Truthfully, especially in modern RPGs, stats are pretty secondary. Time spent fiddling with them is minor, if there’s any at all. Instead your character just gets better as you accrue enough XP. Some games still let you “assign points” or whatever, but it’s not really a major of point of most modern RPGs.
On the other hand, most “real” RPGs (I’m leaving aside the Diablos and Torchlights and other “RPG lite” games here) are good because they make more effort than most games to have an involving story and a fully realized and (usually explorable) world. This is something you get only rarely in other genres, whereas virtually all RPGs make this one of their major points. The story may or may not be branching/sandbox, but that’s pretty irrelevant to you if you enjoy the Half Life 2s and STALKERs of the world, because those titles are highly linear, static stories anyway. (Some people will argue that linear stories are more compelling, or at least, easier to make so.)
So yeah, truthfully? Try a couple of RPGs. Systematically, they’re more complicated than shooters, but in a well crafted game, the mechanics won’t get in the way. Older games can be more ‘clunky’ in this regard, because they were often written for a nichier, more number-crunchy audience, but any good example of the genre shouldn’t be a problem.
Oh, and with regard to immersion, a lot of more recent RPGs are played from the first person perspective anyway. Though whether this makes them more or less immersive depends on the player.
Most CRPGs are pretty lightweight when it comes to up-front character creation, except for D&D-inspired games like Neverwinter Nights and its sequel. Even the most recent hardcore RPG from Bioware, Dragon Age, is pretty forgiving if your stats and skills aren’t optimal at the beginning of the game.
The one I would recommend to the OP is Divine Divinity, a Diablo-clone game with a surprisingly deep and fun storyline and a light RPG system, and is a pretty fun ride throughout. Mass Effect 2 has been recommended, so I will just add my vote to it.
However, the game that I feel sums up the CRPG experience best is the Quest for Glory (aka. Heroes’ Quest) series. Too bad it is not easily available now.
ROGs are your game. You make many choices before and during the game that makes it your unique experience. A good one takes a long time to complete, but if you do you get the big fancy screen at the end telling you that you have completed the quest. So there is a payoff.
As you play ,your character gets more powerful and has better weapons and armor. The monsters get bigger and tougher. There is lots of challenge.
Just a quick addition to this very informative and interesting thread. The Fallout and Fallout 2 games can be had very easily at mainstream places like Target for something like $10 for both (Fallout:tactics too, but who cares?). Add the Fallout Restoration Project mods, and you’re good to go for literally a 100 hours or so of gameplay. It’s obviously not a FPS, but it’s still, IMHO, one of the best of the CRPGs.
Aside, I’d buy Planescape for $10 in an instant, if I could find it anywhere.
gog had this silly promotional stunt going where they made it look like they were going under. Turns out they were re-doing the website and their services + adding Baldur’s gate and other BG engine driven games. People were pissed, but they were quickly forgiven. They are probably the only company releasing games (including the upcoming Witcher 2) totally DRM free.
I’m an RPG gamer, it’s my favorite genre, I do NOT do this, at all. I usually stick by some variation of one character, and I’m always lawful good/light side/whatever if there’s a morality system. I’m generally as good as possible, but sometimes make the ambiguous choice in non-metered games, and only occasionally make the “bad” choice (I let Garrus get his closure in ME2, for instance). I don’t ever spend 100 hours trying out different builds or play through every choice branch, I usually spend once playing the game as completely as possible through the good storyline (I’m too much of a softie and except in really poorly done games I feel bad hurting people). So no, that’s not “the fun” for everyone.
I think part of the point he was making is that in Half-Life 2 you could take a different approach if you were low on health and assassinate people, or just go in guns blazing. My answer is that for most modern Western CRPGs you can still do that. In Dragon Age if I’m in trouble (i.e. not a lot of potions left) I’ll find a bottleneck, run my tank up to the door and say hi, then run back to my little death knell. Sometimes you are forced into a character-based situation, where the fact you can stealth will give you a class-specific mission you have to use your skills for, but in truth in Half-Life 2 sometimes you hit a scripted encounter that requires you to play a certain way as well, so it’s not really different.
Choie, I think some of your problem is not seeing how limited FPS’s are to let you technically do “everything.” Strictly speaking, Freeman is probably a fighter archetype character, you can get sneak attacks in the same matter they can. What (specialization-based-)RPGs do is broaden the scope further, each individual character, I would argue, can do just as much as Freeman. It’s just that they do different things to the same scope as Freeman. So yes, your wizard will be locked into spellcasting, but no more than Freeman is locked into shooting things. There are some “unfair” differences here, not all characters in RPGs can be made to have high enough persuasion, for instance, but it’s just the fact that a lot of RPGs make dialogue encounters in the same manner that fighting is, so again, you can convince people as much as Freeman can shoot (well, I can’t think of any games, except MAYBE MAYBE Planescape where this, specifically, is true, but it ends up being a little stronger in dialogue and a little less strong in fighting usually).
And as for the whole “I don’t want to deal with stats” thing, try a wiki for the game or an FAQ. You may consider it “cheating,” but if you really don’t want to have to think about it, there’s no harm eschewing the part you don’t like so you can get to the fighting and story, the parts you do like. You don’t have to follow a full walkthrough, just a “build guide” or something similar. I’ve even been known to do it in games when it’s very clear that the level ups are broken and you can completely gimp yourself if you do it wrong, save yourself the hassle and just look it up if you don’t like it.
Try Fallout 3. It’s an FPS RPG, and it’s very mild as introductions to FPSes go. There are stats and numbers, but they’re not difficult to work with and during the vast majority of the game you’re not thinking about them at all.
It helps if you don’t focus on the numbers so much as “What do I want to be good at?” and adjust the numbers accordingly. Say, in Fallout 3, you want to be handy with guns. That means you’d make sure your Agility was higher than your other stats and that every time you’re handed skill points, you put a portion into Small Guns. Or if you’d rather be a sneaky switchblade assassin type, you’d raise Dexterity and make sure your Sneak and Melee Weapon skills were high.
Once you’ve selected your skills, you play the way you want to play. The skill allocation is just there to provide a balance, so you’re not automatically the best at every available option. It helps personalize your character and allows you to invest in it through the choices you make.
You really think so? I played Baldur’s Gate for the first time recently and I found the D&D rules to be confusing. 2d10? To Hit Armor Class 0? What the hell is all this? I had to resort to Google and I’m still not sure I entirely understand how it works.
But isn’t QfG half adventure game, in the sense that you look for objects and apply them to puzzles? It’s pretty much the only one I can think of in that particular genre, but I admit my knowledge isn’t encyclopedic. Still pretty fun, I used to re-install and play the whole series over again every few years.
Yes it is, but so what? Is there some unwritten rule somewhere that all tasks in a true RPG must be resolved by some sort of stat test, so you either kill something or talk it down? I might argue that QfG provides something closer to a TRUE RPG experience instead of the number crunching hack’n’slash stuff that has become synonymous with “RPG” in the computer gaming space.
I might also note that while there are multiple ways to do almost everything, the story itself is fundamentally very linear, which to me is part of why it works so well. YMMV.
Wow, verrrry interesting info here! Too many people to mention individually but you’ve all been amazingly helpful.
I had some trouble getting into Deus Ex, which disappointed me because everyone goes orgasmic over it. That was a couple of years back, so I should probably try it again with an eye to what everyone here’s been saying. Plus, I do want to try the new one when it comes out, because it looks gorgeous and the previews I’ve seen (explaining some of the plot set-up) seem compelling.
Besides, everyone will be playing this game, so I wanna be au courant.
Now this is part of the thing that turns me off a bit – the idea of controlling a bunch of other characters. I’m not sure why, exactly; I guess because I can grok either playing one person, or being semi-omnipotent/omniscient as an author (or in a Sims-type game); I don’t get the in-between mode of having to juggle several different characters around, while still supposedly being only one person. Doesn’t that harm the immersive factor there?
TL;DR – I’d probably stay away from party-based games, at least to start with.
Yeah, I think where my mental block has been coming from was this notion of playing a character with totally different abilities to myself. Which is dumb, considering that’s what being a writer is, or a performer (something I also used to do). I need to switch up my mindset and remember that it is, duh, role-playing. In HL, Freeman is me … a little fiction that’s helped by the fact that he never speaks. Same thing with “Marked One” in STALKER. (Well, he spoke a little in a cut scene and at the very end, but that was easy to forget.)
However, in an RPG, I gather, I am supposed to be the character. Not choie hanging out in a faux medieval town, but the actual warrior/wizard/princess/whatever with different personality traits to myself. Am I making any sense?
That’s the part that especially intrigues me (along with the free-roam factor you mention later). STALKER has some of this, especially in its focus on factions. If you piss off a member of one faction, your reputation will be shot to hell with everyone in that faction. (Apparently they’re notorious gossips!) You can stay neutral but that means you won’t be partaking in some cool side-adventures, nor will you be able to take some shortcuts.
One of my favorite moments in STALKER was during a replay. I accidentally got too close to the Army barracks and shot an officer (totally in self-defence! Honestly!), but no one saw me do it so I figured I was in the clear. I went back to the small village where the other Stalkers were hanging out (a locale where no soldiers ever visited), picked up some food, then headed out for a task.
Next time I returned to the village, I was shocked to discover almost everyone dead. A few soldier corpses were among the dead, and the story was clear: apparently the army had invaded the town and decimated it. All thanks to me. Oops.
It was creepy and awesome. I mean, I adore Half Life, make no mistake. But I’ve never been surprised by subsequent replays the way I was when I walked among that Ukrainian ghost town.
So all this is to say that if that’s the kinda thing I can look forward to in your average RPG, sign me up.
Now there you go! That’s what I’m talkin’ about. Which ones aren’t in 1st person? And for the ones that are in 3rd person, does it eventually get easier to figure out your spacial relationship to the world? I couldn’t even play Psychonauts because it drove me nuts that I was just outside/to the rear of the character. Who wants to look at the back of someone’s head the whole time… especially when it’s supposed to be you?
That sounds/looks familiar to me. Hm. But my first thought was that it was a text adventure, so I might be conflating it with something else. Was there ever a game called Orc’s Quest or something like that?
I’m a ‘she’, but yes, that’s it exactly. I’d like to think I’d be fairly flexible if I were in that situation in real life.
Yeah, HL2 is certainly more ‘on-rails’ than not. I think the genius of its design is that things occur that seem random, but they’re totally not. Valve are forcing you into circumstances/behaviors, but they feel natural and improvised to you. (For example, at the beginning of HL2, when Freeman is wandering City 17 and suddenly every Combine officer wants a piece of his ass. I remember running higgledy-piggledy up to the rooftops, desperately trying to find somewhere to hide while soldiers are right on my tail only yards away, and finally skidding along a gutter to dive into a window.
Obviously there’s nowhere else to go (presumably). But that first time I played the scene, I totally felt the terror and breathless uncertainty of where to go, and finding that one open window made me feel like the luckiest shnook on Earth.
Sorry, seem to have digressed again.
Heh. That does seem a bit cheaty but if needs ever must, I’ll keep that option in mind.
Fingers tired now. Thanks all for the responses so far!
Edited to add: BTW I’d love to get Planescape: Torment because many seem to think of it as one of the best games ever. Unfortunately I’ve had trouble with GOG.com games not running on my system despite their apparent updates. (Duke Nukem 3D, I’m looking at you!)
Nope, I am talking aboutthis. You probably need DosBox to play it. It’s a hybrid adventure/rpg series combining the puzzles of King’s Quest/Space Quest with RPG elements, like combat, spells and stats. The puzzles are less punishing/wicked than King’s Quest, though and the combat is slightly action based, but you can tweak the difficulty level for the action sequence.
It’s also about the stats when it comes to solving puzzle. You can’t climb up a tree unless your Agility and Climb skill are high enough, and as you practice the skills, they got better. Even better, for each of the three character class (Fighter, Mage and Thief), there’s a different solution to a puzzle. For instance, in fourth game you have to cross a pit on a tightrope. No problem if you are thief. The wizard character needs to think of an interesting way involving the wind, and a bedsheet, and the Levitate spell.
Granted, games like NWN, Baldur’s Gate and etc. have you using your class’ ability to get through a door, or open a chest. What’s interesting with QFG is that it doesn’t have “Okay, this is just the 100th chest I need to pick/bash open”. Instead, all that you do have a context tied into the narrative. In the third game, for example, a mage duel is played out with spells and counter-spells, instead of the usual “Match your Will save against my DC”. You really do feel that you are thinking like a Wizard or a Thief, instead of the mechanic as a ‘filter’ for your actions.
That’s what so great about the QFG series.It is not all about finding the best build, grinding for the best equipment (there isn’t really many options, honest) but the interaction with the character and storyline. To paraphrase the manual of the first game, “The dilemma of roleplaying is to think as your character would…”
You can drag bodies in Oblivion (no mod needed), even though if I’m not mistaken, it doesn’t matter if you hide them or not, so the only reason to do so is generally to be able to pick up something that ended up being under the corpse.
The name is an heirloom of the pen and paper RPGs, where you’re actually playing a role (speaking as your character when interacting with NPCs or other players).
Maybe Baldur’s Gate (that I personally don’t like much), but I don’t think that Planescape: Torment is a good game to start.
Mind you, I think that Torment is by far the best CRPG ever, and in fact the only game that made me really feel something in the way a good book or movie can. But despite its cult status on this board, many players were disappointed (too complicated, too much stuff to read, too depressing, etc…) and it didn’t have that much overall success. It won’t please everybody, and maybe especially not someone who has no experience of CRPGs. Besides, the universe of this game is really weird which might be disconcerting.
And of course, both games are relatively old, and for players accustomed to high quality graphics, that may be a major turn-off.
Then pick a game where there aren’t any followers, like Oblivion. Most CRPGs that include followers are balanced accordingly, hence, though in theory you could play alone, you chances of surviving are rather low.
Not really. In Torment, for instance, the quite in-depth interactions with other members of your party are an essential element of the appeal of the game. In, say, Arcanum, the characters you can enlist are varied enough for it to have consequences (paths open or closed, followers leaving because they don’t like your actions, etc…). In a game like Baldur, where interactions with the other members of the party are quite limited, it doesn’t really detract from the immersion, because you’re the one playing, interacting, deciding. They are mainly there for the fights (now, you might not enjoy controlling several several characters during a fight, I guess) and may still occasionally add to the atmosphere (random comments, romances).
Finally, personally, I “feel alone” when there’s no companions. So, for instance, I’m playing Morrowind and Oblivion with mods adding followers, even though the games are intended to be played alone.
Yes. Although personality traits don’t play that great a part in CRPG (as opposed to pen and paper) since the game can’t really react accordingly. It might be essentially irrelevant (the more linear the game, the more irrelevant, generally), even. Generally, what is taken into account is your actions in the game, often in a very simplified way (are you a “good guy” or a “bad guy”) sometimes tracking a lot of what you’re doing and adjusting the people’s reactions and the events accordingly (Fallout 1-2 and Arcanum, for instance).
Personally, like a previous posters, I tend to have the same mindset in all the games (although typically my actions will vary a bit depending on the kind of character I’m playing). But other players enjoys much more the “role-playing” part, even when it doesn’t have much consequences.
In your average RPG not necessarily, but quite often. What you do doesn’t have much consequences in Baldur’s, for instance. If you’re playing Morrowind, you’ll get tons of competing factions. If you play Fallout 2, the game will end with a serie of cut-off scenes showing what final consequences your actions had in the various places you visited, etc…
Regarding free-roaming Morrowind/Oblivion (I’m deliberately forgetting Daggerfall here) are probably the best amongst the CRPG I played. You go wherever you feel like to do whatever you feel like doing (south to the caves you want to explore, east to the town where you want to trade, west to fulfill some mission you’ve been given, north just for the sake of watching the landscape…). However, it’s almost equally true in Arcanum (except that walking around the map will soon become a bit boring) or Fallout (except that you can’t explore every single inch of the of the world, you’ll just go directly from region A to region B)
Weirdly enough, I have a hard time remembering which ones are 1st person and 3rd person (Baldur and Fallout 1-2 are definitely 3rd person. In Oblivion, you can choose either). How easy it is to adapt to 3rd person : not really difficult, especially since many CRPG can be paused if you begin to lose control (fights in Fallout 1-2 are in fact turn-based instead of being in real time. I like this feature because I like their tactical combat system, but other people don’t)
He was referring to the character-building part. Looking up FAQ and sites for advices on how to create and “upgrade” a character isn’t cheating. And in some games, having or not having a talent might make a huge difference. Play a warrior type and give him the lowest possible intelligence in Baldur’s gate : no problem at all. Try to do the same in Fallout 2, and you’re in for a big surprise. Having “people’s skill/charisma/diplomacy” in Arcanum will change things a lot. In other games, not so much.
So look up to see what your set of skills/class/talents will change, what competences are really important in a given game and what aren’t, decide on the type of character you think you’ll enjoy the most and go ahead. Don’t necessarily follow the opinion of the FAQ author about what type of character is best because it might no suit your style of play.
Remember anyway that your character’s management won’t take much time. You will level up once in a while and have to decide what to do with the small amount of points you’ll be granted (and it might be hard to choose), but it won’t take more than 1% of the time spent playing. That’s if you even have a say in the matter in the game you will pick.
Again, even though it’s without contest my preferred CRPG, I’m not sure it’s a good first choice. It’s a really enthralling but peculiar game, and in particular, you must be sure you won’t mind having a lot of stuff to read during the game.
It’s not really that big a deal, from a roleplaying perspective. If you consider your character to be the person forming the party, he’s likely “commander in chief” of sorts. As such, you have the say of what kinds of tactics to use. Of course, it stretched belief beyond credibility that you can shout orders and have everybody make perfect moves exactly as your character intended, and the enemies not counter-maneuver, but if you want to justify it it’s not exactly hard. Hell, in Dragon Age there’s even a mechanic called tactics which will allow you to set rules such as “attack party leader’s target,” “if hp < x%, use healing” and so on, so you don’t need to intervene at all. This isn’t recommended universally (especially above normal difficulty), but if you want to take a stab at a very good 3rd person RPG that you can neglect the other characters to some degree, Dragon Age would be a good choice. As you start dying more, you’ll probably even start microing more, which will pull you out of your comfort zone little by little. Hell, Dragon Age doesn’t even tell you the percentages and exact numbers that half of the abilities do, which drives us RPG nuts crazy to a degree, but it may also get you over your stat-phobia since not everything is (overtly) quantified.
It makes sense, but you have different abilities, you can still make your own choices, to a limited degree. There are times where you’re strangled by the stupid or the writers didn’t think of what you have to say about the situation, or a smart way to subvert the system if you were in a real world. But that’s a universal problem, I can assure you that if I were Doctor Freeman Half-Life probably would have played differently, even if I somehow made it out of Black Mesa by coincidence and murderous rampage, Half-Life 2 would have had a lot more of me questioning everyone…
Not so much. Don’t get me wrong, many good RPGs will surprise you with the ramifications of your choices down the line, but that sort of thing is rare, and even in games like STALKER often happen by pure accident. Games such as Oblivion and STALKER where the world isn’t run by plot and you can legitimately use any game mechanic on any game entity are more prone to these sorts of stories, but they’re rare (as they’re usually flukes of AI), and I wouldn’t expect them from your average RPGs. Playing most RPGs, even the more sandboxy ones are more like a really ridiculously elaborate choose your own adventure book, the plotlines branch, but there’s usually not much room for that sort of random chance. That’s not to say you can’t get some cool stories out of it, but they’re usually more of the war story “My entire party died and I took on 50 mooks all by myself” variety than the “I made a mistake and everyone died” variety.
Oops, sorry.
Oh, for sure, but it’s the same for good RPGs. Sure, sometimes it doesn’t occur naturally by being put into a situation, but if somebody says “YOU ARE A ROGUE PICK THE LOCK” it can kind of be excused, while it’s obviously derived from your class, without it you’d probably be scratching your head wondering why you’re barging in the front door when you’re a rogue that can pick locks. The sort of openness of the worlds allows for a certain bit of plot-derived divergence simply because it’s really hard (or nigh impossible) to make things come to a different conclusion naturally all the time from the gameplay, so instead they make the characters know about and exploit your abilities.
Along with many others, I’d almost anti-recommend Torment for your first foray into CRPG land, it’s very much the archetypal CRPG, and as such is wildly divergent from anything you’re used to. I’d recommend testing the waters with something like Oblivion or Fallout 3, and if you like those (or still want to try CRPGs even though you didn’t like their mechanics, I personally hate Elder Scrolls mechanics) transition to either Mass Effect or Dragon Age.
Mass Effect I’d recommend because it’s a shooter, it’ll get you used to third person and stats, but it’s light on the stats, has a good story, and has shooter elements. The first one will start to drag on if you start doing all the sidequests (which I recommend, principally because they give you levels, levels give you points in charm/intimidate, and those in turn let you affect the plot to your liking. Also, many sidequests have ramifications in the second and presumably third game), usually you start feeling that way after you realize that they had exactly three ideas for quests they kept copying and pasting with different (but still engaging) plots, but what can you do? The second one is leagues better, but I wouldn’t really go there without finishing the first one. And I say that as someone who really wishes that wasn’t the case. In addition, you don’t control your party members at all, you very much are playing as Commander Shephard, on the field you can give orders like “move” or “use ability” but you never directly control them in any way, and you don’t select them to tell them to move, it’s implied that Shephard is signaling them in some way, so there’s no real handwaving involved. Oh, and for the record, as much as I love Jennifer Hale forever I have no problem with Male Shephard. So play as whoever you want, I don’t really think it’s as different as people like to make it out to be.
Dragon Age is different, it’s definitely more in the Planescape/Baldur’s Gate category, it doesn’t bridge shooters at all, but like I said, the tactics system and aversion to explicit mentions of numbers in many cases will probably be a good transition into that sort of mindset. It also lacks a morality meter, which is standard fare in a lot of CRPGs that you may want to avoid the first time you play them, so that you can really feel like you’re playing a role, and not just gaming a thinly-disguised attempt at a plot railroad. My only general worry is that Dragon Age is basically the most triumphant example of standard CRPG fantasy tropes, it does it very well, but you might not “get it” without some context of how CRPG fantasy usually goes from other games. However, it’s not that big of a deal in most games, and I’d probably recommend playing Mass Effect one and two before Dragon Age, as it’s a gentler transition in general.
So I’d say get your feet wet with Oblivion or Fallout 3, whether you like them or not (since I personally don’t like those games too much, despite liking shooters and RPGs), try Mass Effect, and then try Dragon Age if you got used to the third person. Then you can graduate to the realm of old school games (I’d probably work backwards, try Neverwinter Nights or Neverwinter Nights 2 and then you can go to Baldur’s Gate or Planescape, simply because 2nd Ed D&D mechanics are maddening).
There are a lot of outstanding points and suggestions already mentioned here, but FWIW I’d suggest Fallout 3: Game Of The Year Edition as the best place to start. The sequel Fallout: New Vegas is the better game, but slightly more “involved” with a more complex plot. The plot of Fallout 3 is still immersive, but less complex, and once you get past the first couple of character levels and acquire some decent weapons and armour, it shouldn’t be too difficult, either.
