I’ve played CRPGs for years. Decades, in fact, since two decades means I get to use the plural form. If it’s been out on the PC, I’ve likely given it a whirl. Lately, though, I’ve become less and less interested with what’s being put onto the market. It’s all crap compared to the good old days. Get off my lawn, you dadgum kids! Don’t know how good it was, way back when. Imagination, we used! Newfangled video cards … 7900GT this … 4 gigs of RAM that … I had 640k and I liked it!
Yeah, I know that there was no ‘golden age’ and 90% of everything “back then” was crap, too. Still, I just finished replaying Ultima 5, and I’m jonesing for some good old-fashioned hack and slash along the lines of Wizardry, Bard’s Tale, Might & Magic, Ultima, Pool of Radiance, et cetera, et cetera.
I’ve played Avernum and tried Avernum 2, wondering if a retro-style RPG was what I was looking for, but that didn’t hold my attention too long. Devil Whiskey was a great homage to Bard’s Tale, but I blew through that in a weekend and wondered why “But you have modding tools to make your own content!” was pitched as an excuse for limited built-in content.
What’s a good old (where ‘old’ means anything from 1982 to the present day - I’m not picky) CRPG that you liked and that I need to try (or re-try)?
I couldn’t help but notice no Wasteland and Fallout on that list. Since you don’t care about the graphics I’d say start with Wasteland, think about the suffering that gamers had for over ten years waiting for a proper sequel (not crap like Fountain of Dreams) and then play Fallout. Or you can go straight to Fallout 1 and 2 and not worry about it.
Heh, sorry. It’d be nigh unto impossible for me to list everything I’ve ever played.
As for Wizardry 8, I gave that a whirl a few years ago. I liked it, tapered off near the endgame, tried to get back into it six or nine months later, and didn’t quite have the enthusiasm. I’d definitely be interested in playing another game similar to it, though. (Not Might & Magic X – that one wasn’t worth the ten bucks I paid for it.)
I played my share of Wasteland back in the day, along with Fallout and Fallout 2. Postapocalyptic games are always a plus. Anything else in that vein you can think of?
Now, Darklands … that’s one that I absolutely loved, but never got all the way through. I might have to pull that one out of the archives.
I’ve brought back countless water chips and GECKs. Give me a different postapocalyptic game, I beg of you!
As for Daggerfall, I suffered through the bugs in that for far too long, but finally forgave Bethesda after Oblivion this past year. That, definitely, was a glorious game.
Can you tell me some more about Arcanum? I never looked too closely at it when it came out.
I loved two lesser-known Origin RPG’s that got forgotten among the Ultima sequels - “Times of Lore” and “Bad Blood.” “Times of Lore” was a typical fantasy game, heavy on the hack and slash, but I really dug into it. “Bad Blood” was a fun post-apocalyptic game with an engine similar to the later Ultimas, plus it had a sick sense of humor. Both should be readily available on abandonware sites, which I won’t link to because the SDMB is probably weird about it.
Classic computer RPGs began with ADVENT (A six-letterism for ‘Adventure’, back when OSes could only support short names.) by Woods and Crowther. This started the field of text adventures, also called interactive fiction, which was brought to the mainstream when Infocom published the wildly successful Zork series.
Back during Infocom’s heyday, there was no single mass-market computer/OS pair with a commanding marketshare. (The first mass-market computer/OS pair to gain such a position was the IBM PC and (mainly) clones with MS-DOS and family, first introduced in 1981 and fairly commanding by the late 1980s. Prior to that, the system that came closest was CP/M running on a family of computers built around the S-100 bus and the 8080 and Z80 CPUs.) This meant that Infocom faced an n-times-m combinatorial explosion: For every n games it made, it would have to port them to m computer/OS pairs to make a profit. It solved this with a rather inspired move: They wrote their programs in z-code, the machine language of a fictional machine called a z-machine, and created a program to run those z-code files (a z-machine interpreter) for each kind of computer/OS pair they wanted to sell games for.
I told you all that because z-code files still exist and new ones are being made by a small but active text adventure community. There are also z-machine interpreters for a huge range of computers, allowing anyone to play those z-code games on any machine they own. The interpreter I personally use is Frotz.
Yup - you can even find my 2002 IF competition entry on that archive. I’m part of that small but active text adventure community and spend a good deal of time on ifMUD.
I have an entry in this year’s IF Comp myself, but I don’t consider adventure games as RPG’s as all. About six or seven years ago game companies started labeling just about any type of game an “RPG” under the argument that the player was taking the role of a character which has considerably diluted the concept of role-playing games. I personally consider the RPG genre about the player building a character and where success in conflicts is more determined by that character’s abilities rather than the player’s.
Since it seems you’ve played all the popular ones and titles I personally consider timeless let’s move down to the B-list:
I’ll bring these up because I’d guess that 90% of RPG fans never encountered them, though I suspect you may have: The Savage Empire and Martian Dreams. Two games developed with the Ultima 6 engine that are exceptional. Martian Dreams in particular is brilliant for its use of pretty much ever major historical figure from the end of the 19th century as characters.
Superhero League of Hoboken - Since you almost certainly like the works of Steve Meretzky I’d recommend this to you. It switches between RPG world wandering and combat and short point-and-click adventure game scenes.
Legacy of the Ancients - Kind of an Ultima-like that I had a lot of fun exploring. Not the greatest game ever but a solidly produced title that was a step above most of the other generic hack and slashers. I just wouldn’t elevate it to the timeless classic level.
Well, if you’re into very old-school, you could try Nethack. Free, though it’s not exactly a story-based RPG.
And allow me to hawk the Lazarus Project. It’s Ultima 5, if Ultima 5 was written today…
…well, if Ultima 5 was written today by a bunch of geeks who adored the original game and series but had no money so they used the Dungeon Siege engine.
It’s like that, because that’s what it is. But it beat out several new games for my absolute favorite computer game, next to Nethack. Not least because I helped write it. eyeshifts
You know, I was just looking at U5:Lazarus the other day, but put it off as I never got around to buying Dungeon Siege, and to my understanding I need a full version of that to play Lazarus. It probably wouldn’t hurt to add Dungeon Siege to the collection, too.
Just Some Guy’s mentions of the Worlds of Ultima games deserve seconding – I was mulling those over, and now that I think about them some more, I do miss noodling around the surface of Mars chewing on oxium.
Best game soundtrack EVER!!! I still have mp3’s of “UFOs are Big Rigs” and “My Babys All Liquored Up”
UFOs are big rigs, that come from outer space.
Stoppin off at the truck stop earth, lookin for some food to eat.
Can’t get no beanie weenies, out past the great unknown.
UFOs are big rigs far from home…
But it beat out several new games for my absolute favorite computer game, next to Nethack. Not least because I helped write it. eyeshifts