A first person dungeon crawler based on Dungeons & Dragons? Sign me up!

"aD&D The forgotten realms: Eye of the Beholder" (from now on EOB) is a first person dungeon crawler developed by Westwood Associates and published by Strategic Simulations Inc. that takes place in the Dungeons & Dragons universe, using the earlier editions of its ruleset (THAC0, anyone?).

Graphics

Graphics are great for the era, the game allows to select between many compatible video modes (CGA, EGA and VGA, for instance) and the pseudo-3d environments are really well-drawn, minute details can hide buttons or secret compartments you can find weapons and food.

Setup and Performance

Installing the game via the GOG Galaxy is absolutely painless and performance is really good, thanks to DosBox. One note goes to GOG for creating a nice setup tool that allows to easily configure the basic settings for the game and its DosBox.

Sounds

Sounds are the typical quality of the DoS era, crunchy and simple. The game has no music (besides on the presentation screens), only very few sounds (like doors, hits and steps of the monsters).

This doesn't mean the game sounds "lacking" (pun intended), it actually adds to the atmosphere. If you were exploring a dungeon, you wouldn't have an MP3 player with you.

Again the game allows to select between the PC speaker (the beeper), AdLib/SoundBlaster, Tandy 3-voice system or no sound at all.

Gameplay

The game plays like a 3D dungeon crawler controlled with your mouse. You use the GUI to take care of everything, from inventory management to combat.

Movement can be easier to do using the keypad (4,6 to strafe left/right, 5,8 to go forwards/backwards, 7,9 to turn left/right) but if you find a monster in front of yourself, you will have to put your right hand back on the mouse.

The gameplay is a bit... clunky. The game is in that wrong place between a turn-based game and a real-time action game, making it a turn-based game where turns change every second. But after a while, you get used to it, and the atmosphere of the game, as well as the variety of things you can do and the sheer size of the dungeons and the game itself make the game just worth it.

Also be prepared: you will get lost in dungeons.

Conclusion

EOB is old and clunky, but it actually aged really really well. The game is overall enjoyable and surprises you positively. My personal suggestion is to use an automapper like "All seeing Eye", which helps a lot in exploring the dungeons and recognizing hidden teleporters (even though the biggest sign of those is your compass changing).

As usual, the score goes from 0 (this game should be terminated by a Beholder's death ray) to 100 (this game may as well be the treasure at the bottom of the dungeon).

My score is: 86/100 , truly a sight to behold.

Thanks again for reading, see you in the next post!

Penaz.