Newbie's first impressions

[PCarroll]

PDF said:
PCarrol, did you try something like Combat Mission (if anything else exists that is "like" CM ) ?

Yep. I played the demo several months ago. It's apparently one of the most popular games around, but I didn't care for it. The 3D graphics that impress everybody else are a turn-off to me. I don't like things looking that realistic.

[Edi]

PCarroll, if you want other games besides Dom2, try the original Age of Wonders, if you haven't already. It has almost none of the micromanagement of AoW2 and AoW:SM, and while it still has some 3D look, very little compared to its sequels. It's also, in my opinion, more beautiful because the maps don't look so cluttered. The magic system also works much better than in AoW:SM, because any spellcaster can cast spells, it's not all dependent on one caster.

There are alsoa couple of mods for the original AoW, Warlock's Ruleset which was done by reverse engineering, and some others that were added when Triumph Studios released the dev editor which made it possible to do modifications without reverse engineering (but was still a lot of work).

Edi

[PCarroll]

Edi said:
PCarroll, if you want other games besides Dom2, try the original Age of Wonders, if you haven't already. It has almost none of the micromanagement of AoW2 and AoW:SM, and while it still has some 3D look, very little compared to its sequels. It's also, in my opinion, more beautiful because the maps don't look so cluttered. The magic system also works much better than in AoW:SM, because any spellcaster can cast spells, it's not all dependent on one caster. . . .

Thanks. Unfortunately I gave my copy of the original AoW away a couple years ago. I barely remember the game now, but I do recall being more disappointed than pleased with AoW2. Until now, I thought I was the only one who felt that way. For a long time after getting AoW2, I kept playing the original AoW. But eventually the scenarios all looked too familiar, so I let it go.

My wife, a longtime Master of Magic fan, plays AoW3:SM while hoping for a MoM2 to come out. The main thing she likes about AoW3 is the random map generator; she hates scenario-based games (including campaign games with strung-together scenarios). The one thing she complains about in AoW3 is that there's no numerical score at the end of a game--no "hall of fame." She wants to know how well she did so she can try to beat her best score next time.

Since I'm rambling, I'll mention that years ago I used to love the game Conquered Kingdoms. Its graphics were obsolete even when the game was first released, but the game played well and was quite challenging and interesting. Evidently, it's due for a comeback sometime soon: http://www.lostadmiralreturns.com/co...dkingdoms.html

I tried the Lost Admiral demo (I hadn't played that game back in its day), and it's pretty good--as a game. The user interface is painfully awkward, though. I'd recommend these games to anyone who doesn't mind ancient 2D graphics and a chesslike feel to their games.

[Endoperez]

EDIT: missed page 3.

I also found Dungeon Crawl through Illwinter's recommendation. They also like ADOM. I enjoy both.

And Crawl has lately seen some development, both "independent" patches and "official" upgrading. The newest beta has added some interesting stuff, and reworked old stats, and you can play as a Giant Fighter (debugging option for new big characters, will be gone from future versions).

I would like to add that Crawl handles religions wonderfully. Character worshipping certain god has to follow its principles, so priest of the Shining One shouldn't backstab or poison, healer god Elyvelon's worshippers should never kill anything while praying, warrior gods prefer killing creatures in their name and accept their corpses as sacrifices (you need a sharp tool to buthcer them, but not an altar)... And you can worship the RNG: Xom! Demonspawn Chaos Knights of Xom are crazy fun, one of mine was dying, and got healed, was ambushed and got few devils to help him, found mace of protection and armor +1 and got to level 3 in first 3 rooms, when he was hungry and wanted to butcher a corpse a magical broad axe just appeared... And then he stepped into a Zot trap that appeared too early due to a bug in the beta, *kaboom!*, dead. If that's not The random-number generator, it comes very close.