Pool of Radiance

Huge, with deep mechanics and satisfying tactical combat. Another essential CRPG.

A commendable effort to bring the AD&D franchise to the home computers. Graphics and control-wise it's all quite competently done but immersion suffers from having to read those bits about the plot from the enclosed adventure book. Also the combat sequences are often way too lengthy and the whole story isn't really compelling but feels rather bland.

Had a real blast with this game. I had heard of D&D, but never played it, and then it came to a computer game and I must admit I really enjoyed playing this. I think I remember the graveyard the most, and of course fighting guys from Zhentil Keep, and of course at higher levels hewing down kobalds with my fighters who were armed with greatswords. Hehehe...
One of the better RPGs for the C64, not too far behind Wasteland in my book.

Great and useful info Omicron5! I am just starting to play PoR for the first time ever. I have heard so many people praise it to the skies, so now I want a piece of the fun too

Clerical and Magic User Spells:

Cure Light Wounds (cl)
Detect Magic (cl & mu)
Protection From Evil (cl & mu) +
Hold Person (cl & mu) *
Silence 15' Radius (cl)
Slow Poison (cl) !
Dispel Magic (cl & mu) !!
Enlarge (mu)
Magic Missile (mu)
Sleep (mu)
Knock (mu) **
Stinking Cloud (mu)
Fireball (mu)
Lightening Bolt (mu)

You can safely ignore all the other spells.

+ cast on fighters versus undead
* magic user read from scroll so can cast offensive spells from memory
! Cast on fighters versus poisonous monsters
!! Cast on immobilized PC's
** to open doors you cannot bash open

Discoveries made while playing:

1) ranged weapons are only useful in the early stages of the game when your party is weak. Your PC will do your party better service later on with his sword.

2) To defeat the Trolls in the slums block arm two or three fighters with bows, cast stinking cloud and hope it immobilizes the monster's in front, then draw back as many of your party as you can and concentrate your attacks on the monster's in back killing them one at a time and quick as possible. Hand to hand with the Trolls you don't stand a chance.

3) One of your magic users needs to learn a knock spell early in the game.

4) An evil aligned fighter will kill quickly armed with a two handed sword +2 gained after the third battle in the Kobold caves. Don't drop it thinking a shield is more important.

Well my party did not do well so I started over; one magic user will not do. To really succeed you need two human fighters (good & evil) because when they advance to higher levels they kick ass. A weak party is not going to be a happy party at Zhentil Keep or in the graveyard.

I used one human cleric of good alignment and one half-elf cleric-fighter of evil alignment. The half-elf will only advance to level 5 cleric but that is more than made up by his fighting ability.

To complete my party I used one elf magic user and one elf fighter-magic user. Frack thieves! They never do any good when you need them.

Best D+D game of the era and was VERY open-ended, with more freedom than most RPG games today.

Want to take your lvl1 party to the (very high lvl) Graveyard? Sure! You'll get raped by Vampires and Giant Skeletons, but be our guest!

Curse of the Azure Bonds(and the later sequels) were very linear by comparison.

My favorite RPG for the 64 which I completed nigh onto 20 years ago.

I began a new adventure with POR using CCS64. Did not modify any of the PC's abilities, did not use any NPC's and just one mixed class character, a fighter/thief for a total of three fighters, two clerics, a thief and one magic user. Because of this I had to wait until my party was strong enough to deal with the Trolls in the Slums block. My friend once created a party entirely of clerics both good and evil.

Using an emulator is great and you can speed up those long battles by going into warp mode. On Vice thats ALT+W and ALT+F3 for CCS64. If you use CCS64 turn off maximum 1541 speed. I find it causes the game to lock up.

One of the best RPG's on the C64. I started to replay it summer 2008 and still have fun with the game. I even like to draw maps and "rip" some graphic. I cleared Sokal Keep, some days ago and go forward into the wilderness now. I like those Gold-Box-SSI-games. Unfortunately, not all of these games has been ported to the breadbin.

Truly a great C64 RPG. It also led into 2 sequals for fans who really appreciated the game, although they get a bit more hard-core, even as they improved the gameplay. Unfortunately, while being inferior, the PC version did allow one to raise his characters through the first 3 games, and then load them into one of my favorite games of all time - Pools of Darkness, which was unfortunately too complex for the C64. The C64 series ends with Secret of the Silver Blades. Nonetheless, I played all 3 games on the C64, and even played the first 2 several times. Always fun and engaging with the arena combat system.

I didn't finish the game without a walkthrough, though. I totally missed the secret passage leading to the final boss, and ended up looking all through the land for weeks looking for the Pool of Radiance. I thought it may have been in one of the random beast lairs in the wilderness. Finally the walkthrough revealed a secret passage I should have noticed (count the squares in the room), and I kicked myself for days.

Awesome game, the best I ever played on the C=64, and perhaps on any system.

My friend had an ST and this game, and I remember playing each night, to compare notes the next morning at school!

I was in elementry school when I saw my friend playing this game. I don't think I actually played it myself, until I got my Amiga 500. My friend would play this game and I would be one of his party members. Sometimes I would tell him that I wanted to change clothes. Lol. That was fun. A two-handed sword pic or that long-bow pic. Shit, do you guys remember the NPC: Hero? That was his name... Hero. Man, I bonded with that dude, even though he was an NPC. When I went home I would think about this game and I couldn't wait to go back to his house to see this game.

Hey I reviewed this game 6 years ago...

I was 13! Damn

this game is a classic. The basilisks in the library suck hard though.

and the hobgoblin ambush in the textile house area...

This was the game I spent the whole of 10th grade playing. It was one of the only gold box games I played, and it was awesome. One of the best games out there, period. Exciting and absorbing, I couldn't get enough of it. It was hard to get through, but I finally did it, and when I did, I think I wanted to light fireworks to celebrate. Yes, I loved it that much.

I never played the other gold box games but enjoyed this RPG very much. Immersive and just the right difficulty. 9/10

This game may be "famous" and be a quality game nonetheless, but the C64 really does have more immersive and playable (although more obscure) RPGs than this. Overall, a great a AD&D series.

One of the best Strategic Simulations, Inc games out there.

I absolutely loved this game! Needs a remake!

One of the best games I ever played on the C64. In fact, it's 07/16/04 and I'm playing it on my C64 C with the 1571 disk drive... STILL FUNCTIONING... Im actually here looking for some journal entries as my paperwork is long gone except the code wheel. I admit, the battle sequences can be long. I always take a couple magic users along and protect them well. Nothing quite like a few fireballs to shorten a big fight... :}~

P_O_R was the one that began the great run of roleplaying games. Although, there have been many since, none rival the complexity, layers, gameplay and enjoyablity of the D&D series. The Gold Box series were one of the best, and would have been even better if there were some routinges to speed up the battle sequences, but overall, they started it all. The new generation for the PC platform are adequate, but bloatware will never come close to touching these.

Excellent RPG game for the 64. Ahead of its time when it was introduced on the market. I play this game some though the annoying fact that this game took so many disks was sometimes a distraction from game play. As I recall, this game came with either 6 or 8 floppies but I can't remember for sure.

This Game was my introduction into the Fantasy RPG genre, and IMHO nothing has come close to thrilling me as much as this game did, (until Daggerfall (PC)) -- I still play this one as a trip down memory lane...
the only drawback this had was it never received an update (since they did not do that back then) the game would be better if it had the enhancements that Azure Bonds had. (never ever think that the recent PC version is an update, it was a failure, though part of me would love to see a true 3D remake, I will always see this the Key RPG (64 version at that)

My first Computer RPG... I love it and sometimes I play it again!

I agree with the othersand this game was too, my first real AD&D I ever tried (and completed). I were so impressed by the gameplay that I HAD to get all in the series (Champions og Krynn series too). The only downers: They could have set the Max level up, but besides that, this game is still my favorit. A MUST have on C-64

As a huge D&D nerd back then - this game was my life for awhile. The first game I played on the C128 monitor (dont remember what it was called)

Well, this game could have been better, if there weren't so many frustrating fights. What I mean here is that fights took so much time, that it went in my opinion boring. In later versions of these series, this was corrected. I liked them much more. But this were not bad either.

This was good and quite fun as it was the most detailed RPG ever ill come across but the painful multiple loading esciapply getting into combats was horendous! Disk greedy alright!

An A-Maze-ing first instalment into what would be one of the greatest and most playable RPG series of all time. I remember when I first played it and my level one cleric got level drained by the spectre in Mendor's Library... I had the wacky theory at the time that maybe if I restored her, the level would go through the roof - as level 0 couldn't be possible. Sadly, she died.

I'm currently taking my 12 year old brother through the game on the C64... He's loving it almost as much as I did, keeping a journal of his wanderings, etc. Can't wait until we do the Zhentil Keep and Graveyard quests!!

The PC sequel game made in its name is an absolute blasphemy of this masterpiece and shouldn't tbe compared in the same sentence. Long Live the old Gold Box stuff, you've proven to be a crucial part of my gaming life!

The first, the one and the only... Great game, much fun drawing maps and killing monsters, following the storyline. Took some time to solve it (mainly because of tedious drawing), but as an old C64 veteran, you're used to such things... Anyone who has problems solving it, mail me.

This game was awesome but I never got to finish it, I just got stuck and I didn't know where 2 go. Friend of mine started playing it about a yr ago and he got stuck as well hehe =]

SSI RPG's were the greatest.. Thousands of hours of gameplay and I don't regret even one of them.

I played this game so much as a kid I had over 2 million experiance points, that's a lot of gobblins and lizardmen

One of the best available rpg's for the C64. The first of the classic 'goldbox' series.

One of the best CRPGs I know of. Highly modular and non-linear. You can clear out any block you want whenever you feel ready to tackle it. It was quite fun!

Ah the hours I spent playing this excellent game, it was a big game too, loads of levels and very good fun!

A revolution in gameplay to me! I was very impressed. Advice to every "common" C64 user: don't miss it anymore !!!

A really great playable game. One of the best games I played. Its story is unmatched by most games these days.
Grab it and play it, now they'll need a update for the modern day. Its hard to find games that are of this game quality. :-)

The pioneer of true AD&D RPG, Pool of Radiance and the rest of the gold box series, is just a masterpiece. For it's time, great customization of characters and direction of story line. It wasn't entirely linear, you could jump to different areas of the map and do things in different order if you wanted to. Amazing story, and a great introduction of AD&D to computer gaming. If only today's AD&D games were this good. Yes, they are great, but the Gold Box series is unmatched by today's playability. Check this game out if you are an RPG fan!

RPGs need two things. A good interface and a great storyline. (With the exception of the Bard's Tale) the next time something as great as this game was available was Baldur's Gate.

This was the first RPG I played on the C64. Apparently I was lucky!
Great story, one of the best ever actually, with lots and lots of small
subquests given out by a mayor in the starting town which leads you
further and further out into the rather large outside world.

Three quick tips: Check out the odds for gambling in town, ALWAYS
use DETECT MAGIC when looting corpses after battle and save the
trolls in the starting adventure area until you've levelled a few times!

This was one of the best Advanced Dungeons and Dragons games. Great storyline and fun gameplay. I enjoyed being able to make a party of people and level them all up and changing their (albeit limited) look and appearence. Some of the sections, especially against the trolls, can be very difficult. Overall a lot of fun!