The Old School PC RPG Megathread: Gaming with rose-colored goggles

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Retro Games > The Old School PC RPG Megathread: Gaming with rose-colored goggles

THE PWNER: Sep 7, 2006; by merry exmarx

I picked up Arcanum and Divine Divinity from GoG a couple of weeks ago and have been playing them sporadically. Arcanum is fun but the combat is pretty lacking in my opinion, and I havn't opened it up since a couple days ago where I ran into those golems in the mine in the main quest line that break your weapons and kill everyone in 1 hit.
Maybe I just sucked at it.

Divine Divinity is really easy to get into though and quite fun, no idea how i'd never heard of it until I chanced upon it in someones GoG recommendation list. The world is gigantic and its pretty much Diablo II if it was designed entirely with singleplayer in mind (meaning it's superior to D2 singleplayer In My Humble Opinion)

# ¿ Mar 21, 2012 02:26

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ Apr 26, 2024 19:27

THE PWNER: Sep 7, 2006; by merry exmarx

Skeezy posted:

I'm working on Divine Divinity and I'm having a real hard time with a Bow Survivor in the Catacombs. Ahahah, it's fun at least.

I had trouble in the Catacombs until I realized that you can just sell any one of the 5+ Axes you find down there and then use the money to buy out the potions from every shop in town. Also meteorstrike even as a non-magic character really helps for the first dungeon, you can use it about 10 times in 1 second if your manabar allows it.

# ¿ Mar 21, 2012 21:02

THE PWNER: Sep 7, 2006; by merry exmarx

Picked up the Fallout collection on Steam today, and i've also been playing like 5 different games mentioned in this thread. One of them is Eschalon, which is definitely old school despite not being old. Quite fun though a bit lacking in variety.

With Grimrock coming out and AoD/Wasteland 2 in the future I don't think i'll ever finish my backlog.

# ¿ Mar 25, 2012 07:28

THE PWNER: Sep 7, 2006; by merry exmarx

I tried the AoD beta and man, this poo poo is hard. Never before have I died 10 times straight on the games very first combat encounter. Now I love difficult turn based/tile based rpgs but hopefully they re-tune the early encounters before release.

# ¿ Apr 7, 2012 09:46

THE PWNER: Sep 7, 2006; by merry exmarx

Yeah I played the arena demo and I got decently far, didn't beat it or anything but I thought I had a good grasp of things. It's quite different to a fight against multiple enemies that can crit for over half your health when you have no armor and just a melee weapon, though.

(I beat that fight by sitting back and letting the npc's with me kill everything, after I realized there was no way me being in range of an enemy to attack them would do anything productive aside from me dying)

THE PWNER fucked around with this message at 10:43 on Apr 7, 2012

# ¿ Apr 7, 2012 10:38

THE PWNER: Sep 7, 2006; by merry exmarx

Leinadi posted:

Which particular fight was it?

I think aside from individual difficulty tweaks to each fight, the biggest thing that needs to change is that Dodge needs to be buffed up considerably. The devs are aware of it though so hopefully they'll think of a good way to bring it up to speed.

I admit I am a fairly big fan of this game so I am a bit biased but the public beta does feature some of the best fights I have had in a non-party based (and way better than many party-based as well) RPG. Given that it's based on dice-rolls it can be extremely frustrating when you get unlucky rolls but it's really satisfying when you find out a good tactic or manage to barely survive a fight because you managed to throw a net at just the right time at just the right guy and so forth.

The first one in the praetor questline, it comes up about 5 minutes in. It's 4 enemies and 2 of them are capable of doing 25 damage in 1 turn while the shortsword you are given hits them for 0 on a non-crit.

# ¿ Apr 7, 2012 12:17

THE PWNER: Sep 7, 2006; by merry exmarx

I havn't seen much mention of Inquisitor, here or elsewhere. Has anyone tried it? I understand it's supposedly pretty poorly translated, but what about everything else? Is the combat/rpg systems any good or is it just a slog through a poorly translated story/world?

# ¿ Oct 11, 2012 16:44

THE PWNER: Sep 7, 2006; by merry exmarx

Jordan7hm posted:

Review: http://www.gamebanshee.com/reviews/109533-inquisitor-review.html

The RPGCodex hivemind wasn't overly kind to it. The review isn't either.

That's a shame. Someone in the comments mentions that stuff is on a set respawn timer and routinely respawns behind you as you clear a dungeon.

What the gently caress? Did the devs not realize they're making a single player rpg or something?

# ¿ Oct 13, 2012 05:40

THE PWNER: Sep 7, 2006; by merry exmarx

I went with the "spam harm" strategy for Arcanum someone mentioned a few pages ago and it's certainly much more bearable, might actually finish the game this time. Is there any other spell I should aim for, or should I just spam harm for the entire game?

# ¿ Oct 18, 2012 05:27

THE PWNER: Sep 7, 2006; by merry exmarx

I picked up the remake of Avernum 1 and man I love it. Grid based/turn based combat owns, even though it feels pretty basic. Does the combat get a bit deeper in the later games? I will probably play them regardless because i'm loving the first one so much.

# ¿ Nov 15, 2012 06:13

THE PWNER: Sep 7, 2006; by merry exmarx

I've been following AOD for years but have been waiting to play it because I don't like "betas" of singleplayer story focused games. Decided to take the plunge on steam early access, since they say it's 60% done. Sounds like a lot of game.

I like it a little bit I guess, but I feel like it's trying way too hard to be "hardcore." Have the people who made it even played the games it's trying to be?

In Baldur's Gate, battles are tuned to a reasonable level for the players assumed progression. Combat is fun and engaging. In AoD, it seems like 90% of battles, even the ones in the starting town, are mathematically impossible on a fresh character. They're also entirely dice rolls without much strategy involved.

The rest of the game is pretty good, but I can't get over such a glaring problem. There is no difficulty curve here at all. It's just a mishmash of battles that you have to trial and error through to find the ones your character can actually do.

If it's not trying to emulate "old school" games like Fallout, BG, etc, then what the gently caress is it trying to be? What old game is there where any sort of actual tuning is non existant?

THE PWNER fucked around with this message at 07:14 on Dec 4, 2013

# ¿ Dec 4, 2013 07:11

THE PWNER: Sep 7, 2006; by merry exmarx

prometheusbound2 posted:

Baldur's Gate constitutes simplified and dumbed down combat.it.

If this combat which pretty much amounts to "click and hope the numbers are in your favor" is seen as better by anyone then I don't know what to think.

# ¿ Dec 4, 2013 07:46

THE PWNER: Sep 7, 2006; by merry exmarx

That's all well and good, but the combat is still just standing around and clicking and hoping for dice rolls. It might as well be entirely hands off. Not sure why it isn't really.

# ¿ Dec 4, 2013 12:00

THE PWNER: Sep 7, 2006; by merry exmarx

Leinadi posted:

He wasn't forced to change anything. They changed it because of the feedback they got from the testers, simple as that. Basically the opposite of what many people are complaining about when they say "omg these guys don't listen to my feedback!"

That's really, really far from my experience with the game... But OK. If you're just standing around and clicking and hoping for dice rolls I would certainly understand why you'd frustrated with the game though.

Your options are "move" "swap equipment/use consumables" or "click to attack." Certainly not a very deep combat system. Most of the "depth" does not come from player action during the actual combat. Try to twist it however you want!

quote:

frustrated with the game though.

I'm not frustrated with it, I mean as far as I can see I'm pretty far in, and I've only played for 3 hours. I remade a bunch of characters and then decided to just make a maxed out combat character. I've done the first 4 guys in the arena and some of the Assassin guild quests in the second town. It's just a really poor system that's hilariously rng based. It's worse than even Arcanum. Is it really "difficulty" if the player has next to no consequential input on the battles? I can fight a guy, die while only hitting him once for 2 damage, then reload and kill the same guy without being hit at all.

THE PWNER fucked around with this message at 17:32 on Dec 4, 2013

# ¿ Dec 4, 2013 17:25

THE PWNER: Sep 7, 2006; by merry exmarx

CrookedB posted:

available here,

I could do so many of the games on this list, including a few of the more obscure ones, but I'm pretty much the worst writer in the world. Maybe I'll send an email and put myself out there as a last resort.

# ¿ May 24, 2014 12:34

THE PWNER: Sep 7, 2006; by merry exmarx

Holy hell Age of Decadence is a trash heap. How is it so widely praised? I played early access like, 3 years ago, and it's exactly the same as it was then, just with another ~5 hours of content tacked on.

It should have been a lovely e-book that no one ever bought, but the guy put his writing into a shell of a "game" that's missing all of the things that made the genre good, so now it's suddenly a masterpiece?

Here is my steam review which encapsulates what I think about this game, before people jump on me because "you died at the start and quit not hardcore enough" etc. I actually broke the game completely with a combat character that beat every single encounter thrown at it, got bored of that and made a non-combat character, then realized the game was never going to get interesting and dropped it.

quote:

There's many disappointing things about this game. It's been in development for a long time, and most of those development hours clearly went into raw amounts of content (this is being generous, there really isn't much content) and lots of mediocre writing rather than improving the general experience. I wouldn't be surprised if a fair bit also went into begging for positive reviews and downvotes on any negative reviews - there is no way this game warrants an 88% positive rating otherwise.

Pros:
-Semi-interesting setting, acceptable writing, lots of reading if you feel like it - but there are much, much better works you could be reading instead.

-You get to play an isometric RPG as a single character rather than a party, which is uncommon.

Cons:
-Advertised as "hardcore," but really, the game is extremely simple at its core. Tedium is NOT difficulty. Dying a lot doesn't make the game "hard," either. Yes, you'll die a lot in Age of Decadence, but it's not like, say, Dark Souls, where you can outplay your death. You just reload and click the other option in AOD; nothing about this game requires much thought and it certainly doesn't test your skill, ever, at any point. Allow me to elaborate:
For a non combat character, you essentially just click choices in a dialogue. For you, that's the game - it's like a tedious visual novel. You also have to keep old saves and save your skillpoints, because you need to level up the correct skills to pass dialogue checks, otherwise you can't progress. You will get lots of game overs as a non-combat character just because you invested your points into the wrong skill, whereas a combat character always has the (realistic) option to muscle their way through any situation the game might present. It's a bit disingenious that the creators say that combat is the hardest way to win the game; you'll probably reload LESS as a properly built combat character than you would a non-combat character.

-Combat is extremely simple, and is mostly RNG based. You mostly spend your Action Points in the most damaging way possible, then move as far as you can to force your opponents to spend additional AP travelling to you on their turn, so they get less attacks. You'll beat the game just fine taking the violent option in basically every situation, as long as you keep your equipment and attributes updated appropriately, and you won't break a sweat doing it. It's heavily random, though, so you might have to reload some fights until your attacks actually connect. But all in all, both combat AND dialogue in this game are really, really simple.

-All combat is set pieces. There's no random encounters, roaming enemies, or anything like that. Every battle is a pre-made set piece that comes behind a loading screen.

-NO EXPLORATION. You get to places by clicking on the map. That's it. There's no roaming the plains and discovering things yourself, nothing like that. How shallow. In the few situations where you might find something interesting, instead of exploring itself, you're usually going to be clicking through a couple of dialogue screens that explain what your surroundings are like, etc.. Hey, how about you SHOW IT TO US instead?? Too much effort?

-Each location hub is heavily lacking in content. You should finish Teron in about 30-45 minutes once you know your way around, Maaadoran is the same. You'll run around thinking "surely, there's something more to do here?" mousing over every NPC you see hoping they are interactable, only to find that no, there isn't. Those npcs are just scenery.

-Every second bit of dialogue will be full of swearing. Not that this offends me, but really, writer: there are other, less obnoxious ways to emphasize that your setting is "gritty." The overuse of profanity is just hamfisted and lazy.

-Game looks like crap. I'm no graphics nut, and I'm well aware of what the devs are going for, but that's just an excuse. Visuals are an afterthought in this game, and it's not good enough that the package as a whole can make me ignore that. Compare the look and feel of AOD to other new isometric games like Project Eternity. There's no comparison.

If you're an oldschool RPG fan, I advise you to stay away unless you've played every other oldschool RPG and you're just desperate for another. This game isn't for you, I'm not sure who it's for, really. The only ways to really enjoy are:

1-Treat it like a choose your own adventure game where you have to reload your last save every 2 minutes, and save every 30 seconds, or
2-Just make a completely OP combat character and put up with the extremely random, simple, tedious and boring combat so that you can experience the story.

But the story, even on its own, isn't anything special - so why would you suffer through a bad game just to read it?

This game should have been a mostly ignored e-book on Amazon. The only reason it's getting any attention at all is because it shoved itself into a genre it doesn't deserve to be a part of. I hesitate to call it a game, let alone a "hardcore old-school RPG."

THE PWNER fucked around with this message at 07:27 on Oct 16, 2015

# ¿ Oct 16, 2015 07:23

THE PWNER: Sep 7, 2006; by merry exmarx

Leinadi posted:

My impressions are like the straight opposite of all that except the bit about the visuals.

Most of those points are statements rather than opinions, so you're gonna have a rough time if you try to justify that standpoint.

Unless you mean the combat part, yeah if your character is "wrong" (the "correct" build is dagger or sword, light armor, dodge, alchemy - game doesn't really offer you much variation, since most other builds get slaughtered and it's not like you can "play better" when your options are "move, attack in one of 8 slightly different ways, use consumable") then you will die a lot. The learning curve is entirely figuring out what the most efficient way to spend your AP is, while still being able to move at least one square before you end turn. This takes 1 fight. If you're still having trouble, it's because your character is just a dud.

THE PWNER fucked around with this message at 09:06 on Oct 16, 2015

# ¿ Oct 16, 2015 09:00

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ Apr 26, 2024 19:27

THE PWNER: Sep 7, 2006; by merry exmarx

Lunchmeat Larry posted:

"you're gonna have a ROUGH TIME if you want to claim that this game you enjoy is good"

More like if you want to claim that Age of Decadence is a game with extremely engaging and skillful combat, the best dialogue ever and the most immersive dialogue choices ever, chock full of engaging, open world exploration. That's what "straight opposite" would entail.

# ¿ Oct 16, 2015 09:15

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Retro Games > The Old School PC RPG Megathread: Gaming with rose-colored goggles