In the late 80s-early 90s there was a game for the Mac where you controlled a medium-sized band of warriors in a fantasy setting exploring locations in the world for treasure etc. Any similar games to that?
The major thing two things I’d like is:
– Storyline and cool-sounding treasure/quests is a major component.
– The band of adventurers can’t be too small, like d+d-style party-based games, since that generally involves fiddling too much with the party’s equipment and skills. NTTAWWT but there are plenty of those out there already. Worrying about the individual units’ health, size, equipment, and experience is fine.
I don’t necessarily want to control a city.
I definitely don’t want to worry about city improvements, or have the game *boards * be mission-based like the original Warcrafts (although individual missions on one big board is fine.)
Do you think you could figure out the name of the game you’re talking about? One way of finding these types of games would be to look for games that people say are similar to the one you describe.
I’d recommend maybe checking out something like the Banner Saga. You might also like stuff like Heroes Of Might and Magic. V and VI feature a lot of story, though there is some minor city management involved.
If you could remember anything else about the game you’re talking about we could probably find out what it is and help you better.
Try Battle for Wesnoth many of the mainline campaigns have some of the features you’re after and I think some of the User Made Campagins sound like they’re exactly what you’re looking for (although I haven’t tried any yet - still finishing the mainline ones).
I don’t remember any more information than this, and even the info I described is shaky. I only remember playing it in '93 and it having graphics nearly as good as Call to Power’s (oh yeah, I think it was also square or hex based like Civ.) You wander around the surface of the fantasy “earth” collecting allies, and then exploring sites and fighting enemies, and I THINK gaining treasures and going on quests.
Definitely turn based. I also prefer discrete areas (squares or hexes) to more open movement, but despite this, the game I’ve put the most hours into is Medieval II: Total War.
Sounds like you should like the aforementioned King’s Bounty -series then. Start either from the oldest (King’s Bounty: the Legend) or from Armored Princess, the newest isn’t as good.
Update: I’ve found a board game that has the feel of what I was looking for: Mage Knight. There is a solo version and it replicates the feel of being a leader leading a medium-sized band of followers across country and into the unknown looking for treasure, monsters, and fame. It also is fairly brightly colored and not as grimdark as games have been for the past 20 or so years. The only disappoint so far is that the art is 15% too Japanese and thus does not perfectly recreate the feel of old school RPGs but not everything can be perfect.
It’s old enough now that it might be tough to run on modern computers, but it sounds like Myth II might be similar to what you’d like. It is one-mission-at-a-time-in-order, which it sounds like you don’t want, but it hits all of the other buttons: You control a small number of units, you can’t produce more (though sometimes you can rescue reinforcements), the units get better with experience but in subtle ways that you don’t need to pay attention to, and so on. The storyline is great, and if you can get it to run, it looks amazing on modern computers. One nice feature of it that I haven’t seen in other RTS or RTT games is that if your units survive, you get the same ones (with all of their accumulated experience) in subsequent missions (so, for instance, if a mission calls for eight bowmen, you’ll have the eight most-experienced living bowmen you’ve ever used, but if in your last mission you were careless and lost them all, you’ll have eight green newbies plucking your yew).
I was going to suggest Mount & Blade Warband. Start off as one main person, and acquire an army, amass a fortune, take over cities, be a merchant, be an outlaw, become King, whatever floats your boat!