RPGs that influenced me the most...

[CrazyBernie]

Yeah, but seriously? I could buy the original version for $30, or the newer, updated version for $25.... stuff like that just blows my mind. Sure, maybe the older version is a hard copy in a box or something... but still... at some point you have to let go and mark the product down to move it.

I worked for a guy who had this computer shop in a mall... he thought he was going to be the next Alienware, so he bought about $200k worth of computer cases. Fast forward to two years later and he was still trying to sell them for original price when everyone else had the same cases for half. I bet he still has half of those damn cases, and he's never going to recoup the cost... he was just too damn stubborn to see that.

Well... while I agree in the specific area of Nethergate (despite the work he put into 'updating the interface'), I'm sure it all comes down to what you have to do to stay viable as a small indie developer. And... for many consumers, price translates to quality. If it's only $10 or $15 it's gotta be crap, especially if the demo shows you a game with very primitive graphics (despite that the story is rather more fleshed out than the typical game). In the same vein, a lower price can suggest to a less-tolerant person that you're absolutely right that those primitive graphics mean it's a terrible game worth only $10. But if an indie game is $30 or even more (Spidweb's are $28 now I think)... then there's gotta be reason for it, right? It's psychology, man!

That's when you slap the "Classics" label on it... breaks right through that psychology. "Oh, well its a classic, I guess 10 bucks is a good deal. Let me see what I missed out on!"

I know I've dropped 10 bucks on re-purchasing older games I lost the discs to and wanted to re-live. Doom, Serious Sam, Icewind Dale, ect; tons of classics wind up in the bargain bin or on the used copy shelf at some point in their lifespan.

[Evnissyen]

Heh, the "classics" label might work, actually.

I think probably one of the things going on here is that Jeff at Spiderweb Software has a loyal following of the sort of people who're just into this sort of game and are going to buy them whether they're $10 or $30 . . . and he knows he's not going to expand his market very far into other territory, so lowering the prices ends up equaling a loss while raising the price a little helps to keep the company in the black and provide them enough profit to allow them to continue making games, which is what all of his fans want.

He has to play by niche-market rules, in other words, not by general-market rules.

(Incidentally, he does mention a little bit about how well his games sell and how profitable they are on his new blog.)

Apparently his games don't generally make a lot of money but they make him enough to keep him making them rather than saying, "ah, screw it, I have bills to pay and I'm going into another business."

[azraelck]

The Bard's Tale 1, 2, 3 - When I was a wee little anthromorphic representation, my grandfather sat me down in his lap. He was playing Bard's Tale 1 on the C64. I've been hooked ever since, and the series has held a soft spot in what passes for my heart. The Bard's Tale 2 was also the first RPG I ever beat (the first game I ever beat was Mega Man 3).

Phantasie III - This game influenced me considerably on my own cRPG I've been working on, and was a favorite back in the C64 days. There are aspects of PH3 that have really not been used since. The DOS version is hard to play, thanks to the 4 color CGA. But still a solid game.

Wizardry 6, 7, 8 - Probably the best RPG's of the first person style IMO. Especially 7. The character generation system is my favorite of any of the classic games.

Might and Magic 2, 3, 4, 5 - I loved the colorful environments, the well developed worlds, and the more humorous take on the genre. I also liked that the items were generated with different materials and such, and you never knew what you might get.

Evin - There was a Mac version of World of Xeen. I had a catalog from NWC back in those days (probably still do, actually), which showed a mac version was available. Finding it, on the other hand, is another thing entirely.

Ultima 6 - U6 is the only one in the series I played extensively though I never beat it. I always started goofing off, stealing things and building forts everwhere. It was the most open game I'd ever played up to that point (we're talking 386 days here).

Basically, the main PC classic series. There are others I loved, but these are the main movers for me. As an honorable mention, I'll add in these:

The Summoning - Same engine as Dusk of the Gods and Veil of Darkness; this isometric RPG wasted a lot of hours back in the day. I never got past the teleport maze though. All three are solid games worth picking up if you can find them.

Dungeon Hack - An AD&D game similar to the Eye of the Beholder games (same engine I think) that had randomly generated dungeons. You could adjust the size and difficulty a great deal; and every game was a different crawl.

Times of Lore - I spent a lot of time on this on the C64. Been a long time though.

[Poxx]

My favourites would be...

Wizardry 6 - 8
Ultima IV - VII
System Shock 1/2
Gothic 1/2
Planescape: Torment
Arcanum
Fallout 1/2
Might and Magic: World of Xeen
Might and Magic VI/VII
The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall
Deus Ex
Ultima Underworld 1/2
Geneforge 2
Mount and Blade
Master of Magic
Lands of Lore 1/2
Bard's Tale 1 - 3
Eye of the Beholder 1 - 3
Darklands
Pool of Radiance
Arx Fatalis
Divine Divinity
Nox
Temple of Elemental Evil (patched)
Realms of Arkania 2: The Star Trail
Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines
Stronghold
Elite Plus
Quest For Glory (any)

There are probably more that I forgot.

yup. you forgot some of the best games ever ( all of them have a lot of RPG in them , but are not pure RPG ( they are pure old and gold though ! ) :

XCom : Ufo
Jagged Alliance
Thief ( can't remember if this was the actual name of the game )
Privateer
Syndicate
Warlords III
Heroes of Might and Magic
etc

If you never played any of the games above, then you have certainly missed something REALLY good and I envy you.
I wish I could go back in time and play Syndicate again for the first time, or Privateer... or Jagged Alliance...
Aaaaawwww how quickly the years go by !

[romero69]

I remember having a commodore vic 20 way back when. there was a text game with a vampires castle cant quite remeber the name. I had progressed through the commodore line 64, 64c, 128, amiga. then In the early nineties i gave in to the evil of the pc and have been there since.
some of my favs would be
zork trilogy
the bards tale series
the ultima's
d & d pool of radiance, curse of the azure bonds
the lands of lore
gothic
oblivion
the witcher
and now eschelon book 1
this game takes me back but not to far back the first games i played were text or stick figures great game looking forward to book 2. oh yeah I started my 3rd time through the game as a mage I guess Im hooked

[trinsic]

Someone mentioned it, but the most recent game that I really like that somewhat compares to Eschalon is Arcanum. That was a well done RPG, IMHO.

[ido]

There are many more RPGs that I enjoyed playing, but these games really affected me. Anyone else care to share?

• * Fallout 1 & 2
  * Baldur's Gate 1 & 2
  * Arcanum

I tried to play some of the older RPG's like Pool of Radiance, Bard's Tale, the Ultimas, Eye of the Beholder & Lands of Lore but didn't really get into any of them.

Ultima 4 is very neat though and have definitely influenced me during the development of my own RPG, as well as Angband, Nethack & Crawl.

The other major influence was pen and paper games, especially D&D and AD&D.

[sapper_astro]

I really loved Ultimas 4-6 and the Worlds of Ultima games. Number 5 was probably my favourite of the series.

I could never get enough Gold Box ADnD games. Never. This includes the Buck Rogers series.

The Magic Candle games were brilliant.

I enjoyed the Questron clones, aka Questron, Questron 2, Legacy of the Ancients and Legend of Blacksilver.

Wasteland. Definately a winner.

Dragon Wars. More win.

Windwalker. Plenty of fun.

My memory is giving out on me now, but there are plenty of one off games and series that I enjoyed back in the day. The above games made the most impression on me. Later games I enjoyed would include Fallout, Arcanum, the Baldurs gate games were pretty good. Not much of note lately except for Knights of the Chalice, Eschalon and a few of the Spiderweb games.

[Evnissyen]

Rereading this thread, this has come to mind: The Neverwinter Nights series has been mentioned before, it's very popular I know (and has a very decent story, I think). The problem I found with #2 was that the very end of the game overstrained my system -- with all those 50+ characters on screen at once -- and it seemed so unnecessary . . . so that I was virtually unable to move my character, therefore making it impossible for me to finish the game.

That pissed me off. In my opinion that falls into the category of poor engineering.

And I love NWN2.

Anybody else here have this trouble?

[Grindstone_82]

@ BasiliskWrangler, looking at BoE, I think you should really try Arcanum if you haven't. You obviously like skill-based systems, and Arcanum is one of the best PC games to feature this. It's also simply one of the most brilliant RPGs ever. There's a line in your announcement of Book II, where you say something along the lines of "no black/white judgements... turning down someone's quest may open up another quest". That made me think of Arcanum instantly.


Simply be sure to grap the latest official patch and stay away from real time mode. There's also a very recent,extremely sweet fan patch that fixes a load of the last remaining bugs, restores content, and adds almost no subjective modded content. That's how much the game still inspires people.

[Evnissyen]

@ BasiliskWrangler [ . . . ] There's a line in your announcement of Book II, where you say something along the lines of "no black/white judgements... turning down someone's quest may open up another quest". That made me think of Arcanum instantly.

Either I missed that quote from BW, or I forgot about it. BW: I like that idea very much, if you mean it in a sense other than just having somebody still alive (in other words: not murdered) means that they can offer you more quests.

And Grindstone: Now I must check out Arcanum... if it works on my Mac, of course. Thanks for the lead.

If Arcanum is one of those games everyone knows about except me . . . I'm gonna be embarrassed.

[Grindstone_82]

@ BasiliskWrangler [ . . . ] There's a line in your announcement of Book II, where you say something along the lines of "no black/white judgements... turning down someone's quest may open up another quest". That made me think of Arcanum instantly.

Either I missed that quote from BW, or I forgot about it. BW: I like that idea very much, if you mean it in a sense other than just having somebody still alive (in other words: not murdered) means that they can offer you more quests.

I think it was said that one quest might require you to "lose" another quest. I guess this would play out like this (taking the Potion of Restoration quest in E1):

- you discover that the potion really is a poison. Now you can either give it to the hermit, killing him but fulfilling the priest's quest. Or inform the hermit that the priest obviously wants to kill him, thereby opening up the "letter to Darkford" quest.

And Grindstone: Now I must check out Arcanum... if it works on my Mac, of course. Thanks for the lead.

If Arcanum is one of those games everyone knows about except me . . . I'm gonna be embarrassed.

it was pretty much a commercial failure, but I've seen it brought up in this thread several times, so it's only really known to/ liked by RPG nuts I guess

[iliak]

Hi there !

Sorry to dig up this post, but...

Eye of the beholder 1 - 3 , WE NEED A REMAKE!

I'm making an open source clone of Eye of the Beholder II. the project is called Dungeon Eye and you can have a look at http://www.mimicprod.net.

I hope not to have violated the rules of the forum, but I thought it was worth it.

Iliak.

[khaooohs]

D2
Baldur's gate 1, 2
online RO for a while

I didn't know that there is a bard's tale 2 and 3, I played the ps2 version
I still remember those zombies dancing, and the beer song, I sing it when I'm drunk if I'm not doing drunken box...

[deathknight1728]

Well, for me, the first and best influence was Tunnels of Doom. It was exclusive to the TI-99/4a. It had tactical turn-based party combat, 3D dungeons, auto-mapping, dozens of monsters, treasures, traps and items, and infinite replay value. Not too shabby! I played it enough that I think I can still hum the tones of it loading from cassette. (It also came on disk, but most 99'ers only had a cassette player.)

I cover a bit about it on my website at http://www.adamantyr.com/crpg/article_01.htm There's also a review of it up on Armchair Arcade, and a remake in the works by Dream Codex.

Adam

Im sorry for this dreadful necromancy, but this topic is awesome. Im currently on the lookout for party based games other than d and d like the remake of that tunnel of doom. I was wondering if anyone knows of any games that are party-creation based that are unique. Something like fallout tactics only turn based.