The party starts their adventure in the city of Phlan, charged with the task to safely escort Council Member Sasha on a diplomatic mission.

The party's objective is to defeat Bane's lieutenants Thorne (an ancient red dragon), Kalistes (a Marilith), and Tanetal (a Glabrezu) and acquire the items they possess.

Lastly, after finishing the final quest, the party had the option to either end their journey or go through one more dungeon of enemies and traps, known as "Dave's Challenge".

[4] Combat in Pools of Darkness, especially late in the story, differed greatly from the encounters of the previous games.

The player's characters faced some of the toughest creatures in the AD&D universe, in addition to a number of new and formidable critters created specifically for the game, such as the Pets of Kalistes (intelligent magic spiders that can see invisible enemies and whose venomous bite had a -2 save) and the Minions of Bane (which have the magic resistances of demons and the breath weapons of dragons).

MS-DOS users had to restart or enter a training hall and remove all their characters from the party to load a game.

[7] Pools of Darkness was reviewed in 1992 in Dragon #178 by Hartley, Patricia, and Kirk Lesser in "The Role of Computers" column.

She criticized the "lame ending", annoying sounds,[3] and having to abandon weapons when visiting another dimension, but called Pools of Darkness "the best of the lot" and "the ultimate challenge for the experienced Gold Box gamer".

[9] Jim Trunzo reviewed Pools of Darkness in White Wolf #31 (May/June, 1992) and stated that "The system is cleaner, quicker, easier to understand and better to look at and listen to.

The adventure's plot is deep and believable, its scope is large and varied, and its monsters numerous and deadly.

"[10] According to GameSpy, while "not remembered as the most memorable of the Forgotten Realms Gold Box games, but it was definitely worth playing back then, if you braved the previous three installments".