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

KeighnMcDeath

RPG Codex Boomer
Joined
Nov 23, 2016
Messages
12,874
:necro:
HAPPY HALLOWEEN TO THIS THREAD!

You aged OK. How has the number of platforms aged for a single game? Going through games like Ultima, Phantasie, Wasteland, Temple of Apshai, etc and I see some are on many platforms that play slightly different or have a different interface. Ultima 3 with mouse on Amiga or MAC vs AppleII and c64 for example. Some DOS variants I still find inferior or uglier except load speeds (again look at Ultima 3 and Phantasie). Some of the nostalgia might depend on what platform you first played it. I have seen many people tout the NES ultima as AWESOME and ehen I first saw soneone bring a Nintendo Power to school and I saw sone of the screenshots I thought it looked cool. Jump to my first time trying the game at a used game store in near 2000 and I went BLEH. Go to me trying NES ULTIMA: EXODUS on emulation and I was glad I didn't but the overpriced used cartridge.

Now said game has been hacked and even has people taking the engine and making new games from it. Go figure. The NES game will always have bad flicker and I find the pacing a little off compared to c64. The music... ugh. I's love to see a NES hack that had the c64 sid music. Still, I played through it once. I never tried the rebalance modification hack.
 

Grauken

Gourd vibes only
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12,787
The same guy who hacked Ultima 3 NES to improve it, is using the U3 engine to make an upgraded version of Ultima 1 with full party creation and other stuff. Looks pretty cool so far
 

Falksi

Arcane
Joined
Feb 14, 2017
Messages
10,539
Location
Nottingham
I could give you many examples of games that have aged well, but ill try to stick more closely to the OP question and only mention games that surprised me in that regard:

Wasteland: Its a game from 1986, it is the foster father of Fallout. That sparked enough curiousity in me that i decided to give it a try. I wasnt expecting to have as much fun as i did have with the game in the end. Of course many aspects of it are dated now, but there is also so much stuff in it that is working to well especially because its such an simplistic game. I dont know if it "invented" skill checks but it most definitely put it on another level back in the day. It also invented many genre tropes the later fallout games built upon and it really feels like the birth of a new type of rpgs. The UI is also splendid if you take the time to get into it.

X-Com: Same thing pretty much. I played the remake first and had much fun with that one. Then i read some reviews of the game during a boring lecture and was puzzled by some negative reviews that claimed its a dumbed down and inferior version to the old classic. That got me curious so i decided to try the openxcom version of the game and boy, i was hooked on the game from the beginning until the defeat of my first ironman campaign on hard difficulty. I loved the artstyle, i loved the combat, i loved the destructive enviroment. While i still like the nu-Xcom, especially with the long war mod, it was indeed the superior game. There was just so much more tension in it. I still remember the names of some of my elite soldiers and i remember that one dramatic terror mission when they all died to save some fucking rookies with overly expensive gear. Never put expensive gear on rookies.


Fallout's character creation is so much better than Underrail, its kinda strange, now we have bigger resolution monitors but devs choose to split things up instead of making everything in one page or something.

Well you spend how long, maybe 30 minutes creating your character? The vast majority of your gametime you spend actually playing the game, and underrail has a vastly superior UI in that aspect.

Well said.

The nu-X-coms are commendable reboots definitely worth playing. But they pale in comparison to the older games, and nothing quite captures the sense of tension and fear like the original X-com does.
 

KeighnMcDeath

RPG Codex Boomer
Joined
Nov 23, 2016
Messages
12,874
The same guy who hacked Ultima 3 NES to improve it, is using the U3 engine to make an upgraded version of Ultima 1 with full party creation and other stuff. Looks pretty cool so far
Yeah, I do find that awesome and will keep following it.
 

Cael

Arcane
Joined
Nov 1, 2017
Messages
20,298
I could give you many examples of games that have aged well, but ill try to stick more closely to the OP question and only mention games that surprised me in that regard:

Wasteland: Its a game from 1986, it is the foster father of Fallout. That sparked enough curiousity in me that i decided to give it a try. I wasnt expecting to have as much fun as i did have with the game in the end. Of course many aspects of it are dated now, but there is also so much stuff in it that is working to well especially because its such an simplistic game. I dont know if it "invented" skill checks but it most definitely put it on another level back in the day. It also invented many genre tropes the later fallout games built upon and it really feels like the birth of a new type of rpgs. The UI is also splendid if you take the time to get into it.

X-Com: Same thing pretty much. I played the remake first and had much fun with that one. Then i read some reviews of the game during a boring lecture and was puzzled by some negative reviews that claimed its a dumbed down and inferior version to the old classic. That got me curious so i decided to try the openxcom version of the game and boy, i was hooked on the game from the beginning until the defeat of my first ironman campaign on hard difficulty. I loved the artstyle, i loved the combat, i loved the destructive enviroment. While i still like the nu-Xcom, especially with the long war mod, it was indeed the superior game. There was just so much more tension in it. I still remember the names of some of my elite soldiers and i remember that one dramatic terror mission when they all died to save some fucking rookies with overly expensive gear. Never put expensive gear on rookies.


Fallout's character creation is so much better than Underrail, its kinda strange, now we have bigger resolution monitors but devs choose to split things up instead of making everything in one page or something.

Well you spend how long, maybe 30 minutes creating your character? The vast majority of your gametime you spend actually playing the game, and underrail has a vastly superior UI in that aspect.

Well said.

The nu-X-coms are commendable reboots definitely worth playing. But they pale in comparison to the older games, and nothing quite captures the sense of tension and fear like the original X-com does.
They are not even in the same genre. Nu-Xcom is more like the old squad based games like SWAT than the 60-80% casualty RNG bullet hell that is old Xcom.
 

Tihskael

Learned
Joined
Jun 22, 2020
Messages
315
I tried Arena a year ago and it played quite well. Hell, Morrowind is 20 years old and it plays how you expect it to play.
 

Rincewind

Magister
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down under
Codex+ Now Streaming!
Look at Gothic's inventory for example: it's clunky as fuck, a huge pain in the ass, same with its retarded way to pick up items.

Actually, Gothic's interface is one the best if you have a strong preference for fully keyboard driven interfaces, including the inventory. Yes, unusual at first, but I reckon you would spend a lot more time familiarising yourself with the game's systems than the interface, which takes like 10 minutes max, with practice?
 

Fluent

Arcane
Patron
The Real Fanboy
Joined
Apr 8, 2021
Messages
830
Hey all. In my honest opinion, ALL RPGs have aged well. From Phantasie to Gold Box to however far back u want to go, the difference is YOUR ATTITUDE. As a kid, everything excites u, then u grow up and FORGET that you're just a human, as u were when u were a kid. We have to remember and recognize our true BEING, that will instantly add a freshness to all things. The world can be exciting, thrilling and NEW for anyone, but u have to silence your critical and even often hateful, jaded and bored mind. That is the source of games not aging well, your own mind. Approach like a child and a game from 1984 can be just as exciting as Wrath Of The Righteous etc.. Trust me, I live it. :) Love u guys, peace. <3
 

Cael

Arcane
Joined
Nov 1, 2017
Messages
20,298
Look at Gothic's inventory for example: it's clunky as fuck, a huge pain in the ass, same with its retarded way to pick up items.

Actually, Gothic's interface is one the best if you have a strong preference for fully keyboard driven interfaces, including the inventory. Yes, unusual at first, but I reckon you would spend a lot more time familiarising yourself with the game's systems than the interface, which takes like 10 minutes max, with practice?
I long for the days of Ultima 4 and 5. Full keyboard interface, you say?
 

Dodo1610

Arcane
Joined
May 3, 2018
Messages
2,155
Location
Germany
Gothic despite starting development in 97 was probably one of the last games which were designed without a mouse. They only added mouse control are in development when testers started to complain. Even with it you still need the arrow keys for everything LMB/CTRL + ↑ is hit forward when holding your weapon or picking up items when not/ in the inventory it's used to consumed items, LMB/CTRL + ↔ is hit left-right
LMB/CTRL + ↓ is blocking
Alt is jumping and Alt + ↑ is climbing up ...
The control scheme is an acquired taste and I think G2 is better since you no longer need the arrow key but it isn't as bad as some people make it seem. The biggest hurdle is finding out that you even need the arrow keys when you have don't look at the instruction booklet since those games have no in-game tutorial.
 
Last edited:
Joined
Jan 14, 2018
Messages
50,754
Codex Year of the Donut
Gothic despite starting development in 97 was probably one of the last games which were designed without a mouse. They only added mouse control are in development when testers started to complain. Even with it you still need the arrow keys for everything LMB/CTRL + ↑ is hit forward when holding your weapon or picking up items when not, LMB/CTRL + ↔ is hit left-right ...
The control scheme is an acquired taste and I think G2 is better since you no longer need the arrow key but it isn't as bad as some people make it seem. The biggest hurdle is finding out that you even need the arrow keys when you have don't look at the instruction booklet since those games have no in-game tutorial.
tank controls
 

perfectslumbers

Arbiter
Joined
Oct 24, 2021
Messages
1,198
Baldur's Gate came out before i was born so I have a literal zoomer perspective on this.

The infinity engine games and fallout 1 and 2 and similar games all aged great. It takes a bit to get used to the UI and the slow movement but they control and play well, and have good art.

Early 3d games usually have aged poorly, mostly because they usually run worse and with more bugs on modern hardware than old games run on emulators. Thankfully mods can often fix this.

Every jrpg aged well. In fact old jrpgs are imo generally easier to get into than current ones.

I haven't played many pre infinity engine games but the first two elder scrolls games aged pretty well and were super immersive for me, and they have better combat than the modern ones :^). I tried a few gold box games and they have a bit of a learning curve but are pretty neat once you figure them out, it is very strange having to relearn how to control games after 20 years of muscle memory. It's clear when playing them how they could capture peoples imaginations so well in the past, although I don't think they'd hold most gen z'ers attention for too long.
 

Strig

Learned
Joined
Oct 29, 2021
Messages
863
Location
Between the pages of Potato's "Republic"
I was always amazed how forward-thinking Dark Sun: Shattered Lands was. It still remains one of my favorite cRPGs and ease of access is definitely a factor. The game doesn't play much different from Infinity games and I would say even the interface style is similar (taking the age and resolution difference into account of course). Not to give anyone ideas for a modern remake, but it would be extremely easy to adapt it wholesale as an isometric game.

darksun-6.png
 

mkultra

Augur
Joined
Feb 27, 2012
Messages
469
yeah, tried Dark Sun: Shattered Lands some year ago and i was extremely surprised of how well it had aged. This is very rare for such old games.
I was similarly surprised of how bad i thought Gothic 2 had aged, the graphics are ok (especially if modded) but the awful movement/animation and control of your character just takes me out of it, it's horrible if you've gotten used to new 3D games. It used to be a favorite that i could replay.

Graphics overall is the easiest to overcome, often being incline in comparison to many modern indies like Knights of the Chalice 2, it's like many devs doesn't even bother any longer, "let's not make character models, people are stupid enough to still buy it." lol. modern 2D is usually absolute shite with a few exceptions.
 
Last edited:

Humbaba

Arcane
Joined
Aug 12, 2021
Messages
2,939
Location
SADAT HQ
Well, in terms of technology none of the DOS era RPGs really hold up. When it comes to controls, interface and of course graphics I don't think any game pre-1990 or so stacks up to anything after that point. Besides that, there are several areas where I think there are older games that do things better than most or all modern titles so far.

When it comes to immersion, U7 is a great example and not only because you can bake bread. Serpent Isle also stands out, especially story wise. Of course PST's story still is unmatched to this day. In fact it is the only video game plot, which I consider genuinely good not only by video game standards, which are extremely low when compared to literature and film. BG2 still is unmatched in providing a proper D&D experience and only second to PST when it comes to companions and general writing.

Gameplay-wise, JA2 is a standout title, the likes of which would not, could not and incidentally has not been made in today's industry. It is also a great example of character writing in a non-character or story driven game. HoMM3 is still a lot of fun these days but that's one of the few old games I actually grew up with, so there's a good deal of nostalgia involved in my judgement here. Though I think its pre-rendered graphics hold up 100% and look much better than early and even some later full 3d. Imo full 3d has only started looking better than pre-rendered sprites about 5 years ago. Same goes for Red Alert 2, which still looks amazing. I'm surprised indie devs never seem to go for pre-rendered sprites and instead only do pixel art. I'm not even sure pixel art is any easier to make.

Myth II is another great game, which has inexplicably spawned no imitators whatsoever. It's like the only RTS where the focus is truly on strategy instead of spread sheet management and the ability to hit a lot of keys really fast. I really like the setting as well but not for how it is built but for how it is presented and how fleshed out it feels despite there being relatively little actual writing. I think this is what's called a "hollow iceberg" in literary circles; basically making a world look and feel very believable with little effort. That sort of stuff is very rare in video gaming where everything needs to be explained with


I suppose Dark Souls, which I've never played does something similar but from what I've heard is that a lot of people went through the game never knowing what was actually going on, which I don't think is a good thing really.
 

vazha

Arcane
Joined
Aug 24, 2013
Messages
2,063
Siege of Avalon?
 

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