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Butter

Arcane
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Oct 1, 2018
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7,522
Pokemon Blue
Same. I was four years old when my older brother and I each got a Gameboy Colour and Pokemon Blue & Red, respectively, for Christmas 1999. It helped teach me how to read.

I know some folks don't like Pokémon, but it really is one of the greatest RPGs of the last few decades. I get that the story is simplistic - it's definitely "training wheels" for little kids on that front. But the character customization options are just so vast...you can breed, train, and customize your party in so many different ways. The rock / paper / scissors aspect of typology in the game has oceans of complexity sitting underneath of it. I stopped playing after HeartGold / SoulSilver...just got to be too much and too many, especially with all the promos you had to keep up with. But it's a great RPG series. I feel like it really needs a reboot - they need to cull the list of ~900 down to like 500 and cut out the duplicates (e.g., keep one of either Caterpie / Weedle, but not both) and get rid of the dumb promo business.

It must have been somewhere in my 20s when I got these original games and started playing them, just to see what all the hype was about. I didn't regret it - was hooked on these games for like 10 years.
There are a variety of issues with the implementation of Pokemon's combat, mostly notably the completely shit AI and insistence on themed encounters which makes type-matching the only tactic that matters. The first 3 generations also suffered from the inexcusable and baffling decision to make all attacks of a given type either physical or special, which makes some Pokemon completely worthless if their type and stats don't match. And it would've been huge incline if the systems had been designed for doubles or triples.
 

Calthaer

Educated
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Joined
Jan 29, 2021
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86
Strap Yourselves In
There are a variety of issues with the implementation of Pokemon's combat, mostly notably the completely shit AI and insistence on themed encounters which makes type-matching the only tactic that matters. The first 3 generations also suffered from the inexcusable and baffling decision to make all attacks of a given type either physical or special, which makes some Pokemon completely worthless if their type and stats don't match. And it would've been huge incline if the systems had been designed for doubles or triples.

I don't disagree with anything you've just said and I think that all these are additional reasons why this series needs a reboot. Game Freak was clearly a small indie developer when they launched the phenomenon and the series has gradually improved. Still, they were amazingly fun despite the flaws - that's my contention.
 

Falksi

Arcane
Joined
Feb 14, 2017
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10,538
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Nottingham
Can't remember which was first for sure, but I can remember which one first made me think "fuck, that was awesome! I must play more games like that", and that was Buck Rogers: Countdown to Doomsday.
 

grimer

Learned
Joined
Feb 24, 2021
Messages
121
pokemon is best enjoyed as a multiplayer game (pvp or collecting if youre a casual) as the singleplayer aspect is too shallow and devoid of challenge to warrant any worthwhile engagement in the game's mechanics. the only direction for this series is further downhill as improving the ai, tactical complexity and resource management would just alienate their target audience and gamefreak would rather spend their development time on forced inane dialogues and cutscenes as evidenced by their latest entry sword and shield.
 

jackofshadows

Magister
Joined
Oct 21, 2019
Messages
4,487
Fallout or Diablo. Can't remember which one exactly was the first because I was overwhelmed at that time by some gem games from other genres as well: X-COM 2, Jagged Alliance 2, Starcraft, Quake. HoMM III and more. M&M VIII, Arcanum and Fallout 2 were somewhere close after that. Good times...
 

Funposter

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Oct 19, 2018
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1,773
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Australia
I feel like it really needs a reboot - they need to cull the list of ~900 down to like 500 and cut out the duplicates (e.g., keep one of either Caterpie / Weedle, but not both) and get rid of the dumb promo business.

They sort of tried to do this with Sword & Shield, but proceeded to do it in the most thoughtless and unintelligent way possible. Realistically what you'd want to do is go down the list and remove Pokemon that are essentially "duplicates" of earlier designs, while retaining anything that is unique either aesthetically or mechanically (type combinations). So Weedle/Caterpie are fine together, since they eventually evolve into things which are different to one another, but you wouldn't bother keeping the Beautifly line from RSE, which fulfills the exact same function. The same can be said of the multitude of bland Normal types, or the many mono-Water types whose design is just "fish". You can keep one or two, but you don't need ten.

pokemon is best enjoyed as a multiplayer game (pvp or collecting if youre a casual) as the singleplayer aspect is too shallow and devoid of challenge to warrant any worthwhile engagement in the game's mechanics. the only direction for this series is further downhill as improving the ai, tactical complexity and resource management would just alienate their target audience and gamefreak would rather spend their development time on forced inane dialogues and cutscenes as evidenced by their latest entry sword and shield.
This is what romhacks are for.
 

oldmanpaco

Master of Siestas
Joined
Nov 8, 2008
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13,609
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Winter
Ultima III in the mid-eighties. I avoided the damn whirlpool for months because I thought it would kill my party.

Jesus.
 

Generic-Giant-Spider

Guest
Eye of the Beholder that a young doctor installed on one of the hospital computers when I'd visit my mom at work. I'd stand there, likely unsettling him, as I stood wide eye and mouth agape as he navigated around. Eventually he asked if I wanted to try and helped me understand what did what. Eventually I ended up getting Eye of the Beholder 2 from him thanks to the magic of piracy.

I blame him for everything wrong in my life.
 

cvv

Arcane
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Kingdom of Bohemia
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In the beginning there were only adventures and strategies and everything was good. I was happy.

But then my buddy said: "You should play RPGs. They're prestigious." And I said: "'K, give me the best RPG there is and I'll try it."

And he gave me Wizardry 7.

Mein Engrish being much bad I couldn't read the manual and I had no fucking idea what to do. I remember heroically sticking with the game and getting as far as the poppy field. But I couldn't get through, I kept falling asleep and I didn't understand why or what's going on. Frustrated I uninstalled that stupid RPG garbage and jumped into another Sierra game.

I was very angery at RPGs for a year or so. And then my buddy cautiously said: "Maybe you can start with something more adventure-like." (Now I know he meant "more popamole".) And he gave me Lands of Lore.

Oh Lands of Lore, my first love. I fucked the game in the rectum all day long. And then I played EoB 1/2 and finally gave a second chance to Wiz7. And I had a revelation that Wiz7 is the kind of video game masterpiece I couldn't even imagine before. Since then RPGs p. much completely replaced adventures in my vidya menu.
 

xasanom

Novice
Joined
Jun 21, 2020
Messages
8
My first RPG (sort of) was Quest for Glory V. I saw the disk while visiting my cousin and it was looking kinda cool. Being a kid I wasn’t very proficient in English language, but somehow I managed to enjoy the game; walking around killing stuff, getting levels and becoming stronger. Well, I was hooked.

Couple of years later I got Morrowind. And it was really exciting again! But the problem was the game being very text-heavy and me being very Russian. So, I took the thickest English-Russian dictionary I had, and I was rebuilding every word and every sentence in my native tongue trying to grasp the overall meaning. I think this “technique” helped me a lot to advance my English and I never had problems with English in school and in my later years.

Also, Baldurs Gate 2. That shit persuaded me completely in superiority of RPG medium compared to lesser genres.
 

Twiglard

Poland Stronk
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Staff Member
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Aug 6, 2014
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Poland
Strap Yourselves In Codex Year of the Donut
Fallout 2. I've had trouble using the lockpick skill on the Temple of Trials door. Then it got better but I've had to reroll at Vault City due to thinking Strength influenced firearm damage, like Diablo 1 did with bows. Retarded I know, but was 11 or 12 years old at the time.
 

laclongquan

Arcane
Joined
Jan 10, 2007
Messages
1,870,144
Location
Searching for my kidnapped sister
Fallout 2. After a review/walkthrough on the vietnamese version of Computer World I had to try that.

NO home computer back then. I had to do it on Net shop (not even net cafe back then, purely a LAN shop that lend out computer to play games).

Each session I had to reinstall the game if it's a new Net shop. Then transfer the save to floppy disk for later sessions.

Later on I try Fallout 1, also net shop first. Then Planescape Torment and Baldur's Gate when I had a home comp.

It's pretty fun the loops I gone through to play crpg back then.
 

Nifft Batuff

Prophet
Joined
Nov 14, 2018
Messages
3,169
Fallout 2. After a review/walkthrough on the vietnamese version of Computer World I had to try that.

NO home computer back then. I had to do it on Net shop (not even net cafe back then, purely a LAN shop that lend out computer to play games).

Each session I had to reinstall the game if it's a new Net shop. Then transfer the save to floppy disk for later sessions.

Later on I try Fallout 1, also net shop first. Then Planescape Torment and Baldur's Gate when I had a home comp.

It's pretty fun the loops I gone through to play crpg back then.
If I don't remember wrong, you can run Fallout 1&2 directly from cd, with a very minimum install.
 

Zed Duke of Banville

Dungeon Master
Patron
Joined
Oct 3, 2015
Messages
11,756
I remember this one too, what is funny is the same people who will rate this incline, will shit on skyrim. This game was one of the first action rpg with almost no character development.
Faery Tale Adventure was the hiking simulator of the future!

QYuZxSo.jpg


And it contained more farmland than Skyrim and Oblivion combined.
 

ThePaleBear

Literate
Joined
Mar 2, 2021
Messages
6
Arcanum, I loved playing a suave gunslinger game still has the best crafting system I have seen and it lead me to Fallout 1,2 soon after.
 

Drew

Savant
Joined
Feb 7, 2014
Messages
338
Location
Syracuse, New York
So what was your first RPG?

Was it love on first sight and established your lifelong infatuation with RPGs? Or was it a disappointment?

I'm impressed that anyone is actually able to remember. If I would guess, it would probably be Pokemon RGBY or maybe Metal Walker based on their release dates. I dunno man, it was more than 20 years ago. How anyone here can say with confidence what it was and how it affected them blows my mind.

pokemon is best enjoyed as a multiplayer game (pvp...
Does anyone who is even remotely competent in pvp actually enjoy it? I can't agree with your sentiment because while the singleplayer game is far too easy and clearly made for actual children, the pvp portion goes 500 miles per hour the other direction. Spending a month breeding specific ha/nature/iv spread/egg move mons to be able to not get blown out isn't exactly my idea of "enjoying".
 

Nijar

Novice
Joined
May 9, 2020
Messages
25
So what was your first RPG? I started out my gaming career with a C64 at the end of the 80s. But despite having two boxes of floppy discs (all originals naturally) there was no real RPG among them.
Having only originals in your two boxes is pretty cool, you sound like you were a really special kid with very wealthy parents. But coming from german speaking roots ("Alter Sack"), are you sure your first experience with Rollenspielen was not "Das Verlies"?
Imperator Software von Jürgen Paasch?
VerliesTitel.png

..whisper..Magic Disk 64
 

grimer

Learned
Joined
Feb 24, 2021
Messages
121
Does anyone who is even remotely competent in pvp actually enjoy it? I can't agree with your sentiment because while the singleplayer game is far too easy and clearly made for actual children, the pvp portion goes 500 miles per hour the other direction. Spending a month breeding specific ha/nature/iv spread/egg move mons to be able to not get blown out isn't exactly my idea of "enjoying".
anyone competent in pvp mostly plays on pokemon showdown where they can just input the desired stats to create a mon and focus more on the battling. the turns also resolve much faster since you can skip animations and combat messages. i think 1 pvp battle on cart takes about as long as 3 pvp battles there. pokemon showdown also supports a wide array of competitive formats (not just smogon ones) so the only reason to play on cart would be if someone were to participate in a vgc tournament in which case they still do most of their team building and testing on showdown then breed/train the final result on cart
 

Bloodeyes

Arcane
Joined
Jan 30, 2007
Messages
2,908
The first Western RPG I can remember playing was Summoner, a game for the PS2 that released in 2002. I have false memories of playing it on the PS1 in the 90s which of course makes me wonder about the chronology of my entire childhood. There's such a strong association between that game and the town I lived in up to December 1999, yet that's totally impossible. That's just how memories work though, it's best not to dwell on it.

I remember enjoying it a lot, but abandoning it after getting stuck and not knowing about walkthroughs yet (I would only recently have used the Internet for the first time in 2002, and didn't really know what it was for beyond very slowly downloading pictures of naked women to print off). I own the PC version now and I intend to play it through one day. I think it could be a fun project to do it as a video LP for the codex next time I'm on holiday and can actually take on something like that.

The first JRPG was probably FF7 or Pokemon Red. Pretty standard stuff, I wasn't a nerdy kid and didn't have a computer.
 

Ladonna

Arcane
Joined
Aug 27, 2006
Messages
10,636
Bards Tale on c64. I enjoyed it for a little while, but it was too boring for me as a kid. The first CRPG I played, enjoyed and finished was Legacy of the Ancients.

 

Rincewind

Magister
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Joined
Feb 8, 2020
Messages
2,427
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down under
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The first RPG I fooled around with was probably Legend of Faerghail or some SSI GoldBox game on the Amiga 500, which left me quite unimpressed because my English sucked when I was a kid and of course pirated games did not come with manuals... But the first one that I actually completed and enjoyed was the first Eye of the Beholder. I had an external floppy drive when I played it, which cut the disk swapping about in half! (it came on four 3.5" floppies, I distinctly remember) I replayed it last year and it's still as excellent as it was 30 years ago, a true classic.
 

Broseph

Dangerous JB
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Joined
Nov 24, 2012
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4,394
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Globohomo Gayplex
Strictly keeping it western computer RPGs, my memory is fuzzy but I'm fairly sure Neverwinter Nights was the first one I picked up and played by myself. I grew up watching my older brothers play Might & Magic, Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale. NWN was simple and easy enough for me to play as a child, but I never got much further than chapter 1 in the OC. Loved the atmosphere and the music of that game. I did ultimately finish Hordes of the Underdark, which was the first RPG campaign I ever completed. Think I was 11 or 12 at the time.
 

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