Eye of the Beholder Review

Dungeons & Dragons... Over the past 40 years (42 at least) players have gathered in kitchens, basements, or just about anywhere else you can think of that has a table big enough for at least seven people to play at, just so that they can play the greatest tabletop RPG ever created, Dungeons & Dragons.

Well, one day, a young company managed to attract TSR, inc.’s attention (the then-owners of Dungeons & Dragons) and acquired the rights to develop games using the Dungeons & Dragons license. One such game that they made, or in this case published, is what follows.

Eye of the Beholder sees the player take charge of a party of mercenaries who have been charged by the Lords of Waterdeep to find the nature of an evil that threatens the city and to destroy it, if they are able.

Naturally, this means that the Lords of Waterdeep can’t send their army down there, most likely because the size of the army would attract unwanted attention, not to mention it would make the Lords AND the army of Waterdeep look suspicious, but that’s where your party comes in. Or at least, that's why I assume that the party was hired to do this instead of the army going down there, that and one of the other cities of the Forgotten Realms would've invaded should the army be down in the sewers.

As you can see from the above screenshot, the gameplay is somewhat similar to Dungeon Master, another First-Person Dungeon Crawler RPG that came out several years earlier, but unlike Eye of the Beholder, it wasn’t based on anything related to Dungeons & Dragons, save for the title of the game.

Anyways, your party starts off with four characters and can gain up to two NPC allies to help you in your quest, meaning that you can have a total of six characters in your party. Each character has their own inventory.

You know, I haven’t covered the party generation system yet. As I said earlier, you must have four party members at all times. This means that you, the player, must create four characters from scratch. Considering that this game uses 2nd Edition AD&D rules, that means you choose from races such as Human, Elf, Half-Elf, etc., and you also have the usual classes to choose from, too, such as Fighter, Paladin, Mage, Thief, Cleric, or if you have a demi-human character (Elf, Half-Elf, etc.) then you can be Multi-classed, such as Fighter/Mage, or Cleric/Thief. Of course, not every race can be every class. Halflings get the worst amount of choices possible, however.

Anyways, back to the gameplay. Your party must navigate dungeons, fight monsters, and solve puzzles in order to reach the goal of either finding and destroying the evil that threatens Waterdeep, or find a way out of the Dungeon their trapped in. You see, your party is trapped beneath the sewers of Waterdeep due to a cave-in, and you must find a way to escape. Easier said than done.

There was a funny song that I wanted to put in for the way this Kenku has his staff in my face, but I can't remember what it is, AND I don't wanna get sued for it either, so let's just pretend that we all know what it is and move on.

Unfortunately, for whatever reason, there is no music in Eye of the Beholder, at least, not outside the title screen or party generation, but every version that isn’t the MS-DOS version or the Amiga version has music, and they even have a Tunes On/Off switch, so maybe they were going to add music to the game early on before deciding against it? Who knows. The only thing that I can truly say about it is that it gives off a rather unsettling and chilling sort of vibe.

The graphics are decent for the time. I mean, you can tell what everything is, and each animation, at least for the game’s enemies are unique. And the best part?

Drow! Or you could also just call them Dark Elves, are here in Eye of the Beholder! This was how I finally learned that Eye of the Beholder takes place in the Dungeons & Dragons universe. From this image (in the SNES version) and from a Dwarf who tells you about them when you first meet the Dwarf clan back on level 5. It was such a huge shock to me back when I was a child who played this game, as I had never made it this far before, but after I played other D&D video games, such as Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale, I decided to try and beat this game, and the rest is, as they say, history.

I will state that some parts of the game, to me at least, feel pretty cheap and the game could proceed at a natural pace if they weren’t included, such as the teleporter maze on level 5 or the “Fight for your freedom” battles on level 7.

Overall, though, this game is easily one of the greatest Dungeons & Dragons video game experiences you will ever have, and I cannot recommend it enough. I’m sure the other two are just as good, as well.

This review is © 2019 Jestan Diams. Please don’t repost this review, in part or in full, anywhere else on the internet without my express written consent.