Felipepepe's Videogame History Articles Thread

[Excidium II]

ok

 

[Deuce Traveler]

I don't need metacritic, since I played the game. It's not bad, but it's not good. Too much running around large areas conducting filler combat against trash mobs. The game rapidly became boring after 10 hours in.

Have you played River of Time?

No. I heard it is better than DarkEye, however, and it did make it as #52 on the Codex list:

http://www.rpgcodex.net/content.php?id=9453

I might play it after I finally beat those higher on the list I still have to beat like VtM: Bloodlines, Jagged Alliance 1&2, NW2: Mask of the Betrayer, Dark Souls, Wizardry 6&7, Betrayal at Krondor & Betrayal at Antares, Knights of the Chalice, the Arkania Trilogy, Darksun, and Albion. Oh, and maybe Neo Scavenger, Divinity: Original Sin and Wasteland 2. But after that, I'm all over River of Time.

 

[Ismaul]

Metacritic user reviews are either from people who like the game this much or are on a crusade against it

Sounds like the Codex.

 

[Ogg]

Nice work. You managed to hit the sweet spot between elitist arsehole and ignorant popamole. It was both a pleasant and educating read. And I'm particularly glad you included Ishar.

 

[Shadenuat]

Magical Diary but not Long Live the Queen too? Best character skill set ever created in RPGs would be unknown

 

[Lord Azlan]

The 200-page preview of the book is out and E3 is past - it's time to promote our good work again. My popamole friends enjoy hearing about cool stuff in RPGs, but will never play most games or even passionetly read the book, and I'm sure that many other people are like them. In fact, most people are like them.

So I've wrote a little clickbaity article for Gamasutra, listing 21 cool RPGs, from obscure stuff like ZanZarah to a brief description fo why Ultima IV is so fucking awesome. It has a lot more chance of making rounds at reddit and other forums than the book ever had, so let's see how that plays out.

Alternate Reality: The City (1985)

Bloodwych (1989)

Might & Magic: World of Xeen (1992)

Wizardry VII - Crusaders of the Dark Savant (1992)

Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar (1985)

But hey, if you enjoyed this list there's a 200-page preview of the upcoming CRPG Book right here for download, filled with this kind of content! And it's free!
[/spoiler]

I am in total shock. Up until now I thought the only place these five games existed in one place was in my drowning teenage brain.

yana. Professor Yana, You Are Not Alone, I am not the last Time Lord?

You sir are Awesome. Thank you for throwing me a branch.

 

[darthaegis]

I am in total shock. Up until now I thought the only place these five games existed in one place was in my drowning teenage brain.

yana. Professor Yana, You Are Not Alone, I am not the last Time Lord?

You sir are Awesome. Thank you for throwing me a branch.

iirc ultima 4, xeen and wiz7 are in codex top 70.

 

[Lord Azlan]

I am in total shock. Up until now I thought the only place these five games existed in one place was in my drowning teenage brain.

yana. Professor Yana, You Are Not Alone, I am not the last Time Lord?

You sir are Awesome. Thank you for throwing me a branch.

iirc ultima 4, xeen and wiz7 are in codex top 70.

Yep - but Alternate Reality and Bloodwych were not. The later was ok - but AR (Dungeon) would be quite high on my all time list - in terms of creating a gaming environment I thought it was awesomeness in the same way Ultima Underworld did.

 

[felipepepe]

Magical Diary but not Long Live the Queen too? Best character skill set ever created in RPGs would be unknown

Bitch please, Princess Maker 2 is where real man go to play as a cute magical girl.

 

[Dayyālu]

Bitch please, Princess Maker 2 is where real man go to play as a cute magical girl.

Yep, but I remember right the Magical Diary developer has as favourites Princess Maker and Fallout. Making the gal more than roughly 35% of Codexers. So I'm happy to see the game there, even if its graphical style and most of its writing are atrocious. PM2 is still far superior, however.

Instead of Ultima VIII (that had only its setting, and even that was mangled by the writing. And of course the fact that the Ultima VIII engine was employed in Crusader) my plebeian sensibilities would have preferred Ultima Underworld. But that's me.

I've found Expeditions Conquistador fairly mediocre, and quite buggy (lost two campaigns to unavoidable crashes). I guess that in a world devoid of historical RPGs it's still something, though.

And on Geneforge it's a small sin not to point out the crazy factional freedom. I still have to find games that gives me so many options, particularly Geneforge 2 & 5.

 

[Darkzone]

I would have brofist the OP but i think that The Ultima trilogy deserves more than special mentioning. In my opinion the rpgs since then have never reached the internal thoughts about the topics that drove the Ultima trilogy. Don't get me wrong Fallout and PST have much to think about, but no other game that i have played.

Uh, that was exactly my reason for giving them a speacial mention. You don't really think that I consider Alien Fires better than Ultima IV, do you?

:D
Ok i was tired and didn't evalute this on the proper level. Sumimasen. Demo ore wa chotto baka no gaijin desu. And after this clarification i had to brofist your post.
Ultima IV, V, VI are with PST and Fallout the best RPGs ever made. But what makes Ultima IV and V so special is that they were at least 10 years ahead of their time. And sadly the PST and Fallout were not continued on that level. This is also why i'm extremely butthurt about Richard Garriott SotA and his current course of actions.
Garriott was never my hero, but the Ultima IV, V and VI. are the outline of what should an cRPG be. The only current project that has the potential is reach this level again, is Torment Numa Numa. But besides this there is no hope for an incline in the depth of cRPGs. Thanks to your OP i will now take a look into Neo Scavenger.

 

[Hirato]

I simply must try ZanZarah

The second feature is pure flair, but it's one of the game's most memorable features. Many RPGs allow you to create a character and then choose a voice for it, but Wizardry 8 offered instead nine unique personalities (Loner, Burly, Chaotic, Laidback, Eccentric, Intellectual, Kindly, Aggressive and Cunning), each with two different voice options for each sex – yes, 32 voiced personalities!

9 * 2 * 2 is 36, not 32.

 

[Jaesun]

Can't believe you didn't even mention how FUCKING AWESOME the music is in Ultima VIII.

 

[Bumvelcrow]

Can't believe you didn't even mention how FUCKING AWESOME the music is in Ultima VIII.

I seem to mention it on my every post on the subject! BTW - Jaesun, I found your YouTube music page the other day and spent ages listening to all the U8 clips!

 

[felipepepe]

9 * 2 * 2 is 36, not 32.

Stop oppressing me with your math privilege!

 

[Viata]

Great list. There was some games I have never heard about, but will play them as soon as I have free time(and I keep increasing my backlog ).

Or, better yet, FATE: Gates of Dawn:

Spoiler

So is this game good?

Can't believe you didn't even mention how FUCKING AWESOME the music is in Ultima VIII.

Amazing youtube page you got there, man.

 

[Rpgsaurus Rex]

I simply must try ZanZarah

Could never get it to run on my PC.

 

[felipepepe]

Could never get it to run on my PC.

I had the same problem, tried virtual machines and asking for help on the Vogons forum but no one had a soultion. Then I found this cool piece of software called DxWndt and, surprise, it makes the game run perfectly.

 

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG

 

[felipepepe]

Man, I can't belive this works so well, the article is now on the front page of Gamasutra, at the very top!

How old are you

27

 

[Ogg]

Still not news-worthy on the Codex? Infinitron? Bee?

 

[jaybirdy]

You should ride the momentum and produce more CRPG content on Gamasutra. That way, more people will download the book, which they should because it's a great piece of work and potentially the most important book on CRPG's.

You can even further the decline by writing a sequel list to this list. People won't be able to resist! A few examples of neat mechanics that you could include could be Ultima 7's object and world interaction (and how Ultima in general inspired the "immersive sim" genre), Wizardry 8's dialog keyword system, Fallout 2 and Arcanum's extreme reactivity (there are moments in the game where you can make narrative choices and interact with NPCs even without being prompted by dialogue, quests, or anything else aside from intuition), Realms of Arkania's survival aspects and why they blow away New Vegas' hardcore mode, and Quest for Glory's various ways to solve puzzles that are tied to your skills and class.

The article really makes me want to try Dungeons of Daggorath. That typing system sounds really exciting--I think it would be even better if you couldn't use abbreviations.

 

[belowmecoldhands]

You should ride the momentum and produce more CRPG content on Gamasutra. That way, more people will download the book, which they should because it's a great piece of work and potentially the most important book on CRPG's.

You can even further the decline by writing a sequel list to this list. People won't be able to resist! A few examples of neat mechanics that you could include could be Ultima 7's object and world interaction (and how Ultima in general inspired the "immersive sim" genre), Wizardry 8's dialog keyword system, Fallout 2 and Arcanum's extreme reactivity (there are moments in the game where you can make narrative choices and interact with NPCs even without being prompted by dialogue, quests, or anything else aside from intuition), Realms of Arkania's survival aspects and why they blow away New Vegas' hardcore mode, and Quest for Glory's various ways to solve puzzles that are tied to your skills and class.

The article really makes me want to try Dungeons of Daggorath. That typing system sounds really exciting--I think it would be even better if you couldn't use abbreviations.

I've heard good/bad about Realms of Arkania, but definitely want to try it. It's up there with Darklands in terms of my interest levels. But I know from experience there'e TONS of games. Ya I doubt his/her list is the end of it. Are you sure that tehre'something distinctive about RoA though? Just having some survival aspects doesn't make it unique, imho. In fact, I think many old games are more like survival games because it's so easy to die. But it's not much to be proud of.

 

[Bumvelcrow]

How old are you

27

Great, now I feel really old. You don't understand, man, you weren't there. Things were different back then...

Bloody kids these days...

 

[felipepepe]

Eh, in my case I could be 37 and it would change little, we had a military dictatorship here, it was forbidden to import computers & games until 1992.

And the good thing is that I'm forced to research, question and learn, instead of how a bunch of journos go "I've been playing since before PCs were called PCs" and think that playing Battletoads once as a kid means they are well-versed in everything relating gaming in the 80's.