Jatopian
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I want an RPG; that I know. But I don't want all of them, so if someone(s) could help me decide, that'd be nice.
The only ones I've ever played are Castle of the Winds (when young) & Kingdom of Loathing (I still check on Wednesday), both of which I enjoyed but am now somewhat weary of.

I'd prefer:
fun - I don't enjoy powerleveling, speedruns, or other tedium
dial-up friendly - if online
ability to play when offline - not essential
intuitive - want learning stages to be fun or else short
engaging - not Progress Quest, but fun
not realtime - I hate time constraints (yay DROD)
rewarding to creativity & resourcefulness, not luck
no traps I couldn't possibly anticipate or easily escape/prevent
somewhat open-ended - only 1 ending is fine, but not only 1 way to play, & class restrictions annoy me
free - not Warcraft
Windows 98 SP2 compatible

I've heard Nethack is good, but lacks a save function (wtf?) and comes in many incompatible versions. I've also heard ADOM & Dungeon Crawl given some praise, and heard of Daimonin, Dwarf Fortress, Thief, Deus Ex, Doom RPG, & Fish Fillets (not sure all of these are RPGs, but meh). Oh, and various ROMs I hear are fairly good too, most notably Zelda.

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Pinnacle
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Jatopian wrote:
I want an RPG; that I know. But I don't want all of them, so if someone(s) could help me decide, that'd be nice.
The only ones I've ever played are Castle of the Winds (when young) & Kingdom of Loathing (I still check on Wednesday), both of which I enjoyed but am now somewhat weary of.

I'd prefer:
fun - I don't enjoy powerleveling, speedruns, or other tedium
dial-up friendly - if online
ability to play when offline - not essential
intuitive - want learning stages to be fun or else short
engaging - not Progress Quest, but fun
not realtime - I hate time constraints (yay DROD)
rewarding to creativity & resourcefulness, not luck
no traps I couldn't possibly anticipate or easily escape/prevent
somewhat open-ended - only 1 ending is fine, but not only 1 way to play, & class restrictions annoy me
free - not Warcraft
Windows 98 SP2 compatible

I've heard Nethack is good, but lacks a save function (wtf?) and comes in many incompatible versions. I've also heard ADOM & Dungeon Crawl given some praise, and heard of Daimonin, Dwarf Fortress, Thief, Deus Ex, Doom RPG, & Fish Fillets (not sure all of these are RPGs, but meh). Oh, and various ROMs I hear are fairly good too, most notably Zelda.

The Ultima series springs to mind -- check eBay or Amazon.
Morrowind is also very open-ended, and restrictions are minimal.

EDIT: The Laxius Power series is quite good too. (freeware)

EDIT AGAIN: Laxius Power is intended for ages 16+ (just need to put that disclaimer)

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[Last edited by Pinnacle at 09-04-2006 02:05 AM]

eytanz
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Jatopian wrote:
I've heard Nethack is good, but lacks a save function (wtf?) and comes in many incompatible versions. I've also heard ADOM & Dungeon Crawl given some praise

All three are Roguelikes, not RPGs. The difference is mostly in playing style - instead of creating one character and sticking with him/her a long time, characters have a pretty short lifetime, and you basically learn from your mistakes. Once you're very experienced you can keep your character alive all the way to the end, but that's not the core gameplay.

Of the other games you mention, I know the following:

Thief, Deus Ex

Both of these are modern-style, FPS/RPG hybirds - Thief is in a medieval setting and Deus Ex in a futuristic setting. Both are great games and well worth playing. Thief is less RPG-like in that there aren't any stats. Both games have sequels - Deus Ex's sequel is ok but not nearly as good as the first one. Thief 2 is great but very hard, while Thief 3 is easier than Thief 1, and doesn't continue the plot very well, but it's a great game independently.

If you like this style of games, you might also want to look at System Shock 2, which is probably the most RPG-like of the three, and is generally great. It's science-fiction/horror, and not for the faint of heart. You don't need to have played System Shock 1 to play it, though it'd help you appreciate some of the nuances (it's unlikely you'll be able to run SS1 on a modern computer).

Fish Fillets

Not an RPG at all, it's a pure puzzle game, which mostly involves moving stuff around.

If you have a strong, modern PC you might want to try Oblivion, which is a really great RPG and very, very engrossing.

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[Last edited by eytanz at 09-04-2006 02:45 AM]

Niccus
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I recommend Wesnoth, but it's mostly a tactical game like how Thief and co. are mostly FPS. Still a nice game though. Has multiplayer support, too.

...It does satisfy your requests though.

NiroZ
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eytanz wrote:
(it's unlikely you'll be able to run SS1 on a modern computer).

Unless you use dosbox that is. The latest version (.65) runs it perfectly, although the pixel size is rather offputting.

Alneyan
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I have had no trouble running SS1 (CD version) on Windows XP, back when I was still using that OS. If memory serves, I didn't have to use VDSM for that game.

b0rsuk
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It's sad how people say Wesnoth, Thief, and Warcraft are RPGs. Fortunately no one mentioned Heroes Of Might And Magic. No, I'm not complaining, I just felt very ... old.

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[Last edited by b0rsuk at 09-04-2006 05:04 PM]

eytanz
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I think by "warcraft" he meant World of Warcraft, which is an RPG of the massively mutiplayer variety. Thief I agree is not an RPG, and I've never heard of Wesnoth before this thread.

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eytanz
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By the way, I should point out that most of the games I mentioned above - Thief 1-3, Deus Ex 1-2, System Shock 1-2, Oblivion - are *not* free, and even the older one (except maybe System Shock 1) cannot be considered abandonware since they are still sold.

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NiroZ
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eytanz wrote:
I think by "warcraft" he meant World of Warcraft, which is an RPG of the massively mutiplayer variety. Thief I agree is not an RPG, and I've never heard of Wesnoth before this thread.

Even though i haven't played Warcraft 3, i have been told that it has quite a few RPG elements, so that could be what he/she was refering to.

eytanz
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If by "RPG elements" you mean leveling up and collecting items, than yeah, it has some, but it's by far a secondary game mechanic to the main RTS gameplay. Deus Ex, for comparison, has both FPS and RPG elements but it feels like they are both equally important.

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Beef Row
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eytanz wrote:
By the way, I should point out that most of the games I mentioned above - Thief 1-3, Deus Ex 1-2, System Shock 1-2, Oblivion - are *not* free, and even the older one (except maybe System Shock 1) cannot be considered abandonware since they are still sold.

Also worth noting that all of the above are real-time, which Jatopian specifically objected to...

Also for the Ultima series, getting them running nicely on a modern computer can be rather unpleasant... even with DOS-box as I recall.. and the newer ones aren't really that much easier to smooth out than the older ones.

One set of games that might fit you nicely is Exile/Avernum by Spiderweb software... (same games, diffrent engines). They aren't free, but there's a sizeable area you can try before hitting shareware boundaries. And they all have multiple endings (sort of. Each game has multiple victory objectives).
Characters are very customizable, skills are based on a point system, and there are some nice mazes, puzzles, secret areas, and rewards for paying attention.

Spiderweb's homepage

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Tim
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Beef Row wrote:
Also for the Ultima series, getting them running nicely on a modern computer can be rather unpleasant... even with DOS-box as I recall.. and the newer ones aren't really that much easier to smooth out than the older ones.

About this Ultima thing...

I've bought some time ago (for a very cheap price) a set called The Ultima Collection. (only because I've heard about being good) It's currently lying here gathering dust.

I really have no time to play all 10 games in there... Any tips of which ones to play?

(Note: Deus Ex and Thief Half Life and many other games are lying here as well... gathering dust... I'm currently playing Advance Wars DS )

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[Last edited by Tim at 09-05-2006 09:34 PM]

eytanz
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Ultima 5 is my favorite of the games. Ultima 7 (the original one, I never played Serpent Island) is my second favorite. There's a big gap in technology between the two.

If you have the underworlds - they haven't aged nearly as well as the main Ultima series, but they were wonderful in their day.

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Alneyan
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I would recommend Ultima VII and Serpent Isle myself. These two are... challenging to run natively these days, but there is a brand new, cross-platform engine just designed for them (Exult, available at Sourceforge or packaged).

I have enjoyed Ultima IV for its spirit (that one was released as freeware some years ago), and it should run fine on modern Windows. The only other game I have really played much of is Ultima VIII. That one is fairly different from the rest of the series, and could be tricky to run (I used VDSM, if memory serves).

Oneiromancer
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I liked Ultima VII and VII Part 2 (Serpent Isle) the best, and U5 second...so inverse of Eytan. I'm actually playing U5 Lazarus right now, the remake in the Dungeon Siege engine, and it's pretty well done. Besides the DS combat, at least.

My next favorites are the Worlds of Ultima, Savage Empire and Martian Dreams (especially the latter). Both of these are in the Ultima VI engine and are probably not included in the collection that you have.

I actually played through Ultima IV a while back and even e-mailed Lord British (Richard Garriott) about it when I won. He responded too...nice guy!

Anyway, if you can play them in windowed mode, they will probably look better just because on today's resolutions they look way too pixelly. But they always pushed the boundaries of the day's graphics, processors, memory, etc., when they were released back in the day. (That's why U7 is so hard to get working these days...they had to make their own memory manager because the DOS one wasn't good enough.)

Game on,

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[Last edited by Oneiromancer at 09-05-2006 11:09 PM]

Hikari
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Didn't somebody recently do an open-source version of Ultima IV? I can't say for sure becuase I'm on Mac and I don't think it's available for me yet, but I seem to remember hearing someone talking about playing one...

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Oneiromancer
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Ultima IV was released as freeware a while ago, so I wouldn't be surprised if there was an open-source implementation somewhere.

Game on,

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Jatopian
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eytanz wrote:

Jatopian wrote:
I've heard Nethack is good, but lacks a save function (wtf?) and comes in many incompatible versions. I've also heard ADOM & Dungeon Crawl given some praise

All three are Roguelikes, not RPGs. The difference is mostly in playing style - instead of creating one character and sticking with him/her a long time, characters have a pretty short lifetime, and you basically learn from your mistakes. Once you're very experienced you can keep your character alive all the way to the end, but that's not the core gameplay.

Er... maybe I did mean roguelikes. Sorry; I'm no hardcore gamer by any means.

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eytanz
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It's not that you got the category wrong; I was trying to say that the Roguelikes offer a different kind of experience than most RPGs. Just because you like one does not mean you like the other, though of course it's possible to like both.

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b0rsuk
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Hmm. I didn't like Ultima5 (and later) precisely because of graphics. Ultima5 tries to do too much, by displaying each chair, torch, blah blah. For me, some charm is gone. Ultima 3,4 were food for imagination. Ultima 5, 6, 7 trigger my 'ugly old graphics' reaction. Ultima 3,4 don't, because graphics is more abstract.

Speaking of RPG elements, Wolfenstein:Enemy Territory is much more of an RPG game than Diablo, and I can say that with straight face. This is because in Diablo, your class is actually your weapon loadout. W:ET, on the other hand, takes different approach. Most clases have very similar weapons (mostly smg's), but they're encouraged to play their roles. And yes, there's also character development, xp, levelups (skills).

In Warcraft3, you can customize your hero ,choose some skills, abilities, etc. . The story is strict and you have NO control over future events, you just follow them. Still, people flag is an rpg game (ok, not all of them, but it happens sufficiently often).
Now Homeworld2 is pretty similar game (in general). It's a real-time strategy game, too. You can design your bigger ships (heroes), choose some modules over others, etc. Eventually, new modules are available for you to use. There's a story, too. ALL of your ships go from one campaign mission to next, same happens to resources you collected. So, in a way, you have even more control than in Warcraft3. But no one calls it RPG. Very strange if you ask me. Or, more seriously, it has no dragons.
You'll see people calling Rune, Blade of Darkness, Heretic2 'rpg games', and they don't even give you a choice to design your character !
Deus Ex is rarely called RPG, despite the freedom of choice (for story ! There are several different endings, some missions which you can fail (hostage) without Game Over screen, and of course, character development/skill choice. Stop the madness.

I'm in favor of dropping the 'rpg' term for computer games, altogether. It's terribly out of place today, causes confusion, etc. Ask someone what does killing monsters have to do with Role Playing, and you'll see him scraching his head. I'd bet majority of people can't figure out what's that 'role playing' nonsense.
I suggest using 'adventure' term instead.

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[Last edited by b0rsuk at 09-06-2006 06:50 AM]

NiroZ
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Tim wrote:

Beef Row wrote:
Also for the Ultima series, getting them running nicely on a modern computer can be rather unpleasant... even with DOS-box as I recall.. and the newer ones aren't really that much easier to smooth out than the older ones.

About this Ultima thing...

I've bought some time ago (for a very cheap price) a set called The Ultima Collection. (only because I've heard about being good) It's currently lying here gathering dust.

I really have no time to play all 10 games in there... Any tips of which ones to play?

(Note: Deus Ex and Thief Half Life and many other games are lying here as well... gathering dust... I'm currently playing Advance Wars DS )

No prise for guessing which one i recommend.

However, which one you would enjoy more is hard to tell, as I do not know your tastes or interests (and i haven't played advanced wars Dual Strike).
I would say that Eyetanz's excellent discripion would be something to go off,

unless your prefer a more gritty, very hard puzzle solving with AI way ahead of its time FPS, which is Half Life.

eytanz
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b0rsuk wrote:
Hmm. I didn't like Ultima5 (and later) precisely because of graphics. Ultima5 tries to do too much, by displaying each chair, torch, blah blah. For me, some charm is gone. Ultima 3,4 were food for imagination. Ultima 5, 6, 7 trigger my 'ugly old graphics' reaction. Ultima 3,4 don't, because graphics is more abstract.

For me 5, even though it is more detailed, still falls into the "too abstract to really care" graphics. Anything top-down 2D does, really. Ultima 6, which uses isometric graphics, causes me the same reaction as you get to some extent, but I find that after playing for an hour or two I get over it and since these games require many many hours of play, it's not really an issue for me. But this is something that varies a lot from person to person.

But my main deciding factor between the different Ultima's is the plots. Ultima 1-3 are simple "fight a lot of baddies and kill the boss monster" type plots. Ultima 4 is different and very interesting with it's emphasis on moral achievements rather than just kill the foobar, but Ultima 5 does everything Ultima 4 does and better. The fact that the world and people are so much more interactive and detailed makes the ethical choices feel more significant, and overlying it is a classic epic plot - a fight against a tyrant and the dark powers behind him - which is tied perfectly in.

Ultima 6 and 7, however, go the path of making all your choices ambiguous. Ultima 6 just doesn't do it well enough - it's overall plot is "while you were making everything better at point A, you were unknowingly making everything worse at point B" which is interesting but it just never fully gels for me. The main problem is that because of limitations of the game, no-one really reacts to anything other than you which makes the whole thing feel pretty much like a game rather than a story.

Ultima 7 does it much better, though it's ultimately not satisfying in some ways - but I think it's deliberately so, in the sense that some major characters just seem to not be able to learn from their mistakes. That this was deliberate to some extent was proven in Ultima Underworld 2 where you saw more of the same.

Ultima 8 and 9 basically give up depth for flashier graphics and a return to simpler plotlines. Ultima 8 has a dark plot but it feels pretty thin. Ultima 9 is not exactly a terrible game but it has little of what made the previous games exciting.

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Banjooie
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Jatopian wrote:
I don't enjoy powerleveling

Wuss.

Niccus
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Banjooie wrote:

Jatopian wrote:
I don't enjoy powerleveling

Wuss.

I don't get the logic of that.

coppro
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The only time I've ever powerleveled with any effort was in Golden Sun: TLA, but that was because it was so easy... can't stand leveling in MMORPGs. Come to think of it, powerleveling in D&D might also be fun, but D&D has a concept of time, unlike many RPGs.

On an unrelated note, did you know that the TI-84 Plus lacks a string token function?

b0rsuk
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Banjooie wrote:
Wuss.

http://thenoobcomic.com/daily/strip079.html

Have fun.

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Pilchard VIII
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I know you can get this free from some websites, but one of the best RPG's I've ever played is EarthBound for the SNES. Seriously, great game. It's possible to download it off some websites, and it's only about one or two megabytes big. It's non-real time, with lots of things to do. If you've not played it, I highly recommend you do.

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Mattcrampy
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Although personally, I would wait until it coems to the Wii Virtual Console so Nintendo gets a kickback for their hard work.

Unless you live in "Europe", where you never even got a chance. But still, probably best to wait until you have the ability to tell Nintendo that Earthbound is awesome and we would like to give you money to make more of them.

I do not practice what I preach. Earthbound was great. It's basically a Dragon Quest format with a veneer of extra awesome (one of the enemies is along the lines of the Annoying Party Man, who complains about kids these days as one of his attacks) and a couple of real-time twists: you can surprise enemies which gives you a free attack (and they can do the same) and it'll even skip fights if you'd win without taking damage. Also, if you're damaged, the damage takes time to take effect so if you rush through about the next five screens you can heal the party member who has been hit on their weakpoint for massive damage before they die.

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Znirk
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Jatopian wrote:
I've heard Nethack is good, but lacks a save function (wtf?)

Maybe this needs an explanation. "Lacks a save function" is a misleading way to put it. Nethack (like most "roguelike" games) does have a save function, but it's meant to be used only for interrupting a game and continuing later, not for backing up to an earlier save if things go wrong. In technical terms, saving also terminates the program, and loading also deletes the save file.