Old RPGs: Should I even bother?

[undead dolphin hacker]

I'm coming close to finishing Wizardry 8 and was sort of in the mood for another grindy game with a party building focus. These are mostly "traditional" RPGs, and by "traditional" I mean "old."

I've got a couple in my closet, Wizardry 7 Gold and Realms of Arnika: Star Trail. Two classics, problem is, I can't seem to get past the oldtimey design, especially in terms of the UI.

I consider my minimum level of tolerance to be World of Xeen or Natuk/Helherron/PotWS. Anything clunkier than that starts to grate on me.

So would either of these games be worth plowing through until I can tolerate them? Or do you have any other recommendations?

 

[afewhours]

Star Trail did so much to hook me on RPGs, I can't do anything but recommend it. It's a game of quite particular tastes - if the idea of your party dying from starvation and catching diseases from not having decent blankets puts you off then you may not like it, but you really should give it at least one proper go.

The combat is awesome as well. Star Trail's all about the details. Once you get into them, you probably won't even notice the graphics. I think it still looks quite pretty, myself, but I'll take vibrant old-school over dull next-gen any day.

 

[hakuroshi]

Both games are more then worth trying.

 

[Binary]

Do yourself a favor and go get Ultima 7

 

[RK47]

Grindy? Party Based? Non clunky?
Jagged Alliance 2.

 

[undead dolphin hacker]

Do yourself a favor and go get Ultima 7

Not interested, tried it years ago and couldn't stand the basic mechanics/combat.

Grindy? Party Based? Non clunky?
Jagged Alliance 2.

Tried that again recently and lost interest pretty quick. Without 1.13, the game is stupid because you're attacked by guys with rifles and those rifles mysteriously disappear after you kill the guys. With 1.13, the game is overwhelming.

 

[RK47]

Overwhelming in what way. Too much loot?

 

[undead dolphin hacker]

Overwhelming in what way. Too much loot?

That's part of it. I think the biggest issue is the game is just downright tedious on every level, and 1.13 multiplies the number of levels by ten or twenty. The game is deliberate to the point of pain-inducing.

I've done some reading and see that the Wizardries prior to 8 don't automap and apparently don't have an auto-log either. They're all immediately thrown out. I want to play a game, not write a journal and draw a map.

The Realms of Arkania games have auto- stuff and I'll probably give Star Trail a shot. Though I will have to download it since the one I have is on 3.5" disks and I don't even have a 3.5" drive anymore.

 

[afewhours]

The Realms of Arkania games have auto- stuff and I'll probably give Star Trail a shot. Though I will have to download it since the one I have is on 3.5" disks and I don't even have a 3.5" drive anymore.

Please tell me you won't automate the combat. The combat rocks.

 

[Section8]

I've got a couple in my closet, Wizardry 7 Gold

I'd steer clear of Wizardry 7 Gold. It does add some nice features, like keeping the automap on the screen and useful, and the integrated hint book, but there were lots of little bugs that made it very annoying when compared to vanilla Wizardry 7. The biggest thing for me was tying all delays into sound termination - you have to wait until a sound finishes playing before anything else is allow to happen. You can disable sound and that fixes it, but then you have no sound. Find a copy of the vanilla dos version and run it through DosBox. It still has some annoying aspects, but if anything turns you off the game, it's more likely to be the repeated raping of your party more than the interface.

 

[undead dolphin hacker]

Please tell me you won't automate the combat. The combat rocks.

No, of course not. I mean the map/diary bullshit.

I'd steer clear of Wizardry 7 Gold.

I'm going to steer clear of Wizardry < 8 completely. Gold sucks (read about this a little while after my first posting and you confirm it), and vanilla doesn't have an automap.

I guess there really aren't many modern PC games of this type (party-based, challenging, mechanics-before-story RPGs). I could always replay Might and Magic 6. Or try to stomach 8 (I recently finished a replay of 7 so that's out). If worse comes to worse there's Baldur's Gate 2.

Is the remake of Nethergate any good? I had heard the original game was somewhat of a departure from the Vogel RPG, of course that was back before he remade every Exile game and put out more Geneforge games than Nintendo put out Pokemons.

 

[Jasede]

Vanilla Wizardry 7 doesn't have an automap? Sure, it isn't on the screen, but can't you use the mapping kit in your inventory for an Eschalon style map depending on the cartography skill of the map kit carrier?

I would avoid Jeff Vogel games if you don't like clunky interfaces and general ugliness. I played Geneforge 4 just because people told me it was good - but eh, you see, choices & consequences don't make or a break a game as a whole.

 

[Section8]

Vanilla Wizardry 7 doesn't have an automap? Sure, it isn't on the screen, but can't you use the mapping kit in your inventory for an Eschalon style map depending on the cartography skill of the map kit carrier?

You can, but that makes it nearly useless, since it shows something like a 7x7 square at any given time, making it a minimap you have to navigate through menus and scroll bars just to glimpse.

I guess there really aren't many modern PC games of this type (party-based, challenging, mechanics-before-story RPGs). I could always replay Might and Magic 6. Or try to stomach 8 (I recently finished a replay of 7 so that's out). If worse comes to worse there's Baldur's Gate 2.

The Silent Storm games and spinoffs would go close to fitting the criteria if you haven't given them a run already.

 

[MF]

Vanilla Wizardry 7 doesn't have an automap? Sure, it isn't on the screen, but can't you use the mapping kit in your inventory for an Eschalon style map depending on the cartography skill of the map kit carrier?

I would avoid Jeff Vogel games if you don't like clunky interfaces and general ugliness. I played Geneforge 4 just because people told me it was good - but eh, you see, choices & consequences don't make or a break a game as a whole.

I sitll don't understand how you can call Geneforge 4's interface clunky. It's very streamlined with all the keyboard mnemonics. I don't even think it's ugly either, but that's a matter of taste.

 

[1eyedking]

I know it's been said before, but I can't find the posts, so here goes a quickie: which Ultima games are a must?

 

[Atrachasis]

I know it's been said before, but I can't find the posts, so here goes a quickie: which Ultima games are a must?

4 to 7 1/2

personal favorite 6, which is also a huge leap forward with regard to the UI

 

[Sir_Brennus]

@OP

Don't listen to the blatant fanboyism of the iffster and Section8: Avoid Wizardy 7 (Dos) and go for Gold because

And unlike most legacy games, Wizardry Gold is highly customizable--you can input your own character portraits, your own voicesets and sound effects, custom magic items, or anything else that strikes your fancy.

Wanna see for yourself?

So, exchange the annoying sound effects with zero sound samples and there you go...

 

[JarlFrank]

@OP

Don't listen to the blatant fanboyism of the iffster and Section8: Avoid Wizardy 7 (Dos) and go for Gold because

And unlike most legacy games, Wizardry Gold is highly customizable--you can input your own character portraits, your own voicesets and sound effects, custom magic items, or anything else that strikes your fancy.

Wanna see for yourself?

So, exchange the annoying sound effects with zero sound samples and there you go...

I do *not* see this as something positive...

 

[obediah]

I think it's pretty hilarious. But then every name I've created for a video game in the past 15 years has either been 'Bub' or a vagina reference. That's how I roll. My last two character names were So0prKunt!1 and Skanky Hot Sheppard.

 

[Xi]

So would either of these games be worth plowing through until I can tolerate them? Or do you have any other recommendations?

Might and Magic 7. I think it's fairly refreshing, and if you give it a chance it grows on you. Well, either 6 or 7. I thought 7 was just a better version of 6 personally, but both have their merits. Give them a shot!

Or even Might and Magic 8. I've started a game of this one, but I think by the time I got to it I was tired of the same exact formula from 6 and 7. It did seem more polished, for whatever that's worth, it's still probably worth a try.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid ... &plindex=2

 

[1eyedking]

I just digged out my copy of Ultima Collection and installed Ultima 4; I can only say one thing:

My eyes, my goddamn fucking eyes.

 

[cardtrick]

Hey, not to hijack this thread too much, but this is at least tangentially related. I want to play RoA2: Star Trail. I remember trying it once on an XP PC and sort of getting it working, but without mouse support. At the time, that wasn't too big of a deal, since I was mostly just installing it to check it out for a few hours and see what all the fuss was about.

Now I would like to run it, with mouse support, on a Vista laptop. I realize this may not be possible, but I'm hoping for advice here. Should I use the version from HOTU or from Abandonia? (HOTU's is about 3 times the size of Abandonia's.) I assume I'm going to have to use DOSBox -- does anyone have any suggestions on how to set that up for Star Trail?

Finally, is it alright that I haven't played ROA1? I don't have a lot of patience for old interfaces, and I'm afraid that even Star Trail's may be too much for me to manage; and in any case, I've heard from reputable sources that Star Trail is the best of the trilogy.

 

[Sir_Brennus]

Now I would like to run it, with mouse support, on a Vista laptop. I realize this may not be possible, but I'm hoping for advice here. Should I use the version from HOTU or from Abandonia? (HOTU's is about 3 times the size of Abandonia's.) I assume I'm going to have to use DOSBox -- does anyone have any suggestions on how to set that up for Star Trail?

Finally, is it alright that I haven't played ROA1? I don't have a lot of patience for old interfaces, and I'm afraid that even Star Trail's may be too much for me to manage; and in any case, I've heard from reputable sources that Star Trail is the best of the trilogy.

1. I think the difference is that one is the CD and the other is the 3.5" version. I dunno exactly, though.

2. Well, it's of course alright, because you won't be bothered by the events of ROA1 with the exception of the orcish siege, which takes place in the game's territory (south) only because you stopped the Orcs further north in Blade of Destiny. You won't be able to carry to much stuff over from pt. 1 anyway (and remember the "giant strenght belt"-bug!) and your starting party will be strong enough to beat the game.

But you should consider that the grafics of ROA1 have aged considerably better than those of ROA2+3, because 2D hand drawn grafics DO look better than low-res and unfiltered 3D...

 

[JarlFrank]

I took the one from abandoina, maybe the one from HotU is some CD-rip version while the abandonia one is just a floppy version [I have no idea if this is true, just guessing because of the size difference]. Works fine on my XP PC with DOSbox, but I remember having had problems the first time I tried to run it. I guess you'll have to use the install.exe before playing, install the game, then just start it up in DOSbox. Good luck.

 

[Atrachasis]

I just digged out my copy of Ultima Collection and installed Ultima 4; I can only say one thing:

My eyes, my goddamn fucking eyes.

Tear them out if they bother you, then keep playing; it is that good.

An alternative to self-mutilation might be the Ultima IV Graphics Upgrade Patch, which gives you all the next-gen graphical opulence one could reasonably ask for. Disclaimer: This did not work for me under DOSbox. Your mileage may vary, and there are instructions for getting it to run with XU4.

Or simply fast forward to U 6, which has the prettiest graphics of the series, in my opinion. I first played U 4 many years after playing U 6, so there is still plenty of enjoyment to be had if you start a little later in the series.