Sceptic said:
Cool, I didn't know Dungeon and City were meant to be one game initially. I do remember reading about the titles of some of the subsequent ones at the time, but I of course don't remember any of this stuff now. Reading through the Wikipedia article was an interesting reminder of how fascinating the series' initial premise was. Shame the developers didn't have the technology/means/talent to take it all the way through.
Yeah. From what I can gather it was supposed to be a series that tied in together to create a large and completely immersive world with lots going on and a vast amount to both do and explore. On top of that there was supposed to be some narrative weaved in to do with aliens or some such generic bullshit. I can't really think of any other cRPG since that had the same ambition. The Wikipedia article reads like a more ambitious game design document than the shit that developers most likely produce internally today. It seems to have been conceptually completed before the first game was even released.
Sceptic said:
Interesting, I thought Eternal Dagger got a PC release.
It doesn't seem so, else I would have played the DOS version. Also, I don't remember the CRPG Addict covering it, yet it came out in 1987, a year that he's already finished with.
Sceptic said:
As for Blacksilver, I never played Legacy of the Ancients but I don't remember there being much that was memorable or noteworthy about it (correct me if I'm wrong), did the sequel introduce anything really interesting? The whole Questron thing seems to have made Addict question his PC-only rule, if there's something really noteworthy about one of these games you should mention it, either here if he still reads this thread, or on his own blog, it might be unique enough to fully convince him to try his hand at an emulator again (I remember he tried and ran into trouble with Phantasie).
Crooked Bee said:
I think Legacy of the Ancients is kinda horrible. It has a cool concept, what with the museum expositions you enter and whatnot, but the execution, oh god the tedious execution, and the minigames, oh god the horrible minigames. I'd say one should give it a spin just for the sake of it, but you must be a masochist to do a completionist playthrough of that kind of game. The monotony killed it for me.
Well, I've given my thoughts on these games already:
MMXI said:
Maybe. They are all basically the same game, though. Just pick one and play it. They are pretty much like more advanced versions of Ultima I and II, before the series introduced parties. Top down view in towns and the over world, first person in dungeons. For 1984 I think Questron was brilliant. The other three games came way too late and were just severely outdated. Legacy of the Ancients came out in 1987 and both The Legend of Blacksilver and Questron II came out in 1988. By that time we had games like Ultima IV and V, Might and Magic I and II, Pool of Radiance and The Bard's Tale trilogy. Even SSI's other pre-Gold Box RPGs, Wizard's Crown, Eternal Dagger, the Phantasie trilogy, Shard of Spring and Demon's Winter were less primitive in terms of gameplay.
Basically, other than the first Questron, they were all severely outdated by the time they came out. If they had all seen release before the end of 1985 then I would have thought much more highly of them. As it were, they came out far too late, in a period where we had far superior cRPGs to play.
Sceptic said:
I had to single this one out because, while I don't think its gameplay was hugely memorable, its narrative was the most interesting thing not made by Infocom to grace the PC at this time (and yes, this includes Ultima 5). This game doesn't get anywhere near the recognition it deserves.
Yeah. Demon's Winter was a pretty good game. It was a massive improvement over Shard of Spring, in my view. The story was actually interesting, especially for an 80s cRPG, and the gameplay was somewhat above average. However, it's the way that the game world fundamentally changes as the plot moves forwards that was perhaps its most revolutionary element for the genre back in 1988. All earlier cRPGs that I can think of, including the Ultima games, consisted of a world that merely sits and waits for you to explore it, with a plot that you discover throughout the game and "solve" in the final confrontation. Demon's Winter has to be one of the first cRPGs where the plot actually progresses as you move through the game. In that respect its story is told in a way far closer to modern cRPGs.
DwarvenFood said:
What good games are we missing out on the PC platform I wonder ?
I can try to dig up some more if you want. I'm sure there are quite a lot more that never appeared on the PC. Though I think at this stage I'll be looking into some pretty poor early shovelware as opposed to uncovering any gems. There must have been at least a few RPGs written exclusively for less popular machines like the Spectrum, Amstrad and the BBC Micro. Who knows?
DwarvenFood said:
Anything else on NES maybe that is worth it ?
I know nothing about NES games as I've never been a console player. There were NES ports for some of the old cRPGs back then, but in almost all cases the home computer versions were far better. The NES only RPGs seem to be JRPGs, a genre I know next to nothing about.
