Backlog: Cutting the Fat

[Ivan]

One of my goals is to not buy any new game until the Christmas holiday. To that effect, I've compiled a list of games I'm interested in trying for the first time proper from my Gog backlog, I've also included some titles I plan on emulating. Please let me know if you have any insight to these titles and advise if one is worth skipping altogether, or if another entry in the series would be better recommended. All the best. <3

Gog:

Spoiler

Beneath a Steel Sky

Baldur's Gate 2 (made it to shark land on my virgin playthrough before I moved and lost save)

Jagged Alliance 2

Mount and Blade: (Original v. Warband)

Realms of Arkania

Alpha Centauri (I've never played a Civ or God type game proper)

Tex Murphy: Mean Streets, martian Memorandum, Overseer (re-imagining of Mean Streets?), Pandora Directive

Emulated:

Spoiler

SNES: Final Fantasy F3 (6), Super Mario RPGh, FF2, Kirby Super Star, Secret of Mana, Shadowrun

PSX: FF7, Legacy of Kain Soul Reaver, Vagrant Story, Mega Man X4 X2

Nes: Zelda 2

GBA: MegaMan Zero, FF Tactics Adv, Final Fantasy V, Mario Luigi Superstar Saga, Zelda: Minish Cap

DS: Dragon Quest 5, Zelda Phantom Hourglass, Phoenix Wright, The World Ends w/You Prof Layton, Ghost Trick, Mario/Luigi Bowser's Inside Story

GBC: Zelda 2 DX

3DS: Link Between Worlds, Metroid 2, Luigi Dark Moon, Mario 3D Land, FIre Emblem Awakening, Dragon Quest 8

PSP: Tactics Ogre

 

[Thal]

Can't say anything about emulated games, but I wouldn't touch Mount and Blade until you've done with most other Gog titles. You'll get so many hours out of it that you'll have hard time reducing your backlog. Start with Jagged Alliance 2 instead. Simply put, it's one the greatest games of all time.

 

[Gregz]

Play these:

Jagged Alliance 2
Mount and Blade: Warband
Shadowrun (Sega Genesis version, not SNES)
Super Metroid (SNES)

 

[Falksi]

Opinion on the ones I've played........

Gog:

Baldur's Gate - Definitely play, still really good fun IMO.......IF you can live with the shit pathfinding.

Jagged Alliance 2 - Tried this 3 times myself over the past few years, and just couldn't get into. Seemed basic and lacklustre. Give it a go, but I really struggled to see what everyone sees in it, and think the genre has been done far better since.

Mount and Blade: (Original v. Warband) - Couldn't get into this either. Clunky, awkward, bollocks.


SNES:

Final Fantasy F3 (6), - Definitelty worth trying. I didn't enjoy it as much as most, but I still thought it was OK enough to finish.

Secret of Mana - Overrated, but still worth playing.


PSX:

FF7 - Brilliant. A must play.

Legacy of Kain Soul Reaver - A real Marmite mixed bag of a game. Some great stuff, drowned out by tons of dull as fuck block puzzles & suchlike

 

[Anthedon]

There's not much fat to cut from your GoG selection. They are all good games. Some of the older Tex Murphy titles have pretty funky controls on modern systems, but that shouldn't disqualify them.

 

[Reality]

I would skip Final Fantasy 6 especially if you are playing the superior FF2(USA/F4) - Pacing is far better than the more advanced game, and the bosses will at least AoE damage race you instead of being a joke.

FF6 - Playing it really depends on how much you get out of the cutscenes - Gameplaywise ... the first half of the game features charathers with Resource-less Attack-ALL physical abilities that can be used every turn, and when you get to the second half of the game EVERYONE's MP borders on the infinfinite ite and you just do the same thing with magic.. Game does try a lot of clever little things to make each charather feel unique and have Char building options with the eqippbable (stat growth modifier items ) but it doesn't really have any affect on the general "flow" of how combat works.

I would skip Dragon Quest 5 even faster, it's not a absolutely excessive as DQ 6-7 but imo it's still way too long for what it is and I find DQ 3 to be the only sensible old DQ.

I would also say to skip FF Tactics, Tactics Ogre, Fire Emblem Awakening

- FF Tactics A - Almost all battles are 6 on 6 (some event ones are 6 on 8) and the super small scale mean that things like Healers can be ignored entirely and you can just beat on the enemies before they beat on you (and all battles are started at full resources)... You shouldn't notice it casually, but if for whatever reason you don't do sidequests , the bosses during the main quest are almost all level spikes (Totema)... There is some interest in trying out the Status condition jobs because the player is allowed to get really accurate and crippling ones, but if you are sitting around getting the jobpoints for that you could have probbably beat the game already.

Tactics Ogre - A lot of people will find this to be a beautiful mess, but highlights include endless job and skill grinding as well as cheezy things (if you manage to recruit a flying unit you can put it on top of a building and rain down magic/arrows freely). For my money it's definately sluggishly paced and the "political" story is hamstrung by devolving into supernatural/mcguffin territory halfway through. The First half IS pretty good at getting your hopes up though.

Fire Emblem A - Playing on Normal Mode or Hard Mode can probbably be done entirely on autobattle - Lunatic mode is a kind of unique challenge by Fire-Emblem standards, but 90% of the game on Lunatic is pre-battle party setup, and the actual positiioning strategy once you are in there is kind of straightforward. On the positive side it does have A metric ton of speed (both in fast forward and the blessed skip enemy turn option) so it will take Far less real-time to try out than TO or FFT.

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

Any plans of trying mods, after you get bored with M&B: Warband main campaign?
I had some fun with The Last Days of the Third Age.

 

[Wirdschowerdn]

Ha! I don't have backlogs. Keeps my conscience clean.

I'm gonna soon start Psychonauts though.... to soil my conscience.

 

[normie]

Beneath a Steel Sky looks like shit, skip
Baldur's Gate is shit, skip
PLAY JAGGED ALLIANCE 2
Mountain Blade is great for wasting time, play it if you have time to waste
no Arkania, skip
Alpha Centuari is playable but I suggest skipping
skip Tex Murphy in favour of superior Japanese games

play everything you've lined up to emulate, skip Legacy of Kain and find another Japanese game

 

[DalekFlay]

Personally I'd only play the Tex Murphy games from Under a Killing Moon and up.

 

[octavius]

BG, JA2 and SMAC are all definitely worth playing. Don't know about the rest.
SMAC is quite advanced if you have no previous experience with Civ type games, though.

 

[overly excitable young man]

Baldurs Gate is shit. Avoid!

Mount and Blades are great fun when you like sandbox stuff
Real time combat in it is very skill based and satisfying.
You basically have a small army like in HoMMs and its great to watch them become stronger and more numerous.

Realms of Arkania
Character system is pretty useless with tons of skills which never find any use in the game
Combat is VERY slow and clunky
People seem to like it because of the simulationist aspects of adventuring (like you have to pack bedrolls) but i didnt see the worth in it.

Zelda: Minish Cup looks kinda faggy compared to older 2d zeldas but has everything that made Link to the Past a great game.
Dungeons are on the smaller and easier side but the dungeon items are cool and unique.
Game mechanic is that you can become smaller which works great.

Zelda: Link between Worlds
Really horrible Zelda game as the designers didnt even understand what makes a Zelda game great.
You don't get your items in the dungeons anymore but have to borrow them one at a time from some rabbit guy.
At the start there are signs before the dungeons that tell you what item you have to borrow...
Later you can outright buy them.
Horrible!

 

[Dramart]

Great list.

Alpha Centauri, I just played the tutorial and be aware that it has a lot of things to learn, maybe I will try it again in the future.

Super Mario RPG has a combat per turns like Final Fantasy or the classics Dragon Quest. Some characteristics of combat mechanics are related to timing, if you press or release a button at a specific moment during your attack you do bonus damage. It's fun but it can become repetitive, because a lots of random fights. The dialogs are funny, humor for all the the family.

I also have FF7 in my list, played FFV, recommended 100% , the game gives you new things to use in combat all the time, like classes ( named jobs) and weapons, so it will never get boring.

Zelda Minish Cap, fun game, similar to other 2d zeldas, and it's short, around 10 hours, recommended.

 

[JDR13]

Baldur's Gate is easily the best game on your GOG list. (Although it sounds like you were actually playing BG2 before)

If you're going to play FF 4 or FF 6, don't play the watered down SNES versions. Play the PSX or GBA versions.

 

[Ivan]

Personally I'd only play the Tex Murphy games from Under a Killing Moon and up.

I've seen this opinion. My first was Tesla Effect and I had forgotten I had these in my library

And yes, I goofed the opening post, I meant to say I made it past Athkatla in BG2 when I lost my save.

Thank you all for the feedback!

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

i wish i had a backlog so short. but every time i try something new it turns out it's utter shit, and the will to try something else vanishes.

 

[oddech_wymarlych_swiatow]

i wish i had a backlog so short. but every time i try something new it turns out it's utter shit, and the will to try something else vanishes.

The very concept of 'backlog' is fundamentally wrong.

 

[Nifft Batuff]

The PS2 version of Dragon Quest 5 has been fan translated now, if you want to try ìt.

 

[DalekFlay]

I own more games on GOG and Steam than I'll ever play, even if I live to 80+. However the number of games in genres I actually love, that I'll probably actually like, is much smaller. Sorting a heap of games into trash categories so I don't see them made me feel much better about my to-do list.

 

[Nifft Batuff]

i wish i had a backlog so short. but every time i try something new it turns out it's utter shit, and the will to try something else vanishes.

I alternate between new and old/emulated games to keep me sane.

 

[octavius]

I own more games on GOG and Steam than I'll ever play, even if I live to 80+. However the number of games in genres I actually love, that I'll probably actually like, is much smaller. Sorting a heap of games into trash categories so I don't see them made me feel much better about my to-do list.

Are you suffering from CBD?

 

[DalekFlay]

Are you suffering from CBD?

If that means something like chronic buying disorder then I would say I used to, but not really anymore.

 

[Ash]

Jagged Alliance 2

Play.

Mount and Blade: Warband

Play. There's tons of mods for it too.

SNES: Final Fantasy F3 (6)

Play. Ignore the guy that says to play FF2 (4) instead. It's as barebones as an RPG gets. for FF5, 6, 7, 8, 9 this is not even remotely the case. they really upped their game.

Kirby Super Star

Play. Preferably in co-op. It's a little easy but still fun and charming.
It's actually hard to recommend this to a full grown adult male, but if you want to be a kid again, or have a gamer gf to play co-op with, this games got you covered. the art, music and overall charm is great. Gameplay is cool and has some depth to it (progressively over time),

FF7

Play. It's a great game. Anyone who says otherwise is just wrong and it's likely they've not played it. Ignore the garbage remake.

Legacy of Kain Soul Reaver

Skip. It's very tedious. For a similar, non-shit third person console action-puzzle-platformer game from the same era, Play Tomb Raider (1996), Nightmare Creatures (1997), or hell go play Legacy of Kain: Blood Omen (1996) instead.

Vagrant Story

Good but I'd prioritise certain other PSX JRPGs if you've not played them: the Final Fantasy games, Parasite Eve 1 & 2, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, perhaps even Koudelka.

Nes: Zelda 2

Rather archaic though kind of cool. Can't hurt to try it I guess. Tough as nails, I wouldn't feel ashamed using save states with this one.

GBA: MegaMan Zero, FF Tactics Adv, Final Fantasy V, Mario Luigi Superstar Saga, Zelda: Minish Cap

GBA Addendum: Golden Sun 1 & 2, Zelda: Links Awakening DX instead of Minish Cap. FF Tactics Adv or original FFT are OK. Not sure I'd recommend them because combat aside they don't have much merit. And even then the combat is pretty slow and grindy.

3DS: Link Between Worlds

As with Minish Cap, play Links Awakening (and/or LTTP) instead.

Throw out list:

FF4, Soul Reaver. Only games I'm confident throwing out. Secret of Mana for example I didn't like, but also didn't play enough of to actually have a valid opinion on. So I'm being very conservative here.

 

[Tigranes]

Ivan For Fire Emblem specifically, don't bother playing Awakening. Each FE game ranges from "generic but fine" to "animu dumpster fire" for story, and good-to-great for the gameplay. Awakening scores poorly on both counts. Instead, the GBA Fire Emblems are the right place to start (FE7 / Blazing Blade, FE8 / Sacred Stones).