Sceptic said:
Well he's writing quite a bit about it in his latest post, as it seems he played it when he was a kid. It would've been more interesting to get a full Questron 1 blog back then and a quick "2 is just the same" post now, but I can live with this. Especially since this last post of his is pretty entertaining.
Yeah well. I think he started blogging about the sequel after I typed my post. The main reason I wished he covered it back when he was covering 1984 games was because there were fuck all cRPGs before 1985. And Questron was, I believe, SSI's first cRPG, therefore making it important, however primitive.
Sceptic said:
Actually I can forgive him for most of these except Wiz 4 and WC. AR is pretty pointless since there's nothing to do but map and grind in order to export your char to the sequel... which doesn't exist on PC. I think he gave up on Autoduel because it doesn't have any kind of MQ either (or he didn't find how to start it after a few hours). BT2 is pretty boring (though I wonder if he'll ever go back to BT3 like he said he would... probably not, but I'll forgive him for that if he actually finishes the much better Dragon Wars). And finally Wiz 2 and 3 are clones of 1 in a different dungeon, and their save/load system (especially 2) is just too much. The main reason I got annoyed at him for 4 is that it is a completely unique game (and the second half, with the multiple endings, is much more interesting) and I feel that he made a mistake sticking to very strict rules until getting completely sick of the game. But then expecting him to finish everything isn't exactly realistic...
No need to explain what each of those games are like. I've played them all to completion (where possible) before, and that's why I mentioned them.
Alternate Reality - Pointless, yes. But as a few commenters noted back then, he didn't play it enough to see all that it had to offer. Of course it was a totally incomplete game, but more time spent on it would have been better. Oh, and The Dungeon, which was actually better and more purposeful than The City, not being released for DOS is another reason why that stupid DOS/Windows only rule sucks.
Autoduel - Again, not enough time spent on it. He didn't get to see all that the game had to offer. I can admit that the game isn't that great, but it was definitely great conceptually for 1985. Oh, and the game does have a plot. Sort of. You stumble upon it when doing courier missions.
The Bard's Tale II - It's definitely the worst game in the series in my view, but he basically quit playing it just because it was similar to the first game. Dragon Wars being vastly superior to The Bard's Tale should have nothing to do with not completing it.
Wizardry II and III - Exactly. More of the same. Wizardry. I actually think Wizardry II and III are both better designed than the first episode. I also think he shouldn't have forced himself to play through the first Wizardry again when his party died in Wizardry II. He should have just kept a backup and restarted Wizardry II from the start. However, this was before he started cheating in games and breaking his own rules.
Wizardry IV - I agree. A totally strange concept for a game at the time and one of the first major RPGs to have multiple endings. He should have stuck with it to the end.
His rule about DOS/Windows only games is only going to make things worse before getting better. There were quite a number of above average RPGs in the late 80s and early 90s that weren't available for the IBM PC.
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