What's the most hardcore RPG you've completed

[Outmind]

I was about to say Betrayal at Krondor before reading your first post. That was back when windows 98 had a fully functioning DOS integration, so there was no problem with that.

 

[IncendiaryDevice]

nickels?

That's called a Turn Of Phrase. A meme so old it's become language in the wonderful world of idioms.

 

[holla_cabezas_de_mierda]

nickels?

That's called a Turn Of Phrase. A meme so old it's become language in the wonderful world of idioms.

got it. Did not know if you were using it in that manner or if there were literally machines I never heard of or experienced.

 

[Morality Games]

And when did you play it for the first time?

I'm asking 'cause I cannot into old school RPG's, their UI:s just suck. People here complain about combat in NWN2 engine, yet praise Betrayal at Krondor.

Did you guys play it in windowed mode?

Hm. Probably Arcanum.

Looking back, I still feel amazed down to my bones that I beat that game.

Note that my background in cRPGs at that point consisted mainly of the Neverwinter Nights, which was mostly about dungeon crawling through painterly environments.

Arcanum was about asking for directions to the hidden elf city until you found an elf trollish enough to tell you.

 

[Old One]

wizardry 1: 1982: 11 years old

You are one year older than me, you grizzled old goat.

Wizardry 1 is also the first cRPG I ever played. I finished it and then finished Wizardry 2 at the same time I played Zork I, II, and III.

Later I remember finished Ultima 1-4, and I played a lot of Bard's Tale with my friends.

It's funny now, but at the time the interfaces didn't seem cumbersome at all. New players to these games don't even get the experience of swapping 5.25" floppies all the time, either.

 

[huckc]

Age of Decadence
Baldur's Gate 1
Icewind Dale 1

Short list I know.

 

[holla_cabezas_de_mierda]

wizardry 1: 1982: 11 years old

You are one year older than me, you grizzled old goat.

Wizardry 1 is also the first cRPG I ever played. I finished it and then finished Wizardry 2 at the same time I played Zork I, II, and III.

Later I remember finished Ultima 1-4, and I played a lot of Bard's Tale with my friends.

It's funny now, but at the time the interfaces didn't seem cumbersome at all. New players to these games don't even get the experience of swapping 5.25" floppies all the time, either.

yeah I did not find the interface bad at all when I first played either. There was a sense of excitement whenever it asked you to swap disks too. I played it on an Apple II+.

my first RPG was actually tunnels of doom on the Texas instruments Ti-99 computer with a color monitor. To play you actually had to load the game off of a cassette tape and it took about 15 minutes. It could even save games on the tape too, but saving and loading also took forever. I would just start loading it up and go make something to eat and come back. It was actually a pretty good game. It had First person movement but switched to overhead tactical combat, the same exact method as the gold box games. You had four characters you rolled up at the start of the game and it had four classes I think, fighter, wizard, cleric and rogue.

It reminds me that I also bought my first phone modem in like 1985 or 1986 and it was for the commodore 64, it was like an 800 or maybe 1200 baud modem I think. I bought it at Toys R' Us of all places.

I lived in San Francisco and would call BBS over in marin to play this online MUD that was similar to Dungeons and Dragons. BAck then it cost money to call even from SF to Marin which was just about 10-12 miles away, but that is how it was at the time.

I ended up ringing up like $250 in phone bills in one month before the bill came, so my mom took the modem away from me...

Wizardy II (the return of Werdna? or something? or was it knight of diamonds?), anyway Wizardry II seemed way too hard, I never finished it..

 

[octavius]

Wizardy II (the return of Werdna? or something? or was it knight of diamonds?), anyway Wizardry II seemed way too hard, I never finished it..

Wizardry III, you mean? That was quite difficult, with a brutal start. Or IV, which was Return of Werdna, which is the most difficult Wizardry. Wizardry II is the easiest one out of 1-7, IMO.

 

[Lady_Error]

Wizardry 7 when it was my second CRPG and I didn't even speak much English. A dictionary was right next to the computer.

Also: Spirit of Adventure (Realms of Arkania predecessor) a few years ago, but mostly due to the old UI.

 

[holla_cabezas_de_mierda]

Wizardy II (the return of Werdna? or something? or was it knight of diamonds?), anyway Wizardry II seemed way too hard, I never finished it..

Wizardry III, you mean? That was quite difficult, with a brutal start. Or IV, which was Return of Werdna, which is the most difficult Wizardry. Wizardry II is the easiest one out of 1-7, IMO.

maybe it was III or iv then. And yeah I could not even get 5% into the game without repeatedly being party wiped, it felt impossible.

The next one i finished after the first was also hard, but not impossible like III or iv.

The next one I finished after Wiz I, was the first one with the new updated cartoonish graphics, maybe it was number VI?

 

[Hobo Elf]

True Chaos path in Nocturne or any of the Kings Field games I guess.

 

[newtmonkey]

I didn't actually end up finishing a lot of games when I was a kid...

Battletech: Crescent Hawk's Inception
Not the hardest game in hindsight considering much of the world is empty, but finally figuring it out without any help as a kid (blowing a hole in the arena to escape) seemed like quite a achievement at the time.

Ultima
Not sure if this is hardcore or not. At once point 9-10 years ago I decided to try going through all the Ultima games in order. This was actually a ton of fun to play, I really got into it. Drew maps, printed out the world maps and wrote all over them, took notes, everything. I think as a kid I would probably have lost interest and never figured this out (my first Ultima was III btw). I can't say this game was difficult, but figuring it out felt like a bit of a puzzle. I felt that the most important thing was to get an overall strategy going at first to get powerful quickly (for me, this was finding a dungeon near a town and mapping it out as I fought, since you used way less food [if any?] in dungeons).

Final Fantasy 1-3
More recently, on NES/Famicom. Never finished any of these at the time, and yes, they are trivial if you grind (1 or 3) or take advantage of system quirks (2). I played them straight with no grinding, just buying what I could afford and dealing with it, and had a great time. FF1 is the hardest to play this way, while 2 and 3 are balanced so that (as long as you understand the systems) you can get through without a problem. However, even for those two, if you pay no attention to the system you'll get hopelessly stuck, so I felt quite clever for playing them straight to the end.

Demon's Souls/Dark Souls 1 & 2
I don't even consider these to the RPGs since they are 100% player skill based, but I seem to be in the minority with this belief. These games are not that hard, and grinding really doesn't do much in my opinion. Getting good at dodging and anticipating attacks gets you through all games, and they all even have "easy modes" (magician/pyromancer). I played online, but never summoned any help nor used any NPCs, and I felt pretty satisfied when each game was over.

Fallout
Is this even "hardcore?" I actually found it to be easy and overall it was a pleasant experience. I bought the game when it first came out and never got very far into it for lack of interest. A year ago I had some free time and got addicted, getting through the game in a week or so of sporadic play. Awesome game, but I don't really feel like I had to figure anything out or really struggle to get through it.

Dragon Warrior
Unlike its sequel, DW is more tedious than hardcore. There is little room for tactics/strategy (basically none). It is just a fancy slot machine. You figure out how likely you are to survive at a certain level based on the avg damage you give/take and your HPs, and push your luck just to the point where you can barely get back to town in one piece. That's not bad. The bad thing is, you will definitely get to a point where you simply are not capable of giving/taking enough damage to get to the next point, so you have to sit there and gain levels. For me it was two spots (roughly the middle, then during the last are). With only one character there's only so much you can do, but I felt like Ultima was overall a much more clever game since most of your power came from equipment and knowledge instead of your level and HP.

 

[Old One]

...it cost money to call even from SF to Marin which was just about 10-12 miles away, but that is how it was at the time.

I remember that. Every small little area had it's own branch of AT&T, and if your call crossed from one invisible zone to another you ended up paying long-distance charges.

Wizardry 2 was Knight of Diamonds. I remember it being a lot like Wizardry 1, so I don't think that's the one that was really hard. It was about the same.

Here's the first Action RPG I played:

 

[Elhoim]

AoD. Took almost 10 years, but I finally completed it.

 

[Malpercio]

NWN2, the part where you fight with the in-game camera.

 

[Emmanuel2]

I do restrictions on games to make them challenging enough.

• Dark Souls 1 and 3 SL1 No-summon
• KH2FM Critical mode L1
• BG1 Max difficulty solo
• Pillars of Eternity PotD Solo

 

[Space Insect]

Not really a RPG, but The Hobbit from 1982. Looking back, it was ridiculous high-tech for its time and definitely more complex than most games these days. All the NPCs would literally do anything completely independent of you. The text parser was surprisingly complex. It was very easy for either you to die or an essential NPC to die, dooming you to lose the game. I would definitely suggest checking it out sometime.

 

[oldmanpaco]

Beat Zork. Totally didn't use those highlighter cheat books either. Totally didn't.

 

[Old One]

Beat Zork. Totally didn't use those highlighter cheat books either. Totally didn't.

You should try Spellbreaker from 1985, the last game in the Enchanter trilogy. Infocom made it extra hard by fan request.

 

[Sranchammer]

1st Walking Dead Game.

I must have died 100x

:m:

 

[Zombra]

Wasteland. Played it when it was new, beginning to end. Also Ultima IV, I don't have as many memories of it, but I did finish it.

Sunk dozens of hours into World of Xeen and felt like I came very close to finishing the MQ, but never did. Always regretted that.

Played but never finished Ultima I-III, all the Might & Magics, Bard's Tales, blah blah blah.

Finished Dungeon Master 2 ... because it was way less hardcore than Dungeon Master, which I also sunk countless hours into but never completed.

Oh! Countdown to Doomsday. Finished that with a buddy of mine. Only Gold Box style game I completed I think, but I played a ton of them too.

Wizard's Crown. Played to completion, also when it was new. That game is the real shit right there.

 

[oldmanpaco]

Beat Zork. Totally didn't use those highlighter cheat books either. Totally didn't.

You should try Spellbreaker from 1985, the last game in the Enchanter trilogy. Infocom made it extra hard by fan request.

I do remember playing enchanter a bunch. Whenever I got frustrated I'd just walk down the road and end it all. Cannot remember if I finished that one but I know I didn't play the sequels. I remember we had a bunch of infocom games: the Zorks, Wishstone, A Mind Forever Voyaging, Enchanter, the Pirate one, Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. The early 80's were a great time to be alive.

 

[octavius]

Wasteland. Played it when it was new, beginning to end. Also Ultima IV, I don't have as many memories of it, but I did finish it.

Sunk dozens of hours into World of Xeen and felt like I came very close to finishing the MQ, but never did. Always regretted that.

Played but never finished Ultima I-III, all the Might & Magics, Bard's Tales, blah blah blah.

Finished Dungeon Master 2 ... because it was way less hardcore than Dungeon Master, which I also sunk countless hours into but never completed.

Oh! Countdown to Doomsday. Finished that with a buddy of mine. Only Gold Box style game I completed I think, but I played a ton of them too.

Wizard's Crown. Played to completion, also when it was new. That game is the real shit right there.

So you didn't manage to complete the relatively easy ones, but did complete Wizard's Crown? That's quite a feat in itself.

 

[Grauken]

Not sure, Pools of Darkness when I had no clue what AD&D or CRPGs were or Wiz 7 on my third try

lots of stuff became hard in pre-internet time when you oversaw some minuscule clue or button and had no idea how to proceed, even if the overall game in general was easy

 

[Ramireza]

Fallout 4 with the new survival mode.