Eschalon: Book I Review

Twenty Sided has been running a multi-part look at Basilisk Games’ Eschalon: Book I, from January 10th onwards. The review is broken down into first impressions, Text, Economy, and Random Numbers, Character Progression, and Ending. Like me, he wasn’t impressed by the story, but liked the game itself quite a bit.

I’m probably being unfair. Eschalon is designed to be old-school, and the old games were notoriously sloppy with justifications for doing all sorts of crazy stuff in the world. The classic (Gather up the Seven Magic Keys of Evil-Thwarting, which have been hidden for no good reason) was about par for the course back then, and Eschalon is miles ahead of that sort of thing.

I was a bit wary about the ending, since this is Echalon: Book I. I was worried we were going to get left at some wretched (buy the next game!) cliffhanger. But no, this game is self-contained and wraps things up nicely.

I had fun with the game. I’ll be looking forward to Eschalon: Book II.