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Which RPGs surprised you that they're actually great?

anvi

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That's what I meant. And Morrowind was a part of that. I have a theory on all this and those two games are key to how the games industry is today.

'Your' theory... :
That had nothing to do with my theory at all. Good documentary though.

Yet it isn't even mentioned on the codex list :/
 
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Yet it isn't even mentioned on the codex list :/

It was. Number 50 or so. Good game.


As far as which RPGs surprised me:

Ultima Underworld and Arx Fatalis are really impressive games that don't get the respect they deserve. Most casual RPG players don't even know about them, and even here, they don't get proper respect from a lot of people.

Betrayal at Krondor was also more fun than I expected.
 

Terpsichore

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Divine Divinity (the first one), expected stone age gameplay and insight into the pole mind, received stone age gameplay and hours upon hours of funny NPC dialogues.

NWN2 OC, expected a slog like the first NWN OC, it turned out to be pretty good, enjoyed it more than the edgy and pretentious MOTB.

Recently, Twitcher 3: Wild Kurwa, for a modern AAA game, it's pretty damn good.
 
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NWN2 OC, expected a slog like the first NWN OC, it turned out to be pretty good, enjoyed it more than the edgy and pretentious MOTB.

:rpgcodex:

Really? Not saying it's complete shit, but it was a slog, and the most annoying thing was that each map, which was supposed to represent some massive area felt like a tiny square corridor.
 
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KoDP, Academagia - I don't know what I expected initially, not even sure how I came about the 2nd one to be honest, but I was pleasantly surprised by both.

Some of the Choice of Games CYOAs were surprisingly good as well (zombie exodus, choice of robots, tin star).

Witcher 3 was way better than I expected. I hated the first one and the hype surrounding both books and games (read the first book, found it to be pretty bland and boring). Anyhow, W3 had plenty of issues, but overall was a solid (at times - great) experience and one of the few games that I actually bought at full price this year.

Space Rangers (1, 2 and hd edition) - back when it was released people didn't expect much from CIS developers (not much has changed since then, for a good reason) but it's probably the best game to come out from this region.
 

baturinsky

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Brofist for Tin Star, it's great (and others your mentioned too, but Tin Star is relatively obscure).
In Academagia I was intimidated by initial infodump and demand of making a choice between things I have no idea about. Like, base on what should I choose between learning Geometry or Calligraphy?
 
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That's part of the fun, at least for me. I know a lot of people say that it's pretty easy to 'break' or/and as you said a bit confusing and obscure in its mechanics, but it's one of the few games where I actually felt like playing a role, in a sense that I had a vague feeling of what my character would be like (given the context) and just went with the flow. And it worked surprisingly well and kind of realistic even, thanks to a shit ton of stats/skills/spells, certain setting related restraints and a whole lot of variety of 'stuff to do'... I improved in things I was interested in, went on a few adventures (and failed miserably in most of them, while still learning a thing or two) and just took part in whatever the fuck was going on at the time, skill checks didn't bother me since most of them made sense.
 
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MRY

Wormwood Studios
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Dark Sun: Shattered Lands. I'd played a fair number of PC RPGs prior to Dark Sun (parts of Ultimas V-VII, parts of M&M 1-6, parts of a couple Gold Box games, lots of FRUA modules) but none had particularly engaged me. Dark Sun basically presaged many of the best features the Fallout / Infinity Engine games (the dialogue system, the multiple paths, the art style), had an amazing setting and some great encounters, had fun (if totally cheesy) character building, and had a pretty good story. Setting aside the lack of true "companions," it's probably the farthest back I think you can go with PC RPGs and still feel like you're playing essentially the same kind of game as AA RPG releases today. AAA RPG releases, with their over-the-shoulder perspective and universal real-time combat, probably are no longer the same kind of game. But TTON, WL, D:OS, AOD, etc. all -- to me -- feel like basically the same thing as DS: SL.

By contrast, once you go one step farther back, you lose the perspective and the dialogue, or you have something that has certain facial similarities but in fact isn't really the same at all. Basically, DS:SL was the first PC RPG that could serve as an entry point for people who didn't "get" PC RPGs. I guess you could treat it as the Typhoid Mary of decline, depending on your taste, but given that my favorite RPGs are all in the vein of DS:SL, I consider it the progenitor of a great nation.
 

anvi

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Space Rangers (1, 2 and hd edition) - back when it was released people didn't expect much from CIS developers (not much has changed since then, for a good reason) but it's probably the best game to come out from this region.

Space Rangers is awesome. When everyone is playing Star Citizen, I'll probably be replaying SR.
 

Ivan

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Gothic

I installed the game one day on Gog and was bewildered by its controls. Uninstalled. Reinstalled when I was ready to give it its fiar chance, loved it. The world, the itemization, your insignificance, it's awesome.
 
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Bicycles have seen serious military use too. One of the reasons that Japan swept Malaysia so quickly that it was able to take Singapore from the land was that they used bicycles for mass infantry movement. Cheap ability to multiple the speed of movement manifold, without having to secure fuel (and repeatedly pause to set up and protect ultra-vulnerable + critical portion of supply line), and without being restricted to roads.

The European military strategists never saw it coming. When the Japanese army started approachng the UK/US defensive positions in Malaysia, the Allied troops heard the sound of thousands of metal-rim bicycles clickety-clacking (because the Japanese had ridden without pausing to fix the things - tires had burst/flattened but didn't give a fuck and kept riding on the rims). The first reports were that somehow the Japanese must have somehow hidden an incredible number of vehicles, and that mass tanks were approaching from far off. They simply didn't contemplate the possibility that the Japanese troops were riding bicycles, and the source of the sound was a fuckload closer than they thought.
 

Fireblade

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Divine Divinity for me. Friend gave me his copy, circa 2002/2003, after he was finished with the game, swearing I needed to play it. It looked like a random Diablo ripoff. Turned out to be one of the best RPG's I'd played in quite a while.
 

hello friend

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I'm on an actual spaceship. No joke.
Bicycles have seen serious military use too. One of the reasons that Japan swept Malaysia so quickly that it was able to take Singapore from the land was that they used bicycles for mass infantry movement. Cheap ability to multiple the speed of movement manifold, without having to secure fuel (and repeatedly pause to set up and protect ultra-vulnerable + critical portion of supply line), and without being restricted to roads.

The European military strategists never saw it coming. When the Japanese army started approachng the UK/US defensive positions in Malaysia, the Allied troops heard the sound of thousands of metal-rim bicycles clickety-clacking (because the Japanese had ridden without pausing to fix the things - tires had burst/flattened but didn't give a fuck and kept riding on the rims). The first reports were that somehow the Japanese must have somehow hidden an incredible number of vehicles, and that mass tanks were approaching from far off. They simply didn't contemplate the possibility that the Japanese troops were riding bicycles, and the source of the sound was a fuckload closer than they thought.
I loved that game to bits
 

anvi

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Divine Divinity for me. Friend gave me his copy, circa 2002/2003, after he was finished with the game, swearing I needed to play it. It looked like a random Diablo ripoff. Turned out to be one of the best RPG's I'd played in quite a while.
Yet not in codex list.
 

DraQ

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Gods: Lands of Infinitron
How come you guys call it Infinitron? When I played it, it was called Lands of Infinity. Good game too.

Oblivion in particular and Bethesda in general only show the power of good marketing. It also appeared in a favorable scenario for them, so much so, that people don't even mind Bethesda's generally shitty DLCs. Ultima 9 and MM9 came out when crpgs were going through a material and creative crisis in the mainstream eyes, so for them half of the battle was already lost.
Oblivion's success was a freak I don't think is explainable by any single factor.

It was a combination of hype, track history, being flagship title on a new major platform and herd instinct in the context of fending off cognitive dissonance and post-purchase rationalization.
Without this pile-up of factors it probably wouldn't have succeeded.

Then, after this bizarre Rube Goldberg machine lifted it, mods helped keep it up.
What are you guys blabbling about?! Oblivion sold like hot cakes because it had the best graphics of any game at the time. People were posting screenshots on every forum I visited and everyone was going nuts over how pretty it was. Graphics > EVERYTHING in modern gaming.
It had? Odd.
Sure, some things about it were technically impressive. Some were even genuinely good looking (Ayleid ruin(s), some outdoor vistas that managed to hide all the visual problems - in particular distant land looking hideous thanks to aforementioned low texture resolution). But overall it was all smeary, hideously low-res textures, characters looking like potato-men with renal failure suffering from severe anaphylactic shock, visibly repeating foliage, thermonuclear level bloom and tons of misapplied effects and filters (EVERYTHING must be shiny and specular). Overall it was very limited visually, with little detail and looked even worse in motion, courtesy of hilariously misbehaving physics engine.
Half-Life 2 before it already looked better, thanks to more detail, better crafted environments, clever use of effects and more robust lighting system.
So did STALKER after it with its fully dynamic lighting, crisp textures and vegetation reacting to all sorts of air movement.
And then there came Crysis.

In the end any graphical potential Oblivion had was not ahead of the curve and it mostly squandered it all on making every rock bloomy and shiny.
It's kind of opposite than with Skyrim which was technologically dated on arrival (having to run on the same Xbox "RROD" 360 that ran Oblivion half a decade earlier), but managed to look impressive because of frugal and clever use of its limited assets.

Yes, it looked good on promo shots, but few games can't be made to look good if you carefully set up your shots, even without doctoring them or using "special" game version which actually did happen with Oblivion:
39955-the-elder-scrolls-iv-oblivion-screenshot.jpg

Hence the "hype" part.
+M

I can't when it comes to Oblivion. It was a turning point in gaming.
* turding point.

That's what I meant. And Morrowind was a part of that. I have a theory on all this and those two games are key to how the games industry is today.

'Your' theory... :



Time-stamped it at Polygons for you.

I personally dislike most historically polygon-based games, but that's a different topic.

It's pretty amusing in this vid how Unreal is used to showcase HW acceleration even though, while it obviously used it and used it well, it also managed to deliver almost as impressive looking graphics using software rendering (in fact I had trouble confirming it was actually using acceleration in the embedded vid) - it was just as much a triumph of HW acceleration as the last epic "FUCK YEAH!" of unaccelerated software rendering.

Anyway, any vid showcasing the development of 3D graphics is incomplete without Frontier and TN:SFC.
Also, do note lack of Morrowind - apart from nice if faked reflective water it was perfectly baseline visually, it simply looked impressive because of good art direction.
 

anvi

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But overall it was all smeary, hideously low-res textures
No

Half-Life 2 before it already looked better, thanks to more detail, better crafted environments, clever use of effects and more robust lighting system.
You can't compare open world graphics to a corridor shooter... And HL2 still looks worse anyway.

So did STALKER after it with its fully dynamic lighting, crisp textures and vegetation reacting to all sorts of air movement.
And then there came Crysis.
They all came after Oblivion, and Crysis is far from open world, and Stalker doesn't look any way near as good.

In the end any graphical potential Oblivion had was not ahead of the curve and it mostly squandered it all on making every rock bloomy and shiny.
No

It's kind of opposite than with Skyrim which was technologically dated on arrival (having to run on the same Xbox "RROD" 360 that ran Oblivion half a decade earlier), but managed to look impressive because of frugal and clever use of its limited assets.
No. Skyrim looks like total shit unless you install 50 mods.


* turding point.
I don't get why so many of you assume I mean a turning point upwards. Things can turn in more than one direction.
 

B0rt

Novice
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Jan 13, 2016
Messages
40
Bicycles have seen serious military use too. One of the reasons that Japan swept Malaysia so quickly that it was able to take Singapore from the land was that they used bicycles for mass infantry movement. Cheap ability to multiple the speed of movement manifold, without having to secure fuel (and repeatedly pause to set up and protect ultra-vulnerable + critical portion of supply line), and without being restricted to roads.

The European military strategists never saw it coming. When the Japanese army started approachng the UK/US defensive positions in Malaysia, the Allied troops heard the sound of thousands of metal-rim bicycles clickety-clacking (because the Japanese had ridden without pausing to fix the things - tires had burst/flattened but didn't give a fuck and kept riding on the rims). The first reports were that somehow the Japanese must have somehow hidden an incredible number of vehicles, and that mass tanks were approaching from far off. They simply didn't contemplate the possibility that the Japanese troops were riding bicycles, and the source of the sound was a fuckload closer than they thought.

^^ this is the best forum



To contribute, UnReal world seriously exceeded all my expectations. Somehow the miserable-but-fair mechanics managed to really get me invested in the survival of my PC's despite the dry, brutal simulation-y world they inhabited. When a character death in a CRPG actually feels a little sad, that's rare enough, but it's almost unheard of in a Roguelike. I guess I went in simply looking to hunt some bears, but then was pleasantly surprised to actually learn a little something about life (while running from a bear).
 

Sigourn

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Divine Divinity for me. Friend gave me his copy, circa 2002/2003, after he was finished with the game, swearing I needed to play it. It looked like a random Diablo ripoff. Turned out to be one of the best RPG's I'd played in quite a while.
Yet not in codex list.

It's in the Codex's Top RPGs, faggot, lurk moar.

10738.jpg
 

laclongquan

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Searching for my kidnapped sister
KoDP, Academagia - I don't know what I expected initially, not even sure how I came about the 2nd one to be honest, but I was pleasantly surprised by both.
...

Space Rangers (1, 2 and hd edition) - back when it was released people didn't expect much from CIS developers (not much has changed since then, for a good reason) but it's probably the best game to come out from this region.

Nah, for a Russian game, Silent Storm, Silent Storm Sentinels, and Hammer & Sickle is better.
 

ntonystinson

Scholar
Joined
Nov 11, 2016
Messages
181
Mount and Blade Warband: I picked it up on a whim before it was popular and expected just an average combat game on mounts. Didn't even know it was an RPG. Played it for the first time.......and that was all she wrote
 

B0rt

Novice
Joined
Jan 13, 2016
Messages
40
Mount and Blade Warband: I picked it up on a whim before it was popular and expected just an average combat game on mounts. Didn't even know it was an RPG. Played it for the first time.......and that was all she wrote

I've gotten some good gaem suggestions from this thread so will try to keep things going-- MNB is a great place to be if you are willing to keep some twitch reflexes alive as a means to access some good CPRGish content -- or maybe more like "Sid Meier's Pirates but on land" if you will. The "Viking Conquest" expansion is a great entry point if you're new. I actually prefer the old MnB for single player-- the Star Wars mod is especially great-- but i can't begrudge the glory of Warband for those interested in online play. Without the multiplayer tweaks introduced therein we'd just be shield blocking one another from here to eternity.
 

Joevonzombie

Literate
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Nov 1, 2016
Messages
45
The Legacy: Realm of Terror

Anybody got any ideas on how to get this thing to run in English on a modern machine? Never heard of this game before coming here and would really love to play it.
 

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