Lucas' 260 RPGs Corner

Thank you!

I was interested in Wizard's Crown, Spelljammer, UnReal World and Nahlakh, so I will be giving them a try, as well as the others you mentioned. I'll kepe in mind what you said about those other non-RPGs too.

I'm working on the pedit5 summary at the moment, so I'll post it soon.

 

I'd stick Lords of Midnight on that list, its just at that sweet spot where RPG an strategy were kinda symbiotic, someat we need a return to if you ask me.

 

1) pedit5: The Dungeon​

Hello and welcome to the start of what will be a long and infuriating journey. I'm good at sugarcoating my words in spanish, but I do not feel like sugarcoating them in English, so let's get to it already.

The first game on my list is, allegedly, the oldest surviving cRPG ever made. Its name is pedit5, also known as "The Dungeon". You can read more about it on Wikipedia, but I'll quote a relevant section of the article:

[QUOTE=Wikipedia]pedit5 was created by Rutherford while he was a member of the Population and Energy Group at University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. There, each group was assigned a limited number of program slots on the school's mainframe, with the Population and Energy Group having program slots names "pedit1" through "pedit5". The group had used the first three slots, and Rutherford was able to code his game into the fifth slot, which became the game's default name. Because at the time the game was not seen to be an appropriate use of the resources by system administrators, but Rutherford would continue to add it back.[/QUOTE]

​

​

The first cRPG offers, accordingly to the genre, some bit of background for our upcoming adventure. Of insignificant notice is the fact that Caer Omn reminds me a lot of The Witcher's Kaer Morhen, in name only. Fun!

The goal of The Dungeon is to earn 20.000 experience points, through defeating enemies, finding gold, silver, and jewelry (which all translate into experience), as well as new swords. The catch of The Dungeon is that your experience is computed ONLY when you leave The Dungeoon. Early on, you will be leaving and returning the game so that your experience computes, your health and spells are restored, and you can level up.

As you start the game, you get to create your first character. Now, there's no "reroll" button. BUT, with a bit of intelligence, you can make your own reroll button. It's a matter of pressing ALT+B to return to the previous screen, and pressing ALT+L to go back to character creation, with new stats. Here's my first (of many) character, aptly named "Sigourn". It's my favorite made up character name, I've been using it for some time already.

​

With my character now created, it's time to enter ze dungeon. I should say I will be using the (legally) free version of Grid Cartographer to help guide my way around the game, and I will say it: I will be using the (legally) free version of Grid Cartographer to help guide my way around the game. This will help me get better acquaintanced with The Dungeon.

​

The graphics are crude, but surprisingly appealing. I'm a sucker for games that are graphically simple, since they tend to look and age much better than games made during the 80s.

The game loads on section of the dungeon at a time. The small openings represent doors which you have to (B)reak your way through in order to enter the following room. My ignorance tells me this is some kind of limitation the game has, else I don't really see the point in having to break through doors (and repeatedly failing in the attempt, I should add). Hence, we already find the first annoying thing in the first cRPG! Hurray!

​

And now you see the second. The game happily throws level 5 enemies at you, which in the early stages of the game (first 30 minutes, let's say) is a death sentence. As you can expect, this particular scenario ended like this:

​

It will become a regular sight in the game, but a necessary one: as I mentioned, the goal is to get 20.000 experience points. The real challenge in the game is having enough luck to make it to the 20.000 experience points. If enemies were limited to areas based on their level, I could easily grind my way up through the game.

​

Let's get back to character creation. It is important to know, in this game, that Dexterity is a very relevant attribute. In the game, you basically press (F)ight and the game determines the outcome of the battle. A higher Dexterity allows you to strike first. How I suppose the game works is through "turn-based" combat, but you never see any of it. You either win, or die. So I try to have my characters have good Dexterity (above 10), "good" Strength (above 10) and good hit points (7 or more).

It's a good head start to The Dungeon, but because of how encounters work, you may well die on your first room after creating an incredibly character.

​

​

Which is basically what just happened. R.I.P. Sigourn2, you won't be remember.

​

Now, Drake here has great stats, except for Constitution. Let's see how he fares!

​

​

​

In this game, as I said earlier, treasure equals experience if you manage to exit the Dungeon. Gold has more value than silver, which is practically meaningless, but the real treats are jewelry, which are in the value of thousands of gold. I kid you not: it is possible to level up finding just one piece of jewelry and returning to the entrance.

​

You can even find enemies defending treasure! You can cast (M)agic, my favorite spell is Sleep as it allows you to (NEXT) your way into the enemies bowels... asuming the spell lands in the first place, that is.

​

Of course, the magic of pedit5 is that not everything is as simple as it appears, and you have to constantly recheck your stats to see how much hit points you have left. This time, however, I forgot to do that.

​

And the consequence is well known by now.

​

Rashomon, another character with great stats. I usually spend less than a minute rerolling my characters. I figure that spending more is pointless when you can die to a level 5 enemy if you are unlucky enough to run into one at the beginning of the game. The programmers added a (R)un command to give you the chance to exit an encounter. However, it appears it only works (and sparsely) in corridors.

​

Naturally, this time it didn't work, so cue "With great regret" screen...



Overall, it is a fun game. My highest score so far has been 8900, maybe a little more. Here's my last screenshot, displaying my stats, my experience, equipment (you can find only two swords in the game, +1 and +2, and it is automatically equipped when you find it). It also displays how many spells do I have available: there are two tiers, tier 1 and tier 2, and it works pretty much like magic works in D&D: once you cast a spell, you have to rest (exit the game) to be able to cast it again.

​

I haven't finished it yet, but I'll try to do it today. There's excitement in defeating enemies, amassing gold and experience, and running back into the entrance hoping you don't accidentally come across a new enemy ready to beat you back to the death screen.

Join later (if you want to, senpai) to know more about Lucas' Fantastic cRPG Adventure!​

 

I'm not good with dem words.
If you really want reviews about more obscure games from this list inform me, and if I would remember this game, I'll try to cobble something.

Elvira, eh? At first I was confused that you don't have review, and then I remembered that only Black Cat, phelot and SCO played it.

 

1) pedit5: The Dungeon - COMPLETED​

It's over! ​

​

After a few sessions, I can finally say I have completed the first computer RPG ever designed that is still available for playing. Considering most Argentinians cannot speak English; considering that most Argentinians who can speak English don't bother with videogames; considering that most Argentinians who can speak English and bother with videogames don't bother with old PLATO mainframe games... I think it is safe to say I'm one of the few, if not the first, to win pedit5. cue pat in the back

The journey was short, but tough. There were a few things I forgot to mention in my first post about this game, and they are as follows:

- You can play this game through cyber1, but you have to request to join. It's fairly simple, though.
- The game is slow. This is most likely because you are playing it "online". While it doesn't seem like a huge problem, it gets annoying having to wait until your commands are recognized. In particular, this makes dungeon mapping a bit difficult when you don't know if the character has already moved (as you saw in the screenshots, the map displays only five squares at a time: top and bottom, left and right, and the one you stand in). So in long corridors, I found it was best to leave them for last.
- Pterm, the emulator to play these games, uses some fairly strange key combinations. For example, I couldn't just use "Esc" when I wanted to return to the previous screen. I had to use CTRL/ALT+B. And if I wanted to create a character, I just couldn't click "(C)reate a character" or "Enter", I had to use CTRL/ALT+L. These combinations, given how often do you die, again, get tiresome in the long run. In particular, one time I misspressed my keys and went back to the main menu of the emulator. Fuck.
- pedit5 is the first (remaining) cRPG to have secret doors! You can (B)ash the walls in search for them, but the normal approach is just to walk around the dungeon, and if your character spots a secret door, it will be visible in your display.
- In addition to (m)agic, you also have, what I asume, are (c)leric spells. You can cure yourself, for example, in case you really need those extra hitpoints on your way to the entrance. Personally, I never used any spell that wasn't "Sleep" and "Cure Wounds".
- When playing the game, sometimes I wondered for what purpose were we given the choice to pick up gold, silver and jewelry, as opposed to picking it right away. More on that in a second.

All that said, here's what my character looked like before leaving the dungeon. Notice the perfect 20000 experience points necessary to beat the game.

And, of course, the Hall of Fame (in your face, Sapkowski!):​

​

Here's where the previously mentioned "why don't I just pick up everything" question was answered (or, at least, possibly answered). The first number is the total experience I had when I left the dungeon. The second number is the amount of gold amassed during my journey. And the third number, what % of experience points were earned through hard, honest, unpredictable battle.

And it hit me right then that, unlike me, some poor bastards had to fight tons and tons of monsters to get the experience needed to finish the game (Cecil, for example). The strongest enemy in the game, a Dragon (which I managed to defeat in a previous run, though I didn't encounter any in this one), is worth around 700 experience points. By comparison, any jewel is worth AT LEAST 1000 gold (and thus, 1000 experience points). And I got plenty of those, as you can see by the total gold I earned. Jewels are particularly useful in the early game, when they propel you to the highest levels very quickly.

Now my final tasks before I put the game to rest are to map the dungeon, which turned out to be much bigger than I originally expected. Then, and only then, it will be time for... dnd: The Game of Dungeons.



And don't forget to mention which one of these do you think are worth playing!

 

My first thought on reading the title is



I hope that you do as felipepepep says and drop those games that you find boring/bad if the reviews agree that they don't get any better at the end. Otherwise, you're going to burn out. Fast.

As I see it, there's no need to put in 33560 hrs into a game if a) you don't enjoy it and b) you've already seen all the important stuff there is to see.

 

I'll put games on hold if I get bored of them, but I intend to play the ones in the list, and complete them, and post updates in the intended order. Of course, nothing stops me from playing tons of games at a time, switching as I get bored, but I know first hand that doing that usually makes each individual experience poorer.

The hardest part IMO is getting through the 80s and early 90s. It should be a smooth sail from then on.

 

2) dnd: The Game of Dungeons​

I'll preface this by saying one thing: that an RPG is 41 years old (holy shit) doesn't mean it's simple.

pedit5 was, by all accounts, a fairly basic game. You had one maze with a set layout. You always started in the same place. Getting in an out was simple. Mapping it was straight-forward (no, I haven't been mapped it completely yet), and the machinations of the game, I believe, are fairly easy to understand: get enough experience, leave the dungeon in one piece.

If pedit5 is Fallout 4, then dnd is arguably Fallout, but mixed with Wizardry IV, which I haven't played yet of course, but its difficulty is legendary. And trust me: this game is pretty brutal.

​

What makes me say that? Well, I could post around 20 in-game pictures detailing the different elements of the game, but I'll take the easy-pleasing route and describe them myself:

- This game, as opposed to pedit5, has teleports that take you from one level of its 20-level dungeon to another. You always land on the same level when using a teleport (if I use a teleport in level 1 that lands in level 2, I'll always land there), but you never know where in that level will you exactly land. I'm ashamed to admit I started mapping the dungeon without this knowledge, so I always associated teleports with a precise location.
- While you always start in the same place, there are three paths you can take: the random path, another path that allows you to return where you started (for what purpose, though) and a third one that is a one-way path into another room. Again, I'm ashamed to admit I always took the "random" path and never bothered to take the other two paths until late at night.
- Everything you find can and will most likely be trapped. You can find treasure, magic items (plenty of these as well, not just your standard Sword +1 and Sword +2 like pedit5 had), books you can read that increase or reduce your statistics (if not outright kill you), as well as potions, among other things. Of note is the fact that you can only carry so much gold depending on your Strength, and your IQ determines your success when attempting to read books.
- Your Dexterity helps you in running away from battles, but your success also depend on your surroundings: if you are locked against a walll, it will be impossible for you to run away. On the other hand, if you have three possible routes to take, running away is much easier.
- Similarly to pedit5, as you gain experience and gold you can increase your hitpoints. And trust me: you will need them, as the strongest enemy guarding the Orb you need to recover and return to the surface can dish out 100.000 hitpoints of damage. In other words: you better map the dungeon very well before even attempting to recover the Orb, lest you are unable to return to the surface and get your ass handed to you by increasingly pissed off monsters.

​

​

​

These images provide a good explanation of the plot of the game, and the main objective. The main objective, IMO, would be to survive long enough to even be able to grab the fucking Orb. Needless to say, I'm still mapping level 1 and 2.

​

The character creation screen is fairly simple, and works pretty much like pedit5, except you are given a convenient reroll button. Stats are in average higher than those I got in the last game, and they really come in handy in dnd, as your character won't die to a level 5 Medusa in his first fight, rendering the rerolling pointless.

​

You have Magic and Cleric spells, just like in pedit5 (hmmmm), and the amount of encounters you will face really make these a necessity. As you gain more gold and experience you will gain more spells to use in your encounters.

​

Fighting works exactly like in pedit5, meaning I didn't have to get used to a new system. You have your typical fight, evade, magic, and cleric skills. The common outcome of these fights, if you haven't read the mechanics of the game, is this:

​

dnd is HARD. It's hard because the game is actively trying to kill you. In most other games, enemies are fed to you with the express purpose of giving you more gold, experience, and loot. In here, it is recommended that you try to avoid enemies for as long as you can to be able to map the dungoen, and only then try to become stronger to survive.

My experience so far tells me I won't be done with this game this week, or the next one, or the other. It will sadly be some time before I post a worthwile update on the game. With exams in two weeks and lots of postponed study to catch up with, I won't have that much time to give this cruel attempt of an RPG the attention it deserves.

 

inb4 abandoned.

Also, not sure if I am even interested in your opinion about CRPGs because..

more wisdom by Lucas9 (open) more wisdom by Lucas9 (close)

Sorry, but I think you are just an attention-whoring weeaboo dumbass; but hey, prove me wrong by going through with this project.

 

fite me IRL

serious edit: I still have the same opinion. It's easy to call it attention-whoring when you outright dismiss it but pay no attention to the facts.

As I explained in that quote, there are tons of more productive things you can do than playing videogames. Notice how I am not playing this one out of fun though, but more of "obligation". So yeah, given the choice: "hey Lucas, if you read the Illiad it will count as having won dnd", I wouldn't give it a second thought.

edit 2: I don't understand what my favorite games have to do with this, though. Are you seriously implying Skyrim and Fallout 3 are in any way or form better games than Final Fantasy?

 

If I wasn't playing CRPGs I'd probably be a menace to society.

 

Don't mess with him. I read this thread with tarried breath, it's miraculous incline of Lucas-CRPGs are for roleplaying-9.
He already got +10 points in my book for these two PLATO games.

 

lets wait and see until he burns out, will happen sooner than later

 

Playing 10 PLATO games or 10 rogue-likes in a row will ensure burnout. Better to insert some other, different games in between.

 

..I am saying that you created an account and then rapidly build your 'identity' on systematically shitting on CRPGs including some beloved classics while praising the brilliance of Final Fantasy, so you will excuse me if I call bullshit on your attention seeking old school hardcore blog, for now.

But as I said, prove me wrong.

 

To you 8 months is "rapidly"? I find it funny you quote posts from a thread specifically made to trigger Codexers, and a post from a game of favorite games which, last time I checked, isn't supposed to be a "show off your amazing favorite games" thread.

And the oldest post is from October, so... yeah, "rapidly" is an overstatement.

 

hey, lucas, i fully support this project, but don't forget to get a tan, 'k?

 

2) dnd: The Game of Dungeons - Update #1​

Hi guys. This is a small update on my progress through the game. Everything I said earlier is still true: the game is freaking hard. There are four contributing factors to this, all closely related to each other:

- There are twenty levels to the dungeon.
- Getting stronger means having to go deeper and deeper into the dungeon to gain increasingly bigger amounts of gold. For comparison: gold in level 1 tends to be around 10 to 100 pieces of gold, whereas in level 3, for example, you can easily get amounts of 1500.
- Going deeper into the dungeon is a suicide task, however. I really mean it. The most important thing to do when you first enter a new level is start mapping it and find a ladder to the upper level as quickly as you can. Otherwise, you will repeatedly die in that level until you manage to find a ladder. In other words, you will repeatedly waste time making a strong character that can live long enough to find a ladder. It sucks. And there's 20 levels to map.
- The infuriating use of teleports as opposed to classic ladders make this possible the most difficult dungeon to map. You never know where you are going to land.
- The layout of the levels is 9x9. This is vital in understanding the layout of the dungeon too: in level 2, for example, I managed to piece together different sections of the level I had mapped, thanks to this knowledge.
- Because I'm using the free version of Grid Cartographer, mapping the dungeon is more difficult since I generally have to redo my mapping from scratch (for example, when I've finally understood the layout of a level I have to put together all the pieces). This takes time.
- For reference, here's what I've managed to map over the course of two days (if you are interested in playing this game in the future, maybe you will want to map the game yourself):

Show Spoiler Hide Spoiler

- The bad news is that this takes too long and I'll have two busy weeks incoming. But after that, I can get to playing the game regularly again.
- The good news is that I can create a character and have it stored, and create a different one. So I can alternate between my good character, Sigourn, and a random schmuck I'll use to map the dungeon. This will definitely allow me to keep my sanity.
- The bad news is that I just realized the above is not true, so I'll have to map the dungeon from start to end, and only then be able to play the game properly. Hurray...

Let's talk about a few more quirks of this game that I overlooked in the last post:

- You can fall through pits into lower dungeon levels. Not only that, but depending on your Dexterity, you can manage to hang onto other levels. A quick transportation method, I suspect, asuming you are strong enough to defeat whatever may be waiting for you.
- Just like in pedit5, you can find secret doors. Unlike pedit5, you always have to bump into them yourself to figure out where they are. I don't bump into every wall myself, as doing so can cause enemies to spawn. Instead, I bump into places where I "suspect" there should be a secret wall. So far I, judging from what I have mapped, there are no sections of a level locked out from each other (which was my initial suspicion). There's always a secret wall that lets you access to another section of the dungeon, and possibly, a ladder towards the surface.
- There's also an "autofight" option, where you fight enemies lower than the level you input into the game. Extremely useful when you are so strong level 1 and 2 enemies are a joke.

All things considered, it may be a while before I post another meaningful update. I did say this before, but I forgot some pretty cool things to talk about, plus I found out about others worth mentioning plus a map that says "I'm not just talking out of my ass".

What I'll probably do is post an update for every 5 levels of the dungeon I complete. So, in theory, there should be four more updates before I post the final update where I win this fucker: update 2 with levels 1-5, update 3 with levels 6-10, update 4 with levels 11-15, update 5 with levels 16-20, and lastly, update 6 with a beautiful winning screen. Else, if I only posted one update in the end, it would take weeks, people would forget about this, and nobody would care about calling me out on it.

Wish me luck!

 

Also considering Spiderweb games.
Blades of Exile/Blades of Avernum is construction kit for Exile/Avernum-style games.

First three Avernums are just remakes of Exiles and really inferior compared to them.

 

Thanks for the comment, I just checked on Wikipedia and apparently it does contain a few scenarios. I'm avoiding anything whose purpose is solely to let me create games (which is why I'm leaving out Forgotten Realms: Unlimited Adventures, among others).

Since we are at it, I made a list with games I had excluded and others that already were in my tentative list. These I will give a go, but there are no warranties I'll complete them, mostly because I'm not sure about them.

On the subject of PLATO games, I decided I will play them all, but only to the point where I understand them. After reading on them, they are best described as offline MMORPGs: with the exception of pedit5, which can be easily won in a few days, the rest of the games are way too long and heavily biased towards "beat your friends' score!", which is something I'm not interested in. And you can really see it: dnd already has 20 floors which are a pain in the ass to map, extremely repetitive mechanics, lots and lots and lots and lots of grinding. And the rest are just as worse. I want to play until I'm acquaintanced with most of the things the games have to offer, but playing for hundreds of hours is not something I want to do.

IF I encounter a similar game in the future (I doubt it), I'll probably do the same thing.

 

this was pretty much my experience with the plato games as well

 

Ctrl+F : krondor

Not found.

Lucas9 !

 

They are in the main list, this is an additionnal list of "maybe" games.

 

Oh okay then.