What old (pre-1995) cRPGs stand the test of time?

[aweigh]

Yep, it is. Really cool game, too. Not shilling but I do have some videos showing that game on my channel. Worth a peek because it's pretty interesting. Open-world-ish, some great dungeons, NPCs to talk to, etc,. It's a really unique and oddball RPG that's worth checking out.

I'll check it out. Am watching gameplay of it on YouTube right now in another tab. Seems good enough, but the combat... sigh. The combat looks very bad.

I'll remove it from inventory and play it, though, before making a final decison on whether its combat is bad or not.

Looks similar to Wiz 8, the more I watch, but less complex.

 

[Deleted Member 16721]

I'll check it out. Am watching gameplay of it on YouTube right now in another tab. Seems good enough, but the combat... sigh. The combat looks very bad.

I'll remove it from inventory and play it, though, before making a final decison on whether its combat is bad or not.

Looks similar to Wiz 8, the more I watch, but less complex.

The combat is alright from what I remember. Not incredibly complex but it is just plain fun and satisfying to kill things. Some of the encounters are pretty brutal, too, and you can wander into danger zones and get messed up quick.

It does have other elements other than combat that make it worthwhile. It has some damn clever puzzles, sprawling dungeons with lots of unique things in each one, unique encounters and items, side quests, a rather huge open-world with different environments and environmental traps (poison swamps, giant lakes and rivers, etc.), simple and satisfying character development, a bunch of loot and unique equipment, some quests and puzzles can be completed in different ways, etc.

Also, not sure if it matters to anyone here, but if you have a mobile device that supports gamestreaming you can stream the game from your PC to it and play it with a controller. You have to set up a 3rd party mapping software, but when you do it's a great game to play on a tablet.

 

[aweigh]

BTW, fluent, I actually use an Arcade Stick to play grid-based dungeon crawlers like Elminage: Gothic and Stranger of Sword City. There is absolutely nothing quite like it, and it makes playing these games 10x more fun!

I'll give it a go, and see if good ole' Bradley managed to learn how to design his dream RPG, since Wizards and Warriors was his first stab at making a game without being shackled by the oppressive manacles Wizardry. He always wanted, right from the beginning, to make an open-world sort of RPG, and as I already mentioned he was not a fan of previous Wizardry games (which is why he fucked over the series).

hopefully W*W proves he CAN actually make a good game when he gets to do it from scratch and without fan expectations of previous titles. I am, of course, deliberately ignoring the fact that his late game, Dungeon Lords, is infamously considered one of the worst RPGs ever made.

I think I posted about this earlier in this thread, or maybe it was in another thread, but the recent dungeon crawler "StarCrawlers" has come out and it is kind of good. It is not overly complex (for example there is no attribute system), but it is grid-based and has solid party building, and decent enough itemization.

The only other recent game I've played was Tyranny... and it was not a good experience. You got any other "old" RPG recommendations?

 

[Fowyr]

Later, he made Dung Lords.

EDIT: think his pre-Dung Lords game was called Wizards and Warriors.

You forget about that FPS Cybermage. It was a good game and you should try it, it's very interesting artefact, that includes many things that Bradley thought would be cool. And some of them are cool indeed.

Sometimes I feel people like aweigh are the kind who play games they don't find fun just for the KKK.
Must... finish... this clunky... shit! [Daddy Yankee plays in the background]

Good gracious! He is on us! I totally played dozens of cRPG just for KKK, also I made it 'cause my white robe and hood is cool to wear while playing.

Not sure what country are you from that forces the Bible onto its students.

I'm pretty sure what I first opened Bible (or maybe it was that Taxil's book first) when USSR was still alive, and I was and still is atheist.
Bible is one of the books that is crucial to understanding of European culture and not knowing it or at least most important stories, should be unbecoming of any educated white person.
FFS, half of old art is based on Bible! But this is not a place. Come to Politics in two weeks and we can continue.

 

[aweigh]

Fowyr you have great taste in RPGs, so I shall heed your advice. Heh, now suddenly I have like, 4 RPGs I need to play when yesterday I had none on the horizon.

- Wizards and Warriors
- Cybermage
- Tales of Wuxia
- Battle Brothers

Oh, yeah, for anyone who doesn't yet know: Battle Brothers is a turn-based RPG that uses a gaming table-top "board" aesthetic, and from everything so far it looks AMAZING.

Can't wait to try it out!

 

[Deleted Member 16721]

I'm torrenting it as we speak. BTW, fluentYou got any other "old" RPG recommendations?

I'll have to think more and look up some things and get back to you on this. Off the top of my head here's a few that might be a bit overlooked.

You might think I'm crazy, but Space Hack is really fun. It's a futuristic Diablo-style RPG with an alien planet setting. It's not just click-click-click combat either, it does have some interesting quriks and twists on the combat. At first it seems really simple but you'll see what I mean once you play for awhile.

Realmz is really neat. I'm sure you guys are aware of that one, though. Very extensive character creation with a ton of race/class options, challenging turn-based combat in the style of a Gold Box game and many campaigns that you can carry your characters over into.

Smugglers V is a modern indie game and it's pretty cool. Open-universe RPG, turn-based combat, ship customization, etc.

Dungeons & Dragons: Warriors of the Eternal Sun. Sega Genesis RPG that combines isometric exploration with Gold Box style combat that switches to first-person dungeon-crawling in indoor dungeons.

But yeah, I'll have to dig a bit more and see which ones I'm forgetting. I know there's more but I took a break from gaming for a bit and have to refresh my brain.

 

[aweigh]

as a reward for all of these recommendations of RPGs, watch until the end, as this is literally the greatest video ever made, and a truly inspiring life lesson aimed almost specifically to Codexers:

 

[aweigh]

fluent

Is there any way to "tag" usernames in the Watch forums? I just posted the following in the Wizardry 5 thread, and I think it provides the best possible argument in order to highlight the accessibility of the Elminage series UI:

One thing I'd like to point out, ElderGnome, is that, precisely because the UI in the Elminage series has everything ordered by lists, so much so that you can navigate it with your eyes closed simply by memorizing, say:

"Ok, now I press up twice, that'll highlight Identification, now I press Enter key, and (game automatically highlights the Bishop), press Enter key again and that will bring up the list of unidentified items; great, now I simply mash Enter until I hear the *beep* that indicates all items were identified.

Now I simply press the CANCEL key (by default BACKSPACE) two times, and BOOM, I just freaking identified all of my items with _my eyes closed_".

Frankly, I prefer ordered "lists" over having to move the mouse and click on stuff. For one thing, you definitely can't do what I described above if you were forced to click on the UI commands with the mouse pointer!!!!

It is thanks to the ordered list menus of the Elminage UI, however many key-presses are required, that I am able to enjoy the japanese-language games in the series! Only 2 out of the 4 games in the Elminage series have been localized into English; however...

...due to the fact that you can memorize the Elminage UI and do everything through muscle-memory, I was able to play through and finish the japanese-language games in the series, since every menu option will ALWAYS be in the same place, and I don't have to guess.

 

[Deleted Member 16721]

fluent

Is there any way to "tag" usernames in the Watch forums? I just posted the following in the Wizardry 5 thread, and I think it provides the best possible argument in order to highlight the accessibility of the Elminage series UI:

Nah, I don't think there is. The Watch's forums aren't as complex as the ones here.

And yeah, that's a great point about the Elminage UI and I agree. Once you understand how the UI works you can breeze through it very, very fast.

 

[aweigh]

fluent

maybe if we turn saiyan like the kid in the video... we can unlock tagging

 

[Serus]

How this turned into yet another Aweigh's thread ? I like you Aweigh but if the "recommending good or interesting and obscure old crpgs to some moron" part is over then just let it die please.

 

[Sigourn]

Bible is one of the books that is crucial to understanding of European culture and not knowing it or at least most important stories, should be unbecoming of any educated white person.

The Bible is good for only one thing, and that thing should be common sense to anyone: be good to your neighbour.

Everything else, I'm not interested in.

You all know how much I love WIZARDRY, but I have never finished Wiz 4 and I never will. It's not fun to play, and even though finishing it would give me the equivalent of an RPG Crown of Kodex Kredit, I still won't finish it.

The most honest thing I've heard you said. Just for that I'm going to forget you are a retard.

Except maybe Lucas9, but I think he's taking more enjoyment from trying obscure and old games than actually playing it

Well said. I don't play videogames if I don't get something out of them. But with time, I realized I would rather get fun out of the gameplay instead of fun out of trying obscure and old games. The times I spent with [TRIGGER WARNING] Skyrim were much more enjoyable than the times I spent playing Temple of Apshai, for example.

It seems, though, that in the case Lucas9 he is approaching the matter of playing 80s/90s RPGs as if he was trying to fill out some sort of checklist, in essence doing exactly what he just accused me of... oh, the irony.

I actually wasn't. I think I explained why I made a thread out of it: it was because otherwise I didn't have much motivation to get the thing going, or some sort of "pressure" to get it done.

EDIT: And, btw, he posts so goddamn much in this thread even after receiving tons of game recommendations, that I think he's actually not playing anything. He's just here for... some reason?

Sadly real life is in the way, with an exam due in two weeks. I don't feel comfortable playing videogames at the moment, I instantly feel guilty.

However, I did download The Magic Candle and gave it a small spin. It was interesting, so I'll be playing it in the future.

 

[Jacob]

The Bible is good for only one thing, and that thing should be common sense to anyone: be good to your neighbour.

Everything else, I'm not interested in.

The Bible is better than 99% of fantasy stories out there, the other 1% being The Bible itself.

Well said. I don't play videogames if I don't get something out of them. But with time, I realized I would rather get fun out of the gameplay instead of fun out of trying obscure and old games. The times I spent with [TRIGGER WARNING] Skyrim were much more enjoyable than the times I spent playing Temple of Apshai, for example.

So... 10 pages to realize that... You'd just rather play Skyrim again? Seriously?
Come on, what can be worse than a picky gamer and a gamer with shitty taste? Of course a picky gamer with shitty taste!

 

[aweigh]

YOU KNOW WHAT? oops, caps.

The fact you're giving Magic Candle a try just raised my opinion of you, Lucas9 .

Now, just go ahead and give Elminage: Gothic a try, and you will officially be one of the cool kids.

here is a FireDrop link to a .zip file containing E: Gothic, already .zipped up and ready for play; simply unzip it anywhere you like and double-click on the game's .exe and the game will launch. There is no installation required.

Here's a download link for a .zip, (again, simply unzip and play, no installation required); this game is called "Wizardry Empire 2: Legacy of the Princess" and it was fan-translated by MrRichard999 and Helly, and it was developed by the same dev-team (Starfish Studios) who are now making the Elminage series of 'crawlers.

Starfish Studios was the first dev studio approached by Sir-Tek to make canon Wizardry titles for the Japanese market, and this happened when the Wiz-brothers were in the process of removing themselves from the game-making business and making their home(s) in Japan.

Starfish made 6 Wizardry games, 3 of them on Game Boy (also translated by Richard), and 2 for PC (Empire 1 and 2), and lastly their final Wizardry game, the 3rd Empire entry in the series for PS2 and PSP with, sadly, no PC release.

In any case, the one that is mandatory playing is the one I'm linking below, Wizardry Empire 2, as it features the best mix of old-school hard-core Wizardry (Wizardry dungeons/classes/mechanics from entries 1-5) combined with cherry-picked elements from Wizardry 6, such as new Races, new Classes, and the spell schools introduced in Wiz-6 which are "PSIONICS" and "SUMMONING".

Please, be my guest and enjoy this fantastic game, Empire 2... this game is positively the pinnacle of Wizardry dungeon design and is one of the best gaming experiences I ever had the pleasure of living through.

Link to Wizardry Empire 2: Legacy of the Princess: http://frd.li/e362b9a95a05adf0 (Once again, there is no installation required. Simply unzip and play).

However, in the case of Empire 2, make sure to snag the latest English-patch from the game's thread over in the JRPG sub-forum; and of course, don't worry... I'll link it in a bit. I'm incredibly pushy like that.

There is literally NOTHING that makes me happier than to be able to share these amazing turn-based dungeon crawlers with people who would not otherwise ever play them.

 

[DramaticPopcorn]

aweigh seems the kind of mentally unstable nigga who would start this thread in the first place, Lucas9 ip check pls

 

[pippin]

Isn't this piracy? I don't think the authorities will be cool with this...

 

[aweigh]

www.Sacred-Texts.com

That website contains an unbelievable repository of .zipped (and also in .html for reading from the website itself) of every single important philosphy book/text/doctrine you can think of, including but not limited to:

- Section replete with the most important Greek texts (my personal favorite is Epicurus, and yes, I know I mispelt his name).
Sections replete with almost every single English translation of all the important texts from:
- Buddhism.
- Taoism.

(Taoism is my go-to philosophical reading whenever I'm feeling depressed; also the single most important philosophical texts in history. EVERYTHING copy/pasted shit from Taoism, including the vast majority of the Proverbs in the Bible.

- Confucianism.
- All of the varied Hindu Texts.

EXAMPLE: The ole' (paraphrasing here) "He who keeps his mouth fucking shut is thought wise until he speaks". That old goat of a proverb? Yep, from Lao Tzu, father of Taoism. Jesus fucking stole 90% of the Tao Te Ching)

- Absolutely MASSIVE, MASSIVE section with a ridiculous amount of texts of...
- Judaism.
- Modern Christaninity.
- Jainism.
- Texts written about motherfucking HERALDRY.

(The text I read, one of many on this Heraldry stuff, deals with stuff like why the Hydra that Hercules fought in myth is theorized by many to actually represent the unending floods that wrecked the ancient cities; basically the theory goes that Hercules's action of cutting off heads off the Hydra and the heads growing back represent the floods that would spring anew in different places and forms despite the heroic efforts to stop them.

Another example of "Heraldry stuff" in the text I read explains the meanings behind the multi-colored wings painted on the Angel figures/statues, but I forget what each color represented).

I finish the post with an excerpt from a text on "Demonology and Creatures of the Ancient Past", found inside the section titled "Symbolism":

The thunderbolt of Jove, the spear of Woden, are in the barbed point of his tail. His huge wings—bat-like and spiked—sum up all the mysteries of extinct harpies and vampires. Spine of crocodile is on his neck, tail of the serpent and all the jagged ridges of rocks and sharp thorns of jungles bristle round him, while the ice of glaciers and brassy glitter of sunstrokes are in his scales. He is ideal of all that is hard, destructive, perilous, loathsome, horrible in nature; every detail of him has been seen through and vanquished by man, here or there; but in selection and combination they rise again as principles, and conspire to form one great generalisation of the forms of pain, the sum of every creature's worst."

 

[aweigh]

pippin

With the exception of Paper Sorcerer and E: Gothic, the other game (Empire 2) is officially abandonware plus it was never released outside japan.

In any case, you are correct and it is against Codex rules: I shall remove the links to PS and EG. Whoever wants those 2 games, simply PM me.

Serus

You are absolutely right and I apologize. I won't make any excuse for my behavior; I'll try to control myself from now on. Thank you for checking my behavior.

Here are some on-topic game recs:

- Wasteland 1 (released like 30+ years ago)
- Wizardry 5 (released around 1988 or so)
- Final Fantasy 1 for the NES (released in 1987)
- Dragon Quest 1 (released in 1985)
- ALL OF THE GOLD-BOX RPGs.
- Gemfire for the NES (released around 1989, and to this day the best KOEI game ever).
- Inindo: Way of the Ninja for the SNES (excellent hybrid of JRPG, ninja/samurai period, and topped off with the point of the game being to recruit NPCs to join your guerrilla "army", while enganging in diplomatic efforts with the Daimyos of Japan in order to gain their support in helping your cause, which is to overthrow Oda Nobunaga.

Inindo is an overlooked gem and features a time limit, and also other interesting stuff like having to first "charm" the NPCs you wish to recruit by reading their personalities and acting how they think you should act; some are ninjas from rival clans that you must impress or defeat in combat before they join, while others are sages who ask you to engage in battles of wit, among many other types. It is actually impossible to get all NPCs in 1 playthrough as most are mutually-exclusive with others.

Also, you have to to engage also in espionage missions where you infiltrate places/castles in pseudo-text adventure style; you also spend a fair amount of gameplay sections utilizing your "army" in top-down view Fire Emblem-style battles which you can lose if you're not careful about employing proper use of your troop types); if you dilly-dally too much Nobunaga will eventually secure alliances with the Daimyos you should've courted and when the strategy army battles happen you will get butt-fucked.

Oh, and you can catch Nobunaga in the end game while he's taking a shit and kill him without fighting him. I can't think of any game that allows killing the end boss while he's wiping his ass. It's funny, AND historically accurate, as Oda Nobunaga was assassinated while taking a shit in some bushes according to the game's instruction manual... which is obviously as legit as any history book :D

 

[Doctor Sbaitso]

Two of my favourites that stand the test of time.

The first ever and still very best to date first person, realtime 3d Simulation Dungeon Crawler: Ultima Underworld.

A thoroughly enjoyable, ingeniously designed and grossly underplayed Dungeon Crawler remeniscent of POR that still looks, plays and controls great today: Dark Heart of Uukrul.

 

[Bumvelcrow]

Whoever wants those 2 games, simply PM me.

EG on GoG if you like paying for things. aweigh - is it any good? Seems to have some mixed reviews.

 

[aweigh]

I payed for both fo those games. EG was 2.99 USD when I snagged it on Steam, and Paper Sorcerer was 10 bucks (on Steam as well).

I'm the wrong person to ask if Elminage: Gothic is good or not, since I consider it the best turn-based 'crawler made in more than a decade.

Instead of typing even more text, and probably pissing more people ITT off, here is a short 4-minute video clip of my E: Gothic party inside one of the game's best dungeons, "The Royal Tomb". This short video showcases the combat, the puzzles, AND the incredible gothic "atmosphere".



If you like what you see... then either buy it, or PM me.

Doctor Sbaitso

Wow, I'd forgotten about Dark Heart! Lucas9, before anything else I word-vomited, play that one instead. It has incredible dungeons and a very intelligent "magic system" consisting of runes.

The atmosphere and writing conveyed in Dark Heart of Urkul is beyond compare. Warning, though: The game does not feature any music, and I know you have already expressed how important things like graphics/music are to you.

It is also quite fucking hard game, maybe, MAYBE, even harder than E: Gothic.

Listen to Doctor Sbaitso, he is incredibly knowledgable about 'crawlers. I would heed his opnion on any game.

Oh, Lucas9

- Play Darklands. It is a landmark RPG.
- Play Dark Sun: Shattered Lands. It is a fantastic RPG and it is the game that gave birth to the "Infinity Engine" genre.

 

[Sigourn]

Oh, Lucas9

- Play Darklands. It is a landmark RPG.
- Play Dark Sun: Shattered Lands. It is a fantastic RPG and it is the game that gave birth to the "Infinity Engine" genre.

Oh, I will. They are in my current list. I was also interested in the japanese Wizardry games, a shame almost all of them are still untranslated. It seems English+Japanese+German+Russian are the key languages to know in order to enjoy the best games around.

 

[aweigh]

Well, the RPGCodex itself, (well, Richard and Helly basically, though I'm doing my best to join that pantheon of translators), have translated:

- Wizardry Gaiden 4: Throb of the Demons Heart (SNES).
- Wizardry Empire 2: Legacy of the Princess (Windows PC).
- Wizardry Chronicle: The Promised Land (Windows PC).
- Wizardry Empire (Game Boy series; seperate from the PC series, but same devs).

Other than Codex-translations:

- Wizardry 6 port on the SNES was English-translated years and years ago (much better than the original DOS release).
- Wizardry 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 ports for PS1 all come with official localization (change language to English in options menu). BTW, the PS1 port of Wizardry 4 is the only other existing version of the game aside from the Apple II release. All of the PS1 ports are content-identical, however 4 and 5 received additiona of optional Auto-Mapping.
- Wizardry Gaiden 6: The Prisoners of the Battles (again, comes with built-in options to change to Eng-language. Game itself is a Wizardry 1-3 clone, and it is amazing).

I'm currently translating Wizardry Empire 1 for Windows PC, and have just received word that a kind soul will try to translate the NPC dialog. I already have everything else in English except for the dialog.

You could say, without any sort of hyperbole, that the RPGCodex is the best thing to ever happen to the Wizardry series.

BTW, since I want to keep on-topic: if you find the time to give one of the Wiz titles a try, I recommend either playing the PS1 port of Wiz 5 for hard-core traditional Wizardry, or alternatively play Wizardry 6 which features a healthy mix of old-school Wizardry mechanics combined with the burgeoning designs that the new series "leader", Mr. D. W. Bradley, began implementing.

As for Wiz 6, either of the two existing versions if just fine: DOS release and/or the fan-translated SNES port. Both are content identical, but since you value graphics so damn much I say definitely go for the SNES version.

Simply look at the beautiful sprite art:

Here is DOS Wiz-6:

Same screen from Wiz-6 SNES port:

(screenshot is in jap, but the snes ROM is in english, as I said above).

Here is graphics from Wiz 5 on PC:

SNES version of W5:

PS1 port of Wiz 5:

 

[aweigh]

Dark Heart of Uurkul screenshots; again, one of the all-time great RPGs:

 

[Deleted Member 16721]

^ Some of the most beautiful things I've ever seen. :D