The Codex Top Ten RPGoldies for DOSbox

Romanian_Dude2005 · Jan 28, 2007

... Or top five if you haven't played so many pre-PC games

1. Darklands
2. The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall
3. Ultima 7
4. Realms of Arkania: Star Trail (the only RoA game I've played so far)
5. Betrayal at Krondor/ Ravenloft Stone Prophet

Honorable Mention: Lands of Lore: Throne of Darkness

sheek · Jan 28, 2007

Recommendations for a n00b:

Darklands
Realms of Arkania 1
Ultima VII/Underworlds
Eye of the Beholder/Dungeon Hack
Magic Candle 3/Bloodstone
Betrayal at Krondor

(all are available as abandonware)

Honorable Mention: Lands of Lore: Throne of Darkness

Sucks.

Ravenloft, generic Gold Boxes and Wizardry also excluded because of excess suckiness.

Flux_Capacitor · Jan 28, 2007

Not necessarily top ten, but some off the top of my head that I've spent countless hours with:

Bard's Tale: Tales of the Unknown
Dragon Wars
Dungeon Master
Pool of Radiance
Magic Candle
Buck Rogers: Countdown to Doomsday
2400 A.D.
Demon's Winter
Wasteland
Knights of Legend

JarlFrank · Jan 28, 2007

Ultima 7 [+ expansion + Serpent Isle with expansion]
Ultima Underworld
Betrayal at Krondor
Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall [not abandonware yet, but you can download it by emule or some torrent site without getting a bad feeling about it, as it is no longer sold anyways.]
Planet's Edge
Might and Magic IV and V: World of Xeen [you can combine parts IV and V to create the game WoX]
Realms of Arkania trilogy [with the second part being my favourite]
Dusk of the Gods
Veil of Darkness
Waxworks

Claw · Jan 28, 2007

Dude, DOS isn't pre-PC!

Unless you mean prolitical correctness.

Naked_Lunch · Jan 28, 2007

Ultima VII
Darklands
Demon's Winter
Lords of Midnight
System Shock 1
Wasteland
Ultima Underworld 1
Magic Candle 1
Pools of Darkness
All Phantasies

LCJr. · Jan 28, 2007

Playing Darklands now. I've had it running under Win98 and W2KPro(w/VDMS) but it seems faster computers screw with the encounter frequency. IIRC I had to create a custom autoexec file and simply blank out everything so it would leave the memory alone.

It's interesting Darklands is being listed as one of the top RPG's since it includes things the hivemind supposedly hates. Realtime w/pause combat, level scaling and it's a "sandbox" game.

JarlFrank · Jan 28, 2007

LCJr. said:
Realtime w/pause combat, level scaling and it's a "sandbox" game.

If it's done right, such games are good.
Darklands is done right.

Naked_Lunch · Jan 28, 2007

Those aren't necessarily bad things (Not for me. I wuv sandbox) but just haven't been implemented right over the years. Without level scaling, I think Darklands would be downright impossible as it is now, without any heavy tweaking.

Elwro · Jan 28, 2007

We hate sandbox games?

JarlFrank · Jan 28, 2007

Elwro said:
We hate sandbox games?

I think he used "logics".
We hate Oblivion. Oblivion is sandbox. Thus we hate sandbox.

Stupid logic, but logic nonetheless.

Romanian_Dude2005 · Jan 28, 2007

sheek said:
Sucks.

Yeah I know, but it was my first CRPG, besides I didn't realy understand why a game sucks at the age of 5.

We hate Oblivion. Oblivion is sandbox. Thus we hate sandbox.

You dislike Oblivion. Thus you dislike Action games with stats. But you've claimed in the past that you like Dark Messiah. And Dark Messiah is a...?

sheek · Jan 28, 2007

LCJr. said:
It's interesting Darklands is being listed as one of the top RPG's since it includes things the hivemind supposedly hates. Realtime w/pause combat, level scaling and it's a "sandbox" game.

Personally I am not in love with any of those games and some bore the fuck out of me. Just recommendations for a newbie who wants to play the 'classics' and what's interesting from a historical standpoint.

Stupid logic, but logic nonetheless.

Sandbox = stupid

Zomg · Jan 28, 2007

Darklands does kind of fuck me up, because I really, really like yet it doesn't conform to or even precurse the character-heavy late '90s early '00s RPGs. I think it's more of an X-Com kind of love, where the really good setting, tone and elements of gameplay lend themselves to player-assisted emergent narrative.

The actual tactical combat is fucking terrible, though.

JarlFrank · Jan 28, 2007

Romanian_Dude2005 said:
We hate Oblivion. Oblivion is sandbox. Thus we hate sandbox.

Click to expand...

You dislike Oblivion. Thus you dislike Action games with stats. But you've claimed in the past that you like Dark Messiah. And Dark Messiah is a...?

As I said, it's a stupid logic, but a logic nonetheless.
It's some kind of illogical logic.
And no, I don't know what the hell I am talking about.

JrK · Jan 28, 2007

JarlFrank said:
We hate Oblivion. Oblivion is sandbox. Thus we hate sandbox.

Braindead, this isn't logics. Just like "I love dogs. Dogs are animals. Thus I love animals" isn't logical.

Balor · Jan 28, 2007

It's called 'Hasty generalization phallosy'.

LCJr. · Jan 28, 2007

JarlFrank said:
Elwro said:

We hate sandbox games?

Click to expand...

I think he used "logics".
We hate Oblivion. Oblivion is sandbox. Thus we hate sandbox.

Stupid logic, but logic nonetheless.

Once a douche, always a douche. I'll do my own thinking without any help from you Fritz.

There's several here who have expressed their dislike of sandbox games for whatever reasons. For instance in this very thread Sheek provided us with one of the most beautifully written arguments I've ever seen on this forum.

sheek said:
Sandbox = stupid

If I were to guess I'd say some people like having an idea of what they're supposed to be doing. Not a completely linear JRPG experience but at least a "find a waterchip" type goal. Or something in between those two examples. Probably depends a lot on what you do in the real world. If you have to make to decisions all day I can see not wanting to do it for entertainment.

The other reason that comes to my mind is the limited random mission generators that have been used so far. I enjoy Darklands but there's no denying there's only limited number of encounter and mission types. They get a little more life out of them by sending you halfway across Germany each time you have to fetch something. But still I break it out about once a year and play around with it for a few game years and then put it back away.

Of course the other example most people think of is Daggerfall. I personally didn't see much difference between being a fighter and getting sent to a dungeon kill bandit X and being a mage sent to a dungeon to kill creature X. Only difference was a line of text telling your mage character part of creature X was needed someone's experiment. Then again I didn't much care for it so I'm sure my opinion is biased.

So to sum up in expanded Sheekian logic.
Random quest generators we've seen so far. = Eventually repetitive.

sheek · Jan 28, 2007

The second reason. My problem with sandbox stuff is that the quests become too abstract... or 'gamist' as Higher Game would call it. I need some narrativist element to enjoy role-playing. Massively branched narrativist plots are the ideal.

Elwro · Jan 28, 2007

Well, I thought Gothic 3 was pretty much a sandbox game and that's why I was surprised to hear we hate games of that kind. I guess you could also call Avernum by this name, since you're just thrown into a huge world with vague hints on what to do. But of course it's something different from Daggerfall... but on the other hand the last thing I want is a discussion on what's sandbox and what isn't.

Claw · Jan 28, 2007

LCJr. said:
Once a douche, always a douche. I'll do my own thinking without any help from you Fritz.

Who're you calling Fritz, you fuckin' imbecile?

There's several here who have expressed their dislike of sandbox games for whatever reasons.

So "several here" represent the hivemind?

Stalagmite · Jan 28, 2007

Don't mind LCJr, he can be an overzealous cunt sometimes.

Kind of like Volourn's 'Good side'

Jim Kata · Jan 28, 2007

Anyone play twilight 2000? I just heard of it and it looks pretty good.

LCJr. · Jan 28, 2007

Stalagmite said:
Don't mind LCJr, he can be an overzealous cunt sometimes.

Kind of like Volourn's 'Good side'

Now that hurt.

I'll dredge up my stupid poll. Only 62 votes and the choices could have been better. Still I've seen worse polls in the news.
http://www.rpgcodex.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=17044
I'm willing to bet the slight margin to open world type games is due to the recent influx of ES refugee's.

And I'll ask then. What is a good definition of "sandbox" in cRPG's? It's a term I'd previously seen only used in city builders as replacement for what used to be called "open play". For example I don't think I'd call Fallout a sandbox game since, with the exception of random encounters, everything else is fixed in place.

And for the record I have no experience with any of the Gothic games. They've always struck me as a love it or hate it series with a small fanbase.

LCJr. · Jan 28, 2007

Jim Kata said:
Anyone play twilight 2000? I just heard of it and it looks pretty good.

IMHO it sucks bigtime. Great idea, poor execution. For example each village leader speaks a different language. It's set in Poland but none of the leaders speak Polish. When building your team you literally have to make sure that you cover every language in the game. The vehicles for some bizarre reason handle sailboats. When turning to the east they come to a stop. As the game progresses the enemies get ridicously armed i.e. each badguy will be packing a ATG and MG or AGL. Combine this with the lethality of the combat system and you get a lot of save+reload.

If you want to play a Paragon/GDW game try the MegaTravellers instead.

Suppose I should add I played and enjoyed the PnP of Twilight 2000.

The Codex Top Ten RPGoldies for DOSbox

Scholar

Arbiter

Augur

I like Thief THIS much

Erudite

Erudite

Erudite

I like Thief THIS much

Erudite

Arcane

I like Thief THIS much

Scholar

Arbiter

Arbiter

I like Thief THIS much

Prophet

Arcane

Erudite

Arbiter

Arcane

Erudite

Scholar

Arbiter

Erudite

Erudite