Most of us expected a Baldur's Gate with 3e rules, a deep, rewarding roleplaying experience with customizeable characters, non-linearity and questing galore. PoR 2 is nothing of that. It is a tactical dungeon crawl, a hack and slay game - and, sorry to say that, far from being brilliant at that.

When everything is about combat, combat should be perfectly implemented. It isn't. The combat interface is crude at some times, ruining your plannings more often than leading to success. Click the wrong menu item, and you are done. No way to undo an action before unleashing it. Distance weapons and spells are rather useless sometimes, because enemies tend to close in very quickly. This doesn't say the game is unplayable, but it can be quite frustrating. In some ways combat is more interesting than in Baldur's Gate, because you CAN plan your actions (as you might remember, spellcasting was a problem in Baldur's Gate from time to time, since the baddies moved around a lot, and sneaking in doesn't help in PoR 2), but as I said, you'll have your frustrations, too. For example, it is completely impossible to disengage from a fight - you just can't run or hide. This isn't what I call roleplaying, is it?

Where the game badly fails is character development. 3rd edition rules are implemented, but implemented inconsistently. First of all, you can't choose your feats, the will be assigned to you when you level up. Second, some of the feats you get are rather useless for your class. Third, your choices when creating your characters are limited. You don't roll your starting characters, but you spend points on you basic stats. The funny thing is that the premade characters come with higher stats than you could create, so taking those characters into the single player campaign will give you some advantages, It isn't necessarily a design flaw, but nevertheless strange at the first look. However, there isn't much customisation in the game, not regarding stats, not regarding appearance, not regarding colors.

You start out with a party of four, but you will be able to take two more NPC's with you during the game. At first, your party is extremely vulnerabe, but once you gain two or three levels, this changes rapidly due to higher stats and fabulous equipment you will find. The level cap is 16, but since you can multiclass, you can gain level 16 in more than one class per character. For the beginning, you'll fight some Orcs and undeads, free a trader from his wagon and talk to two elves that are in a hideout. At that point, your characters should level up and be ready to enter their first dungeon.

Graphics are nice, especially the monsters and characters. Backgrounds lack some clarity, but spells just look fabulous. Voice acting is ok, music and sounds aren't. They coud have spent a little bit more time on that, actually. Your point of view cannot venture from your party, so only a small portion of the map is visible at a time. There is a general map available in the game, and it can be annotated, a very useful feature. Very useful, too, is your quest log that keeps track of your adventures. Inventory management is quite ok as well - one thing that is annyoing is encumberance with halflings: Halfling armor is much smaller than normal armor, of course, but weights just the same, so your halfling can't carry a lot. The starting cinematics look, well, childish, I have seen much better ones, but I can easily live with that.

One thing you will have to get used to is how spells are handeled in PoR 2. You don't have to memorize them, they are at your disposal after every rest you made. You can rest quite often, the game even tells you when it is safe to rest, so sorcerers (there are no real wizards in the game, just sorcerers!) are more powerful than you'd be used to from Baldur's Gate. More differences to 2nd edition rules are layed out in the handbook, which isn't pretty but very informative. Dying, for example, is different, too. You don't die when you reach 0 hitpoints. Unless you are down to -10, you can be healed or stabilized. Of course dead party members can be resurrected with the proper spell or at certain locations.

If you are creating your own party, be sure to bring a cleric with you. Lots of people on the message board indicate that without a cleric (although not a very powerful character on its own), the game gets extremely difficult at higher levels. Apart from that, Rangers do not make much sense in the game, becuase ranged weapons don't make much sens, either. Rogues come in handy because they can detect traps and secret doors. So, in my opinion, you should have a fighter or a paladin, a cleric, a rogue and a sorcerer for a start, but this is only my personal preference.

Apart from the flaws you'll find with gameplay, there are seriious bugs hidden in the game. You can't install to another drive but C: without a trick, and it isn't advised to save your game when a character is invisible. Some people report that uninstalling the game has erased their system, others have uninstalled without problems. I have installed the game without a glitch, and haven't noticed a bug yet (some report crashes during character creation, other stuttering sound).

I haven't seen a lot of the game so far. What I have seen so far is entertaining, but falls short of my expectations. Actually, I have got the feeling that PoR 2 is more entertaining when doing a multiplayer game with random dungeons alone, without other players. It's a little bit more like a roguelike then, and you can create a party of six from the beginning - I'll certainly try this option in the next few days and let you know how it plays.

But back to the single player game: if you enjoy dunegon crawling and hack and slay, PoR 2 could be something for you, even with the problems it had. If you are looking for a deep roleplaying experience, keep your fingers away. The game will disappoint you. I won't give a rating to the game yet, this will be part of a full review. What I can and will say: Pool of Radiance isn't what it promised to be. It isn't necessarily a bad game, and you can get some fun out of it. But it isn't a gem either. One candidate for "my perfect RPG" has failed, lets see what NWN, Morrowind and Dungeon Siege will bring...