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How was your first time?

Nesahat

Barely Literate
Joined
Feb 5, 2021
Messages
1
For me it was either Dungen Master, Shadowlands or Legacy of Sorasil for Amiga when I was like 8 or 9 years old. Those were the times! Now I feel more than a little nostalgic (and a little drunk). Somehow I miss not knowing what am I doing and just experimenting. Also.. Hi everybody!
 

Keyboard Vomit

Guest
I was dripping in sweat and was starting to have a hard time to swallow as I booted her up. I made contact with the black mouse and started rubbing it in different directions with my sticky hand. The response was soft moans from the fans and when I grew in confidence and pressed its buttons the slick drive started working hard. Everything was under my control and we both knew it. The disc started spinning faster and faster as the bar started growing in length until it had almost reached full mast until it finally erupted and shot out icons all over my desktop. The foreplay was over and it was time to step into the real game. My personal computer started panting before it could even boot up the game fully. After a short pre-rendered tease the game didn't wait for me to get ready before whopping it all out. Big fat bars coming at me from all directions along with sensual numbers and dice roll targets. An orgy of spreadsheet madness opened up before me. I was later told that this was character creation but back then it was just a big OH WOW to me. My tongue flopped out and I my eyes rolled up in my head. I had not even gotten to play the game and it was already getting too much for me.

That was my first RPG experience.
 

Dodo1610

Arcane
Joined
May 3, 2018
Messages
2,155
Location
Germany
Tldr started with Pokemon and discovered good RPG in 2010 when I had no other option.

My first "RPG" was Pokemon Yellow because my mum bought it for herself because of the hype but she didn't like it and gave it to me. She preferred playing Tomb Raider on PC and Mario on the SNES. Incidentally, she skipped the N64 and PS1 because she hated early 3d graphics:)
Later I mostly played strategy games and economy sims on the PC but one day I heard of this crazy new RTS called Spellforce 2 which had a 3D animated talking dragon!!!!!!! Obviously, my 12 year old self had to buy it and that was the first time I had to deal with choosing my equipment, organizing my party, choosing skills/spells/stats and making decisions in dialogue trees. Later played Gothic 3 and Oblivion and other action RPGs of questionable quality of that time like unpatched Witcher 1 or Two Worlds:negative:
Sadly my PC died and my father lost his job so there was no way I could get a new gaming PC anytime soon. This meant that in 2010 I bought an Nvidia Geforce 4 in and Pentium 4 and up in some old office Dell in order to at least play some of my older games. That meant that I played tons of ancient pirated classics like Baldurs Gate, Thief, Gothic, Spellforce 1 and many other games from that time. So if you ever want your kid to develop a taste for good video games give them a crappy PC
 
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Tavernking

Don't believe his lies
Developer
Joined
Sep 1, 2017
Messages
1,216
Location
Australia
As I've said here before, Skyrim took my RPG virginity and I'll never forgive myself for that. I cringe at how I used to think the combat was deep and interesting. You can literally just take 1000 health potions with you and drink them all whenever you like so you can never lose fights. It becomes more of a logistics game at that point.

My first game with quasi-RPG elements was probably MARDEK. Oh god, this means a JRPG was my first rpg. Grab the minigun, there are demons here to smite
 

Vlajdermen

Arcane
Joined
Nov 19, 2017
Messages
2,039
Location
Catholic Serbia
I also played the shit out of diablo 1. I was literally addicted. My poor mouse didn't survive it. Strangely nowadays I can't get into these kind of games anymore (too much grinding? I don't know).

Same. They've grown stale, probably because they're always the same. Diablo clones haven't evolved at all, they all just have the same gameplay loop. You played one, you played them all.
That's because their template doesn't leave much room for imagination. It went as far as it was gonna go in the second game
 

grimer

Learned
Joined
Feb 24, 2021
Messages
121
first rpg was pokemon yellow but if that doesnt count then it wasnt until i played oblivion in 2008. i was like 10 at the time so i didnt really know what to make of it but looking back i can safely say i do not want to relive that experience
 

Pechorin

Guest
I don't really remember. The first games I ever saw were on some sort of a bootleg (possibly original even) Sega Saturn console. I don't even recall how they were named. Something about a dude with a huge axe and dwarves. Amazons too? Duck hunting as well with a light gun. As for the first RPG I am sure I remember, I think it was Diablo 2 played on my neighbours PC. Not that I really played, but my first impressions of RPG's were watching gameplay of Morrowind, Gothic 2, Sacred, and all kinds of early 2000's RPG's that I can not remember anymore in detail. When I got my first computer, which was a few years later, I installed Morrowind first I think. Then Gothic 2. I also remember playing the shit out of Sacred too.
 

Catacombs

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Aug 10, 2017
Messages
5,927
As I've said here before, Skyrim took my RPG virginity and I'll never forgive myself for that. I cringe at how I used to think the combat was deep and interesting. You can literally just take 1000 health potions with you and drink them all whenever you like so you can never lose fights. It becomes more of a logistics game at that point.
It's ok. You were young. You were stupid. But you've grown since then. You know better. Just don't let your children make the same mistake.
 

Renevent

Cipher
Joined
Feb 22, 2013
Messages
925
My dad brought home a 386 for his home office and it just so happened to have 2 games already installed: Pool of Radiance and Hillsfar. I think I played Hillsfar first and really didn't like it much or get too far. I was 8 at the time and it was confusing trying to figure out what to do so I mostly ran around on the horse or compete in the arena.

As for Pool of Radiance, that game completely consumed me. While it was difficult at first for a first time RPG player (and being 8 years old), I eventually figured out what to do. The game was so much fun, going through all the different areas, leveling up, and then getting to the outer world map blew my mind. Only thing that really annoyed me was some of the outside battles (fuck stirges). I never did beat the game though, got to the pyramid and had no idea how to get the password (and would get shredded by the beast).
 

Alphons

Cipher
Joined
Nov 20, 2019
Messages
2,557
Before I started I was really excited, but then I got scared that I'll blow it (which unfortunately I did moments later). I cried, my self-esteem in shambles. You get to do it for the first time only once and I fucked it up. My dad later told me that these things happen at the beginning.

Nowadays I wish I've played something else, not Fallout 3.
 

gurugeorge

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Aug 3, 2019
Messages
7,432
Location
London, UK
Strap Yourselves In
I got into gaming late, in my 30s, in the early 1990s, with Doom, Descent and other fpss., and it took me a year or two to branch out into other genres. First it was RTSs with C&C, and then my first CRPG was BG, which was immediately captivating, then I played the Fallouts and BGII, and went with mostly BioWare/Troika/Looking Glass CRPGs and immersive sims after that.

Then the decline (consolification, oversimplification) started, and I took refuge in wall-to-wall MMOs for several years, and by the time I came up for air back into single player games, they were well and truly fucked, bar the odd good 'un here and there.

A few years later I went back and retro-appreciated some of the earlier games like Betrayal at Krondor, but I was always too much of a graphics whore to be able to enjoy the really old games.
 

Alrik

Educated
Joined
May 14, 2020
Messages
72
First experience of an RPG was watching my stepbrother's entire party getting disintegrated by a Beholder in Eye of the Beholder on his Amiga.

Playing them myself was sort of a ladder from LttP to FF7 to Baldur's Gate, then onto BG2 and Deus Ex. Must've been 10 or 11 at the time I started playing BG. Naturally my MC was a male Human Fighter with 2h sword and NORF FC voiceset. I was terribly disappointed that Minsc (*and Ajantis) aside there were no more companions that were male Human Fighters/Rangers/Paladins with 2h sword as I wanted a 6 man party of them. I was entirely unimpressed with magic, locks were for bashing, traps were for facetanking and clerics were only for healslutting and sometimes Hold Person. Companions were evaluated solely based on their Strength and Dexterity (damage, ThAC0 and AC). I think my party was MC, Minsc, Kivan, Viconia, Edwin (read on the Internet that he was the best mage) and maybe Imoen, not sure about the 6th member Ajantis. Got filtered by having to find Tranzig until I read a guide, then I think I stalled out on the spider map in Cloakwood (web traps + poison became insurmountable when you barely use magic nor disarm traps) before constantly restarting and using the console to cheat. Didn't actually finish it until I came back to the game years and years later when I started playing with SCS. I did finish BG2 and ToB on my first go with a 2h sword Berserker and a slightly less anti-magic mindset, only slightly less though.

E: I'm dumb and forgot Ajantis, who was the 6th member
 

Hag

Arbiter
Patron
Joined
Nov 25, 2020
Messages
1,647
Location
Breizh
Codex Year of the Donut Codex+ Now Streaming!
Ah, how could I forget my encounter with RPGs. While not a novice at video games, I had never played any. Then a friend lent me one CD, telling me this was going to blow my mind. And boy, it did. After a long installation and a first few steps where I created my character completely at random, I got to walk into another world.

I walked in Seyda Neen.

There were many PNJs. Could talk to them all. Houses. Could enter them all. Cutlery. Could steal them all. And it was only a small town. I walk my way to Pelagiad, beating the shit out a Kwama, and there, by a small lake, a guar was doing its guar things. I tried to beat the shit out of it and of course utterly failed. But that was it. Got bitten. For the nerdy teenager I was there was now a brand new world to explore. And in our small nerdy circle of friends, everybody went to play Morrowind, boasting about new artifacts found or new exploits uncovered. Glorious times. Never felt so much excitement at a RPG ever again, so much eagerness to discover it all.
But hey, I was sixteen. To hell being an anxious teen with no social skills. I could fly into the sky and shoot fireballs.
 

*-*/\--/\~

Cipher
Joined
Jul 10, 2014
Messages
909
First RPG time was... when my brother brought Ultima Underworld on a bunch of 3.5" floppy disks. Couldn't understand half of it at the time (I was like 9, non-English) so I ran around like a headless chicken unable to finish it, but still loved it.
 

Luka-boy

Arcane
Joined
Sep 24, 2014
Messages
1,629
Location
Asspain
My first Windows 95 PC had demos for both Fallout 1 and Diablo 1 (And Tyrian!). Oh boy was that one hell of a cherry popping for RPGs. I played those dozens if not hundreds of times until I could get my hands on the full versions.
:love:
 

Alter Sack

Magister
Joined
Dec 22, 2019
Messages
2,201
I got into gaming late, in my 30s, in the early 1990s, with Doom, Descent and other fpss., and it took me a year or two to branch out into other genres. First it was RTSs with C&C, and then my first CRPG was BG, which was immediately captivating, then I played the Fallouts and BGII, and went with mostly BioWare/Troika/Looking Glass CRPGs and immersive sims after that.

Then the decline (consolification, oversimplification) started, and I took refuge in wall-to-wall MMOs for several years, and by the time I came up for air back into single player games, they were well and truly fucked, bar the odd good 'un here and there.

A few years later I went back and retro-appreciated some of the earlier games like Betrayal at Krondor, but I was always too much of a graphics whore to be able to enjoy the really old games.

And I thought that I was one of the oldest geezers here with my 39 years. Didn't know we have actual boomers here.

Since there seems to be a need I will probably open a thread about medical supplies for the elderly. There we can then discuss to our hearts content about the best helpmates, incontinence pads etc.

I mean, I am fortunately still far away from needing those things but I have an 80 year old grandmother who could use some recommendations.

Godspeed.
 
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Melcar

Arcane
Joined
Oct 20, 2008
Messages
35,215
Location
Merida, again
Grew up on SNES rpgs. Secret of Evermore was a favorite and I guess that was my first "rpg" (I guess Zelda would not count).
 

Calthaer

Educated
Patron
Joined
Jan 29, 2021
Messages
86
Strap Yourselves In
There was a brief window of time prior to the Computer Software Rental Amendments Act of 1990 when video rental stores were allowed to rent out computer games. A small local place had a few of them and we had just gotten our LASER 128, an Apple ][ clone. Got my mom to rent two games, King's Quest and The Bard's Tale. I saved my pennies and bought both of them in a computer store in the area - a small place in a strip mall whose name escapes me. I had barely scratched the surface of character creation and combat in The Bard's Tale, but it really got to me. I drew pictures of the characters, imagined personalities for them and all that. I'd never played Dungeons & Dragons, mind you - it was just this computer facsimilie. The little animated enemies - mages pointing their fingers at me to cast a devastating spell, dragons breathing flame...I was hooked.

Never really went back and played any of the other contemporaries - Might & Magic, Wizardry, etc. The fact is that Bard's Tale was a really accessible and distilled version of that early experience and the other renditions left me kind of cold.
 

ProphetSword

Arcane
Developer
Joined
Jun 7, 2012
Messages
1,755
Location
Monkey Island
Well, we've certainly had this thread before, though I'm seeing some different answers this time.

For me, it was Phantasie on the C64, followed by Pool of Radiance. It's been all downhill since then.
 

Baardhaas

Cipher
Patron
Joined
Dec 1, 2014
Messages
576
Make the Codex Great Again! Grab the Codex by the pussy Insert Title Here
Moonstone on my older brother's Amiga. Great little action rpg with good gory combat and hotseat multiplayer.

Check this website if you haven't tried it, or want to indulge in some nostalgia. There's a prepackaged file that launches the game in an Amiga emulator.
 

Butter

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Oct 1, 2018
Messages
7,521
Is Donkey Kong Country an RPG?
You play the role of a gorilla. You have the choice to either collect bananas and KONG letters or not. You have a party of up to two characters, just like in Neverwinter Nights.
 

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