What's the most hardcore RPG you've completed

[octavius]

Yeah, there are some special cases where you just have to melee and hope for the best.

 

[IncendiaryDevice]

I dunno about hardcore. I dunno about RPG. But Dragon's Lair (1984) the arcade game was designed in way as to ensure you encountered death scenes no matter how good you were. It forced you to put more nickles in the slot. Its death screens are legendary:

 

[Johannes]

Yeah, there are some special cases where you just have to melee and hope for the best.

The final boss is the last one I recall, what else specifically if you remember?

For the start before you have magic, bows are much safer to use. But there's no legendary bow to use in the final fight... Though I'm not fully sure you absolutely need one of them to hurt him, or if they just do extra damage or smth like that.

 

[Lonely Vazdru]

Probably Daggerfall, without grinding, cheating, metagaming or any other game ruining "ing" shit. Just playing.

 

[octavius]

Yeah, there are some special cases where you just have to melee and hope for the best.

The final boss is the last one I recall, what else specifically if you remember?

Only one I can recall is the first demon.

For the start before you have magic, bows are much safer to use. But there's no legendary bow to use in the final fight... .

Problem with bows is that they are so bloody slow. An enemy can move 10 squares or you can cast half a dozen spells in the same time time it takes to fire an arrow, which really hurts in dungeons. The game is heavily skewed towards magic IMO.

Though I'm not fully sure you absolutely need one of them to hurt him, or if they just do extra damage or smth like that

I'm pretty sure you need to hit him with all three weapons.

 

[Mark Richard]

Captive. Better yet, I was playing the PC version which is bugged and gives out too little cash and XP.

When I was five years old I was obsessed with this game and regularly dreamt about it. Couldn't tell you much about it today other than the creature design was awesome. I had goofy nicknames for all of them.

 

[Grimnir]

Probably Nethack.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

When I was five years old I was obsessed with this game and regularly dreamt about it. Couldn't tell you much about it today other than the creature design was awesome. I had goofy nicknames for all of them.

I had nicknames for some of them, at least.

Not this one, though. He was covered.

For the young'uns among you...

 

[Johannes]

Yeah, there are some special cases where you just have to melee and hope for the best.

The final boss is the last one I recall, what else specifically if you remember?

Only one I can recall is the first demon.

You can just bash him against a wall repeatedly, it was straight Air spell that pushed enemies back IIRC. That's how I dealt with him and also all the magic-resistant undeads or whatever they were in the legendary weapon dungeons. Very safe and reliable approach, that spell doesn't give opportunity to resist it. Big creatures like trolls might've resist it, but definitely worked on the demon.

For the start before you have magic, bows are much safer to use. But there's no legendary bow to use in the final fight... .

Problem with bows is that they are so bloody slow. An enemy can move 10 squares or you can cast half a dozen spells in the same time time it takes to fire an arrow, which really hurts in dungeons. The game is heavily skewed towards magic IMO.

Yeah bow becomes redundant once you have magic p. much. But for outdoors fights early it's really good iirc, or at least what I remember using.

Though I'm not fully sure you absolutely need one of them to hurt him, or if they just do extra damage or smth like that

I'm pretty sure you need to hit him with all three weapons.[/QUOTE]
That sounds right, since I remember getting all of them. But once you've hit him once with all three maybe you can change to other avenues of attack? No idea at this point.

 

[racofer]

A Dance with Rogues.

 

[mushaden]

KotC... not a long game but certainly hard

 

[Grampy_Bone]

Captive. Better yet, I was playing the PC version which is bugged and gives out too little cash and XP.

The PC version is bugged? Fuck. That explains a lot.



Take your pick:

-Beat ADOM once like ten years ago. Drakeling Paladin.

-7th Saga on an actual SNES, when it was released (I was a teenager). Party was Kamil and Esuna. Fuck that fucking game.

-Recently played through the original Ultima 5. Didn't grind enough, had to abuse magic pretty hard to make it through the final dungeon. The game told me to let Origin know about my victory, but they're gone. So I tweeted Lord British instead. He gave me a nice congratulations.

 

[eric__s]

Captive. Better yet, I was playing the PC version which is bugged and gives out too little cash and XP.

-7th Saga on an actual SNES, when it was released (I was a teenager). Party was Kamil and Esuna. Fuck that fucking game.

Damn son, Kamil's the worst character too.

 

[Prime Junta]

Does NetHack count? Ascended that with most of the character classes.

Only if you don't savescum

I've mostly played on Nethack servers actually, so no I don't savescum. The only type of degenerate behaviour I'll admit to is startscumming, and I don't do that all that much either.

 

[btbgfel]

Skyrim, this damned game is so hard, I have use tgm the whole playthrough.

Spoiler

Nah, it's eye of the beholder 2, I was young and knew nothing about d&d when playing it. Beholders are nightmares.

 

[Daedalos]

Pillars of Eternity

 

[SwiftCrack]

The most hardcore in terms of gameplay, I have no idea.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sword_of_Hope I completed this when I was 9/10 though, and the cartridge was in Spanish. I found some crude guide for the game on the internet (we had just gotten dial up) that was cryptic as fuck, and this was even before Google was a thing (I used AltaVista which was at its height back then).

I think I sunk like 100+ hours into that game, while it is actually something you can complete in 2 hours, as long as you can read what the fuck is going on.

Go me

 

[Xathrodox86]

Wizardry 8 in junior high. First I've spent half a day trying to get the fucking thing to work. Then some killer plants ate my party. Still loved every second of it.

 

[Sykar]

Oblivion of course. It was really hardcore hitting that

Spoiler

uninstall .exe button after 2 hours.

Spoiler

 

[Mortmal]

Fate: Gates of Dawn

First completed it in the early 2000s at around the age of 12 on an old amiga

I'm p awesome

ok back to playing WoW

Finishing fates gate of dawn is definitively more hardcore than anything else you guys mentioned. I guess my most hardcore game was dark souls.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Mount and Blade Viking Conquest story mode.

 

[T. Reich]

The Geneforge series because it's pretty hardcore by a lot of standards.
Wasteland, which is the oldest CRPG I've played and completed.
Wizardry 8 is pretty hardcore mechanically, I guess, so I feel like it should be mentioned.
Would Lords of Xulima count as hardcore in terms of game's difficulty and no handholding (on Veteran+)?
Might & Magic IV.

Everything else I've played (the CRPGs) I wouldn't rate hardcore, really. But I haven't played a lot of oldie goldies from the early 90s or earlier.

 

[holla_cabezas_de_mierda]

Tunnels of Doom: 1981: 10 years old
wizardry 1: 1982: 11 years old
Ultima 1:1984? 13 years old
Questron: 1984 13 years old
wasteland: 1987: 16 years old
curse of the azure bonds: 1989: 18 yo (finished every gold box game the year they were released)

Edit: forgot bards tale, forget what year, probably 1987-1989

Dont know which one was most 'old school' though

 

[holla_cabezas_de_mierda]

I dunno about hardcore. I dunno about RPG. But Dragon's Lair (1984) the arcade game was designed in way as to ensure you encountered death scenes no matter how good you were. It forced you to put more nickles in the slot. Its death screens are legendary:

nickels?

 

[Revenant]

Ultima II, somewhere around 2013 in DOSBox on my Nokia N900 that died the day before yesterday (R.I.P.).