Game:

Eye of the Beholder (1991)

Category:

Review

Duration: 11:20

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#dungeonsanddragons #eyeofthebeholder #pergasus #dosbox #forgottenrealms #waterdeep #undermountain

Some things that I forgot to mention in the review...

First of all, there is a Dwarf Cleric located on Level 5. Until your Cleric has hit level 9, he is your only way to cure poison and revive dead characters. Oddly enough, your Cleric will be high enough level to cure paralysis long before you encounter enemies that can paralyze you, but you encounter enemies that can poison you long before you can cast the Neutralize Poison spell yourself. Weird, right?

There are stone portals located all over the dungeon, and with the exception of one of them, they can get you around much faster, provided that you have the proper stone item, of course. Each portal will have a list of stone items on each side of it, and one of them will be missing. Simply take the missing stone item that you have collected up to that point and put it where it's indentation should be, and you will be whisked away to another location in the dungeon somewhere. You actually have to use one such portal to beat the game, two of them if you're going for 100%.

While this game does follow Advanced/2nd Edition Dungeons & Dragons rules fairly faithfully, it makes some exceptions here and there. For example, a Fighter/Mage can wield all weapons and wear all armor and can even cast his arcane spells while wearing armor, and a Fighter/Cleric can wield weapons such as swords and axes, instead of being limited to just blunt weapons. I like this because it isn't limiting and it does make things a bit more realistic, wouldn't you agree?

Some of the secrets in Eye of the Beholder are just not worth it, plain and simple. As Albus Dumbldore told Luke Skywalker in Lord of the Apes, "not all secrets are rewarding."

One problem with Eye of the Beholder is that even if you know that an item is a +5 longsword or a curse -3 suit of plate mail, the game doesn't really give you any information beyond that, at least for the weapons. For the armor, you can just do a before and after comparison on your AC, and as this is 2nd Edition/Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, the lower your AC is, the better.

I explored every single tile that was reachable without aggroing NPCs, such as the Dwarves and the Drow, and I didn't open every lock because some of them I just plain old forgot about, but I did everything that I could remember and explored every single tile, and while there was some minor backtracking and brain farts on my part, the game took me just under 3 hours to complete. It's short and it's simple for the most part.

Gog.com's store page for Eye of the Beholder: https://www.gog.com/en/game/forgotten_realms_the_archives_collection_one?countryCode=US¤cyCode=USD&gad_source=1&gclid=CjwKCAjwzN-vBhAkEiwAYiO7oO-B-NuG7uFU3-SKvjJAyPtr6x81BwZU8i_yBKxckryymYccyxw0vhoCpXoQAvD_BwE&gogID=GAD_US_MAX_PURCH_GEN_SMART_ONG&r=true

Steam's store page for Eye of the Beholder: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1882240/Forgotten_Realms_The_Archives__Collection_One/

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