what's the first game that made you think 'now THIS is RPG!'

[RK47]

for me it's Ultima 6. I wasn't even playing it mind you. But my cousin would ask me for my opinion on some gameplay decisions. It never cease to surprise me what he could do. So much freedom. You mean you can get 7 people with you and steal things? And ride a boat? Kill the shopkeeper? So, THIS is RPG!

I was really happy when I finally got a PC and finally ran Ultima 7 successfully with a boot disk. Good times.

 

[Archaeon]

Fallout, it's the very first RPG I played, as soon as i got a computer, in the winter of '97. at first i was quite baffled by all the options, but then i realised what a true RPG was like.. needless to say from then on i was put off by most of the rpg's that didn't even touch fallout's knee.

 

[User was nabbed fit]

Fallout. First RPG I played. I know, I got into games, and RPGs, pretty late (I played it a bit after it came out -- probably 2001-2003?).

 

[HotSnack]

Arcanum, when I reached the first village and found out you can break into the merchant's house via the back window and then proceed to raid his inventory was the moment I thought "fuck yes this is how you make a crpg". I've played FO and PST before playing Arcanum, but it was only in Arcanum when I was actually impressed by the amount of options you are given to get things done. I should probably go play the Ultima games, as the way people talk about it it sounds like you're given even more options if that is correct?

 

[Hamster]

Fallout 2. I remember being very impressed by simple thing,like the fact that you needed perception of 7 to notice unusual spear the guard on the bridge have, or like stats really affecting dialogue,etc...

 

[Cimmerian Nights]

Bard's Tale. Probably because I was too young to know any better, but as someone who played D&D at that time, it was the next best thing for a long time to come.

 

[Calis]

A tie between Quest for Glory 2 and The Aethra Chronicles. Though I had played other RPG's before, those two are the only ones I really dug into and managed to finish at a younger age. Others I played at the time (and before) included the Bard's Tale series (never finished any of them), EoB series (ditto), Ultima 7 & 8 and the Underworlds (ditto).

 

[Sarvis]

Final Fantasy was my first RPG. Nothing ever made me say THIS IS SPAR...err RPG really, FF is just what RPGs are.

 

[Admiral Rimjob POOBUM]

Well, my first "THIS is an RPG" moment was with Morrowind, I believe.
My "oh, wait, no it isn't, this is an RPG lol" moment was with Fallout.

 

[Elwro]

Eye of the Beholder. It had stats, experience, fantasy creatures and dungeons. And I was a child.

 

[Noceur]

Even though I played PnP as a child, I never thought "This is an RPG" about games I played at the time. While I played games like Twilight 2000 and Eye of the Beholder, the first time I started thinking of games in terms of "This is RPG" was probably Baldur's Gate or Fallout.
My first "Wow, THIS is RPG!" moment was most likely later, with Planescape Torment. I think it was because we didn't play combat heavy PnP and Torment had a lot of dialogue and stuff.

Edit: Prettified text by removing repeated phrases and words.

 

[Joe Krow]

Ultima 4. The cloth map was the epitome of rpg goodness. I think the in-game moment came when I realized that if you walked along the shore you might be attacked by pirates. If you beat them you get to keep their boat and everything on it... that's fat loot when your six!

 

[GoldLeader]

For me, it was Icewind Dale 2.


After 3 days i uninstalled it, whatsoever....and started to play Fallout 2

 

[Klaz]

Quest for Glory... but I thought of them more like adventure games with stats. My first CRPG was Morrowind, and my first good RPG was Arcanum.

 

[Micmu]

Ultima 7: The Black Gate. First & first real RPG

 

[TalesfromtheCrypt]

Realms of Arkania 3, Shadows over Riva.

I didn't have much RPG expierence before playing it and was really amazed by the open game design which most other genres (and more and more RPGs aswell) are lacking.

This was the first time I played a game which gave you a world (although the world was limited to the city of Riva and its surroundings) and let you figure out yourself what you had to do. The game had no handholding at all and that was pretty amazing.

Unfortunatly I got stuck at the Wizard Tower, but a year or 2 later I replayed the whole RoA trilogy and haven't found any games since then which could be compared to the unique design of the RoA games.

 

[Deleted member 7219]

I suppose the first RPG I played was KOTOR. Before then I didn't really know what RPGs were, I kept thinking of the geeky tabletop games which put me off them. I only tried KOTOR because it was a Star Wars game. Since then I have been hooked on CRPGs.

After KOTOR I tried NWN and thought it was ok but could have been better. Then I tried Morrowind, and absolutely loved it. That's what I considered a great CRPG. It didn't have many choices but it had a wide, expansive gameworld and many options for levelling up your character, with some really memorable quests. I think the only RPGs that I've played that have presented me with real choices are the two Fallouts, Bloodlines and the two KOTORs. But I enjoy other CRPGs too, I consider them all CRPGs.

I don't really consider the IWD games or Oblivion 'true' CRPGs because of the huge emphasis on combat and a dumbed-down gameworld. When I play the IWD games I think of top-down hack'n'slashes, and when I play Oblivion I think of an action-adventure with a few stats thrown in.

 

[Ladonna]

Ultima 4 for sure. Thats what my brother called it, and thats the first big experience with Roleplaying games I had.

He had Bards Tale before that, but it bored me to tears when I tried playing it.

 

[Lonely Vazdru]

Daggerfall. Probably because it was 1) the first non team-based RPG I tried, and 2) using a "direct experience" system, that would improve your skills by actually using them, instead of the usual "level-up system" that, somehow, makes your character become a better lockpick or healer just because he killed 100 orcs. Also, HUGE world.

 

[RK47]

I think Ultima did not age well.

still liked messing around with Daggerfall at my cousin's computer. The funny shit was, I was the one who bought the game but because my PC can't deal with the crashes, I decided to give it to him.

Wow. We took turns, even his sister gave it a spin. The funniest moment was when me and my cousin were wondering how to get rich while focusing entirely on warrior types while his sister just mastered open spell and gained millions. :shock: It made the game cheap from then on LOL

 

[Mithter Thibbs]

Baldur's Gate.

Yeah, I'd played the Ultimas about a decade before BG came out, and the Bard's Tales after that, and the Gold Box series, and the Darksun games, and the Menzoberranzans and Eye of the Beholders and Lands of Lores, but I'd spent most of my computer-user years playing those types of games exclusively and watching them evolve. They were my introduction into computing, and the Round 42s and Thexders and other arcadey games of that time were nothing more than a blip on the radar.

But then gaming died in the middle 90's for me, and the very first game that caught my eye after that long drought was Baldur's Gate; saw it on the shelf in Radio Shack and thought: "hey... A forgotten Realms game. They still making those?" And, based on nothing more than my recollections of the old gold box series, I picked it up on a whim; I was a little leery of the real time combat and so at first passed it over, but a few minutes later I was in EB and heard someone asking the counter-monkey to call around for a game that he'd been waiting for for ages called "Baldur's Gate", because no one in the city seemed to have any copies left in stock, so I went back to Radio Shack and picked it up, being the perverse individual that I am. Hadn't heard anything about it, had given up gaming in general for dead, but that game hit me like a ton of bricks when I first fired it up.

There have been better cRPGs, but that's the only one that made me sit right up and say "now THIS is a cRPG". More for the circumstances surrounding my first experience with the game than the game itself, perhaps, but such was the question.

 

[fastpunk]

I came late to the RPG genre. It was 2003 and I kept hearing about KOTOR. KOTOR here, KOTOR there. I heard about it so much that its name started to annoy me but also made me curious. So I rented the thing, got back home and installed it. I didn't have a good feeling about it, specially because I loath Star Wars but surprise, surprise. It was actually good.

I remember exiting the apartment complex in Taris for the first time and seeing all the NPCs running around, hearing the nice background buzz etc. And I thought: so I have to find this Bastila chick but I have no starting point. I'll just go explore the place, talk to people etc. That was the moment when I thought "wow! this is RPG!"

 

[katzenjammer]

Maybe the original Diablo.

It wouldn't be the last time I said "now THIS is RPG!" about a game, of course, but I played it to death when it first came out.

These days, I tend to think of it more as a pure action game. Sorta like a gothic-themed "Crusaders: No Remorse" with stats, classes, and a paper doll.

 

[mirrorshades]

Dungeons of Daggorath

No, really.

It is (was) a real-time dungeon crawler that had so much to it that it's hard to believe it fit on a single cartridge.

Ok, the graphics sucked. But there was a lot to it that was fun for me when I was a kid. It did a lot to create atmosphere... your torches would gradually burn out, allowing you to see less and less ahead of you. Likewise, each monster made a distinctive noise, and you could hear it when it was in the vicinity. It also kept track of your character's heart rate (!!!), which is something I've not seen before or since... it kept combat from becoming a click-fest, since if you swung your weapon too fast, your heart would speed up and you could pass out from exhaustion. There was real incentive to flee from combat if you were getting beat -- no more of this hanging on and fighting until you have 2 HP left. *And*, you couldn't even run away too fast, since moving too fast also tired you out.

A lot to it. Not in the way of story or graphics or music or dialogue or inventory management or skill-based leveling or anything else; but it was one of the first RPGs that got me hooked on the genre.

If anyone is morbidly curious, you can check out a free PC version: http://mspencer.net/daggorath/dodpcp.html

 

[Ion Flux]

Pool of Radiance (the original SSI Gold Box game on the C64, not the one that came later that I never played).

Yes, I am old.