Torment Classic games that you want to play... eventually. But you just keep postponing and postponing. For years.

[anvi]

all of vogel's games
I've tried but I just get bored

I'm now a good deal through Avernum: Escape From the Pit.

NPCs are being put out of work to starve all in the name of dubious "QOL" features and you're laughing?!

Which is the best Vogel game?

 

[mindx2]

all of vogel's games
I've tried but I just get bored

I'm now a good deal through Avernum: Escape From the Pit.

Which is the best Vogel game?

Exile

 

[Fargus]

all of vogel's games
I've tried but I just get bored

I'm now a good deal through Avernum: Escape From the Pit.

NPCs are being put out of work to starve all in the name of dubious "QOL" features and you're laughing?!

Which is the best Vogel game?

Geneforge 1

 

[rusty_shackleford]

shamelessly shilling the Geneforge codex review since I've been fixing up the old Codex articles https://rpgcodex.net/content.php?id=6
It also did quite well in the 2002 year-end roundup https://rpgcodex.net/content.php?id=27

 

[Delphik]

Arcanum, for whatever reason the first town is just straight up boring to me and I can't get through it without having to literally sleep beforehand.
I tried 4 times so far and I'll keep trying because of the constant praise it receives.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

shamelessly shilling the Geneforge codex review since I've been fixing up the old Codex articles https://rpgcodex.net/content.php?id=6
It also did quite well in the 2002 year-end roundup https://rpgcodex.net/content.php?id=27

Geneforge and Morrowind both appeared on the top 3 RPGs list for 3 out of the 4 staff members selecting games, above all other RPGs in 2002.

 

[Cyberarmy]

Arx Fatalis, started it so many times but always stoped for some stupid reason. Need to finish it in this cold, rainy days I reckon.

 

[Tavernking]

Fallout: New Vegas (I guess it’s considered a classic by now, right?), Dwarf Fortress, Knights of the Chalice (only played the demo), Jagged Alliance 2

 

[gaussgunner]

Arcanum
Not so much because of terrible combat or parts that feel like a slog. I am just indecisive about what character to make, want to play technologist but i hate hunting for crafting items and keeping my inventory choke full of trash i might or might not need.

First run magic user, then start over as technologist. It's definitely harder and it helps to have some familiarity with the game so you know what to plan for and where to stash all your ore and crap.

 

[KainenMorden]

I'm undiagnosed but believe I have ADHD as well so I empathize with you but certain works of literature and video games and movies could always immerse me and get me to "hyperfocus".

It could be that you just don't enjoy some of the games that are considered "classics" by others and that's ok. Can you tell me what games you thought about playing?

 

[gaussgunner]

all of vogel's games
I've tried but I just get bored

I think I've completed two of them. They're good games, but they're basically all the same game.

ToEE might be worth another go, just to fuck around not to attempt completion. It's the only Troika game I've underplayed.
Nox, I only got halfway.
Thief was interesting but I wasn't in the right frame of mind to get into it; maybe sometime.
Gothic, I was doing good but never finished.
Gothic sequels if I can get them to run.
JA2 and XCOM, I've never actually played to the end.

 

[Kabas]

Arcanum
Not so much because of terrible combat or parts that feel like a slog. I am just indecisive about what character to make, want to play technologist but i hate hunting for crafting items and keeping my inventory choke full of trash i might or might not need.

First run magic user, then start over as technologist. It's definitely harder and it helps to have some familiarity with the game so you know what to plan for and where to stash all your ore and crap.

I don't wanna be wizard

 

[KainenMorden]

Do a dex based throwing build. Get agility of fire, put atleast 3 points into throwing and dodge, start with a boomerang and learn to make healing salves and Molotov cocktails and later stun grenades and explosive grenades.

That's also enough to then go melee and with tech manuals, craft the pyro axe. You can also then boost perception and pump firearms eventually. Not really worth it to use firearms until late game when you can find/craft some good guns. Best gun can only be made near the end game unfortunately.

The cheesiest build I played is a dex based build that focuses on melee, dodge, backstab and you will need to have willpower high enough to get stun spell. When you get expert backstab you can backstab with the pyro axe or sword of baltar, etc. Stun is best used in turn based combat mode.

That's the build to take on anyone in tarant at a low lvl.

Note the spells i mention will work for a tech character no problem, so will other stat boosting spells like strength of earth, your investment in tech stuff will rebalance your aptitude.

 

[perfectslumbers]

Darklands because the pixelated font legitimately makes my eyes hurt

 

[Mig]

Arx Fatalis, started it so many times but always stoped for some stupid reason. Need to finish it in this cold, rainy days I reckon.

I only played and beat it about a year ago for the first time. (with some mods)
Really liked it, pretty unique game.

 

[__scribbles__]

I'm going to start Arcanum in a few days as well, PS:T is going to need a while to digest.

Well, after four months of putting it off and playing other games, I finally finished Arcanum, and I liked it a lot but a part of that may be due to me being lucky with bugs. I don't know how buggy the GOG version is compared to how it was back then, but it may be patched. I decided against playing with Drog's patch for my first playthrough, just to get some perspective for when I do play with it, so this is judged from the vanilla GOG version.

thoughts on the game

Arcanum more than earns its reputation as a flawed gem. To quote another codexer, "it's so rough around the edges that it may as well be a circle". The game is very unpolished in the second half. For example, typos and grammar errors show up frequently("Drog Balck Tooth" and "you're experience" among others), and dungeon design goes from slightly annoying to a dull slog. The second half is noticeably rushed and while it's not a massive jump off of a cliff quality-wise, it definitely feels less cohesive compared to the eccentric and excellent first. I think a good indicator is how few quests there are in Caladon. 5 in Caladon(7 if we include the master persuasion quest and the gnomish conspiracy) compared to around 16 in Tarant. The game feels front-loaded to hell and back. It reminds me of Torment, where the first half is open and the second is pretty much only plot from Curst to the Fortress.
It didn't change much for me, but the graphics and many of the non-spell animations are just plain ugly as well(that prowling animation tho).

Now, character creation, reactivity, and questing are where the game makes up for the aforementioned flaws for me. This game has some of the best sidequests I've ever seen in a game - the gnomish conspiracy, the ancient gods, stealing the funerary stone, bypassing the bandits at the bridge, and the list goes on. It feels refreshingly open and varied, and none in a way that I thought to myself while playing that they were just copy-pasted or reskinned from another game.
The classless character creation was one of my favorite things about Fallout 1/2, and it carries over and multiplies - there are more interesting skills and spells, races, backgrounds, and more. A complaint that gets raised often is that Arcanum is unbalanced, but that misses the point, IMO - finding ways to make ridiculously bad or strong builds is part of the fun. Right after finishing the game for the first time I jumped back into the game and made a combat mage that didn't use Harm, and it was a ton of fun. People are still finding ways to break the game with OP builds, and I think that that's a testament to Arcanum's flexibility and freedom, to have a cult following playing around with your game over twenty years after it came out.
The character building also carries over into reactivity, where the game derives most of it from. I actually laughed out loud when I was denied a train ride because of my magick, getting thrown out of shops because of my race, yelled at because I was ugly, seducing people due to my charisma, making headlines after solving a crime among others, Arcanum feels very alive and adaptive. I truly feel like I'm a part of the world and that I'm having an impact on it without it feeling like the world revolves around me or is hand-crafted to be played in, and that's one of its core strengths.

This at least made the game justify being played for me, even though it didn't for a ton of other people and I can understand that.

 

[Radiane]

ToEE. On one hand i want to play the game in its "original" form as I'm not a big fan of mods, but I know the game is full of bugs in its original state. Then again, I can't really decide what's the best time to try it with the temple+ mod, as it still keeps getting updated. Also while I'd like to appreciate the positive changes the modders have achieved, this isn't easy to do without having played the game initially without mods, so I'm eventually torn on this game, and always end up playing something else in the end

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

FRACAS & Full ACS (adventure construction set) playthrough.

 

[cretin]

ToEE. On one hand i want to play the game in its "original" form as I'm not a big fan of mods, but I know the game is full of bugs in its original state. Then again, I can't really decide what's the best time to try it with the temple+ mod, as it still keeps getting updated. Also while I'd like to appreciate the positive changes the modders have achieved, this isn't easy to do without having played the game initially without mods, so I'm eventually torn on this game, and always end up playing something else in the end

The temple+ mod is just bugfixes (going off memory). I think you're thinking of the Co8 mod(s) which are often recommended along with temple+, which does introduce new content even in their so called non-content altering edition.

So yeah, you should probably just try again with temple+.

 

[Nikanuur]

ToEE. On one hand i want to play the game in its "original" form as I'm not a big fan of mods, but I know the game is full of bugs in its original state. Then again, I can't really decide what's the best time to try it with the temple+ mod, as it still keeps getting updated. Also while I'd like to appreciate the positive changes the modders have achieved, this isn't easy to do without having played the game initially without mods, so I'm eventually torn on this game, and always end up playing something else in the end

I've played it only with the Co8 and I cannot recommend it enough. It's basically "We've redone few bits to make more sense in the 3.5 ADnD environment and we've patched the game's bugs extensively." It's also pretty easy to install, you just have to mind some shortcomings of the game itself. All is explained: https://co8.org/community/threads/the-circle-of-eight-modpack-explained.7737/

 

[anvi]

I don't like Co8 but Temple+ was good for bug fixing.

 

[Rincewind]

There's only about ~1300 on my list currently. And those are only the pre-2001 titles. I'm definitely interested in life-extension theraphy!

 

[HansDampf]

Arcanum and System Shock have been on my "soon to play" list the longest, since 2016. It's only a matter of years now.

 

[KainenMorden]

ToEE. On one hand i want to play the game in its "original" form as I'm not a big fan of mods, but I know the game is full of bugs in its original state. Then again, I can't really decide what's the best time to try it with the temple+ mod, as it still keeps getting updated. Also while I'd like to appreciate the positive changes the modders have achieved, this isn't easy to do without having played the game initially without mods, so I'm eventually torn on this game, and always end up playing something else in the end

I've played it only with the Co8 and I cannot recommend it enough. It's basically "We've redone few bits to make more sense in the 3.5 ADnD environment and we've patched the game's bugs extensively." It's also pretty easy to install, you just have to mind some shortcomings of the game itself. All is explained: https://co8.org/community/threads/the-circle-of-eight-modpack-explained.7737/

They also added encounters that weren't originally there and I believe modified an existing encounter, I think it was only at the moathouse tho

 

[Feyd Rautha]

Arcanum and System Shock have been on my "soon to play" list the longest, since 2016. It's only a matter of years now.

I played System Shock for the first time a couple of years ago and I had a blast. Mandalore gaming or whatever it is called on YouTube has a video that can teach you a bit about the interface and controls. Makes for an easier start.