiliskgames.com/eschalon-book-i

System requirements for PC

  • OS: Windows 2000, XP, Vista
  • Processor: 1.8ghz or better
  • Memory: 512MB
  • Graphics: 3D Accelerated (DirectX 7.0 or OpenGL compliant)
  • DirectX®: 7.0 or greater
  • Hard Drive: 200MB
  • Sound: Yes

System requirements for Linux

Minimum:
  • OS: Ubuntu 12.04 LTS
  • Processor: 1.6GHz
  • Memory: 256 MB RAM
  • Graphics: 3D accelerated graphics card

System requirements for macOS

Minimum:
  • OS: OS X version Leopard 10.5.8, Snow Leopard 10.6.3, or later
  • Processor: 1.6GHz
  • Memory: 256 MB RAM
  • Graphics: 3D accelerated graphics card
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Last Modified: Aug 29, 2023

Where to buy

Steam
GOG

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Sinkler

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Eschalon: Book I reviews and comments

Translated by
Microsoft from Deutsch
Hi there, first of all, I like to play this game. The developers took their time for a good story with lots of small adventures on the side which all make sense more or less. Here are my critics which were maybe already dealt with in Book II and III. Maybe it´s still helpful for new players. - The tutorial is missing and lots of explanations, hints and the like. This leads to things like me buying and wearing light armor (while having the heavy armor skill) and decreasing effectivly my armor rating which really does not make sense in any way. Took me some fights and wasting of precious coin to realize that. The same goes for the character creation where you can choose between boons without knowing anything about their impact (i. e. choosing "druidic": How do I know if more combats are in the wilderness or underground? How shall I estimate if it´s a good idea to choose this religion? The same goes for blessing/curses. How shall I estimate if its worth taking the risk´to be more vulnerable to curses?). As a beginner you are forced to make a more or less blind decision. - the "Pick locks" system leads (because of the price of 30 Gold per Lock Pick and long travel times to merchants) to a "save and restore" way of dealing with locks (Heh, don´t tell me that you did not do that, too). The developers should have anticipated that and implemented another system - if you don´t focus maximum on combat (or maybe even if you do, I don´t know) you easily end up in camping after every second fight to restore your HP. But since it takes quite some time to regain the HP you will encounter more enemies during resting which is really frustrating. I have delayed playing more than once because of that. It´s boring and annoying to camp and/or run away from monsters all the time. - I like it that enemies are not dropping things all the time ( like in many games when wild animals dropping gold and stuff) but humanoid enemies should definitly drop a bit more stuff just to be realistic. It´s just makes no sense killing an armed goblin without him dropping not a single gold coin of value. - speaking of realism: There are barrels in the wilderness containing gold coins and stuff... That´s just stupid imho. There should be an easy other way to provide players with rewards (like corpses, a cache in a tree or in the ground or whatever) - monsters can kill npc´s! Those who gives adventures or own shops! You really need to notify players about that up front! Loosing an npc to a monster could have a serious impact on the game don´t you think? - automap is not working without having the skill cartography. I like that idea but I want to be notified about that not only in the description of the skill. It´s just too important imho. - you can be killed by stepping on a thornbush... come on... who´s idea was that? I wanna kill him (by throwing him in a bush with thorns...) - there is no hint that tells me that I can smash things like barrels, chests and the like. And there is no hint either that in doing that I could destroy the used weapons. Again: The game provides esspecially n the beginning way to little coin and a player should get notified about those things up front. Still: I like and recommend this game. Edit: Well, I cant say that this game is not good for some real frustrations. The idea of implementing curses and diseases that need to be cured with effort or big money, the fact that acid from traps or animals can destroy your armor and weapons brings the player one more time to the point of just reloading instead of playing it out. Loosing a weapon worth 1000 gold or running around in a dungeon cursed or diseases is just way too frustrating. Thats a big thumbs down for this game. When you just refixed your equipment and made some changes to the hotkeys of spells and did not save and then run into a trap that destroys the weapon you just bought you just want to kill somebody. Cheers and have fun, Kribskraps
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