Pool of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Drannor Re-release — Full Breakdown & Transcript

[00:08] This time bringing you a look at Pool of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Draor, which is getting a re-release onto both Steam and GOG come November 6th. However, in the meantime, they have a public demo available for everyone, which is what we

[00:23] are looking at right now. And given the fact that this game was uh to my knowledge pretty much unavailable prior to this, that's pretty exciting news if wanted to make a video talking all about it. And obviously I'll be reviewing the

[00:36] full game when it releases as that is a pretty exciting opportunity. However, let's talk some specifics starting with uh where this is coming from. So, if you just didn't happen to know, a company known as Snag, S neg, has been going

[00:50] back and touching up and re-releasing a ton of old D&D games following the success of BG3. It seems that that was finally the motivating factor they running. And Snake has been doing a great deal of that. I actually took a

[01:05] them and a couple of other games here and there, and this is just their latest entry in that project of restoring all of these old titles. And I do mean reasons in the case of this game because a lot of their re-releases have been

[01:20] updating these games to not only run on modern hardware, but also to get rid of the worst of the bugs and just generally improve those experiences overall. That is especially important when we're talking about this game because Pool of

[01:33] Radiance Ruins of Mythor here had some pretty infamous bugs. Uh, in fact, the worst of which caused the game when you uninstalled it from your computer back when it released in 2001, it would just straight up wipe that hard drive. And

[01:46] that is about as bad as bugs tend to get. So, while the game sold initially well when it launched, uh, just word of mouth of all the serious bugs and all of those issues led to stores having to put up like signs and warnings about it. And

[02:00] that obviously killed any follow on from that, deservedly so. And then shortly after ruins of myth Janori here was kind of lost to the sands of time. But before we start talking more specifically about this game, I do want to take a step back

[02:13] and talk about the pool of radiance series. Because while Ruins of Mythor is not like technically speaking a sequel story-wise, it is actually, I believe, the fifth game in a series of them that started all the way back in 1988 with

[02:27] the original Pool of Radiance that got three sequels in every following year ending in 1991. In 2001, we saw the release of Ruins of Mythoi here, which again was part of that series and centers around a pool of radiance with

[02:42] the pool itself always being kind of loosely described. But the general gist is that it is a portal from which power can be drawn and used of course for nefarious ends which finally brings us to the game itself ruins of myth

[02:55] Draanor. So the game is set around the city of New Flain which is located in city of New Flain which is located in the area of the moon sea in Fyun and it has become clear that a nefarious power has taken over the ruins of an elven

[03:08] city known as myth Draor. They have corrupted a magic there, a really powerful protection spell that protected the city while it was still standing. all sorts of power. And they've become a

[03:20] Elminster, the wizard, has been sending people to investigate and put a stop to it, including a group that went before yours. Now, from here, the game takes the form of mostly like a dungeon crawler. So, you'll be thrown into the

[03:34] area and you'll be moving through a whole bunch of zones and areas dungeon crawling style to eventually work your way towards the actual pool of radiance. So, you can hopefully put a stop to all that. Now, what's interesting about this

[03:47] is the party setup. So, the game at large is based on D&D third edition, not 3.5, but just base third edition. And you'll ultimately get uh potentially a party of six. However, you'll start the game with four characters. These are the

[04:01] characters that you can either make or choose from a few different presets. But decide what you want their overall attributes to be, that kind of thing. It does look like for this one they went with pretty set in stone builds for all

[04:14] of them. Like you don't really get the option to pick between like spells and stuff from what I've seen so far. You just pick a couple of options like race, class, etc. And then it kind of just locks in a bunch of choices for you.

[04:26] that done, as you continue through the dungeon, which is outside the scope of the demo, mind you, you'll eventually pick up two other party members who can join you and then fill out your party of six there. The demo, however, is

[04:39] basically just the first area that you find yourself in as you move to the actual dungeon bits just after this. But it's enough, I would say, to give people an idea of what the game actually is. Starting with combat first and foremost

[04:52] as there's going to be quite a bit of that. And somewhat notable here actually is that it is a turnbased system. That is uh important because real time with pause was pretty popular at the time, but even in that time, this one went the

[05:06] turn-based nature of that and the fact that they give you just a few options having to pick and choose a lot of stuff, which for third and 3.5 is probably the right move for a lot of people, honestly. it's relatively easy

[05:21] you. Not least of which though, probably because of the new UI. So, from here, I and updates that they've made with this version, as it is a re-release after

[05:33] all, and it includes quite a few little changes. Now, some of that stuff is obvious. We've got things like widescreen monitor support up to 4K, upscaling some of the background assets and stuff just to make the game a little

[05:45] more visually clear on those bigger screens. They've also made numerous changes to the UI to bring that in line with, of course, the uh extra resolution and a handful of other visual changes in line with that. However, from the

[05:59] options menu, you can choose to toggle on the original version if you want to play like the legacy mode, which reverts all of those changes back to exactly what the original release was, minus the bugs anyway, because other things they

[06:11] changed were mostly more technical and quality of life improvements. So, for instance, they've added proper Steam Deck support. There will be cloud saves. achievements, things like that. And on top of that, a lot of the extra little

[06:24] changes are actually also uh on the modular side, meaning that you can be what you want them to be. It looks like they put a surprising amount of effort into bringing this game back to

[06:36] life, so to speak, which is again a pretty exciting concept overall. But I think that is just about everything I've got for you guys today. Like I said, uh exciting development. And the game itself will be uh re-releasing as it

[06:50] happens again on November 6th, which I will obviously be reviewing, and I'm genuinely pretty excited to do so, as Snake has been doing some great work bringing these games back to life. But I will save the rest for the actual review

[07:03] when we get around there, as I do have uh quite a few things to get done over excited for this and I will make it a priority to some degree. But as for everything I've got for you guys. I certainly hope you enjoyed it. If you

[07:18] you're looking forward to jumping into this one, I would love to hear all about it down in the comments section below, which naturally means to like, comment, subscribe, all that YouTube jazz. But regardless of any of that, truly just

[07:31] thank you so much for watching. I really do appreciate it. May you wander in do appreciate it. May you wander in wisdom and have an amazing day.