What game best recreates the feel of Conan the Barbarian?

[AndyS]

Shamefully I'm very unfamiliar with the Conan IP as a whole, never read, played or watched anything. I did play and love very much both Severance and Rune, and I do like a lot what I understand to be the "Conan feel" this thread is chasing after.

So where do I even start? Are the movies any good? Is Conan Exiles playable and worth it as a single player game?

The first movie, Conan the Barbarian, is unironically one of the best movies of all time. Watch it as soon as possible.

Second movie is degenerate schlock but kind of fun if you're in the right mood for silly 80s stuff. Red Sonja is awful, and the reboot with Karl Drogo is terrible, don't waste your time.

I remember following the development of the Momoa movie pretty closely and it was such a frustrating course of events. The producers initally wanted someone who would be faithful to Howard's work. They couldn't find a single goddamned person - literally all of the candidates just wanted to remake the Arnold movie with Conan's family getting wiped out and Conan being raised in slavery before he goes off and kills Thulsa Doom. They ended up hiring Brett Ratner because he was a reliable hack. Then Ratner fell out when production stalled and they settled on their final choice because his qualification was that he really liked Frazetta's paintings (not a bad thing but the guy's best movie was merely passable if you're feeling generous). They couldn't find a decent Celtic actor to play Conan and settled on the inexperienced pretty boy Momoa because his work on the Stargate show was broadly warrior guy/barbarian-ish. The script was full of B-movie nonsense like blind archers and a general disregard of Howard's storytelling. Of course Conan's dad gets killed when his village is invaded by the evil wizard. The justification for all the changes was that "they'll do the real Conan in the next movie, after they've set up the franchise"; i.e., the usual bullshit they peddle for franchise reboots. The only person in the entire show who actually wanted to stay faithful to Howard's writing ended up being Momoa, who supposedly fought to get some of Howard's dialogue in the script after devouring all the stories. Movie predictably bombed because it was total crap, but even if it had been great it probably still would have bombed because fans of the original movie only want Arnold to play the character and post-millennial kids were all about Harry Potter as sword and sorcery and general masculinity frightens them too much.

 

[Sjukob]

 

[deama]

Mortal online 2 evokes this somewhat, it's a full loot open pvp mmorpg.
It's not 1:1 aesthetic wise, but I can see some bits and pieces that invoked a similar feeling.

Maybe the gothic games a bit?

Rune Halls of Valhalla I would say so for sure, though that's more viking themed.

Age of Decadence I would say does it, if you roll a warrior that joins the guard faction.

What about Dragon's Dogma?

Warlords Battlecry 3 definitely feels like, it especially if you pick the babarian faction.

 

[udm]

Shamefully I'm very unfamiliar with the Conan IP as a whole, never read, played or watched anything. I did play and love very much both Severance and Rune, and I do like a lot what I understand to be the "Conan feel" this thread is chasing after.

So where do I even start? Are the movies any good? Is Conan Exiles playable and worth it as a single player game?

Start with Robert E. Howard's works. You can readily find his stories online. Just avoid people like L. Sprague De Camp and his co-author since they bastardized a lot of what Robert wrote in the 1960s-1970s.

AD&D 1E and 2E both have Conan as a setting in adventure form.

TSR did put out Conan the RPG boxed set as well.

So where do I even start? Are the movies any good? Is Conan Exiles playable and worth it as a single player game?

https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/36031

Conan the barbarian is a great movie, but it has only the barest connection to the works of REH.

What JamesDixon and ERYFKRAD said. Anything else not written by Howard is fan-fiction. That said, I have a soft spot for the short run of comics produced by Dark Horse (more so than the Marvel ones), at least the first few volumes, as they captured the essence and frenetic energy of the stories.

I will also suggest getting the Del Rey books from Amazon for cheap if you want paperback. I prefer reading off dead trees than online, which strains my eyes after a while.

Finally, if getting the paperbacks, you'd be doing yourself a grand favour too by getting Howard's Solomon Kane stories. Truthfully, while I love the Conan stories and have read each at least 2 times, Kane is the character I felt Howard wrote best because of the strong characterisation as a flawed Puritan just trying to do his best by his religion and values. Reading the first few parts of Hills of the Dead still sends chills down my back.

 

[Spacer's Nugget]

Skyrim w/ Mods

 

[oddech_wymarlych_swiatow]

Best Polish game on Amiga - Doman: Grzechy Ardana:

 

[TripJack]

thanks bros but nothing in here that's new to me looks too good

Shamefully I'm very unfamiliar with the Conan IP as a whole, never read, played or watched anything. I did play and love very much both Severance and Rune, and I do like a lot what I understand to be the "Conan feel" this thread is chasing after.

So where do I even start? Are the movies any good? Is Conan Exiles playable and worth it as a single player game?

howard stories and first movie are all excellent in their own ways

 

[gabel]

:>

 

[udm]

thanks bros but nothing in here that's new to me looks too good

What about PnP as JamesDixon suggested? There will never be a CRPG or even PC game that will do a Hyborian-type setting justice, not in today's political climate and literacy drought. The best time for this to happen was 20-25 years ago and those years will never return. Age of Conan tried but failed; Exiles I haven't tried but seems more like ARK Hyboria Edition. So, we're never getting a truly Howardian game, but at least it can be recreated in tabletop gaming.

 

[Great Deceiver]

This guy is running a 24 hour barbarian games marathon. Pretty solid retro streamer, if you can stomach the disgusting accent:

 

[octavius]

There's also Evil's Doom but I'm not sure if it recreates the feel perfectly, as it seems there's plenty of magic.

That is pretty cool actually - and the setting is pretty much Conan-style. It was an Amiga RPG with lots of bugs that was later fixed by someone and is now offered for free. Real-time combat unfortunately, though quite similar to Eye of the Beholder.

The problem was not so much the bugs as the buggers that pirated the game before it was even finished and made the devs quit. Those Amigatards never learnt...

The game has good atmosphere, at least on the overland map (the dungeons use a very limited palette), but the game mechanics are rather weak.

 

[JarlFrank]

So where do I even start? Are the movies any good? Is Conan Exiles playable and worth it as a single player game?

https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/36031

Conan the barbarian is a great movie, but it has only the barest connection to the works of REH.

The movie has little connection to the Conan of the stories, but it captures the vibe of Howard's sword & sorcery very well.
Its plot and character are an amalgamation of Conan and Kull, and the visuals perfectly capture the world Howard envisioned.

When it comes to stories, Howard's Conan short stories are of course the most obvious first step, but after that, Howard's other characters - primarily Kull - should also be read.
And some of Howard's contemporaries who wrote similar sword & sorcery, many of whom corresponded with Howard by letter. Among those, C. L. Moore and Clark Ashton Smith (his Zothique cycle) capture the same vibe most closely.

If you never read any of the classic pulp sword & sorcery, you're in for a treat. A whole world of excellent storytelling awaits you.

 

[Darkozric]

The problem was not so much the bugs as the buggers that pirated the game before it was even finished and made the devs quit. Those Amigatards never learnt...

The game has good atmosphere, at least on the overland map (the dungeons use a very limited palette), but the game mechanics are rather weak.

I was able to find 2 versions of this, 1.0 and 1.8. The 1.8 is available on thecompany.pl however it's locked (supposed to be an exe with fixes), and the faggots want you to beg them on their forum.

Is the 1.0 playable till the end?

 

[octavius]

I played the 2.6. The name of the downloaded file is Evils.Doom.(v2.6)(1996)(Olympia)-TheCompany.rar

 

[Modron]

Age of Barbarian at least has fun with the classic sword-and-sorcery image and tropes, although it's pretty buggy in parts.

There is another one of those coming out in October, haven't actually played any of them even if I liked his Karate Master games.

 

[udm]

And some of Howard's contemporaries who wrote similar sword & sorcery, many of whom corresponded with Howard by letter. Among those, C. L. Moore and Clark Ashton Smith (his Zothique cycle) capture the same vibe most closely..

I've heard good things about Moore's stories. Which would you recommend for a start?

 

[JarlFrank]

And some of Howard's contemporaries who wrote similar sword & sorcery, many of whom corresponded with Howard by letter. Among those, C. L. Moore and Clark Ashton Smith (his Zothique cycle) capture the same vibe most closely..

I've heard good things about Moore's stories. Which would you recommend for a start?

Her Jirel of Joiry stories are the most sword & sorcery of her oeuvre.

IIRC it was that character which prompted an exchange between her and Howard about female sword & sorcery heroines (he had written The Sword Woman around the same time she came up with Jirel of Joiry).

Black God's Kiss is the first story starring that character. She's a knight in a fantastical version of medieval France, so in that regard the setting is similar to CAS's Averoigne.

 

[lightbane]

Oh right, if you can stomach NwN 2 the Conan modules by John McA are pretty good.

About that, can you give any feedback about these and how do they plan? There's not much info about the NWN mods of Conan, not even videos IIRC.

 

[AndyS]

And some of Howard's contemporaries who wrote similar sword & sorcery, many of whom corresponded with Howard by letter. Among those, C. L. Moore and Clark Ashton Smith (his Zothique cycle) capture the same vibe most closely..

I've heard good things about Moore's stories. Which would you recommend for a start?

Her Jirel of Joiry stories are the most sword & sorcery of her oeuvre.

IIRC it was that character which prompted an exchange between her and Howard about female sword & sorcery heroines (he had written The Sword Woman around the same time she came up with Jirel of Joiry).

Black God's Kiss is the first story starring that character. She's a knight in a fantastical version of medieval France, so in that regard the setting is similar to CAS's Averoigne.

It should probably be noted that Moore's stories aren't very action-oriented but are heavier on mood. Jirel is very brave and fierce but she doesn't do a lot of whupping stuff with her sword, mostly just pushes ahead into increasingly surreal landscapes.

 

[JarlFrank]

My favorite sword & sorcery writer is Clark Ashton Smith. His stories have some action, but they're mostly focused on lush descriptions of otherworldly places and scenarios... and the plots are about protagonists doomspiralling into their own demise. Dark and moody, his stories carry a real vibe.

He also has the best writing style of any fantasy author ever. Dude was a master of vocabulary.

 

[Zombra]

Conan Exiles is excellent. Nails the atmosphere, gives "good enough" justifications for video game foolishness such as no permadeath, and is ALL about exploration and adventure with next to zero handholding. Someone upthread says there's no sense of adventure in it, and to that I can only say close the fucking walkthroughs and wikis noob.

Did you try it TripJack?

 

[MurkrLurkr]

I am surprised that no one has mentioned Slav Life of the barbarian king Vukodav. Haven't played the game Requital based on this Russian secondhand Conan movie, which is my guilty pleasure to this day, but I heard good things about it, if you make it work. Also I think Silmarils's Targhan fits the OP's description like Atlantean Sword in Wolf Witch's fleshy maw...

 

[DemonKing]

Aside from the magic/potion chugging maybe the Witcher series?

A lone swordsman travels the lands fighting monsters and evildoers, screwing women and partying whenever he can.

 

[Nutmeg]

You forgot to add

 

[Edgetard]

depends if you're talking the intro to conan mount and blade while you pillage a town