OT: Recommendations?

[fahdiz]

Originally posted by Karacan:
Going the fantasy way of suggesting games:

A couple of years ago, I fell in love with the Exile-series from Spiderweb. Great immersive hack&slay-rpgs. Check out Avernum I - III, their spiritual children, but beware: They're huge. My third time playing through Avernum III, which I all but knew by heart then, took about 55 hours playing time approximately, and none of it boring.

I played the Exile games years ago when I had a Mac, but I never tried the Avernum "remakes". Maybe I'll give one of them a shot.

I'd suggest Planescape: Torment as probably the best computer-rpg available, but since everyone knows it (or should, at least...)... unbelievable that a company that proved that it could deliver tons of story, highly interesting characters and finally an interaction system that allows you more than the general "Yes, I would love to lick your boots"-, "Now you die scum!"- and "I'll do it, but pay me first"-answers then turned out some disappointing crap like Neverwinternights...

Independent? Black Isle has always been a wholly owned subsidiary of Interplay, to my knowledge. I loved the story of PS:T, perhaps more than any other RPG around...but I hated the combat and the lack of creation and development options for your main character.

Those are my independent favourites. I am also an avid Morrowindplayer, but that's beside the point.

I have a special love/hate relationship with Morrowind. Unlike PS:T, you have virtually limitless options at character creation, and that is a Good Thing (TM). I love its sprawling nature, its interesting storyline, and its nOnlinearity. However, melee combat in Morrowind is so bloody awful...and there are so many other little frustrations with that game. So I love it and want to throw my PC through the window, all at the same time.

[rabelais]

Angband.

The deepest ... timesink... ever constructed, by man or Valar.

http://www.thangorodrim.net/


Rabe the YASD, Emeritus.

[fahdiz]

Originally posted by rabelais:
Angband.

The deepest ... timesink... ever constructed, by man or Valar.

http://www.thangorodrim.net/


Rabe the YASD, Emeritus.

I prefer Nethack, and its fabulous variant Slash'EM, but I've spent a good deal of time on several Angband variants as well. ToME is just super.

By the way, I just wanted to give a special thanks to those who recommended King of Dragon Pass...what an innovative game that is! I can't wait to get the full Version. Reminds me of how badly I wanted to be able to host Turn 41 in the Dom II demo...

Does anyone else here play Coliseum? I've been having fun with that demo, as well.

[Taqwus]

The _Combat Mission_ games from http://www.battlefront.com also come to mind, although they're not necessarily of that wide appeal. Meticulously scanning the 3D terrain and carefully plotting orders for every unit (individual vehicle, squad or half-squad, weapons team, gun, basically) for each minute-long phase can be daunting. But if you're at home in a community full of grogs who'll debate the frequency or utility of a Bren tripod or research TOE/OOB for specific battles or who have tables of actual penetration data of a particular AP round type from a 88mm PaK '43 against so-and-so mm of steel plate and so-and-so angle and distance, well, have at it.

KoDP is fun. Heh -- if you want to REALLY annoy the other clans, try a slavemaster approach. Say your ancestors took the Nalda Bin as thralls, choose a War clan, and in battle keep choosing "take captives" and keeping 'em. It is not good for diplomacy when you have more thralls than your own farmers in your clan, better keep amassing weaponthanes and war blessings...

Nor is it good for your economy when an enemy raid eventually gets lucky, cracks your defenses and frees all the thralls. Oops. Don't say I didn't warn you.

[fahdiz]

Originally posted by Taqwus:
KoDP is fun. Heh -- if you want to REALLY annoy the other clans, try a slavemaster approach. Say your ancestors took the Nalda Bin as thralls, choose a War clan, and in battle keep choosing "take captives" and keeping 'em. It is not good for diplomacy when you have more thralls than your own farmers in your clan, better keep amassing weaponthanes and war blessings...

Nor is it good for your economy when an enemy raid eventually gets lucky, cracks your defenses and frees all the thralls. Oops. Don't say I didn't warn you.

OK, I ordered KoDP this morning. I do have a question, though, for avid fans of the game - is A Sharp developing any "expansions"? Like more story events, etc? Or are there modding tools to add your own? Or is the game pretty much "finished"? Either way, I don't care - 450 random story events will keep me well-entertained, and will probably keep things random enough that it doesn't feel too similar each time you play. But it would be neat if they were actually developing some new stuff for the game...

[Karacan]

Originally posted by fahdiz:
OK, I ordered KoDP this morning. I do have a question, though, for avid fans of the game - is A Sharp developing any "expansions"? Like more story events, etc? Or are there modding tools to add your own? Or is the game pretty much "finished"?

Unfortunately, I believe A.Sharp suffered as much from the HeroWars disaster as Greg Stafford himself - several publishers of the books went broke due to deservedly low sales, the books were released due to monetary pressure far too son, and are full of typos, confusion and lack of serious material - at least in the european area.

Any way, make sure to patch immediatley after getting your game. The shipped Version isn't much fun once you realize that there's no way of getting more sheep to upkeep your temples. On the other hand, maybe they ship the patched Version by now. I still have a treasured one from my Beta-days.

Oh, and don't even bother to play the "short" Version - it stops just as things are getting interesting.

Any way, I am afraid there won't be a sequel, strangely enough though that KodP received lots of praise from nearly everywhere. If someone proves me wrong, I'd be glad about it.

[fahdiz]

Yes, I saw that there was a patch released Last year. I'll be sure to grab it.

I was looking at what happens in the "short" Version...and I was thinking the same thing. "Why would I play this when there's a LONG Version?"

As for A#, it appears that they at least haven't abandoned their website. They Last updated it in February of this year...perhaps I'll write them and see if they have any future plans for KoDP.

[Kel]

Originally posted by fahdiz:
Yes, I saw that there was a patch released Last year. I'll be sure to grab it.

I was looking at what happens in the "short" Version...and I was thinking the same thing. "Why would I play this when there's a LONG Version?"

Note that a long game could be *extremely* long, depending on your actions You get a choice of when you want to 'go for the gold' as they say and you can just keep chugging along for as long as you want before you decide to go for it.

Also note that events are done very subtlely and the same 'right path' for one event is often different from game to game and situation to situation...so while there are X number of events that can happen, there are more than X different paths, if that makes any sense.

- Kel

[fahdiz]

Originally posted by Kel:

quote:

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Originally posted by fahdiz:
Yes, I saw that there was a patch released Last year. I'll be sure to grab it.

I was looking at what happens in the "short" Version...and I was thinking the same thing. "Why would I play this when there's a LONG Version?"

Note that a long game could be *extremely* long, depending on your actions You get a choice of when you want to 'go for the gold' as they say and you can just keep chugging along for as long as you want before you decide to go for it.

Also note that events are done very subtlely and the same 'right path' for one event is often different from game to game and situation to situation...so while there are X number of events that can happen, there are more than X different paths, if that makes any sense.

- Kel

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It sounds like you feel there's a lot of replayability in the game, yes?

[PvK]

Hey, you people do have good taste.

Also worth mentioning, IMO, are Myth: The Fallen Lords and Myth II: Soulblighter (I don't really care much for Myth III.)

Great detailed real-time tactical fantasy/medieval combat with good atmosphere, humor, and interesting tactical problems, good scenarios, and good multi-player. No RTS genre badness like having to gather resources and do construction and R&D while trying to fight. No fake-o wrong proportions of time and space.

PvK