I’m playing Disco Elysium, which is similar(but features no combat and is actually really different).
Playing it reminds me how much fun I had playing Planescape: Torment, Baldur’s Gate(1 and 2), and the old Fallout games, which were also similar in look.
What are the best modern examples of this? I guess I’d call them “top down” of sorts. You look at the part and move them around, open chests, fight battles, explore dungeons, have your story.
Dragon Age? Is that the cream of the crop or are there other better ones?
I believe “isometric RPG” may be the term I am thinking of…
I enjoyed Pillars of Eternity quite a lot. It’s very similar to Baldur’s Gate 1 and 2 in terms of looks and atmosphere. I haven’t played the sequel, though.
I thought Divinity: Original Sin 1 & 2 had a fun gimmick, but the gimmick started wearing a bit thin for me. In fact, I think I liked D:OS 1 more because it was shorter.
I’m also going to vote for Shadowrun: Dragonfall and Hong Kong (Returns isn’t bad, but the other two are much more polished). I think Dragonfall has the better story of the two, with Hong Kong being a bit more fun. And for people who aren’t familiary with Shadowrun, it’s cyberpunk with magic. Some people do complain if you get chocolate in their peanut butter (or magic in their scifi), so you have fair warning.
There is a surprisingly large list of possible interactions between different items and different abilities for you to experiment with. For instance, if you have a log and an ax, you can combine them to make a staff, and if you have a staff and a sharp stone you can combine them to make a spear, etc. Or if you cast a fire spell on a water puddle, it creates a steam cloud, and if you cast an electric spell on a steam cloud, it becomes an electrified cloud, etc.
In D:OS 2, they simplified the crafting (if I remember correctly) and the novelty of creating pools of fire/electricity/whatever started to wear off after the umpteenth fight.
I also enjoyed Pillars of Eternity and am currently having a second playthrough. The Shadowrun games are great and rather short, so a nice distraction.
I started Pathfinder: Kingmaker and loved the characters and the storyline, but the movement/combat in-game is just too slow. Unplayable for me.
The bigger gimmick is in how it has no character creation unlike most games in the genre. You pick a premade character and team up with other premade characters, each one of which has a full background and goals and personality. You go through the game exploring their personal stories and quests, and have to manage their conflicts with each other. Also, you can basically develop each character in any direction you want as far as classes/skills/etc. so you can have any kind of party you want with any combination of characters (though some characters work better in some roles than others due to natural abilities).
Talking about the way certain powers interact with the environment and each other as “the gimmick” is extremely misleading, as if that’s all that distinguishes the game from others. It’s a disservice in a thread where someone is wanting to learn about such games to present your own pet peeve as defining the game.
I get not liking the game, we’re entitled to personal preferences of course, but that was unhelpful.
Conversations with NPCs will reveal more of a premade character’s story if you use them as your main PC instead of as a companion. If you make your own PC, then you get more generic responses from NPCs.
