Pool Of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Drannor is the latest in a long series of games to bear the D&D logo.  It takes place in the ancient city of Myth Drannor a place of magic and corruption, which passed hands between the forces of evil and good a millennia ago.  

Your party consists of 4 players, two of which you can make personally using a surprisingly restrictive character making process.  The character models are nice but it would be nicer if you could pick sex as well as race and perhaps customize your skills a bit rather than having them assigned arbitrarily and there is no chance to buy equipment for your character before you’re thrown into the fray (and little chance after, gold seems almost useless in this game).  The game decides what equipment is appropriate and sends you on your way.

Beyond a restrictive character system the game itself is not very accessible.  It took me a long time to get into the mode where I wanted to stay playing the game.  Almost all actions are accessed through a system of annoying pop up windows that slow things down considerably.  In their quest to create a game that accurately uses third edition rules they have succeeded.  You’ll notice that when attacks of opportunity allow monsters to beat you to a bloody pulp.  Low level characters die...a lot.  The difference between this and the reality of role-playing resides in the kindness of a DM and the ingenuity of a player.  Neither is allowed in an almost mandatory combat system (almost every NPC attacks) that emphasizes turns.  Despite an attempt at faster gameplay that makes the turns time based, combat devolves into a slow and mindless hack and slash. Just hope you have more hit points than what you are facing. 

Graphically the game is very nice with fluid character models and well rendered backgrounds.  The music helps give the game the heroic feel that the gameplay lacks.  But none of this can make up for the games' inherent defects.  Speaking of which...there were two major bugs in the release of this game.  One that would erase a users C: drive during the install/uninstall process and another that would erase saved games.  The install/uninstall bug has been addressed in a patch and the save game patch will be upcoming.

PoR: Ruins of Myth Drannor is an attempt to carry on in the enthusiastic adventuring spirit of games like the Baldur’s Gate series.  Unfortunately by offering little to no role-playing experience and by being based on an outmoded and poorly accessed combat system PoR is anything but radiant.

Install: Easy
Just make sure you get the patch..."Oh no it erased all my old Greyhawk Modules!"

Gameplay: 4
This system works but it works poorly

Graphics: 8 
Very well animated.

Sound: 7
Fitting for the D&D genre.

Difficulty: 6
Lot of death and not much to do about it.  No first level char would behave like these guys.

Concept: 8 
Great concept but extremely poor execution.

Multiplayer: 4
Eliminates none of the game play problems so why bother.

Overall: 6
Gameplay is poor and just barely viable, but the graphics are the best I’ve seen in any D&D game.  Still I would recommend ogling the screenshots rather than buying the game.