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(Veterans) Remember Your Newbie Thoughts From Your First (Best) RPG...

Lambach

Arcane
Joined
Feb 11, 2016
Messages
12,730
Location
Belgrade, Removekebabland
Not sure if I'd count myself as a veteran, but w/e. My first was Bloodlines back in 2005, I was 11 at the time. Completely blew me away and in large part was crucial towards forming my taste in vidya and entertainment in general. Being a snot-nosed idiot, however, later playthroughs made me realize how much stuff went over my head during my first 2 playthroughs. Still, the overall atmosphere, characters and even the clunky combat (which I thought was brilliant at the time) made sure I was semi-obsessed with it. I still consider it my all-time favorite and replay it probably twice a year. Despite this, as Smiling Jack would say: "It's never as sweet as the first time"

On the other hand, I was madly in love with Oblivion (my second "proper" RPG) when it first came out and that love completely fizzled out with age, to the point where I couldn't even bother to finish it, extremely modded, about two years ago.

The last time I've been completely "WOW!"d by an RPG (or any game, really) was Mask of The Betrayer, 'bout 9 fucking years ago and I doubt I'll ever experience something like that again. Could be that they just don't make them like that anymore, could be that I'm just a bitter, jaded cunt now.
 

Prime Junta

Guest
My first vaguely RPG-like computer game was rogue -- the thing that started the roguelike genre. My charname was Hercule Poirot. Took me ages to git gud enough to not get my ass handed to me by centaurs. NetHack is probably the game I have overall most lifetime hours in, I still return to it from time to time although I've ascended with most (all?) of the classes at this point.

I think the first "true" cRPG I played must have been Ultima III Exodus and it was mind-blowing. I tried getting back to it a few years ago but unfortunately I couldn't, the lack of QoL features was too much for boomer-me to handle. Do not feel up to mapping dungeons on graph paper anymore.
 

SymbolicFrank

Magister
Joined
Mar 24, 2010
Messages
1,668
The game I payed most is probably Manic Miner, one of the first graphical computer games. But my second place certainly goes to Morrowind.
 

thesheeep

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Mar 16, 2007
Messages
9,939
Location
Tampere, Finland
Codex 2012 Strap Yourselves In Codex Year of the Donut Codex+ Now Streaming! Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Torment: Tides of Numenera Codex USB, 2014 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 BattleTech Bubbles In Memoria A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
Must've been Breath Of Fire on the SNES.... I can remember having no clue whatsoever what I was doing as it was in English.
Guess it taught me what "attack" means :lol:
 

laclongquan

Arcane
Joined
Jan 10, 2007
Messages
1,870,144
Location
Searching for my kidnapped sister
My first game is HoMM3, Deadlock2. Deadlock2 because free demo on a free demo game collection disk. HoMM3 because it's all the rage at that particular year.

My first RPG is Fallout 2 due to a review on Vietnamese Computer World magazine.

The other two is nough said, but Deadlock2 is a good compact game to spend time on public transport.

(I did play some snes, sega saturn games earlier, but nothing memorable)
 

rohand

Cipher
Joined
Aug 20, 2014
Messages
592
Location
Planet Escape
I got a few memory flashes that I fondly like:

Playing a Daggerfall demo and scared shitless of the skeleton screams
Playing Eye of the Beholder and scared shitless of the silent halls that echoed those ominous monster noises
Playing Fallout and becoming astonished with the amount of stuff going on at the same time

To me those three have aged beautifully and still play them
 

mondblut

Arcane
Joined
Aug 10, 2005
Messages
22,205
Location
Ingrija
Eye of the Beholder: "what a strange game, why do I need to throw all kinds of things at monsters? isn't there a better way to use swords and shields than throwing them as projectiles?"

Ah, the days when the right mouse button was a novel, untested concept.
 

ManaJunkie

Arbiter
Joined
Feb 15, 2018
Messages
281
First one was Phantasy Star. It was soo contrary to everything i played before. Finished it in a few weeks. tried the MS version of Ultima 4 afterwards....and yeah...wtf was going on?
The first crpg was one of the gold box games. It was probably Champions of Krynn. I played most of them so my memories are blurred.
But Crusaders was the reason i abandoned other genres.
 

Lady_Error

█▓▒░ ░▒▓█
Patron
Joined
Oct 14, 2012
Messages
1,879,250
Eye of the Beholder: "what a strange game, why do I need to throw all kinds of things at monsters? isn't there a better way to use swords and shields than throwing them as projectiles?"

Ah, the days when the right mouse button was a novel, untested concept.

Seems like we had the same experience with it. A friend of mine who played it back then had the exact same problem.
 

EldarEldrad

Savant
Joined
Sep 13, 2017
Messages
253
Location
Russia
My first RPG was KOTOR. Around 2005 my schoolmate gave me disk with Jedi Academy game. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to finish game before he knocked my door and take away his disk due to a lot of people who want to play this wonderful lightsaber porn slasher. So next day I went to local shop where some neckbeard fat guy sold cracked games and films (I guess, that guy was the one who cracked and translated them because subtitles were completely unreadable and game crashed every half an hour). I forget name of the game, so I asked something about "you know, Star Wars, light saber, woo-woop". Of course, that guy sold me KOTOR. Despite quality, I somehow complete game. After 10 years I finally re-played original English version and didn't find any differences. Especially in subtitles.
 

Lonely Vazdru

Pimp my Title
Joined
Jan 10, 2007
Messages
6,656
Location
Agen
MY first CRPG was a text based one on Mac, back in 1982 :

510705-the-hobbit-macintosh-screenshot-title-screen.gif


I had a good time with it then, but it was still just text based. My first reall thrill came a year later with this :

178209-exodus-ultima-iii-apple-ii-screenshot-title-screen.png

Now that was something : having a full party of characters, equiping them, digging all around the world for exotic weapons, trying to kill Lord British... nice times.

But the CRPGs that really made me go bonkers came a decade later : M&M 3, World of Xeen, Wizardry 7, X-Com (as borderline CRPG as it is), Dark Sun : Shattered Lands, Thunderscape, Menzoberranzan...

Things continued to go well until the late 90s, early 00s, and then...:decline:

Even later, console market absorbed computer market, SUPER :decline:
 

Saduj

Arcane
Joined
Aug 26, 2012
Messages
2,547
Temple of Apshai for Commodore Vic 20. Top down single character (fighter) dungeon crawler with insect theme. Also had the expansions Curse of Ra and Upper Reaches of Apshai. Very primitive but I spent hours and hours with it. Epyx made some great games back in the day. SSI also made great games back then. I had a baseball game, Computer Baseball (they weren’t so good with names), they wrote in BASIC that was a favorite for years.

Once we upgraded to C64 and got Ultima III, that blew Apshai out of the water. Only thing I’ll add to previous post about UIII is he left out the time stopping powder that you’d use to try to escape town before being wrecked by the guards after failing a steal attempt. Was disappointed to see that taken out of UIV.
 

jebsmoker

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Nov 17, 2019
Messages
2,578
Insert Title Here Strap Yourselves In I helped put crap in Monomyth
i first played fallout 1 in middle school when i was like 14 and it blew my mind in terms of how detailed it was. i thought "wow! games are gonna get better and even more deep! this is game is a milestone in crpgs!"

oh how wrong i was; few games compare to fallout 1 in terms of depth or presentation
 

Tito Anic

Arcane
Shitposter
Joined
Dec 27, 2015
Messages
1,679
Location
Magalan
Fallout 2. On my first playthrough i was stuck in Gecko power plant because i didnt know english well. Resumed playing it after i met friend in college who knew Fallout and we ended up discussing how awesome the game is. He told me about internet site NMA where i found Fallout solution which i downloaded to FDD and resumed playing on summer holidays when i was back home. Time is running:)

p.s. Also i have fond memories about classic ZX Spectrum game Heroes Quest which was board game adaptation. It sucked there was no save function on ZX. I allways had to beggin from start.

iu
 
Joined
Mar 30, 2012
Messages
7,045
Location
Elevator Of Love
Divinity: Original Sin 2 Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
Ultima Underworld II: Labyrinth of Worlds. The game really fascinated me, since I didn't have any experience with RPG genre. I just wandered around and interacted as much as I could with characters, gathering stuff and just getting to know the mechanics. It was really amazing how interactive it felt, with high quality graphics and first person view. Of course without existing language skills I didn't even expected to finish it. Later on I borrowed the first part as well, to compare them. I really need to play them from start to finish, and Arx Fatalis as well.
 

Old Hans

Arcane
Joined
Oct 10, 2011
Messages
1,442
Ultima Underworld II: Labyrinth of Worlds. The game really fascinated me, since I didn't have any experience with RPG genre. I just wandered around and interacted as much as I could with characters, gathering stuff and just getting to know the mechanics. It was really amazing how interactive it felt, with high quality graphics and first person view. Of course without existing language skills I didn't even expected to finish it. Later on I borrowed the first part as well, to compare them. I really need to play them from start to finish, and Arx Fatalis as well.
I used to go over to my girlfriends house JUST to play ultima underworld 1 on her parents computer
 

Sacibengala

Prophet
Joined
Aug 16, 2014
Messages
1,098
I get no recolection. I only remember IGN saying it was good and I got it and played. Good times.
 

Dorateen

Arcane
Joined
Aug 30, 2012
Messages
4,332
Location
The Crystal Mist Mountains
In December of 1989, I was playing Dragon Warrior on the NES. This was in the waning years of running pen and paper RPGs, having started in the early 1980's, our peak gaming group was probably in 1986. Dragon Warrior was fun, walking around an overworld map talking to characters for clues and information, fighting monsters through a limited menu-driven combat interface. It was a decent RPG primer.

And then, shortly thereafter, I installed Might & Magic II: Gates to Another World on the computer. What an experience, which changed everything. You mean I would be able to create a full party of six D&D-like characters? Wait, you mean, even more I could create an entire roster of characters, able to swap them in and out over the course of the same adventure? In addition to hirelings that would be found and recruited into the team. Hundreds of items and enemies to engage with first person tactical combat, where positioning in the party matters.

And I get to to explore in 3D perspective a sprawling map that looks like this:

3-MM2-0002.jpg

Are you kidding me? This was a dream. It felt like coming home.

Thus, no modern mainstream game could ever hope to match the richness of such a composition.
 
Last edited:

Tyranicon

A Memory of Eternity
Developer
Joined
Oct 7, 2019
Messages
5,861
>OP's question

Shit if I remember, but it would be probably about how ugly everything was and how many numbers were being thrown at my face like a blizzard of bad dicks.
 

King Crispy

Too bad I have no queen.
Patron
Staff Member
Joined
Feb 16, 2008
Messages
1,876,560
Location
Future Wasteland
Strap Yourselves In
How many times have we gone over this?

Anyway, Wizardry Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord on Apple ][+, circa 1981? '82?

I wonder what Cleve was doing back then.
 

Chippy

Arcane
Patron
Joined
May 5, 2018
Messages
6,037
Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
Maybe I should have said "Your first, best RPG - and what features made it great?". My point being that I remember playing ZX Spectrum games as a kid - Target Renegade, Green Beret, Rampage, etc, but I'm not retarded enough to say: "I could jump + attack in Rampage, climb, and it had destructable environments" because that would be really retardred.

But I can say early experiences with games defined what they could and couldn't do. For instance: A racing game on the ZX spectrum didn't have enough memory to recognise the grass beside the track - so even on corners, you didn't slow down - you just hit the invisible wall and as long as you didn't collide with another racer, you won the game.

So when I started playing RPG (like Fallout 1) I was dumbstruck by stuff that you could do. I remember thinking "Holy shit! I can kick this guy in the balls! And he knows I just kicked him in the balls! This is fucking awesome!". I didn't play F3, and they kinda kept the heritage going with F:NV but then they dropped targeted shots in Skyrim. That was just lazy - although I shudder to think of the knee-shot dialogue if implemented.

But maybe developers need a list of stuff that was in games that was considered to be incline. Like there should be an entry level. I mean that Skyrim drew inspiration from x2 films that I know of: The Thirteenth Warrior (that was a pretty good film) based on Michael Crichton's book, and Reign of Fire. In Skyrim, the first dragon you fight is by a tower - how many retards (myself included) jumped off the top of that tower, hoping to deliver the death blow to the first dragon; only to realize you couldn't jump + attack?.
 

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