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

Jack Of Owls

Arcane
Joined
May 23, 2014
Messages
4,274
Location
Massachusettes
I have NEVER enjoyed an RPG as much as my very first ones played, in the Year of Our Lord -- 1988 -- which were (in order): Battletech: The Crescent Hawk's Inception, Pool of Radiance, and last (but not least) Dragon Wars, all on my old Commodore 64 with a 1541 floppy disk drive that was the stuff of 8 double-sided double-density disk-swapping nightmare on my old hand-me-down from x3 previous generations Zenith 19" color TV with the pronounced green tint because the CRT tube was going. It's all been straight downhill from there. My current big 4k Samsung LED OLED HDR 60" with Dolby 11.1 surround sound playing the latest near-photo-realistic RPGs can kiss my ass. Kiss. My. Ass. The thrill is gone, baby. The thrill is gone.
 

jebsmoker

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Nov 17, 2019
Messages
2,578
Insert Title Here Strap Yourselves In I helped put crap in Monomyth
I have NEVER enjoyed an RPG as much as my very first ones played, in the Year of Our Lord -- 1988 -- which were (in order): Battletech: The Crescent Hawk's Inception, Pool of Radiance, and last (but not least) Dragon Wars, all on my old Commodore 64 with a 1541 floppy disk drive that was the stuff of 8 double-sided double-density disk-swapping nightmare on my old hand-me-down from x3 previous generations Zenith 19" color TV with the pronounced green tint because the CRT tube was going. It's all been straight downhill from there. My current big 4k Samsung LED OLED HDR 60" with Dolby 11.1 surround sound playing the latest near-photo-realistic RPGs can kiss my ass. Kiss. My. Ass. The thrill is gone, baby. The thrill is gone.

i can relate. i'll probably never experience playing fallout 1 or morrowind on a shitty dell machine and being amazed by it ever again. only a very select few new games have knocked my socks off
 

newtmonkey

Arcane
Joined
Aug 22, 2013
Messages
1,725
Location
Goblin Lair
There's no way I can remember my very first CRPG, but it was either Ultima III, Pool of Radiance, Demon's Winter, or Temple of Apshai Trilogy. My earliest memories of playing CRPGs is that they felt absolutely massive and detailed, like an entire world stuffed on a few 5.25" floppies. I remember having a lot of fun reading the manuals cover to cover and planning out different parties.

The only games that have given me that feeling since then are all older games I've gone back and played/finished for the first time, like Wiz 1-3+5 (5 especially), Might & Magic 1, and Wasteland.
 

Ensi

Educated
Joined
Oct 28, 2016
Messages
69
My first RPG was Final Fantasy Tactics and it's still one of the best games ever made. I go through and play it every few years, something I don't do with any other game.

Second RPG was Secret of the Silver Blades, the AD&D SSI game. I liked it but I sucked at it, never got far.

Not exactly sure of the timeline but a bit later I played Fallout 1+2, Planescape: Torment, Diablo 1+2, Final Fantasy 7, Breath of Fire 3, Chrono Trigger, Deus Ex, KOTOR, Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale...I loved pretty much all of em, although tbh BG and ID didn't do as much for me as the rest. Prolly cuz fantasy settings suck.

Replayed BoF 3 earlier this year and had a great time. I've been replaying PS:T and it's not as good as I remember, although it's decent and I still think it was important at the time it came out.

re new games...occasionally one is good (I loved Disco Elysium), Age of Decadence was decent, Underrail was great, Shadowrun Dragonfall was great. Pillars of Eternity was okay. Pathfinder Kingmaker was pretty solid but I stopped playing when I got to the second chapter, need to pick it back up. Haven't cared for too many others lately. I always want to like games like Elex, Witcher 3, modern Elder Scrolls, Outer Worlds...then just can't give a shit whatsoever.
 
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Ladonna

Arcane
Joined
Aug 27, 2006
Messages
10,637
The Bards Tale, 1985.

"Wow, how deep is this game!! Look! the pictures move!!!11ONE!" and "Oh, wiped out again 10 steps from the adventurers guild. Where the fuck is Garthes Emporium?"

Not long afterwards Ultima IV: Mind blown. No words. SID music.

Nowadays, I have no inclination to replay them. I still play many oldies from the 80s, but those two are a strange mixture of too simplistic mixed with too much tedium. I can replay Goldbox games, Ultima V, Wasteland, Dragon Wars, even easy games like the Questron/Legacy of the Ancients series again and again, but my original RPGs, while magical at the time, are better memories than experiences to me now. Though I do enjoy listening to the SID tunes for Ultima IV, and the Bards melodies too.

I still have my C64, drives and 1801 monitor. Working perfectly.
 
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PrettyDeadman

Guest
Diablo 1.
Wow, nice graphics, good music.
What do I do? Never got pass the butcher.
I was 6 or 7 years old.
 
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*-*/\--/\~

Cipher
Joined
Jul 10, 2014
Messages
909
Ultima Underworld on my brothers 386. Not that the non-English 9 year old me could finish it, but I got hooked anyway.
 

hexer

Guest
Does "Sid Meier's pirates" count as a RPG?
I remember borrowing my friend's Commodore 64 in late 80s playing the game all the time and later trying to "hack" the savegame when I was stuck.
Of course, I had no idea what I was doing at the time.

But the true first RPG I played and replayed for 6 months straight was Fallout.
I remember being shocked at all the various things you could do and discover.
I was literally obsessed with it-- for example.. it was December 31st, 1997., 8 PM and at 9 PM we are leaving to a rave party to celebrate the New Year's Eve.

8:00 PM - I'm booting up Fallout and starting a new game
8:55 PM - My speedrun is over, roll the end game slides!
9:00 PM - I'm leaving the house and going to a rave party

I sometimes miss those carefree spontaneous days
 

Zumbabul

Savant
Joined
Jan 14, 2017
Messages
210
My first RPG was Wizardry 8.

I felt guilty for having sex wtih Al Sedex. After all, she is EVIL, and evil is WRONG! I felt like I'm a bad boy, who needs to be punished.
 

ItsChon

Resident Zoomer
Patron
Joined
Jul 1, 2018
Messages
5,381
Location
ÔµÖ€Ö‡ŐˇŐ¶
Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
I guess by default my first RPG was indeed Skyrim, though I hardly count it. My first proper RPG was in fact, Icewind Dale. I remember being shocked when I stepped outside of the Inn and I saw more than five NPCs. The small opening town felt far more alive than Skyrim ever did. I played through the game and beat it in a matter of days. I was entirely new to the D&D system, though I had limited exposure from the popular D&D youtube series Critical Role (Critical Role actually inspired me to look for D&D games, which led me to the IE games, which further led me to the CRPG book, which led me to the Codex. So another reason to hate Crit Role I guess).

After IWD I played PS:T and somehow loved it even more than IWD. I than played BG 1, but after going through the campaign, the expansion, Durlags, etc, I was IE'd out and couldn't be bothered to start BG 2. After that, I played various different RPGs (Lands of Lore, KoDP, etc), and the rest is Codex history. OP is right though, in that nothhing will beat the wonder and amazement I had when first playing IWD, and familiarizing myself with the D&D system. Holds a special place in my heart.
 

Starwars

Arcane
Joined
Jan 31, 2007
Messages
2,829
Location
Sweden
I actually can't quite remember which one was first but I *think* Eye of the Beholder was it. I was too young and didn't understand English well enough to really get any kind of grasp on it but I loved the feeling of danger and adventure. That's basically all I remember. I also remember playing Lands of Lore pretty early on.

But I didn't really start to fully appreciate cRPGs until Fallout, and then Baldur's Gate after for different reasons. Fallout 1 and 2 (which my brother got me as a Christmas present) and Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 are the games that really got me into cRPGs in a deeper way I'd say.
 

Darth Canoli

Arcane
Joined
Jun 8, 2018
Messages
5,687
Location
Perched on a tree
The first "digital" RPG i completed was probably Shining in the Darkness (Sega Megradrive/Genesis)

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The game was particularly unfair, you could fall through the floor and find yourself in the next level of the dungeon surrounded by high level monsters which left you two solutions, be lucky and find your way up quick or die.
Monsters could use desoul spells (insta kill) and i think, even mass desoul later on ...

That's also the game that had me drawing labyrinth maps (each level being a labyrinth ...), the only one though, was a nice experience but quite time consuming, well, i used small squares bloc notes, which made it easier.

Before this one, i had played a bit of Drakkhen, Phantasy Star II and M&M III but i didn't really play M&M III until way later, after playing HoMM II (and then the first one).

So, my first digital RPG was unfair, a bit tedious but strangely addictive.
 

ZagorTeNej

Arcane
Joined
Dec 10, 2012
Messages
1,980
...And how do they compare to any RPG you play today?

As a general rule, less organized and over-designed but far more fun, creative and unpredictable (with tons of hidden content). One good comparison to get my point is original Deus Ex compared to the new ones for example (yes, I consider Deus Ex to be an RPG) or BG and Pillows.

Also with little to no pandering to the current political/social climate, despite what ideologues (on Codex and elsewhere) would have you believe with their "everything is political BS", that shit just didn't matter back then, period.

If you were to play a game that was as good as your best game from years ago - do you think it would be as good as when you were a newbie

Of course, evolving tastes notwithstanding, a classic is a classic whether it came out 25 years ago or 5 years ago.

Same reason I'd love say Dark Souls 1 or Hollow Knight even if they came out in the 90s. They're great games that get it, both in terms of design/gameplay but atmosphere as well which is an element that is hard to nail down or even precisely define but very important nonethless.

I just finished Vampire Bloodlines again after not playing it for several years, and it's still fucking awesome for me. I don't get people that say they suffer from fatigue or that older graphics are unbearable.

Bloodlines is one of the absolute best, most atmospheric games ever created by an extremely talented group of individuals. I'd question the gaming taste of anyone who doesn't find it awesome no matter when they came in contact with it.
 

nikolokolus

Arcane
Joined
May 8, 2013
Messages
4,090
Tunnels of Doom on the TI-99/4a (which was also my first home home computer). Fantastic music, procedurally generated levels, talking statues, magic fountains, overhead tactical combat, 3D exploration (non wire-frame). Just about the perfect game for a budding 11 year old nerd in 1985. The only thing that really sucked ass was having to load data from a cassette storage tape, it took something like 4-5 minutes and just as long to save your game. Second RPG was probably Pools of Radiance on my best friend's IBM 386 clone a few years later, and then all of the gold box games after that once we got a PC of our own.

Damn, now I'm gonna have to find a TI emulator and fire that thing up again and see if it holds up.
 

Chippy

Arcane
Patron
Joined
May 5, 2018
Messages
6,037
Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
ZagorTeNej I played the first Deus Ex: HR when it came out, then got the director's cut in a sale. But the boss fights in the first iteration pissed me off so much, I never bothered with the DC.

I'm actually trying to play it now, and it's a bug-riddled mess. Game doesn't even shut on its own - I have to alt-ctrl-delete. Also has a "smooth operator" bug where you miss out on the XP if you have old save games or something; can't get that to work. Just had gang members shoot at me for no reason in a alleyway, so reloaded and no reaction from them at all.

One of the few games that I want to take seriously, (in the sense that you want to do an ironman mode) but manages to infuriate me as much as Green Beret did when I was a child...and that didn't have bugs. So not in any rush to buy the sequel now.
 
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Galdred

Studio Draconis
Patron
Developer
Joined
May 6, 2011
Messages
4,346
Location
Middle Empire
Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
The first ones I played were:
BAT
bat_004.png


215317-b-a-t-dos-screenshot-in-a-bar-trying-to-draw-the-girl-s-attention.png

Not really an RPG. More like a RPG/Adventure hybrid, but it had point based character creation, so my first thoughts were: is it safe to dump Charisma to 1 to be able to use the heaviest guns?
I felt awesome when I found the force field retailer and a hotel room I could use as my armory.

It is also from a time where games were not afraid to experiment with the weirdest of ideas:
It had a physical dongleware that needed to be inserted in your computer as copy protection/music card.
You had a programmable wrist computer, and you had to actually use it for things like:
- translate both robot and alien languages at the same time (without manually switching)
- wake you up when attacked during a nap.

Ishar
https://rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/ishar-series.77220/

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Given that it was on Atari STe, I was pretty awed by the graphics and the atmosphere. The combats were not super interesting, though (RT blobber with horrible UI and no auto Attack...).
But it was really good to find companions that had stats beyond the maximum allowed instead of the cripples with a backstory looking for a psychologist that are given to us these days.

Note: I don't think these games are really worth playing today.
 
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bloodlover

Arcane
Joined
Sep 5, 2010
Messages
2,039
Diablo 1 on PS1 for me. I had an Atari 2600 when I was a kid but I don't remember playing an RPG on it and on PC I was mostly an FPS fag. I remember having a lot of issues with The Butcher and then cheesing Leoric and his bloody archers. I don't remember even finishing the game on PS but I spent a lot of time playing it.

My first PC RPG came very late. I had a few friends that played the genre but it was very hard getting me into Wizardry or M&M. Even 20 years later I still have a hard time starting a game if I don't like it from the first hour or so but if it catches me... I spent my last Xmas playing Fallout 1.
 
Joined
Nov 3, 2016
Messages
425
Location
Georgie's shitter
My first was the game Dungeon, played on the University of Illinois mainframe, a very looong time ago (mid-1970s, and yes I'm an old scrotum). Hell, I'm so old I remember punched cards data processing.
 

Ialda

Learned
Joined
Oct 13, 2019
Messages
124
Galdred just wondering, as you were talking about Ishar, have you ever tried Crystals of Arborea ?
 

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