So, what other RPG's worth playing?

[Wyvern]

Originally posted by Marikai: WYVERN!!!! OMG!! I so owe you an email! As for the question... I'd say try out Daggerfall. OR Albion. Damn that's an awesome game... as old as my bones but hey... still awesome

Well, don't use the email address listed here - lol! I don't use it anymore! I suppose I should go ahead and change it but just haven't bothered. You can send me a private message on here, that still works.

Wyv

[WillowIX]

Early Might and Magic games were good. I still love Arx Fatalis, and Elder Scrolls: Arena. I played sacred a lot earlier and that was kinda nifty as well. [img]smile.gif[/img]

To finish the post, a huge hug to Wyvern and Bungleau!

[Bungleau]

Willow!!! [img]graemlins/thewave.gif[/img] [img]graemlins/thewave.gif[/img]

Tons o' hugs your way! 'Tis truly a pleasure to see you here

I got down to the final battle in Arx and tried it about half a dozen times. When I get some patience back, I'll try it again...

I'm currently going through Baldur's Gate (the original, with ToTSC). Fun, and different from W&W (and M&M). Probably worth a replay this time...

How is your daughter (Jackie, isn't it?)? And are you still salvaging the sick and injured in Toronto?

[Dajjer]

Interesting discussion but I wonder if it helps Creosote in his search for a new RPG? Our addiction to eye candy has created some problems with our favorite genre but sometimes when the developer knows what they are doing, these high tech games can be just as fund to play as some of the old school RPGs

I'm assuming you played Balders Gate, it was meh for me but many people have it at the top of their list of all time great RPGs.

Here are a couple I liked in the past 5 years or so.

1) Gothic 2. This game brought me back to CRPGs. It had an interesting story. Great NPCs. And a wonder to looks at. While I agree that our addiction to eye candy is responsible for the dearth of good RPGs, Gothic was truly a wonder. The game was told in 1st person perspective and the people in the game world actually did something while you were out adventuring. They slept, worked, and played. And they refused to let you loot their place if you were hard up for cash. The game also made Orcs and skeletins truly formidable monsters.

The game did have a couple of problems however. The interface was whacked. It was truly whacked in Gothic 1 and fixed up somewhat in 2 but it did take some getting used to. Also the game was unforgiving if you ventured off the beaten path. The game had monsteres that would kill you dead if a nube wandered to deep into the forest. And finally there was something about this game that made people either love it or hate it. I clearly fall into the prior but the game does have its detractors.

Still, I had a great time with this game. And if you can put in a few hours with this game and get used to the interface and not get so killed, I think you to will become a fan.

Arx Fatalis
Another game with a clumsy interface. By games end I still had not really mastered spell casting. But a very much fun game to play. It too, like the Gothics, is a single player, first perspective game. But this game is all played in an underground world. The opening scenes in the dungeon have some of the creepiest atmospheric sounds ever produced. Curiously though there is no gaming music. A lot of good NPC in this game also.

Anyway good luck finding a new RPG. If you wait a month or so, Dungeon Lords should be out.

[NickCowan]

Hello there people, I was reading this post earlier, before I joined, and I had a few thoughts that I wanted to add... or maybe just steal from other people.

First off, I've never had a console game because my parents decided that, growing up, it would stunt my brain, or something along those lines... We got a PC back in, oooh... '90 maybe? which means of course, DOS. There was a game called Dungeon Master, where you ran around cutting things up. Admittedly, I was about 8 at the time, and so I'd probably not like it now, but I loved it back then.

My brother was into P&P and I played as many of the Ian Livingstone books as I could get my hands on. Again, we're quite a long way in the past here.

More recently, a PC I had in '98 came with Might and Magic 6 installed on it, and I loved it. Great game. MM7 was pretty cool, but then it went downhill a bit, MM8 was finished in record time, and I can't remember if I even played MM9 - which shows how much i cared about it.

Anyway, onto the debate about the decline in society's ability to stand thought-provoking games. It seems to me not that people are not willing to take on challenging games/books/movies, but because they ARE challenging, the chance of making money off them are slimmer... it's main-streaming if ever there was. Books are a good indication of what's going on, I think. SF and Fantasy books were all fairly slim things back around 50 years ago, but about the time Frank Herbert's Dune series got into, I think it's 3rd book, they got fat, and stayed fat. Robert Jordan has written 10 volumes between 700-1200 pages of one story, and hasn't finished it yet, much to my dismay. Books the length of Lord of the Rings are fairly common-place, and I think that's a sign that people have more time and more desire to read huge books.

I think that that is an indication that people's tastes are getting well, more spaced out. If you had a multi-pointed star with all the different tastes in game, or any kind of entertainment, I think you'de find that the points are stretching farther and farther from the centre - EA, Westwood, etc. are forced to try and hold the middle ground, because that's where the most money is.

So why have computer games gone crap? Well, I'm sure that part of it is the eye-candy syndrome, game developers are being given new toys to play with, and so they are doing just that... the insane increase in game sizes - I remember Silver being insanely huge at about 1Gig, and now Battle for Middle Earth is something like 4Gigs - the better equiment gamers and developers have means that they get to play with their new toys. And so let them have their fun, once people start getting bored of the same old "real" graphics, they'll have to go back to clever games - with luck, we're just in a slump at the moment.

I suspect that we'll start getting independent companies making smaller-budget but more playable games in much the same way as sourceforge is making decent programs from people who just want them out there. We can all hope, eh?

[NickCowan]

While I was waiting for the train in Norwich earlier, it occured to me that just about all the old Lucasarts Games - Indiana Jones, Secret of Monkey island, etc. were great - I dunno if they're strictly RPG, the actual term seems to be a bit vague - but the Money Island games are great. I've played 1 - got stuck on the island, and STILL don't know where to go next, I've played the demo of 3, but never got round to the full game, and I've completed 4. Great games - they've got that bang-head-against-wall trial-and-error sort of chemistry. just try to make the abomination of nature in 4....madness...

Discworld Noir was an interesting game, though I don't think I completed it - I think I got distracted with real life, and I've moved country, so the CDs are back in the Middle East.