Eye of the Beholder II: The Legend of Darkmoon

About Eye of the Beholder II: The Legend of Darkmoon

Eye of the Beholder II: The Legend of Darkmoon (1991) is Westwood's first-person Dungeons & Dragons sequel in which the heroes infiltrate a temple raising skeletal legions against Waterdeep.

Eye of the Beholder II: The Legend of Darkmoon in Depth

After their first adventure, the heroes are resting at an inn when Khelben "Blackstaff" Arunsun, Archmage of Waterdeep, slips them a note: he sent a scout, Amber, to investigate evil brewing at the temple of Darkmoon, and she has not returned. Khelben transports the party to the temple, where they fight its clerics and other inhabitants and discover that the high priest, Dran Draggore, is assembling legions of skeletal warriors to attack Waterdeep. To reach the temple's inner sanctum the party must pass an acolytes' test, and in the final confrontation Draggore is revealed to be a red dragon.

The sequel adds outdoor areas, more interaction with the environment and more role-playing elements. Most of the game takes place in and around the temple, which can be roamed freely once inside: the catacombs beneath it, its upper levels and its three towers, silver, azure and crimson. Monsters attack in real time, even while the player is searching through spellbooks, a point Computer Gaming World's Scorpia criticised, while still calling it "a more substantial game" than the original, with "more to do, a bigger variety of critters to fight and a larger area to explore". GameSpy later said its completely original ending was badly needed given its "almost insane level of difficulty".

Making Eye of the Beholder II: The Legend of Darkmoon

Westwood Associates developed it and Strategic Simulations published it for MS-DOS in 1991, with Amiga, FM Towns and PC-98 versions following; the PC-98 version added new songs for each main part of the game. Computer Gaming World named it one of the year's top role-playing games, following "the strong graphic and solid play-balance tradition of the original", and Scorpia called it "a definite must for all EOB fans" despite her interface complaints. The One gave the Amiga version 87 per cent, praising its "beautifully-drawn" graphics and atmospheric sound but calling it unoriginal next to Dungeon Master. The series as a whole passed 350,000 sales by 1996.