And if you are tempted by Dungeon Siege, just say no. Gods preserve us was that a stinker. Pretty, but P U ! IMHO, of course.
If you liked SimCity, you may want to pick up Tropico, which is, uh, erm… SimCuba, basically. You are able to pick certain qualities of your leader (unless playing in a pre-built scenario), like Paranoid, Installed by KGB, Scholarly, Flatulent, Capitalist Rebellion, and so on.
It’s amusing, and the game plus expansion (Paradise Island, put together to form the Mucho Macho combo) is $30 at Amazon. You may be able to find it cheaper locally.
Few things as fun as hearing your advisor say “Good morning, el Presidente. May I say you are looking particularly powerful today?”
Or deciding that a certain political opponent has become too uppity, and sending armed guards to shoot her down in the street and then invalidating the next election…
Cite? 
Actually, I put that there to encourage tangents about whether there were or were not plenty of good RPGs out there, but what the heck. It wouldn’t be this board without someone calling names. (snif) I feel so included. (snif)
Oooh, I remember FF1 on the Nintendo. Long time ago. (At least, it’s probably the same game, I know they played some tricks with the numbering between the Japanese versions and the American versions.)
Flatulent?!?! :eek:
Do I wanna know how that affects the game?
“Kindred:The Embraced” was a short-lived but excellent TV series that can give you a taste of the game. The game begins with our hero, Cristof, a mortal crusader in medieval Prague. He falls in love with a nun, Anezka, who is nursing him back to health from a battle wound. The first part involves ridding the silver mines of a Vampire and her minions. Once this is done, Cristof is “embraced” by the leader of the Bruja vampires. There are several different clans of vampires: Bruja, Ventrue, Gangrel, Tzimisce, Nosferatu, Cappadocian, Giovanni, Malkavian, Tremere, and Lasombra. As you progress, you acquire more ally characters in your group. Each clan has unique spells or “discipines” that increase in strength with experience. Using them expends blood, which must be replenished from mortals or other vampires. If you drain a mortal to the point of death, you lose “humanity,” which has repercussions down the line. (sort of a “catch and release” policy.)
As you acquire treasure, you can buy better armor, weapons, and magic items. The plot ranges through Vienna to modern London and the New York. There are many “mini-quests” within the larger quest of finding Anezka. Sunlight, of course, will inflict damage on your characters. They will all follow the main character’s lead unless they are instructed to hold their position. The graphics are 3d.
Feh, it’s not really an RPG. It’s more like Diablo with some fancier graphics and pre-generated characters. Keeping your humanity up was easy, you just had to choose the obviously non-monstrous conversation option when it gave you a choice, which is about 5 times in the entire game.
I recomend Arcanum - it can be played turn-based, has a huge world, an interesting setting (the industrial revolution has come to a typical fantasy world), good story, and an awesome character generation system.
There is an upcoming game that looks good, too. I believe it’s called ‘Lionheart’. It’s got a fantasy setting, but with a historical background - during the Crusades someone gathered together certain artifacts that opened a door between our world and one inhabited by spirits, elves, monsters, etc. The game is set in the 16th century, you meet many historical figures (like Shakespear) from that timeframe, but the world is very different - there is a powerful Christian/Muslim alliance that is the result of the opposing sides joining forces to drive back the supernatural invaders after they were released, some countries have been taken over by non-humans, etc.
It has a character generation system similar to that used in the Fallout games and Arcanum, and is supposed to be very open-ended.
I am an RPG gamer at heart. THo my favorite is city building (My wife and I love Sim City 4)
ducks the geek targeted rotten eggs
Diablo 2 with Lord of Destruction Expansion: My wife and I have been playing this since it originally came out. It is an excellant RPG I love it for its “American” feel (no purple hair heros with over sized swords). It is great for team work, has stats, TONS of items and magic but is action oriented. Can be played on a LAN or over the internet. (Side story: A while back my wife and I were having trouble and we slightly fought about who would get the magic items we found on Blizzard’s Battle.net Realms.) Worse thing is you need 2 copies to play on Battle.net at the same time.
Never Winter Nights: Is IMHO the biggest dissapointment in the history of video games. Not that it is a bad game but that I had been reading about it for 3 years before it was released and had such high hopes for it. Still a great game tho. 3rd edition rules action oriented but can pause in mid action to figure out what to do next.
Dungeon Seige: Another dissapointment but fun for a while
Morrowind: A great game but single player only. IMHO this ruined it for me. That and the fact that I always felt like I was just running from town to town never really accomplishing anything.
Ahh, Diablo II. It’s usually a frenzied rush as me and my flatmate massivly twink our characters, powergame through it and chomp throught the monsters in a mad rush to be the first to pick up the uniques items.
Hey NE Texan, forgot to mention The Underdogs. Has heaps of abandonware games you can download on it, and you’ll find a lot of old-school titles there.
Thanks for all the great suggestions. If I may be so bold as to nudge the topic space a little:
I know it’s easy to miss in my OP, and again in one of my later replies, but I’m really not interested in on-line gaming. At all. Won’t buy one, won’t play it. Let me now add to that, that I’m not very interested in games that aren’t good enough out of the box, but have these great user-generated modules… No, I’m just looking for a single-player, single-computer game that’s fun to play on installation. On the other hand, if you want to make those recommendations in case someone else reads the thread, I don’t really object (and couldn’t enforce it if I did). I just wanted to let you know that’s not what I’m looking for.
(Back on the soapbox again)
I understand that online gaming is really popular, but does that mean that they can’t still make single-player games anymore? I seem to be in an ever-dwindling minority here, but I really prefer that if I spend money on a game, you can play it out of the box - it doesn’t need user expansions or an internet connection. Not that there’s anything wrong with those games, they just aren’t what I’m willing to spend my money on.
(Done with the lame rant, and back off the soapbox.)
By the way, I mean no offense to the quoted posters, who I appreciate giving their thoughts - I just used their posts as a jumping off point for a general statement.
I’m beginning to wonder if I have Diablo mixed up with some other game, so I’m going to ask for clarification.
Gravity and Eric_Balrog both suggested Diablo (specifically II) as a good rpg, and Rabid_Squirrel mentioned that he’s played it, also. I was under the impression that Diablo was a “shoot-em-up” game - you go through progressive levels killing everything in sight, without interacting with NPC’s, solving quests, or having much of a story. Do I have the description of the game wrong, or am I just running into the (already-known) fact that different people have different ideas of what an RPG is? Because if I have the summary of the game correct, it’s not really what I have in mind when I ask for an RPG recommendation.
I’m willing to admit when I’m wrong - please correct me if I have the description of the game wrong.
Badtz Maru, thanks for the recommendation of Lionheart - I’ll definitely look into that, along with Fibber’s suggestion of Temple.
In fact, we’ll probably get a new computer sometime within the next year (my son’s computer died, and I’m having trouble finding an adequate replacement for the power supply, so there’s a certain amount of pressure to just buy a new one and hand down the old one). That’ll probably be the right time to buy the latest and greatest games, and rethink Morrowind (and see if I can find a copy of Ultima 9).
Arcanum was a good suggestion - but one we have. My wife finished it. I looked at it, and want to start it next time I have free time (like that happens). I can see that it’s the technology part that turned my wife off, but that doesn’t bother me.
Miscellaneous replies:
I’ll definitely be looking into BG2. I’ll probably look for Wizardry 8, and Dungeon Keeper.
I’m leaning away from Majesty - not that it sounds bad, but it seems like it’s in the same vein as the HOMM series, and we’re not finished with/tired of those yet.
Still pondering Vampire and Septerra Core.
It’s classified as an action/RPG. There are quests given at various points (mostly ‘kill Zaknar’ or ‘return my pub sign stolen by demons’), and there is a background story, but most NPCs you can interact with are all gathered in town levels, and the vast majority of the game is going through random dungeons killing hordes of monsters to build up XP and get random loot to use or sell back in town. The action part is because you have to click on the monsters you have to attack, hit hotkeys for special attacks or items, all in rather fast-paced realtime combat. It’s probably got more story to it than a lot of early true RPGs (ala Wizardry), but that’s not the point of the game. Diablo 2 allows you to hire NPCs who will follow you around and help you fight, but doesn’t change the gameplay much otherwise.
It’s not my cup of tea, but it does have RPG elements, especially when people start playing online.
Morrowind has some action elements too, but the game is relatively slow-paced in combat and it doesn’t require much skill to click attack while facing your enemy (though ranged combat, whether bows or spells, may require leading a running target from time to time). It has a LOT more role-playing elements, though, and your success in combat has a lot more to do with your characters skills and equipment than your skill at clicking. Unfortunately, it sounds like your system probably couldn’t run it. Look into it in a couple of years when a system capable of running it is cheap and the game is in the bargain bin, it’s got a LOT to it.
Don’t forget the spellcasting elements, especially those of the sorceress. Neverwinter Nights and Diablo II share some elements, such as being able to hire companion NPCs and the point & click attack style but NWN has many more quests. Your companion NPC will also drop hints of a quest specific to that particular NPC but won’t reveal the entire quest until your character is strong enough.
You’ve nailed it, Badtz Maru. I’m not the least bit interested in games where your success has more to do with your skill in clicking than in your strategy in building your character. Or, to put it another way: I’m only interested in computer RPG’s that are NOT action/RPGs. (Don’t worry - plenty of other people like them, they’re not going bankrupt from losing my business.)
I realized you weren’t interested in online gaming, but I didn’t realize you weren’t interested in games that require customization to be fun. My bad.
I just finished playing Neverwinter Nights, and I enjoyed it reasonably well. Again, it’s not a great storyline, but the graphics are pretty, and character customization is a lot of the game’s fun. I recommended getting modules online because I’ve heard that some of those modules have good stories on top the good character-building engine. I rarely play any games online myself, and don’t buy games that depend on online play.
Diablo2 DOES have a fair amount of character customization: every time you go up a level, you get to choose different skills from different skill trees, and finding a good balance of ksills (some of which cost magic and some of which don’t) is part of the game’s challenge. You can make a necromancer who focuses on blowing up the corpses of the dead, or who focuses on bone-daggers, or who focuses on golems, or who focuses on raising the dead to serve his bidding, for example. There are a lot of ways to play the game.
Deus Ex, another action/RPG, is somewhat similar. You gain the ability to customize your character at several points through the game, and you can choose to play stealthily or mechanically or guns-blazingly or in a few other fashions.
I forget if I said this above, but Vampire: the Masquerade had (for me) incredibly boring game play. It and Wizardry 8 both suffered from the ultimate weapon problem: both games had tactics you could achieve fairly early on that were much better than any other tactics for nearly every battle. I much prefer games that require different appraoches to different encounters. And Vampire is as much of an action game as Deus Ex: it’s (I think) a third-person real-time action game.
Have you ever played the old Escape from Monkey Island games, or Full Throttle, or Grim Fandango? These games are all brilliant. Although you don’t really build a character in any of them, they’re funny, story-driven games, kinda like Zork except with a much better sense of humor.
Daniel
Careful with abandonware links. The copyright owners of the games listed there might start enforcing their copyright.
Same here. I don’t really have any time to invest in an online game so I avoid those. I especially avoid ones where any sort of fee is involved (e.g.: EverQuest, Motor City Online). Neverwinter Nights and the Diablo series can be played either way but those who do play online will probably get the most enjoyment. Those who play Diablo I or II online will collect better equipment quicker than solo players without using a cheat program to speed up the process. There are also solo player add-ons for NWN. Morrowind and Dungeon Seige have map editors too but I don’t know much about them. I believe the editor for Dungeon Seige has to be downloaded from its website.
Diablo is fun. But it is far more hack n slash than anything like “roleplaying”. Baldursgate had some more roleplaying elements. Icewind dale had almost none.
Daggerfall was very interesting. I liked the quests & the open ended design. However, the bugs made it impossible to finish.
For fun, with more roleplaying, and some great humor, I can steer you towards the “Quest for Glory” series (Sierra). Ok, the first, although a classic, is dated, and a bit stereotypical. The last one, with romance, etc gets very close to a real roleplaying game.
Left off… but start with #1, and play them through. You can likely buy them as a set, I suggest it.