Putting the 'role' back in role-playing games since 2002.
Donate to Codex
Good Old Games
  • Welcome to rpgcodex.net, a site dedicated to discussing computer based role-playing games in a free and open fashion. We're less strict than other forums, but please refer to the rules.

    "This message is awaiting moderator approval": All new users must pass through our moderation queue before they will be able to post normally. Until your account has "passed" your posts will only be visible to yourself (and moderators) until they are approved. Give us a week to get around to approving / deleting / ignoring your mundane opinion on crap before hassling us about it. Once you have passed the moderation period (think of it as a test), you will be able to post normally, just like all the other retards.

RPGs that fell short of greatness and should be remade

Lacrymas

Arcane
Joined
Sep 23, 2015
Messages
17,948
Pathfinder: Wrath
The only good thing from Harebrained cRPG comes from the Shadowrun rules and settings, they didn't add anything of value, only dumbed it down.
Mobile game engine, corridor dungeons, jrpg linear quests, they even dumbed down the game mechanism so much they sucked the fun out of character development.
And it's still better than the other stuff from the KS era.
 

Shackleton

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Dec 29, 2011
Messages
1,301
Location
Knackers Yard
Codex 2016 - The Age of Grimoire Make the Codex Great Again! Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture
Titan Quest, if they removed all the padding and used the original concept:

EXSxChIUYAEnSuF.png


Also, Neverwinter Nights 2 with a decent camera.

What? Like is everyone going to pretend to not notice the fucking nonsensical typo in this quote? Erymanthian BOARD? Board like a fucking plank of wood? Yeah, I can see why that stupid quest was cut, a town being terrorised by a massive noticeboard that's turned sentient from all the bullshit fetch quests posted on it and has struck back against it's oppressors.

Now, a quest to slay the Erymanthian BOAR might have made a bit more sense. Better to hunt a giant pig than a lump of timber.
 

PorkaMorka

Arcane
Joined
Feb 19, 2008
Messages
5,090
Obviously almost any remake would most likely be bad, we shouldn't want anything to be remade in today's culture

However, a lot of RPGs could be significantly improved if an experienced player with a solid understanding of pacing and level / encounter design went through with some decent editing tools and made them less annoying to the player, mostly by cutting away bloated parts or tweaking existing fights to make them slightly less boring.

Wizardry 8 and TOEE are good examples of almost- good games dragged down because they force the player to sit through low quality pseudo-content, but even Pool of Radiance Ruins of Myth Drannor was potentially kind of fun to play around with, I just didn't want to spend hours and hours (with the fast animation mod on) exploring the same brown dungeon and fighting the same zombies etc. Just condense that part into a few hours and skip some of the more boring fights, put some interesting enemies with actual abilities in, etc.

Divinity Original Sin Enhanced Edition could also use another remake, where they just try to make the game less annoying to the player and remove all the lootable barrels and paintings, other pointless busywork, excessive dialog and unfun puzzles. If it had normal pacing it would actually be a decent game, by the time you got sick of throwing environmental effects around it would be almost over.

I don't understand why this problem persists from game to game, because it should annoy the broader and more casual audience that companies are seeking.
 

Norfleet

Moderator
Joined
Jun 3, 2005
Messages
12,250
What? Like is everyone going to pretend to not notice the fucking nonsensical typo in this quote? Erymanthian BOARD? Board like a fucking plank of wood? Yeah, I can see why that stupid quest was cut, a town being terrorised by a massive noticeboard that's turned sentient from all the bullshit fetch quests posted on it and has struck back against it's oppressors.
I noticed. Like you, this is the vision that it immediately conjured. I just thought this this idea was too hilarious to say no to.
 

lukaszek

the determinator
Patron
Joined
Jan 15, 2015
Messages
12,620
Divinity Original Sin Enhanced Edition could also use another remake, where they just try to make the game less annoying to the player and remove all the lootable barrels and paintings, other pointless busywork, excessive dialog and unfun puzzles. If it had normal pacing it would actually be a decent game, by the time you got sick of throwing environmental effects around it would be almost over.

I don't understand why this problem persists from game to game, because it should annoy the broader and more casual audience that companies are seeking.
why would you play dos if not to trap bosses with furniture?
 

luj1

You're all shills
Vatnik
Joined
Jan 2, 2016
Messages
12,871
Location
Eastern block
Uh..

ToEE, Wiz 8, Arcanum havent "fell short of greatness", they are already great

Go reread the thread title
 

PorkaMorka

Arcane
Joined
Feb 19, 2008
Messages
5,090
Wizardry 8 and TOEE are good examples of almost- good games

:deathclaw:

What's better than Wizardry 8?
Name 3 better blobbers and make us laugh.

I don't like blobbers, but as far as I know, Wizardry 8 IS the best blobber. I especially liked how you could move your formation around during battle.

However, it is still true that Wizardry 8 is slow and bloated with tedious random encounters, some of which take 15+ minutes to play out, either because of crowd control and slow animations or because of "friendly" NPCs and weird pathing issues.

Most long time fans recommend playing Wizardry 8 with a speed patch and there are also some recommended mods that (I believe) try to address some of the problems with abnormally slow random encounters, by tweaking animations, pathing issues, enemy stats, friendly NPCs, etc.

So the Wizardry 8 fan community basically agrees with my assessment that Wizardry 8 would benefit from an experienced player going through and cleaning up some of the annoying aspects.

ToEE is a similar story, yes it has a good combat engine with some good fights, but that combat is semi-locked behind hours and hours of Hommlett, which is not fun at all. It also suffers from boring encounter design in a lot of places. It was a mistake to translate the P&P module into a video game too literally, the DM is supposed to adjust things to keep it fun.

An experienced player with a good understanding of level / encounter design and a basic set of design tools could DRAMATICALLY improve TOEE, in fact the community used to recommend the use of the Circle of Eight patch to help with some of these issues, however I'm not sure if it is still recommended, since it started to get bloated.

(Which is another issue; mods can and do improve aspects of these games, but mods tend to introduce their new own problems at the same time.)
 

Grunker

RPG Codex Ghost
Patron
Joined
Oct 19, 2009
Messages
27,385
Location
Copenhagen
However, it is still true that Wizardry 8 is slow and bloated with tedious random encounters, some of which take 15+ minutes to play out, either because of crowd control and slow animations or because of "friendly" NPCs and weird pathing issues.

Wizardry 8 is one of the very small number of Codex Sacreds. Not even stuff like PS:T or Baldur's Gate has membership of that Church. So what's a Codex Sacred?

A Codex Sacred is a game considered so awesome that even constructive criticism of its minor flaws is considered heresy. A good example would be something like critiquing the shallow nature of Fallout 1's combat. Even if you preface your critique by saying that it's just a small part of Fallout's otherwise magnificent gameplay, even if you remember the disclaimer that you're talking about a minor blemish on an otherwise all-time great, your criticism will be mistaken for edgelord declinerist bullshit about a perfect game.

Or indeed, as you do here, point out the fact that Wizardry 8 would be even better with less bloated encounters and more fluidity in the combat.

Every codexer of course plays with WizFast and thus implicitly recognizes that any sane person will ackknowlegde the fact that Wiz8 encounter can get a bit tedious due to the slow and distended encounters.

You're just not allowed to point it out.

The high priest of the Chuch of Codex Sacreds is Darth Roxor, but many prominent members of the 'dex count themselves members of it. All good people, by the way, some of the most worthwhile posters around here when it comes to quality content about older games. Many of the members are people who actually play tons of RPGs and not just GD scum. So you'll have to take the sour with the sweet, to translate a Danish expression.
 
Last edited:

Bigg Boss

Arcane
Joined
Sep 23, 2012
Messages
7,528
The only good thing from Harebrained cRPG comes from the Shadowrun rules and settings, they didn't add anything of value, only dumbed it down.
Mobile game engine, corridor dungeons, jrpg linear quests, they even dumbed down the game mechanism so much they sucked the fun out of character development.
And it's still better than the other stuff from the KS era.

Wasteland 2 DC is better than the first two Shadowrun's. I couldn't be bothered to go back for Hong Kong with the barebones RPG mechanics (more like XCOM) followed by talking to bullshit NPC's with fluff text in-between missions.
 
Joined
Oct 9, 2015
Messages
2,095
Location
DFW, Texas
I'd quite like a re-imagining of Spelljammer: Pirates of Relamspace.

Make the ship-to-ship combat bits happen from a 3rd person view with a 3D battle field with debris and stuff, make the boarding actions take place on multi-level ship maps and make the Toril based solar system full of pirate docks, Illithid slave markets to raid/capture/trade with, treasure to hunt for, and mysterious beasts to kill. Maybe have each new career start with a goal to achieve before retirement rather than a 'save the world' plot. Preferably include some factions which you can help to conquer territory and get rewards from.
Imagine using an engine like Prey (2006) that allows for real-time portals and variable gravity.
 

curds

Magister
Joined
Nov 24, 2019
Messages
1,098
Titan Quest, if they removed all the padding and used the original concept:

EXSxChIUYAEnSuF.png


Also, Neverwinter Nights 2 with a decent camera.

Holy shit.

They weren't allowed to have snow in the game because of the risk of alienating people who are already so stupid they don't know it snows on mountain tops in most parts of the entire planet.

This is like the most perfect example of why gaming has declined.
 

Blutwurstritter

Learned
Joined
Sep 18, 2021
Messages
875
Location
Germany
better off relying on fan remakes than anything official at this point

Totally right, like the BG2 fan remake in the DAO engine. Instant classic.
I know there was talk about a Icewind Dale conversion to the ToEE engine but I lost track of it. A port of BG 1 to the NWN II engine also exists but wasn't finished when I tried it some years ago. Did any of the conversions ever finish ?
 

Pink Eye

Monk
Patron
Joined
Oct 10, 2019
Messages
5,793
Location
Space Refrigerator
I'm very into cock and ball torture
Ravenloft is still one of my top games, but, a reimagining that gets rid of that annoying real time combat in both games. Would be terrific. Also a touch up on some of the Dungeons in Strahd's Possession, like Elven Warrior Crypt. Shit is so annoying to play with the amount of SPINNNERS, HIDDEN SWITCHES, and TELEPORTERS! Nearly stopped playing the game because of that one dungeon alone. Glad I powered through it. As Count Strahd's Castle is a complete treat to explore. Another thing is adding more content to the overworld of Stone Prophet. There's a lot of open space filled with nothing within the Har'Akir desert.
 

curds

Magister
Joined
Nov 24, 2019
Messages
1,098
better off relying on fan remakes than anything official at this point

Totally right, like the BG2 fan remake in the DAO engine. Instant classic.
I know there was talk about a Icewind Dale conversion to the ToEE engine but I lost track of it. A port of BG 1 to the NWN II engine also exists but wasn't finished when I tried it some years ago. Did any of the conversions ever finish ?
Pretty sure the BG to Nwn TC was completed fairly recently, as in this year, and they've begun work on Bg2.
 
Joined
Jan 14, 2018
Messages
50,754
Codex Year of the Donut
better off relying on fan remakes than anything official at this point

Totally right, like the BG2 fan remake in the DAO engine. Instant classic.
I know there was talk about a Icewind Dale conversion to the ToEE engine but I lost track of it. A port of BG 1 to the NWN II engine also exists but wasn't finished when I tried it some years ago. Did any of the conversions ever finish ?
Iirc there's a decent Ultima-something one in Dungeon Siege(??)'s engine. Never checked it out.
 

ERYFKRAD

Barbarian
Patron
Joined
Sep 25, 2012
Messages
28,237
Strap Yourselves In Serpent in the Staglands Shadorwun: Hong Kong Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
better off relying on fan remakes than anything official at this point

Totally right, like the BG2 fan remake in the DAO engine. Instant classic.
I know there was talk about a Icewind Dale conversion to the ToEE engine but I lost track of it. A port of BG 1 to the NWN II engine also exists but wasn't finished when I tried it some years ago. Did any of the conversions ever finish ?
Iirc there's a decent Ultima-something one in Dungeon Siege(??)'s engine. Never checked it out.
Ultima v and vi, actually.
 

As an Amazon Associate, rpgcodex.net earns from qualifying purchases.
Back
Top Bottom