Pros and Cons of Eschalon II

[Mongolian]

I've played both books. I've had a lot of fun in both, but I kind of wish someone else could chime in on a few things I've heard on the forums and in the past from:

GOOD
- Graphics. Phenomenal, into. good upgrade on pretty much the entire land
- Great revision to illustrating the 3D sprites to show the different gear. I know this isn't that important, but this I love to see this get developed further to help personalize characters.
- Weapon/spell selection was right on.
- Fighting right on.
- Monster choice was decent, perhaps a little too wimpy though
- Initial game options. Done very nicely. I was really only interested in trying to beat the game, but I wanted to help increase the difficulty level.
- Overall game was really good, cohesive and well put together. Thank you for all the efforts.

BAD
- Character classes in general. The choices of what you get are fine and I wouldn't change them, but all of them blend together too much as you can move stats around too easily
- How easily all the skills could be acquired. I really don't like that any character can get divination/elemental for +1 point. That goes the same for spell casters/priests that can get all the fighting stuff. I just really hate I have this super tank fighter that can easily switch to casting spells. Characters should have some skills at heavy prices, like every level up is +3, while some are +2 and yes some +1.
- Also, hated how easily you can go to all the venders to get +8 just buying buying the skills. For E3, please limit this more. Bonus points would actually be if you turned them into quests too.
- Resting/Healing. Once you purchase the +8 divination spells and find 1-2 +2 lore rings, you have infinite amount of food-water to basically rest forever. This is completely bogus. There is no challenge and actually spoiled the game for me to exploit camping. Btw, how come I rested in E2 but never got surprise attacked? In E1, you could all the time. Please bring that back to some degree.

NOT SURE
- Despite I love the overarching storyline, I kinda wish I could play the game out solo just doing what ever I wanted. I really don't know how to achieve this as it would mean tossing in lots of extraneous information and possibly even random monster spawning.
- Non-monster spawning. I really love that when you kill a creature it doesn't repopulate. However, there should also be random monsters that repopulate the world so you are never 100% calm where ever you walk. Having 'rare' monsters would also help give a little more seduction in to running around too that didn't pertain to any quest
- Plot/storyline was really interesting. However, being a visual person I get kinda bored just having to read the story. Maybe a comic-book type style with a narrator voice might have really helped, but just reading plot got me bored.

[Mongolian]

Just to emphasis my post, I loved the games and think they are great. Overall, I just wish I could play this game with more customization of characters and play it like an endless monster mode kind of thing. It's fun to get deep in to a D&D type game, but sometimes I want to turn my brain off and just move around.

[Kreador Freeaxe]

Mongolian, there are random monster spawns while camping in most places. Just not on a few of the maps (Port K and its upstairs maps are without encounters, and the creepy necromancer place is without encounters--not sure what other maps might be).

[SpottedShroom]

BAD
- Character classes in general. The choices of what you get are fine and I wouldn't change them, but all of them blend together too much as you can move stats around too easily

See, I actually like this. I wouldn't mind if classes were removed entirely in Book III - just pick a starting skill and either get an appropriate starting item or be able to choose one. It would be nice to be able to get some different starting skills than are currently available.

- How easily all the skills could be acquired. I really don't like that any character can get divination/elemental for +1 point. That goes the same for spell casters/priests that can get all the fighting stuff. I just really hate I have this super tank fighter that can easily switch to casting spells. Characters should have some skills at heavy prices, like every level up is +3, while some are +2 and yes some +1.

And I disagree with you completely here. It's very hard to make a character that's legitimately good at more than one thing. You can easily be a fighter with some light magic support, but you need to be good at your chosen combat discipline by the end of the game. Investing in multiple things isn't overpowered, it's underpowered.

Of course, there's really no reason for any character not to get a few ranks in the magic skills and learn a few key spells, but I don't think that's what you mean.

[Mongolian]

Someone has already pointed out a fighter is better off with wisdom I think 25 or 30 to grab all the needed boost spells like Bless & Ogre Strength, etc vs a pure boosted fighter. Look, I'm just sad that there is no specialization with the characters. The game, yes, need to move in 1 of 2 directions: (1) no character classes or (2) character specializations. It's not a question of efficiency, I'm just not comfortable playing a game like I did as a fighter 3/4 all the way through, then I go to 1 town, buy 8 divination, level up once and spend 3 more points for 11 and now I can cast all the spells I need. It's just lame.