OT - Favorite RPGs and more

[Wyvern]

We've discussed rpgs in general off and on in numerous threads on this board.

We've have a few good long threads on what we would like to see in Bradley's
next game.

Responding to Bungleau's post in another thread just made me want to have a place to create a list of the games I have enjoyed or disliked with or without explanation. Such a list (incomplete as it will no doubt be) reflects my own preferences and is not a "I'm right, you're wrong" challenge should you disagree. I'm very glad that people like different things in their CRPGs - that adds variety and (hopefully) stimulus for the genre in general.

Not in any order:

Many of the Infocom games.

Asylum - PC and Nintendo versions - PC version was more of a challenge, the graphics were horrible and it was a lot of fun!

Early Wizardry -
I personally got ticked off with Wizardry in Wiz 6. I spent two months writing a very thorough (including ascii maps) walkthru for that game and didn't even bother to look at Wiz 7 when it came out. My objection was the game was turning into a "girlie magazine". That probably was excellent for their target audience but I didn't like it.

Crimson Crown

Some of the Ultima series - I rather dislike Lord British's whole Avatar routine which may have been partially influenced by having talked to him in private (online chat).

Bard's Tale

M&M - the earlier ones were the best for me. M&M 6 totally crashed on my machine, completely unrecoverable twice starting from scratch. I did play 7 and 8 - don't think I ever finished either. I tend to loose interest when they throw in the sci-fi bits at the end.

Below the Root - fun game! I do wish someone would take it and update it to new computers.

Magic Candle - they attempted to include a log to handle all the information that one collected while exploring. It was an awful tool in itself but gave rise to simplier more efficient quest logs in later games.

Diablo - yes, it was terribly repetitious but I liked it anyways and I replayed it quite often too.

Daggerfall - or whichever one that was the first in that series. The sequels got too involved in these terrifically large cities and random dungeons that were gigantic - every bit as large and complex as the quest dungeons. In the sequels I pretty much gave up playing the game and played to get better armor, weapons and skills. I got tired of having too many people to talk to and then try to remember what it was they said.

Darkstone - don't think I ever finished it successfully but I had fun playing it.

Phantasy - I can picture some of the monsters and stuff but really remember very little about the games at this point.

Wasteland - enjoyed that so much more than Fallout.

Stellar 7 - oh dear - your party were just dots on the map when in the space stations but it was a fun game!

StarFlight - Jack and I spent so many hours exploring and cataloging the planets. What an effort that was!

DragonWars

Faery Tale Adventure

There were many others that I played - I don't recall them all.

I'm not going to bother with the list of CRPGs I have played and didn't like at this point. Some on that list will be there because they mix fantasy with sci-fi and I don't like my genre mixed. Some would be included because way too many options were thrown at my character. I don't mind having options but when some of the options that are given you are not in keeping with where your character is in their development - I don't find that fun, I find that confusing and frustrating. I tend to like a game that is fairly straight foreward (linear) in over all plan while allowing you a lot of freedom within that structure.

Now - Off to the real world!

[Radek]

The best games, I've played:

Ishar 2 and 3.
Ishar 2 was my first RPG. I appreciated gradation of the story and difficulty. When I have decoded the saved game files then I also appreciated sarkasm and irony of the game

Realms of Arkania 2 and 3
Nice games with the best "turn based" combat system I've ever seen. Extremely unjust as far as rewards in XP are considered. Unjust in other directions, too, but still nice.

TES Arena, Daggerfall, Morrowind
IMO, Arena is the best but it is unplayable on contemporary computers.
Daggerfall is boring because it's the same from its beginning to its end. Moreover, the gigantic dungeons (all of them the same) are unexplorable. Maps (except town maps) are completely useless.
Morrowind is a heap of extremely nice graphics but I don't think it's more. Dungeons - except the quest dungeons - are extra small now and again, all of them the same.

MM7, 8, and 9
MM7 was perhaps the best RPG I've ever seen. MM8 is well playable but not as good as MM7. I dislike MM9, I've even finished it.

Wizards and Warriors
No comment needed [img]graemlins/hehe.gif[/img]

Albion
A very interesting RPG, playable even now.

Gates of Skeldal
It's a Czech speciality [img]smile.gif[/img] so that nobody will know it. The game is interesting by consistent implementation of a "qualification system" for equipping items. You must have certain values of abilities and skills if you want to equip or use a particular item. We can see rudiments of qualifications in many games, but this game makes the qualifications essential.

[Wyvern]

Ah yes -Ishar and Arkania!

Yes - it was Arena first and I enjoyed that. Thanks, Radek - my memory is getting foggy!

Daggerfall was just too huge without a reason for being huge - especially dungeons. There was one quest dungeon which was impossible to solve. I spent ages and I'm good at that sort of thing and once you got into this particular loop you were stuck. After that the only playing I did was to exploit a weakness in one of the dungeons. There was a reoccuring encounter with monsters I knew I could handle and I could eventually get all the best pieces of armor in the whole game just by going back and whacking them over and over. Sold the rest of the stuff to buy myself a mansion in town - I thought that was going to be really neat but there were errors with the mansion and the game would crash if I ever visited my own home. (shrug)

[Radek]

Not only one, Wyvern I know about one dungeon, where you can get the quest item only by cycling through the quest locations (that means, by cheating). And then there was Wayrest. I was able to leave this dungeon only once (so that it was possible) but I was unable to rediscover the way out later even if I tried seriously. Therefore, I had always a portal ouside the Wayrest dungeon and teleported there after getting the painting.

[Bungleau]

My favorites...

MM1 was my first, and you never forget your first. Ah, the memories... and the things we graciously accepted. Saving your game only in an inn? Heavens, no! Now we save everywhere!

The rest of the MMs... MM6 was a great step up from MM3-5, and MM7 was really MM6, chapter 2. 3do started getting "cute" with MM8 and MM9, and about the best thing you can say is that they got away from the sci-fi stuff by the end.

Bard's Tale 2... there are some things I still don't think I've finished [img]smile.gif[/img]

Ultima... nice, but I haven't had as much fun with the later ones.

Drakkhen... the first game where the language skills *really* meant something! You could decipher if you took the time, but it was a whole lot easier to speak another language. Don't know if I ever finished that one.

Gold-box games... Krynn, Pool of Radiance, and the like. Good ol' D&D fun.

Wizardry... nice, but too much linear stuff. I like the flexibility that MM offered... going into Dragonsand for the first time and promptly getting wiped out [img]smile.gif[/img] That was a healthy dose of gaming reality.

Masters of Magic... not really CRPG, but you did develop your wizard. Looked and acted a whole lot like Civilization, it did... but with magic [img]smile.gif[/img]

I remember Dragonwars... never completed it, though

Crystals of Trazere... a bargain bin pickup. Never finished that one, either.

Of the more recent genre... Arx Fatalis (not bad for development), Divine Divinity (too exploitable, and too big a shift in reality for me), and Baldur's Gate (haven't done BG2 yet).

Hmm... guess I'm ranking 'em all. If I pick just my faves, it would be:

MM6
MM1 (for nostalgia's sake)
W&W
Wiz 7
BG (working its way up there)

Anyone remember Rogue?

"RUN!!!!!!!! It's a 'T'!!!!!"

[Wyvern]

Around here somewhere I have my M&M map - the one I carefully made, color coding all the squares so you knew what physical type it was (forest, water, grasslands, desert - etc.) It was, and still is a thing of beauty!

What is amusing to me now, looking back on it, is the land in M&M 1 was rather like standing inside of 4 cards with a painting on each one to display the next square in whatever direction - it wasn't the real 3d view that we have in games today. I remember feeling like the card in front of me would slap down whenever I took a step. Primative by today's standards but it was wonderful!!

This is neat - you're remembering names of games I have played but forgotten.

[Wyvern]

Rogue
Larn
Nethack

Spent may hours playing those! As I recall they made the final level of Nethack almost impossible - well I don't recall ever winning. (that was in the upgraded version, not the original ones) lol!!

How about Ragnarok - never did win that one because they wouldn't allow a backup save.

[ 01-25-2005, 02:47 PM: Message edited by: Wyvern ]

[Pop 'n Fresh]

..... I have never heard of alot of these games. I have heard of the Wizardry series and Baldurs Gate. I hate that stupid Baldurs gate. I couldnt get past the tutorial. They told me to use a scroll (or a spell can't remember) on a person and i did then they told me to do it again so i did and they told me too do it again .... etc. Either my grey matter has faded into nothingness or theres sumthing wrong wid the game.

You ppl seem to know alot about these games so could u help me???

[Greidee]

Ah, Wyv, you got me all nostalgic! [img]smile.gif[/img]

Asylum! Dare i say the 1st first-person "RPG". I played it on a TRS-80 with 16 k of RAM - Now that's showing my age! I think the block graphics were something like 64 x 64, and to get anywhere you had to reply to the character questions with exactly the right sentence. It absolutely drove me and my best friend insane! Ha Ha! But we were hooked. And it had a dark sense of humour too. There was a note that you picked up that said "Look Up". If you did, a giant piano fell on your head - wherever you were! End of game. hehe

Eye of the Beholder I & II (never got to do III)
Especially liked the dungeon cheat in EOB I - The corridor of fireballs - The giant thingies just keep coming out of the walls and the fireballs just keep knocking em down. The whole party could jump to ultra-high levels in the space of an hour or so. Shame that the last part of both games became so easy.

Darkstone
I remember slogging away for ages trying to get some decent weapons in this, and then someone told me about the town gold cheat - Brilliant!
Loved running around madly in wide open spaces trying to kill twenty monsters at once. Loads of fun!

[Bungleau]

Wyv, you brought a tear to my eye. I used to have all of MM1 mapped out... every map square, dungeon, and castle.... with that same color-coded detail (only not as nicely, I'm sure [img]smile.gif[/img] ). Every single trap was marked, every door, every space where something special happened (like the black and white checkered walls).... and somehow, I lost it in my travels. In some move or another, that folder got thrown away *sniff*

Pop 'n Fresh, there's a whole IW board on the Baldur's gate series. Actually, I think there are three -- BG and Tales of the Sword Coast, BG2: Hordes of the Underworld, and BG2: Swords of Undrentide (or something like that). The BG board is a "classic" game like W&W... the folks there have been very helpful to me.

Ahhh.... the life of a classic gamer....