Which older RPG surprised you with how well it has aged?

[Shape]

So recently I tried re-playing some of my older favourite games ever like M&M 6 and Ultima UW, but I actually had to put them down at one point due to sheer frustration with some obvious faults that have been there due to lack of technology..

Has any of you guys been surprised with how WELL an older (2000-ish and before that?) RPG has aged?

 

[Fowyr]

I just recently replayed M&M6 and Ultima Underworld and there is nothing wrong with them. The only annoying thing was that item overflow bug in UUW.

 

[Watser]

If it was a good game then it is a good game now. Stop with this retarded aging rhetoric.

 

[Baron Dupek]

Most of them?
I dare to say that more modern games are harder to get into, because they were made for mentally handicapped people and there were times when obvious things were revealed to be counter intuitive for no particular reason.

 

[muds_animal_friend]

Replaying old games gives me some insight into how Dark Age Europeans must have felt when they encountered the crumbling remains of a Roman aqueduct. How did the ancients manage to build such wonders when the current generation can only build huts composed of cow shit and twigs?

 

[Tigranes]

Most of them. There are few good games that are unplayable later on.

Arcanum for instance is still beautiful - and its clunkiness was already there on release.

It isnt like humanity lives in entirely linear time slowly raising its standards from low to high. Each of us stumble about until we discover incline little by little, and realise it can be found not in the latest but things made well from any period.

 

[Morblot]

Pool of Radiance. The UI could be less clunky and the enemy AI is bad, but it's still a good, solid game.

 

[Neanderthal]

Krondor, simple UI wi buttons that are easy to recognise, simple system o left an right mouse clicks for interacting wi world. Spend ten minutes left an right clicking on everything you can an you'll get grasp on it. U7 were even fucking simpler.

 

[RoBoBOBR]

I'd say Grimoire. Game is so old, yet it feels like it only came out this year!

 

[Max Damage]

No surprises for me. Games that were good back then are still good, don't see why it would be otherwise.

 

[buffalo bill]

Has any of you guys been surprised with how WELL an older (2000-ish and before that?) RPG has aged?

All those old games have aged very poorly, I'm afraid. They lack modern quality of life improvements like ubiquitous real-time combat, quest markers, automaps, elimination of confusing and tedious "decision making" and "exploration" in favor of straightforward linear gameplay that is all reward and no risk, elimination of the scary and unwanted possibility of losing the game or encountering something that you would be unable to deal with, streamlined dialogue system that offers exactly three flavor dialogue options every time, and so forth. The list could go on forever, really. It's sad, but the so-called "classics" just don't stack up.

 

[laclongquan]

A few console game (ps1) should still age well, graphically and gameplayingly. Example: Chronos Cross.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Realms of Arkania HD

 

[taxalot]

Oblivion.

 

[MightyHoax]

Robinson's Requiem

 

[Sigourn]

If it was a good game then it is a good game now. Stop with this retarded aging rhetoric.

Don't be retarded. A good game back then may be extremely simplistic and boring nowadays.

On topic: I was surprised at how nuanced dnd was (1975). It had some very interesting mechanics, like having low Intelligence (IIRC) preventing you from reading books. Of course, the game is very crude by today's standards and not very fun, but it had some mechanics that would be right at home nowadays.

JRPGs are quite possibly the only RPGs that have aged well. Something like Chrono Trigger plays much more comfy than wRPGs of the time.

 

[santino27]

BG/BG2. Not so old, in the grand scheme of things, but the gameplay is the same as it ever was, and the painted 2d backgrounds have aged a lot less poorly than most 3d graphics.

 

[Watser]

If it was a good game then it is a good game now. Stop with this retarded aging rhetoric.

Don't be retarded. A good game back then may be extremely simplistic and boring nowadays.

On topic: I was surprised at how nuanced dnd was (1975). It had some very interesting mechanics, like having low Intelligence (IIRC) preventing you from reading books. Of course, the game is very crude by today's standards and not very fun, but it had some mechanics that would be right at home nowadays.

JRPGs are quite possibly the only RPGs that have aged well. Something like Chrono Trigger plays much more comfy than wRPGs of the time.

I'm just gonna quote octavius and leave it at that because we really don't need another one of your retarded threads.

Of course if you consider all the very old (pre 1980) CRPGs, of fucking course most will be bad and will have aged badly. 90% of everything is crud.

But the games that were great in 1985-1995 are still great today IMO. And I wouldn't be surprised if the same is true for the 1975-1984 CRPGs, none of which I personally played back then.

But I played many of the CRPGs released from 1985 to 1995 - and replayed many of them -, and generally they do stand the test of time IMO.

CRPGs I enjoyed back then, and enjoyed when I replayed them:
The Bard's Tale
Dungeon Master
Gold Box games
Might and Magic 2
Chaos Strikes Back
Wizardry: Bane of the Cosmic Forge
Ultima Underworld

CRPGs I enjoyed back then, not quite as fun when I replayed them:
Ultima IV
Phantasie III
BattleTech: tCHI
Eye of the Beholder
The Bard's Tale II: The Destiny Knight

CRPGs I enjoyed more when replaying:
Dragon Wars
Black Crypt
Ultima Underworld 2

CRPGs I enjoyed when I played them for the first time the past five years:
Wizardry 1-5, 7
Phantasie
Might and Magic I
Ultima V
Demon's Winter
The Magic Candle
Knights of Legend
The Dark Heart of Uukrul
Disciples of Steel
Might&Magic 3-5
Darklands
The Legacy: Realm of Terror
Betrayal at Krondor
Lands of Lore: The Throne of Chaos
Dark Sun: Shattered Lands
Nahlakh
The Aethra Chronicles
X-COM (remake)
Jagged Alliance
Anvil of Dawn

CRPGs that needed an unoffical patch or a remake to be enjoyable:
The Bard's Tale III: The Thief of Fate
Ultima VI

Conclusion: old crud is still crud, but the classics have in general stood the test of time.

Your definition of what is fun changes as you get old and typically your tolerance for bullshit mechanics and shitty UI decreases as you age, but that does not decrease the value of the game itself.

You age, games don't.

 

[undecaf]

o recently I tried re-playing some of my older favourite games ever like M&M 6 ... but I actually had to put them down at one point due to sheer frustration with some obvious faults that have been there due to lack of technology..

What's wrong with M&M 6? From what I've played recently, it's rolls quite nicely for its age.

 

[Sigourn]

Your definition of what is fun changes as you get old and typically your tolerance for bullshit mechanics and shitty UI decreases as you age, but that does not decrease the value of the game itself.

You age, games don't.

Games show their age because of what's readily available nowadays. And yes, that definitely decreases the value of the game, because what was groundbreaking 30 years ago now feels obsolete.

EDIT:

I love it when retarded shit like this pops up and the Codex circlejerks around it:

All those old games have aged very poorly, I'm afraid. They lack modern quality of life improvements like ubiquitous real-time combat, quest markers, automaps, elimination of confusing and tedious "decision making" and "exploration" in favor of straightforward linear gameplay that is all reward and no risk, elimination of the scary and unwanted possibility of losing the game or encountering something that you would be unable to deal with, streamlined dialogue system that offers exactly three flavor dialogue options every time, and so forth. The list could go on forever, really. It's sad, but the so-called "classics" just don't stack up.

 

[CryptRat]

 

[Falksi]

2 which I've re-played recently, and which surprised me just how well they had aged and how much I enjoyed them still, were Phantasy Star 4 & Snatcher.

The flaws stand out far more, and saving whenever you can is a BIG plus on emulation. But both were extremely enjoyable, and just good examples of great storytelling.

I expected to kinda enjoy them when I returned to them, but what surprised me was how I could barely put them down until finished.

 

[Gregz]

This question is mostly about what players will tolerate these days, although some features were obvious mistakes in retrospect.

 

[moraes]

The lack of some user interface stuff that nowadays is almost mandatory but didn't exist at the time is usually what puts me off initially, a hurdle that sometimes is hard to surpass. For example: lack of mouse look in first person games, lack of drag select in RTSs, WASD movement is always nice to have, etc.

In RPGs specifically a lot of the old games are from an era of keyboard-driven interfaces (not only in games, but in general) where mouse use was considered the exception at the time, in contrast to what we have now, with mouse-driven interfaces being the norm for the majority of users and the keyboard a fallback replacement. Probably what makes old JRPGs so easy to pick up and play is the fact that for the most of their development history the genre always stayed within one interface paradigm: the console controller one.

 

[JarlFrank]

Might and Magic: World of Xeen.

The user interface is so smooth and everything looks so good, it's a game that gives you no trouble at all to get into.
The only thing that needs some getting used to with, say, pre-1996 games is the cumbersome interfaces, but M&M WoX? Holy shit that thing has a better interface than some of the games released today.