New RPGs vs Old RPGs

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I borrowed Final Fantasy III off my friend and despite the fact that it was in 3D, the old-fashoined story put me off a bit. I think I prefer VI. It's classic, but not too old.

One of my favorite RPG of all time is Lufia 2 from the SNES, for such reasons :

- Tactical combats, no sh***y "summon an etereal god" that makes the game easy as hell
- Cool varying characters. Althought you can't choose your party, there's no such thing as building up a character you'll never use (ie, FF VI, Chrono Trigger)
- Great dungeon exploration with lots of puzzles (Zelda style). Some dungeons are real mazes, and rarely linear.
- Some secrets, yet not the kind you actually need a walkthrought to fully enjoy the game. Simply progress throught the game without worrying there's a super weapon you might be missing.
- Simple, yet nice storyline. No boring nonsense as in many recent RPGs.

You guys like classic RPGs?

If you have an SNES emulator, give these roms a try.

Lufia I & II
Star Ocean
Shadowrun
Illusion of Gaia
Secret of Mana
Chrono Trigger
Dragon Quest VI
Breath of Fire I & II
Romancing Saga I & II
Ultima: The Black Gate
Final Fantasy IV, V & VI

For myself, I think all RPGs should involve a table, paper, pencils, dice (d6 for GURPS, cool polyhedrals for most others), Jolt, pizza, and four or five people as geeky as I am.

Hey, I like a good computer/console game as well as the next nerd, but if KotOR were a real RPG, I'd have a shot at convincing Malak to return to the Light Side...

I still love FF. Accept no substitutes.
Oblivion, meh. Too open ended, most characters are weak, and it gets boring after a while. Not many weapons or pieces of armour either.

I prefer RPGs with good stories, and I dislike MMORPGs. Too addictive...

Has anyone played The Witcher?

I prefer old RPGs but I got so spoiled with new fancy 3D graphics that now it's hard for me to play something like Baldur's Gate - everything looks so square and ugly

I've played a lot of Pokémon games so I'm used to 2D RPG's. One of the reasons why I like VI so much, along with it's ATB battle system, soundtrack and story.

I haven't played a really good RPG game since Arcanum. I played Oblivion and had fun with it, but it couldn't hold my interest for very long, Oblivion was poorly implemented IMO.


Space Rangers 2 was a good sci-fi non traditional RPG IMO, very open ended with tones of content and gameplay. Well worth the $30 I payed for it.

My favourite RPG is Tales of Symphonia, and the pokemon games are cool too. I dont have Tales anymore though. A few months ago i made a friend at TAFE and i let him borrow some gamecube games, but then he left the course and said he couldnt find the games, i think he sold them . They where Tales, Christal Cronicles and Zelda wind waker . I will never trust anyone like that again.

Good hardcore CRPGs have always been pretty rare, even in their "popular" days. Now they've basically become a niche product. Bioware (the makers of Baldur's Gate) have said they will never again make an RPG with the length and depth of BG2, because it's impossible to create all the art and technology to support a game that size with a modern game engine, and if a modern game doesn't have fancy 3D graphics, it won't sell to a mainstream audience.

Whether or not you believe them, no developers with the ability to make a decent hardcore RPG are willing to aim for the niche market that their audience has become. If they did, they would be almost guaranteed to lose money off it. It sucks, but that's the way it is. Same thing happened to adventure games after their time was over.

Luckily for me, my enjoyment of a game has less to do with its length and complexity, and more to do with its story, setting and atmosphere. Some of my favourite previous-generation RPGs are:

Planescape: Torment - Unforgetable world and characters.
Fallout - Awesome original style and setting, even if I didn't find the characters very interesting.
Ultima 8 - A lot of people thought it was the worst Ultima, but it was my favourite because of its setting and atmosphere.
Quest for Glory 4 - More of an adventure/RPG hybrid. But something about this game's story and atmosphere really stuck with me.

I also enjoyed a couple of recent CRPGs:

NWN2: Mask of the Betrayer - The expansion pack, which is way better than the original. Almost makes you forget it's set in the horribly cliche'd Forgotten Realms.
The Witcher - A pretty original take on the whole Tolkein-wannabe fantasy setting. Terrible Polish-to-English translation though.

If you have Neverwinter Nights (the first one) then come join the City of Arabel persistant world. Powergaming for the sake of it is frowned on, and story and roleplay are not only paramount but are also enforced. It's collaborative storytelling, aided by a huge team of DMs who provide continuity through huge server-wide plots. The average character is only level 6 or so, and respect is earned through story-telling and interplayer interaction, instead of combat. There are no levelling-up areas, so gaining xp and power is done through roleplay and interaction rather than simply spamming the 'attack' button. And the best part is that it's run by volunteers who play themselves, so there's no charge.

The problem with most modern RPGs is that making the game look good and detailed in 3D takes so much work and time that the developers have to either:

a) Cut down the content (i.e. make the game shorter) to finish development in less than 10 years or (see Mass Effect)

b) Procedurally generate a landscape with the developers making little detailed areas for the player to find and upping the length with filler (see Oblivion)

Both of these games are great, but when you have to model detailed enemies, script many conversations and quests you have to make a choice: quality or quantity. I like when games add their own content creation packs, but there are never enough quality mods around.

I shouldn't really talk, since I wanted to make my own with Aurora but I didn't get further than a few houses in the woods and some crazy neighbours. Maybe I should try again...

Baldur's Gate was my first CRPG (well, second if you count Castle of the Winds), and it's the one I keep going back to. I think it's partially because of the plot, partially because of the characters. The amount of mods available for BG2 probably help; I've got so many installed that I find random people and things EVERYWHERE, some of which I'm not sure I can track back to their source mods. Point is, I can't find that kind of experience in a newer RPG, and it drives me crazy. The KOTOR games come reasonably close (although I wish it was easier to customize your character's appearance). The rest? Oblivion I got disgusted with a week or two in, when I discovered that in exchange for all the fancy voicing, you get a world full of desperately boring people (which I get enough of already away from my computer), and your character rarely has anything to say to them but "yes." And yet this is the game that I see lauded in articles everywhere as the bright future of RPGs.
On a more personal matter... I find that simple graphics and a simple POV make for a game I can enjoy more. I've been trying to play NWN2, but apparently I jostle the trackball too much when I play, leading to interesting parts where the camera spins uncontrollably while I attempt to fight for my life. Or just try not to throw up. What's so amazing about having a beautiful world where you can check out the game's production budget in every effect, angle and close-up of the characters' faces when you can't play the game? (I think I may be the only one with this problem. But still... I haven't had this much trouble getting around in the game since I tried to play Arena, the first Elder Scrolls game, and failed because the graphics were crude enough I couldn't tell what or where anything was... if I can get the same gameplay out of a flashy game and a very un-flashy game, the modern game doesn't deserve to get extra credit just because someone spent a lot of money on effects.)

All RPGs piss me off.

Secret of Mana can be played with 2 players ^^

Ultima 7 is classic. it really feels like you live in Britannia
Ultima 4 is another classic because of the concept.

Okay, there is one RPG I like. Final Fantasy III (DS)