Video Games

Maxus · Post by **Maxus** » Sun May 17, 2009 7:09 pm

Lago PARANOIA wrote:I just know that one of you guys know a good one-player dungeon crawler RPG.

I don't care what kind of sub-genre it is, as long as it's single-player, isn't ridiculously hard, and has a lot of character customization. I don't mind difficulty in most games but in an RPG it just ends up pissing me off. I'm looking at you, Wizardry.

http://www.kongregate.com/games/garin/m ... k-of-dread

For the moment, anyway.

I'll ask around.

Orion · Post by **Orion** » Sun May 17, 2009 8:59 pm

Diablo II?

Surgo · Post by **Surgo** » Sun May 17, 2009 11:29 pm

Icewind Dale maybe? I'm not sure if by "one player" you mean "only the protagonist and no party members" or "not multiplayer"

RandomCasualty2 · Post by **RandomCasualty2** » Mon May 18, 2009 12:14 am

Lago PARANOIA wrote: I don't care what kind of sub-genre it is, as long as it's single-player, isn't ridiculously hard, and has a lot of character customization. I don't mind difficulty in most games but in an RPG it just ends up pissing me off. I'm looking at you, Wizardry.

Good old Wizardry. That was back when RPGs were tough.

The gold box AD&D games were bitches too.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Mon May 18, 2009 12:43 am

By one player I meant just one protagonist.

Like Dungeon Hack or Quest for Glory.

Also, just because it's hard doesn't mean that it's good. Ninja Gaiden is hard, N is hard, Henry Hatsworth is hard, God of War is hard. But you know what? Those are GOOD GAMES which while hard are also fair and play straight.

Wizardry is a pile of fucking shit.

I don't approve of 'difficulty' in RPGs because the difficulty comes from either a spike in monster power (which just means more grinding) or just blatantly unfair and annoying elements, which Wizardry has more than a ton.

Ganbare Gincun · Post by **Ganbare Gincun** » Mon May 18, 2009 12:47 am

Lago PARANOIA wrote:I don't approve of 'difficulty' in RPGs because the difficulty comes from either a spike in monster power (which just means more grinding) or just blatantly unfair and annoying elements, which Wizardry has more than a ton.

Wizardry V wasn't that bad. It was challenging, but not nearly as insane as the previous games in the series. Still not a cakewalk, though.

Surgo · Post by **Surgo** » Mon May 18, 2009 12:49 am

Okay. How about Daggerfall then? You can play it as a dungeon crawl.

CatharzGodfoot · Post by **CatharzGodfoot** » Mon May 18, 2009 1:44 am

I actually once rolled up a pixie ninja in Wizardry Gold. No joke.

RandomCasualty2 · Post by **RandomCasualty2** » Mon May 18, 2009 3:22 am

Lago PARANOIA wrote: Wizardry is a pile of fucking shit.

I don't approve of 'difficulty' in RPGs because the difficulty comes from either a spike in monster power (which just means more grinding) or just blatantly unfair and annoying elements, which Wizardry has more than a ton.

Yeah, the grinding elements just suck in RPGS.

That's one thing I liked about the gold box AD&D games. They didn't really require you to grind hardly at all. You were always doing things, but the battles were just brutal, and unlike most RPGs, you couldn't solve them by just power leveling (in most games there was actually a level cap), you had to solve them via strategic use of abilities.

Wizardry actually wasn't terrible for straight difficulty, but the grinding just made it horrendously bad. Because pretty much the majority of the game was just grinding shit, and you were always scared to not grind stuff because if you died, you had to actually send a group down to retrieve the bodies.

Maxus · Post by **Maxus** » Mon May 18, 2009 3:33 am

The Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance games might wet your thirst, although I can't vouch for the second. I only ever played the first.

To be honest, I wish the rest of the game could have been as good as the first act, which had sidequests, people to talk to, and sent you running all over the place. The last act had exactly 1 friendly person, who tells you who's starting shit around here, asks you to go tell them to knock it off, and will buy treasure from you and sell junk to you.

But, still, it wasn't godawful.

A friend recommended Morrowind and/or Oblivion.

Is DnD-ish fantasy a requirement here?

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Mon May 18, 2009 4:16 am

I can only suggest some holy-shit-this-is-old games, but ones that I loved back in the day (and can probably be legally downloaded for free by now).

-Castle of the Winds (sadly, there is a point late in the game where you need to grind a bit, simply because all the stat-draining undead, adult dragons and demons will curbstomp you.)

-Moraffe's World (and Ultimate Dungeon or something, also made by Steve Moraffe. Best feature: the currency involves copper/silver/gold/platinum/gems, and Greater American Dollars, with an exchange rate of about 1,000 GAD to the copper piece.)

-Mordor (I think that was the name)

-Progress Quest

-Ultima Underworld

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Mon May 18, 2009 5:29 am

Shit, I played Mordor way back when... for some reason I have a fuzzy feeling when I think about that game even though I can't remember much of it.

Yeah, I think I'll download it. Thanks, Koumei!

Am I going to get pissed off when I play it again, like I did with Final Fantasy 8? Stay tuned!

cthulhu · Post by **cthulhu** » Mon May 18, 2009 6:13 am

Aside from having a stupidly large world, Morrowind and Oblivion are actually not bad games.

That said, Fallout 3 is those 2 + betterness and I'd try that first if you don't mind 'the future'

IGTN · Post by **IGTN** » Mon May 18, 2009 6:21 am

Koumei wrote:-Castle of the Winds (sadly, there is a point late in the game where you need to grind a bit, simply because all the stat-draining undead, adult dragons and demons will curbstomp you.)

-Progress Quest

I really like these two. PQ does your grinding for you, and you've always got a quest. CotW is a pretty solid random dungeon, and a fair bit more tactical, although it's thinner on goals (mostly: find the stairs down and collect all the loot).

ckafrica · Post by **ckafrica** » Mon May 18, 2009 6:28 am

Morrowind totally cost me weeks if not entire months of my life, which is a good or a bad thing depending on how you look at it.

You definitely have to waste a bunch of time finding mods to spiff up the base character skins (there are lots of good and bad mods out there to replace the pathetic skins the game shipped with.)

You also need to figure out which mechanical mods you want to make the game more playable. Getting rid of the pteradactyl things and things to make running and carrying stuff not suck so hard were definitely part of by staples.

One of my beefs with it was also that the coolest looking armor was often not the best. It became my habit to drop in equivalent armor using the skins I liked rather than wearing armor I thought looked stupid.

Though I'm sure it's been beat (I haven't played a new rpg since Morrowind) once you've dolled it up a bit, it is a game where you end up spending a great deal of time just looking at things because they are pretty.

One big downside was magic pretty much sucked compared to bashing things with a sword and so I hardly ever used it for anything other than utility spells.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Mon May 18, 2009 6:34 am

Might and Magic VI and VII were basically the same game, and that was basically a good thing.

-Username17

Crissa · Post by **Crissa** » Mon May 18, 2009 7:09 am

Fallout 3 was a real bore if you're not an FPS fan. You end up basically running around in circles and the characters aren't really very interesting. You spend a good deal of time looking at stuff, which is cool, but you constantly get attacked by things trying to gank up which are more annoying than actually tactically interesting to interact with.

-Crissa

cthulhu · Post by **cthulhu** » Mon May 18, 2009 7:50 am

Yeah at the point you become a combat supermonster, the bad guys are just speed bumps and you'd rather they just went away, but morrowind and oblivion suffer seriously from that too.

Caedrus · Post by **Caedrus** » Mon May 18, 2009 9:57 am

Yeah. Once you get to a certain point, the Elder Scrolls games just lose all difficulty whatsoever, no matter how high you ratchet up the difficulty meter. Even endgame enemies hardly register as speedbumps.

Murtak · Post by **Murtak** » Mon May 18, 2009 1:23 pm

Caedrus wrote:Yeah. Once you get to a certain point, the Elder Scrolls games just lose all difficulty whatsoever, no matter how high you ratchet up the difficulty meter. Even endgame enemies hardly register as speedbumps.

The storyline NPCs are fixed, while random encounters are at least partially tailored to your level. If one wanted the main game to stay difficult at all times this is of course the opposite of what is needed.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Mon May 18, 2009 6:19 pm

Oh, Jesus, Morrowind/Oblivion isn't one of those games where the enemies get stronger as you level up so the best strategy is to spin your wheels in place while trying to gain as much power without levelling as possible, is it?

Surgo · Post by **Surgo** » Mon May 18, 2009 6:58 pm

Morrowind: No

Oblivion: Sometimes, there are lots of mods that change that though. I think Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul is one of the more popular ones.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Mon May 18, 2009 6:59 pm

Lago PARANOIA wrote:Oh, Jesus, Morrowind/Oblivion isn't one of those games where the enemies get stronger as you level up so the best strategy is to spin your wheels in place while trying to gain as much power without levelling as possible, is it?

Uh... yes.

To add insult to injury, you "level" when you rest after doing a certain amount of skill raises in your tag skills. Skills which get a corresponding bonus both to value and to training times. But you get stat raises based on how much total skill advancement you've done. So technically you are at your best by making a character with tag skills that you literally never use and just spend more time skill grinding on the real ones so that you hae ridiculous stats and skills for your level and cut through everything with ease.

Fortunately, the game really isn't that hard, so you seriously don't have to do that shit, which is just as well. Indeed, once you start making your own spells you can min/max the fuck out of hat subsystem so hard that you're well beyond all opposition whether you've been skill grinding or not.

-Username17

Surgo · Post by **Surgo** » Mon May 18, 2009 7:05 pm

FrankTrollman wrote:To add insult to injury, you "level" when you rest after doing a certain amount of skill raises in your tag skills. Skills which get a corresponding bonus both to value and to training times. But you get stat raises based on how much total skill advancement you've done. So technically you are at your best by making a character with tag skills that you literally never use and just spend more time skill grinding on the real ones so that you hae ridiculous stats and skills for your level and cut through everything with ease.

God I hated that so much.

For that reason, if you're playing Morrowind, I recommend this mod. It's pretty much completely transparent and, instead of requiring you to remember what skills you set to what levels and which you raised and blah blah blah, it just raises the relevent stat by a point when you increase your skills that correspond to that stat so you really don't have to care about it. To put it much more simply: it does what the Morrowind level system should have done in the first place.

Murtak · Post by **Murtak** » Tue May 19, 2009 8:50 am

Morrowind had a ton of good ideas, most of them executed badly. Still, I loved the game, and I still like it, if only because they shipped their own editor with it. And thankfully all of the blunders don't overly matter.

Yes, some (keyword: some) of the random monsters get stronger as you level, but they get stronger much slower than you do. Yes, by putting your leveling skills into stuff you don't care about your level gains will be bigger, but you will also level slower. Yes, you can min-max the spells, but the game is easy enough you don't need to, and you can bow-kite and potion-melee anything at almost any level anyways.

Where Morrowind stinks though, is if you don't like to randomly wander around and explore. The world is absolutely massive and the plot hooks are scattered around liberally.