I'll second Lands of Lore 1. Really approachable, nice graphics, feels casual but has some difficulty.
I strongly disagree.
If my first blobber had me wrestle with atrocious RT control scheme where you need to hunt and click relatively small icons on your interface bar with your mouse AS FAST AS POSSIBLE, I'd probably have jaywilson'd the entire genre.
Additionally LoL1 is infuriating in its simplification and lack of transparency - you have three use based stats total (like in those post oblivion jokes about Bethesda and evolution of their games), up to three characters in your party and are generally unable to milk any sort of quantitative or qualitative information about stuff in game - the only way to see weapon and armor stats is equipping them and calculating them from the difference and any special properties can only be discovered via in-game experimentation, if at all.
You only can choose one of four predefined characters, that are mostly distinguished by hidden variables, which, accompanied by faulty mechanics results in baffling shit like the dumb oaf archetype character being able to inflict most damage with offensive spells.
Level design also isn't anything to write home about though some locations are better than others.
It would be a good game to recommend to a complete casualfag who
's at TB, stats or numbers in general, but it has a good chance to just throw off a seasoned cRPG veteran.
Sure, it does have upsides - some spells can be used creatively to interact with environment, it has genre's trademark pressure plate puzzles and makes extremely good use of physics for a game that doesn't even have proper 3D environment, but it's main attractions - aside form graphics and music - is rather intangible kind of charm, which makes it a hit or miss.
No, for one's first blobber I'd definitely recommend Wizardry 8:
- It's TB, meaning you can focus on tactics rather than fumbling hectically around the interface when commanding your party in combat.
- It's true 3D, meaning you don't have to put in additional effort to master the abstraction of tiles. Yes, it's an obvious abstraction and doesn't require much effort to getused to, but it's still somewhat disorienting and jarring at first to hop around in one tile increments and only turn in increments of 90 degrees.
- It has interesting enough environments, while tile based crawlers ofter suffer from monotony of their environments, due to limited amount of tiles and the way image is rendered.
- It's complex enough to be interesting mechanically, with nice stat system, good combat mechanics, formation management, variable power/variable risk spellcasting and so on.
- Being 3D it allows for more positioning and meaningful movement (other than exploitish dancing from RT crawlies) in combat.
- It's adaptable, each party build provides different challenges, but it's extremely hard to fuck up your party due to lack of metagame knowledge in Wizardry 8, even very non-obvious parties and characters can be viable and fun to play in their own way.
- Ability to customize your party member's voices and personalities in addition to portraits allows for varied and fun party banter which prevents the game from feeling dry and mechanical - characters comment on pretty much everything, including other character's comments.
- It features modern and user friendly interface with generous tooltips and transparent functionality as opposed to monstrosities found in some older games.
- It's pretty easy if one doesn't play it in ironman mode, while playing it in ironman mode unearth whole new layers of challenge and fun.
- It was my first blobber and it was love from the first sight.
