Good explorefag games

[KeighnMcDeath]

Back in the day I did enjoy exploring maps in Aion and PWI. Of the two, Aion had fantastic backgrounds. Thus, I made LordToadstool who only gathered and collected resources and took pictures of everywhere. I enjoyed the soundtrack as well. PWI, early release I enjoyed but it became rather tedious later on. I played these at my brother's homes in different states since he had decent internet though his wife would DC the service often because she gambled at casinos all the time and lose.

 

[Louis_Cypher]

There is a ZX Spectrum / C64 adaptation of Knightmare, by the way. I saw screenshots and a mini-review of it in some gaming magazine in the late 80s and found it quite fascinating as a kid. That wizard head that periodically appears and gives you various tips seemed like something super cool. Well, I'm yet to play it.

Wow, that's an unexpected tie-in game. Anglo culture was pretty interesting in the 90s, with stuff like Knightmare and the Crystal Maze; people seem to have had a dungeon-crawling impulse. They even got that presenter to appear in the first D&D movie lol.

 

[Mark Richard]

I remember there was a show on British children's TV, called Knightmare, where contestants were inserted into a virtual dungeon, via old fashion animation. There was this old school feeling of some surreal wizard setting challenges and testing your courage through physical challenges and riddles:

Fuck me, I used to watch this every Friday. Parts of it scared the shit out me... it was highly atmospheric.

As a kid I could only roll my eyes at my family leaping off the couch in response to a football referee making a questionable decision, but this show would bring out the exact same reaction from me every time the contestants couldn't spell a word or failed a simple riddle about mythology. All time classic.

 

[kangaxx]

They're all on YouTube if you ever fancy indulging the nostalgia...

 

[Iucounu]

Witcher 3 is not an explorer's game.

You just follow the breadcrums on the floor and everything is flagged.

I recall you can't ignore your Witcher Senses in quests, but maybe you can at least switch off the sidequest question marks?

But even if you move around freely I felt the game was fighting me with it's many absurd level restrictions on enemies. Too often you find some enemy that's impossible to kill at your current level, but even if you remember to return later you've levelled up so much that the enemy is now trivial and boring. Trying to find enemies on just the right level to be challenging isn't fun exploration. I didn't help that almost none of the loot was worth anything.

 

[lukaszek]

I recall you can't ignore your Witcher Senses in quests, but maybe you can at least switch off the sidequest question marks?

yes, you can.

indeed level scaled/locked loot paired with lvl difference dmg formula kills it. Xp gathering is not really incentive to explore in this game. Nor is items gathering.
However there are perk points and monster parts that you need for crafting. Qute a shame that you dont get whole package.

There are very few cool locations that are not spoon fed to you via map marker, like so

 

[Gilius Thunderhead]

On Kenshi - while it's an excellent game I dunno if I'd call it 'explorefag' per se. Good world, interesting and everything...but it's pretty barren and disconnected. I basically did play it as an explorefag....it's just pretty 'thin'. If you have the patience I guess it counts but for me it doesn't go into the same category as something like Might & Magic

Kenshi is supposed to have low density of content. This is not bad, per se--that's how I wanted FNV to be like, for example. I always felt the desert should've been much larger, that I should need to walk miles between locations and maybe die of thirst along the way. I know many would hate this, but to me this was always the hidden promise of the game, to let you experience the wasteland itself, not just the places it connects. Kenshi lets you do this, but sacrifices a lot of other things, including the staple of any RPG: quests.

Disconnected... perhaps. The abrupt transitions between biomes help produce a mood shift, but one could argue this is probably just a byproduct of the way the game was coded. There are certainly many things Kenshi 2 can do about this, such as transitional biomes, border settlements, trade and transportation routes and a larger, more fleshed out map. We'll have to wait and see.

I guess it's a good idea to distinguish between different types of exploration. Kenshi has almost nothing in common with games that feature exploration as a component of puzzle solving, or that neatly divide main areas from hidden areas to "reward exploration"(there are some such inaccessible areas with lootable ruins, but many more that don't offer any tangible reward). To call it a "hiking simulator" is not correct, either, there's too much fighting/resource management/strategy, too much "gameplay". I suppose "sandbox exploration" is closer to the mark.

 

[fantadomat]

I'd suggest Crystal Project if you can get over the graphics. The world is massive, detailed, and rewarding. Basically no story to speak of, just all freeform exploration, looting and crafting your party into some sort of cheesy monstrosity. I gushed about it on the forums in a couple other places. Recommend playing on hard difficulty with default settings otherwise.

Looks interesting. How's combat ?

Check out laxius power and laxius force games.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Check out laxius power and laxius force games.

Could you manage to not be a lying cunt sometimes?

Video of a guy doing a fight at appropriate level (Maybe a little over, honestly, but he's not mastered the systems yet either so it's a wash challenge wise) blind. His classes are a bit boring but it's a good showcase of how bossfights tend to unfold, with him figuring things out on the fly and he makes good use of the turn order and paying attention to what the boss is going to do.

 

[fantadomat]

Check out laxius power and laxius force games.

Could you manage to not be a lying cunt sometimes?

Video of a guy doing a fight at appropriate level (Maybe a little over, honestly, but he's not mastered the systems yet either so it's a wash challenge wise) blind. His classes are a bit boring but it's a good showcase of how bossfights tend to unfold, with him figuring things out on the fly and he makes good use of the turn order and paying attention to what the boss is going to do.

Suck a dick,faggit!

 

[behold_a_man]

On Kenshi - while it's an excellent game I dunno if I'd call it 'explorefag' per se. Good world, interesting and everything...but it's pretty barren and disconnected. I basically did play it as an explorefag....it's just pretty 'thin'. If you have the patience I guess it counts but for me it doesn't go into the same category as something like Might & Magic

Kenshi is supposed to have low density of content. This is not bad, per se--that's how I wanted FNV to be like, for example. I always felt the desert should've been much larger, that I should need to walk miles between locations and maybe die of thirst along the way. I know many would hate this, but to me this was always the hidden promise of the game, to let you experience the wasteland itself, not just the places it connects. Kenshi lets you do this, but sacrifices a lot of other things, including the staple of any RPG: quests.

The first three Might & Magic games didn't have a lot of quests either. The difference was that each dungeon or overland area held something interesting, usually unique, and beneficial. In Kenshi, the most interesting things were bosses (usually serving a similar purpose as monster nests in the Isles of Terra) or science-related things - those were spread across the world and homogeneous. What I didn't see was some wondrous stuff tied to certain places - something like an NPC giving me an ability obtainable nowhere else in the game. I don't think this problem is easily solvable, as Kenshi seemed to be built around redundancy (I can simply avoid most areas without crippling consequences) and learning by doing. The density of content itself is not a problem; it's the lack of special content.

 

[MerchantKing]

Two worlds is a great game for exploration.

 

[Losus4]

Two worlds is a great game.

FTFY. It really is a misunderstood gem. See my earlier post in this topic about it. Most of the jank comes from the poorly rendered grass + shadows. Disable them both to make the game buttery smooth.

 

[NecroLord]

Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss and its sequel The Labyrinth of Worlds took the real-time blobber format and put it into 3D environments with free movement.

The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall expanded on this with procedural generation to develop vast, sprawling dungeons, as well as settlements ranging from hamlets to large cities.

Two highly prestigious games.
A shame that the wilderness in Daggerfall is rather empty and with very few random encounters. I did get ambushed by some assassins and some monsters every now and then, but that's it.

 

[Spike]

Two worlds is a great game.

FTFY. It really is a misunderstood gem. See my earlier post in this topic about it. Most of the jank comes from the poorly rendered grass + shadows. Disable them both to make the game buttery smooth.

The Epic Edition on Steam or original vanilla version?

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

For explorerfag is first person, third person, isometric, old 2D, king's Quest-like or something else just better and more immersion than another type?

 

[ADL]

You're able to turn off the compass and the NPCs give you enough information to complete quests without it.

 

[Non-Edgy Gamer]

indeed level scaled/locked loot paired with lvl difference dmg formula kills it

IIRC, the W3EE mod fixes most of the level scaling issues by just removing levels entirely.

Makes the game into an open-world, nonlinear action RPG with RPG elements. You can now complete the main quest in any order like it was clearly designed to be.

 

[MerchantKing]

Two worlds is a great game.

FTFY. It really is a misunderstood gem. See my earlier post in this topic about it. Most of the jank comes from the poorly rendered grass + shadows. Disable them both to make the game buttery smooth.

The Epic Edition on Steam or original vanilla version?

The original version of course.

 

[KafkaBot]

The RPGs I wanted to mention have already been discussed in the thread, so I'll refrain from mentioning them again.

I'm seconding Outer Wilds, though, since it was only mentioned once. It's a wonderful game that often reminded me of Riven, at least when it comes to how enjoyable it is to explore its world(s).

The Forgotten City and Paradise Killer are also great. Paradise Killer is a detective adventure first and foremost, but gives you almost complete freedom to solve the mystery by exploring the (gorgeous) island it uses as a setting.

 

[Damned Registrations]

indeed level scaled/locked loot paired with lvl difference dmg formula kills it

IIRC, the W3EE mod fixes most of the level scaling issues by just removing levels entirely.

Makes the game into an open-world, nonlinear action RPG with RPG elements. You can now complete the main quest in any order like it was clearly designed to be.

Holy shit that sounds awesome. I really wanted to get into the world but finding enemies made of either butter or bricks depending on which order I was intended to do the quests ruined it for me.

 

[Non-Edgy Gamer]

Holy shit that sounds awesome. I really wanted to get into the world but finding enemies made of either butter or bricks depending on which order I was intended to do the quests ruined it for me.

It seems like the original mod got deleted because of the new update, but there appears to be a newer version:

W3EE Redux:
https://www.nexusmods.com/witcher3/mods/5802

I haven't tried it, but hopefully it's similar.

The one and only idiotic thing about the mod was that the author was autistically attached to one "feature". He thought that Qwen was electricity and therefore using it in water would kill the player. If you even touched a puddle with it on, zap, you die.

However, the mod files were pretty easy to edit before install, so I removed it every time.

IIRC, the function was "killplayerforlulz".

 

[Louis_Cypher]

For explorerfag is first person, third person, isometric, old 2D, king's Quest-like or something else just better and more immersion than another type?

It depends, but I would say first person is better for explorefag RPGs specifically. It puts you inside the world, like an explorer climing everest. Side-scrolling is best for Metroids.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

Now the question is MMO or just plain RPG? Some MMOs I liked except the constant chatter (which you could turn off). Seeing UO offline servers is interesting but I wonder if other games have ever been ripped from the online community for personal offline play?

 

[SmoothPimp]

May I recommend you, my fellow exploring CRPG enthusiast, the great work of the great mind of Todd Howard, who in his all-embracing love for humanity, favored us with intricate gift of modding kit. With thy mods people fill the endless moulding of vanilla Skyrim, turning it into a dynamic and rich adventure in high fantasy world of Tamriel's north.

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim +

• Attack Behavior Revamp
• Better Dialogue Controls
• Better MessageBox Controls
• Better SkyUI Config
• Better Sorting
• Better Vampires
• Complete Crafting Overhaul
• Deadly Combat or Wildcat
• Distance Based Combat
• Dragon Combat Overhaul or Deadly Dragons
• Duel - Combat Realism
• EFF - Extensible Follower Framework or UFO - Ultimate Follower Overhaul
• Frostfall
• Frostfall - Hypothermia Camping Survival
• Genesis / Genesis Unleashed Levelled
• Genesis Surface Spawns - Encounters Unlevelled
• High Level Enemies Redux or Revenge Of the Enemies
• Hunterborn
• iNeed
• King-Priest - Enhanced Dragon Priests
• Locational Damage
• Modern Combat AI
• MorrowLoot Ultimate or Scarcity - Less Loot
• OBIS - Organized Bandits
• Realistic Needs and Diseases
• Realistic Needs and Diseases
• Rebalanced Encounter Zones and Leveled Actors
• Requiem - The Roleplaying Overhaul
• Skyrim Revamped - Complete Enemy Overhaul
• Skyrim Revamped - Loot and Encounter Zones
• Skyrim Revamped Rebalanced and Releveled
• SkyUI
• Unread Books Glow
• Weighted Arrows
• Wounds
• YASH - Yet Another Skyrim Hardcore mod