Touhou Labyrinth of Touhou: Hardcore PC dungeon-crawler - See OP for links etc.

[Damned Registrations]

Games aren't proper RPGs if you can't defeat your enemy with ingenius tactics like firing a ranged weapon while walking backward to make sure the enemy never makes a return attack. Us plebieans don't understand because we can't think of such awesome strategies elite minds like his can. As far as plot and lore goes... don't make me laugh. What worthy plot has been written in the last 15 years?
This one?

If you want general rpg discussion limited to fallout 1+2, PST and Twitcher, there'd be about 3 posts a week, tops.

 

[Jaesun]

fallout 1+2, PST and Twitcher were the only cRPG's ever made?

 

[Kawaii Theurgist]

@ Hitotsume-Kun

Yes, precisely. But I digress...

What's the point of entering a thread about a number crunching, spreadsheet loving, combat heavy dungeon crawler and then start whining about number crunching, spreadsheet loving, combat heavy dungeon crawlers?

Let me explain you something important about this game, so you can put it on perspective: You play it right on the automap when outside of combat or the spreadsheets. Got it? There are no graphics other than the automap, a pretty background, and the portraits when you aren't killing shit, and the only animation is SD Reimu walking around an automap while hitting event icons. What are you doing here if you want more from a game than OCDing about numbers, multipliers, and damage formulas? This is a dungeon crawler for people who wants to crunch numbers, then create a battle plan based on those numbers, and then pit their numbers against the numbers of evil bosses according to the already mentioned battle plan. Period. For thirty floors.

Why so angry about it? Because you don't like the visuals? Good for you, then leave the thread and go back to play something whose visuals you like, no one is forcing you to be here. But the game IS a cRPG. It has numbers that control the result of your actions, and you control the growth of those numbers, as well as which sets of numbers to pit against which set of enemy numbers. So there. Be happy.

 

[1eyedking]

Hey 1eyedking, do you like any pre-Fallout cRPGs then? Do you like the Gold Box games? Dark Sun: Shattered Lands? How about Wasteland? Dragon Wars? Wizardry VI and VII? Do you even like any of the Ultima games?

Somewhat liked Ultima 7. I thought of it as a container simulator mostly, though. Combat was abysmal.

Wizardry games I consider utterly tasteless, what with all the furry, space-travel, technology & magic (at least Arcanum designers were cautious enough to handle this with the importance it warrants), and completely uninspired setting and plot. Gameplay is passable, and since movement isn't grid-based a lot of tactical depth is lost and thus I find it boring. I could have had a laugh at least it if it had had interesting death animations, but no. ONLY THE ELITE CAN TRULY APPRECIATE EMOTIONLESS GAMES and all that.

As for Goldbox games, I found combat to be interesting and entertaining, though I yawned at the complete utter lack of purpose of it all: world lore, character motivation, economy, item descrptions, definable plot...they're all nonexistent. It would have been nice to have fought all of those massive battles for a reason other than GETTIN' PHAT LEWT AND XP SO TO GET PHATTER LEWT AND XP SO TO GET... Also, animations would have helped immensely, and this is coming from a guy that doesn't get bothered with clipping, lack of bloom, bump-mapping, and utlra-hi-res textures. If I want to imagine shit happening I read a book.

Dark Sun I haven't tried. I remember it crashing constantly so I never bothered again.

Dragon Wars and Wasteland were fucking screen-savers, even worse than the Wizardry series.

 

[torpid]

So basically you don't like the RPG genre; you just like a handful of games released in the late 90s that tickled your LARPy/artfag bone with "world lore, character motivation, economy, item descrptions, definable plot" -- which are, aside from the plot, secondary characteristics that have little bearing on basic RPG gameplay. The artfag version of Skyway.

 

[Johannes]

Hard to like something he never played I'd think.

Editops didn't notice there was a page 4... Intended to respond to this post:
http://rpgcodex.net/phpBB/posting.php?m ... &p=1683634

 

[Jaesun]

So basically you don't like the RPG genre; you just like a handful of games released in the late 90s that tickled your LARPy/artfag bone with "world lore, character motivation, economy, item descrptions, definable plot" -- which are, aside from the plot, secondary characteristics that have little bearing on basic RPG gameplay. The artfag version of Skyway.

We have a winner!

 

[1eyedking]

So basically you don't like the RPG genre; you just like a handful of games released in the late 90s that tickled your LARPy/artfag bone with "world lore, character motivation, economy, item descrptions, definable plot" -- which are, aside from the plot, secondary characteristics that have little bearing on basic RPG gameplay. The artfag version of Skyway.

So suddenly there's something wrong with only liking good games?

Yes, those had good art direction, but at least that art direction gave me a reason to stand the sub-par combat (in the case of Twitcher & PS:T). And for fuck's sake it's not as if the Wizardry series and the Goldbox games had deviantly well-designed encounters and had incredible tactical depth. They didn't. Games like IWD2 make much more use of terrain, for example, than their ancestors. Even more, if I want an actual intellectual challenge in a game I play MP chess. And if you say you like challenging games but with character classes, dragons, and an actual fictional world rather than something completely abstract then you're being a hypocrite.

But well-thought-out worlds, plots, & characters are hard to come by (more nowadays), and this happens in other artistic mediums, too. Even so, you can't get that feeling good art-directed games give you from books, for example; that "All" feeling Melville and Hawthorne talk about in their letters.

I still enjoy games completely devoid of anything 'artistic' like Civilization, but that's beside the point. I seriously don't get the point why people grind in games for the sake of grinding. I get no satisfaction from watching numbers grow exponentially because I know it's a game and not my bank account.


So at least give me some good art while I'm at it!

 

[Jaesun]

Let me guess, Fallout was your first cRPG. That would explain a lot.

edit: quoting for great prosperity:

Hey 1eyedking, do you like any pre-Fallout cRPGs then? Do you like the Gold Box games? Dark Sun: Shattered Lands? How about Wasteland? Dragon Wars? Wizardry VI and VII? Do you even like any of the Ultima games?

Somewhat liked Ultima 7. I thought of it as a container simulator mostly, though. Combat was abysmal.

Wizardry games I consider utterly tasteless, what with all the furry, space-travel, technology & magic (at least Arcanum designers were cautious enough to handle this with the importance it warrants), and completely uninspired setting and plot. Gameplay is passable, and since movement isn't grid-based a lot of tactical depth is lost and thus I find it boring. I could have had a laugh at least it if it had had interesting death animations, but no. ONLY THE ELITE CAN TRULY APPRECIATE EMOTIONLESS GAMES and all that.

As for Goldbox games, I found combat to be interesting and entertaining, though I yawned at the complete utter lack of purpose of it all: world lore, character motivation, economy, item descrptions, definable plot...they're all nonexistent. It would have been nice to have fought all of those massive battles for a reason other than GETTIN' PHAT LEWT AND XP SO TO GET PHATTER LEWT AND XP SO TO GET... Also, animations would have helped immensely, and this is coming from a guy that doesn't get bothered with clipping, lack of bloom, bump-mapping, and utlra-hi-res textures. If I want to imagine shit happening I read a book.

Dark Sun I haven't tried. I remember it crashing constantly so I never bothered again.

Dragon Wars and Wasteland were fucking screen-savers, even worse than the Wizardry series.

 

[MMXI]

So basically you don't like the RPG genre; you just like a handful of games released in the late 90s that tickled your LARPy/artfag bone with "world lore, character motivation, economy, item descrptions, definable plot" -- which are, aside from the plot, secondary characteristics that have little bearing on basic RPG gameplay. The artfag version of Skyway.

We have a winner!

I baited him. Give me some credit.

 

[torpid]

So basically you don't like the RPG genre; you just like a handful of games released in the late 90s that tickled your LARPy/artfag bone with "world lore, character motivation, economy, item descrptions, definable plot" -- which are, aside from the plot, secondary characteristics that have little bearing on basic RPG gameplay. The artfag version of Skyway.

So suddenly there's something wrong with only liking good games?

Yes, those had good art direction, but at least that art direction gave me a reason to stand the sub-par combat (in the case of Twitcher & PS:T). And for fuck's sake it's not as if the Wizardry series and the Goldbox games had deviantly well-designed encounters and had incredible tactical depth. They didn't. Games like IWD2 make much more use of terrain, for example, than their ancestors. Even more, if I want an actual intellectual challenge in a game I play MP chess. And if you say you like challenging games but with character classes, dragons, and an actual fictional world rather than something completely abstract then you're being a hypocrite.

But well-thought-out worlds, plots, & characters are hard to come by (more nowadays), and this happens in other artistic mediums, too. Even so, you can't get that feeling good art-directed games give you from books, for example; that "All" feeling Melville and Hawthorne talk about in their letters.

I still enjoy games completely devoid of anything 'artistic' like Civilization, but that's beside the point. I seriously don't get the point why people grind in games for the sake of grinding. I get no satisfaction from watching numbers grow exponentially because I know it's a game and not my bank account.


So at least give me some good art while I'm at it!

That doesn't change my point. There's nothing wrong with only liking good games, but if for you the only good RPGs are 4-5 games from the late 90s, then you don't really like the genre.

So basically you don't like the RPG genre; you just like a handful of games released in the late 90s that tickled your LARPy/artfag bone with "world lore, character motivation, economy, item descrptions, definable plot" -- which are, aside from the plot, secondary characteristics that have little bearing on basic RPG gameplay. The artfag version of Skyway.

We have a winner!

 

[Jaesun]

Indeed, which begs the question, why does he even come here?

Updated My TheTrueFaceOf1eyedking.txt

 

[1eyedking]

I played a couple of RPGs before Fallout, but none of them left a memorable impression.

So if I had played Pools of Radiance first I would think differently now? That's akin to saying all the worth those games had can only be seen through a nostalgia eyeglass.

My good man, I have dug out some gems from the past that I missed, such as X-COM & Thief (which I didn't remember as being good, something that I'll never forgive myself for), but for all the love of God I couldn't partake in all the grinding the Goldbox games demanded from my soul, nor could I turn a blind eye to all the ridiculousness of the Wizardry setting.

So fling on, crazy flingers.

 

[MMXI]

The Gold Box games require grinding?

 

[1eyedking]

Yes. Some encounters serve no purpose at all but to give you loot and experience, their existence unjustified by any type of surrounding circumstances.

I'm surprised by goblins. Endless fun. Love the pretentious comments in the vid, by the way.

 

[Jaesun]

Thank god Fallout had none of that bullshit!

 

[MMXI]

So RPGs should only throw encounters at you when you are ready and willing? Where's the challenge in that?

 

[1eyedking]

So RPGs should only throw encounters at you when you are ready and willing? Where's the challenge in that?

It's OK, as long as its justified in the game world. Fallout did that with the worldmap random encounters, for example, but as we all know all of them were tailored to the specific area you were in, i.e.: you wouldn't find Super-mutants far away from Mariposa, Enclave troopers from Navarro, Vault City patrols...you get it.

Ah, I used a bad example. Pool of Radiance wasn't that bad, in fact I recall some monsters asking for items in exchange of their silence. Primitive, but cute; still, it's nowhere near Fallout's level of quality.

 

[MMXI]

In many ways Pool of Radiance did it better than Fallout. There actually seemed to be mechanics behind avoiding fights through various means such as "dialogue". Everything was pretty much scripted in Fallout.

 

[Jaesun]

So RPGs should only throw encounters at you when you are ready and willing? Where's the challenge in that?

It's OK, as long as its justified in the game world. Fallout did that with the worldmap random encounters, for example, but as we all know all of them were tailored to the specific area you were in, i.e.: you wouldn't find Super-mutants far away from Mariposa, Enclave troopers from Navarro, Vault City patrols...you get it.

Ah, I used a bad example. Pool of Radiance wasn't that bad, in fact I recall some monsters asking for items in exchange of their silence. Primitive, but cute; still, it's nowhere near Fallout's level of quality.

You honestly think that a game made in 1988 should have the same exact mechanics in Fallout?

This is what 1eyedking believes.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Got it set up. Played a bit, enough to get my party to level 2 and make a 2nd trip into the dungeon, promptly getting myself killed trying to stretch my weakass tiny party too thin. I'm liking the mechanics though, except for one thing: is there some way in game of finding out what the enemy's stats are, or do they expect you to trial and error spells against everything and take notes (Or read someone else's notes)? Although I can make strategic decisions on party makeup and stat distribution in the abscense of enemy data, tactically it's rather aggravating to have a moveset that factors in 2 different kinds of defense and an elemental affinity AND evasion without knowing any of those numbers.

 

[1eyedking]

In many ways Pool of Radiance did it better than Fallout. There actually seemed to be mechanics behind avoiding fights through various means such as "dialogue". Everything was pretty much scripted in Fallout.

You honestly think that a game made in 1988 should have the same exact mechanics in Fallout?

This is what 1eyedking believes.

English, motherfuckers! Do you read it? I didn't question the mechanics, but the coherence of random encounters. Their justification, their reason of being.

Stop with the brainfarts already.

 

[MMXI]

But on that topic Pool of Radiance does well too. The encounters fit right in with the area you are exploring.

 

[1eyedking]

Yes, and that's why I took back what I said, PoR isn't that bad. You can still encounter goblins, undead, and rats nesting in the same continuous area IIRC, though.

Wizardry with its Ratmen + Green Goo + Crabs combos, on the other hand...

Also, medieval dungeons with computers . You can totally make a "what the fuck am I playing" macro with Wizardry.

 

[MMXI]

Actually, Wizardry VII does a good job also. You get wandering groups roaming the land doing shit and taking items you need.