*deep breath* gonna try to reply to a bunch of these!
Fox12 said:
Fallout 1&2 had awful gameplay. It didn't help that it had the same engine as old school RTS games, so it felt like I was playing a strategy game with one unit. The writing didn't hold up well either. It may have been good for the time, but modern game stprytelling has easily surpassed it.
Fallout 2 is the first Fallout I played, and I still enjoy it but it has an incredibly slooow start. On several replays I give up just trying to get through the temple of trials, sometimes my build is just not suited for it and I die. Even after that, going slowly through your village and even the first town it "suggests" you go to is a rather boring slog, with the only real weapon you have being a cruddy handgun and some spears and knives. It takes several hours to reach the level of having an arsenal on your back and getting to any sort of interesting story bits.
bottero said:
i got into rpg's with dragon age origins. so, craving for more, i learned about the baldur's gate games being awesome. I played and enjoyed dune 1 which came out in '92
i played (the f*ck out of) gp 2 from '96 and quite a few other classic adventure games from the 90's But found baldurs gate unplayable. The graphics were shit and the isometric view is terrible. The combination of both was an impassable wall for me. Very surprised to see sequels to some of the classic crpg's being made with the same crap isometric view.I liked shadowrun dragonfall and x-com but they re more strategic games. rpg's are about exploring the world and interacting with characters. Fallout 3 and new vegas , mass effect and dragon age are my favourite games. i didnt play the latest divinity game for more than 1 hour. isometric view in rpg's is a huge obstacle in the way of immersion.
Having played the remastered version of baldur's gate 2 i feel like, if it had been completely remade with today's technology it would be the greatest game in human history. As it stands i find it an above average game but i did not think about the plot or the characters for a second outside of the game whereas the characters and lore of dragon age and mass effect for instance have made a deep impact
EHKOS said:
Planescape Torment and Fallout 1&2. I can't stand isometric views and the Fallouts have that old difficulty to them that's too hard for someone who started out on consoles in '96. I guess we can throw in Arcanum of Steamworks and Magick or whatever that Trokia game was called.
My basic complaints are usually "It's haaaaaard, the character moves too slow, why do I have to click on places to make him go places, I miss my analogue stick!"
I really enjoy Isometric RPGs and find them to be the absolute best way of playing a party-based RPG. Some attempts at better immersion in dialogue can be made (like having face portraits or voice overs for NPCs) but in general I think the exploration works great in Iso, although not on the minute level that say an Elder Scrolls game might have but it works. Though I can fully understand that not being someone's preference, I don't believe that the view is at all dated.
I do however believe they are designed more for the kind of players who prefer turn-based slower paced games, and that throws a lot of people off. I see many people get turned off from the Infinity Engine games (Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, and Torment) because they never assume you are SUPPOSED to pause in combat. It's not even really an optional thing, if you don't pause in combat to issue commands to your party then unpause to see those played out, then you won't finish those games. The dialogue also is very text heavy and without getting invested heavily into the world or lore may not interest you as much (I spent over an hour just talking to a single non-important NPC in Torment). Because of this the pacing is very slow. A single map in Baldur's Gate could be a multi-hour affair. Also there is a certain amount of meta-gaming that is to be expected in those older games at least, with save scumming, learning what skillsets the enemy has. It's a very tactical sort of experience and you aren't expected to win easily.
Elfgore said:
Morrowind. It has not aged well at all, but I do believe it has the most content of any Elder Scrolls game. I've tried installing the restoration mode once before and it completely bugged up, causing me to completely reboot my PC. I may give it a go in the future once again and give it a go.
Morrowind is a very difficult game even for some big time fans to go back to after newer installments like Skyrim. I can't even touch it anymore unless it's heavily modded, and modding it CORRECTLY is such a chore that requires so much time and effort that it's more like work, so I never get around to enjoying the game I used to love so much.
It has flaws, the combat, the walk speed, the graphics (especially the NPCs), the dialogue, but luckily most of this is corrected by mods, and it's underneath all that dated mess that a truly amazing game shines.
I've honestly been afraid to get into the Gothic series because I want to start with the first one and am afraid it will be far too dated for me to want to give it much effort.
Dragonzeanse said:
CHRONO TRIGGER:
Oh, now it's just obvious I'm trolling, isn't it? Another classic JRPG? I must be biased, me and my love for Final Fantasy 9, my positive acknowledgment of Final Fantasy 10, my burning passion for Parasite Eve's accomplishments, and my obsession with the Persona games. No, truth be told, I grew up with JRPGs - but not very many. Secret of Mana, Chrono Trigger, Xenogears, Suikoden, Grandia, Skies of Arcadia, and indeed, the earlier Persona games and Final Fantasy 6, were among JRPGs I did not play when I was younger, and still haven't played. I picked up Chrono Trigger over at a friend's house and played it for about five hours. Perhaps I'm missing something by judging this game quite early, but I found it to be a perfectly average - perhaps even above-average - JRPG that successfully pulled off the tactical depth of a JRPG and provided an interesting story without doing much else. Perhaps just accomplishing what it set out to do is exactly what makes this game so beloved, but I saw missed opportunities. Character positioning, for example, seemed to be - like in Final Fantasy X-2 - purely for show save for a few enemy attacks that might have exploited it. You don't get to move around, yet the enemy can saunter about and change their positioning? I'd like to be able to use that, too. It was the natural next step for JRPGs, I feel, and Chrono Trigger missed it.
That's not really why I dislike this game, though. I dislike it because, well, frankly... it's not THAT good. Have you ever picked up a game that was new at the time and played it and thought it was satisfying, but had no strong urge to go pick it back up again? That's what Chrono Trigger is. It's basically a Suda 51 game in that you don't really need to look back at it after playing it. Okay, so there's multiple endings, but I never liked that idea in video games, like, ever. Multiple endings are so rarely satisfying, as I just think to myself "what about those other endings I haven't gotten to enjoy? Maybe I should start up a new game and play those." I'm not pleased, because I know I haven't actually completed the game. It's one of those experimental innovations in video gaming that I've always thought needs to die. This so rarely works. One of the appeals of a lot of western RPGs is playing the game differently a second time, which is the notorious cause of that so-called excuse: "I haven't finished the game yet, but I have made five different characters already." While this certainly presents its own challenges, providing multiple approaches in a game is the sort of depth that makes you want to genuinely revisit it. Many games fail to do it well. People are fans of the Elder Scrolls games exactly because they can do this. This, however, is the reason I can sometimes accept multiple endings. You had a completely different character with a completely different skill-set and (if you're properly roleplaying
) a different moral compass. A JRPG like Persona is capable of this as well. But the standard for video games is to have one minor choice in a game or a god-awful binary moral choice system that restricts your gameplay because you want to pursue the most climactic of endings or the mode of gameplay that fits you, the player, best. I'm not going to pretend I know what Chrono Trigger does, but after seeing the status quo from both old and new games providing such lazy incentives for multiple playthroughs, and the fact that Chrono Trigger appears to be a fairly linear JRPG, trust that I won't hold my breath until I know for sure. There are a lot of video games to play, and I just can't give that time to many JRPGs that don't grip me fast.
Part of the allure of Chrono Trigger is it accomplished things no other JRPG at the time did, or at least not nearly so well. Having enemies visible on the screen at all was RARE for a menu-driven RPG, sure you can't move around the battlefield at will, but the fact that characters moved at all during the battle was AMAZING. It is kind of a bit less impressive by today's standards, but back then... WOW!
As for the Multiple Ending thing, I kind of understand your point, but mostly from a modern me view. I have easily over 100 games I want to play and get through now, and I'm never going to go through that whole backlog but having that backlog means that I'm more resolved to want to do a full and complete playthrough the FIRST time I play a game and not replay a game, especially one boasting 40+ hours. As a kid however, particularly one with far fewer videogames to play, the aspect of being able to play a game I loved again and get a different ending based off my efforts was phenomenal and an awesome idea I was really behind, but the adult me who is pressed for time finds that too much work. So I think that idea is great, but should be done in a way that is more about "giving you feedback for your different playchoices" and not "Here's an ending, but it's not the one true final ultra secret hidden special ending", those I hate!
sageoftruth said:
Ah yes! Earthbound! I knew I was missing one. I've wanted to delve into the story so much, but everything about the mechanics just pushes me away. Everything is so slow and cumbersome, and some early fights are too reliant on praying that the enemy doesn't abuse a particular attack. Sorry, Earthbound. You're one masterpiece I'll never get to appreciate.
Earthbound is a masterpiece of style, not of substance, it doesn't have any truly amazing gameplay innovations (aside from the rolling HP counter which admittedly is more of a novelty in the grand scheme) but in general the story isn't breathtaking, the graphics while certainly decent aren't amazing, the battle system works well and is challenging but not INCREDIBLE, the game length is about right for a JRPG, and there's no great degree of interactivity or emergent gameplay beyond it's contemporaries.
What it does to make it such a timeless classic is capture a certain feeling, and it's one really hard I think to reproduce, it's a childlike wonder of the world that is in game form. The setting of the game is I imagine what would happen if you asked foreign children to draw a picture of modern America solely based off the assumptions and stereotypes. It's by no means mean-spirited, but it has a modern day setting with very colorful interesting characters, with a very tongue-in-cheek humor. I don't even know if it's charm works the same nowadays, but at the time it was a turn-based JRPG in a setting no other JRPG even got close to trying, and it was amazing, it still is.
But it is hard.
Arnoxthe1 said:
Final Fantasy 7.
Those graphics... Just... UGHHHH!! SO BAD. They seriously should have waited until 3D graphics had progressed more before they did any FF game in 3D. Today it just looks utterly atrocious. And I'm the kind of person who still likes to play the rather dated first Unreal Tournament and N64 games too.
Final Fantasy 7 is a game I find very hard to recommend to anyone who didn't play it when PS1 was still the thing. It just can't hold up graphically for anyone to overlook it. I remember a time, when I first got my PS1, and it was one of the two games I got, and I remember vividly being AMAZED and BLOWN AWAY by how great this game LOOKED. It was just a sign of those times, and those times are LONG past.