Top 5 most complex games

[laclongquan]

The recent threads inspire me to the question "What is the most complex game?"

It need not limit itself to PC system, although I agree with the idea that consoles dont represent well in this kind of poll.

It need not limit itself to genres, because, who know, even some sim or builder game can be very complex.

The idea is that the game should contain either one MASSIVELY complex gameplay, or several subminigame with complex gameplay that can hook players for tens, hundreds of hours.

Calling upon Codex to argue which is the most complex game! Present your piece, and your argument.

 

[laclongquan]

Okay. I will go first. This is temporary and I can adding more later when I can.

1. Morrowind. The writing aspect is despicable which pull down the game from top 5 game, but every other aspects are complex. You can play the alchemy minigame. Or the skill trainings. Or the spell making. You can trek through the varied environment and gawk like a yokel in new land.

2. Witcher 1. (not 2 or 3). Leaving the writing aspect aside (which is a huge plus for the game), the alchemy, the spell, and the moveset are pretty well meshed together.

3. Fallout New Vegas. Leaving the writing aspect aside (which is a huge plus for the game), the gunporn aspect and the trekking are pretty well meshed.

4. Prince of Qin. Now we are getting in to uncharted territory. The alchemy system based on 5 element system, allow for 5 offensive and defensive elemental damages, various type of buffs with each type of element, then an item crafting minigame that allow you to play smith all game long. You can buy those different item sets, of course, if you dont want to dedicate your MC's build to a builder/smith .

5. Legend of Mana. Now we are getting in to even more uncharted territory. This game is PS1 game era, with anime art style to boot, which should discourage the bias graphicwhore among Codexers here. but lurking behind that is a very robust item crafting that can affect your whole gameplay in unsuspected ways
- Items can have enchantment, which can be done (partly) by using magical fruits.
- The magical fruits can be grown (or buy outside) in your garden, and each fruits has its own element and can be influenced by the garden's element itself.
- The garden's element itself is affected by the landpiece outside our home base. If you set up the surrounding as 3forests and one beach it would be different elements from 1 desert, 1 town, 1 forest, and one beach.
- You get landpiece by doing quests. you can choose the order of the chosen quests, so can have control over which landpiece you set down first.
The other interesting subsystems is the way you learn movesets of items by input command and perform them in battle. Each weapon has its own characteristics.

 

[Lazing Dirk]

No Dwarf Fortress?

Probably EVE Online as well, given the variety of ships, their possible loadouts, player setups, the economy, factions, alliances, levels of security, and the amount of batshit crazy background politics. Hell, the politics alone probably put it near the top.

 

[laclongquan]

Never play it so dont know. Ditto with Minecraft. You are free to present your argument about it.

 

[Lazing Dirk]

I'm not sure where to begin with Dwarf Fortress. Before you can even play you have to generate a world, and this in itself has a bunch of options you can change. It doesn't just plop out a landscape like Terraria, oh no, this thing is generating entire civilisations that rise and fall before you even get to play. The landscape is weathered away depending on rains, rivers, and the type of rock. Trees grow and die. Thousands of years pass. Finally, once you have your land with its own history and culture, you can play in adventure mode or fortress mode.

Fortress mode is the crux of the game. Starting with just a few shitty dwarves and a few tools, you begin your quest to build a mighty fortress. Dwarves grow, learn, establish relationships, produce offspring, have likes and dislikes, and can be assigned to various tasks. They can create weapons, trinkets, food, or drink, dig out rocks, minerals, metals, build walls and traps, trade with merchants, even go mad and create precious artifacts. With this in mind, you build a fortress, populate it with your initial dwarves offspring and immigrants, set up trade routes, fight off monsters, dig in the deep for precious metals (but watch out for aquifers, lava, and nasty beasts), build, build, and rebuild, pump out lava and fluid and relocate it for your own uses, and more. And I haven't yet talked of adventure mode, how combat works, or endless other details I'm likely forgetting. Not to mention I haven't even played DF in years, so there's likely far more added to the game that I'm not even aware of.

It's truly a monster of a game.

 

[taxalot]

Define complex.

Some games have faily simple rules and can be understood, fully, within minutes. Yet, they take ages to master.
Others are incredibily complicated from the get go but do not offer any margin of progression.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

The games laclongquan names as his Top 5 are more of a "Top 5 most deepest games" than most complex, but that's just nitpicking.

As for complex games, Dwarf Fortress and EVE Online are two obvious ones and they have already been mentioned.

SimEarth is another possible contender, if only by looking at the beast of a manual that came with the game.

I'm almost certain there's a 1980s game somewhere with massive layers of complexity in it. Universe, B.A.T. (2), something along those lines.

 

[sser]

 

[Lady_Error]

1. Civ games can hook you for hundreds of hours.
2. Wizardry 7 was complicated and long enough.
3. Kerbal Space Program looks it might be one of the most difficult to learn games.
4. Crusader Kings games are quite complex.
5. The early Flight Sims where you had to know every button to fly a plane were certainly complex.

 

[laclongquan]

Learn from Lazing Dirk, goddamnit! I dont care for your opinions if you cant even present your argument about a game you believing complex or deep.

Civilization games is complex true, but in that genre, Alpha Centaury beat them black and blue. SMAC got the customizing units aspect to it aside from the usual civilizations thing going on.

I leave some obvious gap for you to jump in and what the hell did you all do?

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

point of attack 2.
a game so complex not even the codex dared to try it.

 

[laclongquan]

Eh, the impossible to torrent was the killing factor~ It's like a corporate game made for gubermint men.

I mean, if it's easier to demo we would demo it just for shits and giggles, right? If it's unexistant then uh uh, nuh uh.

To be fair, the war sim genre is a big No for me. Even the Russian rate it as 35%.

 

[felipepepe]

EVE Online?

 

[Gerrard]

I'm not sure where to begin with Dwarf Fortress. Before you can even play you have to generate a world, and this in itself has a bunch of options you can change. It doesn't just plop out a landscape like Terraria, oh no, this thing is generating entire civilisations that rise and fall before you even get to play. The landscape is weathered away depending on rains, rivers, and the type of rock. Trees grow and die. Thousands of years pass. Finally, once you have your land with its own history and culture, you can play in adventure mode or fortress mode.

Fortress mode is the crux of the game. Starting with just a few shitty dwarves and a few tools, you begin your quest to build a mighty fortress. Dwarves grow, learn, establish relationships, produce offspring, have likes and dislikes, and can be assigned to various tasks. They can create weapons, trinkets, food, or drink, dig out rocks, minerals, metals, build walls and traps, trade with merchants, even go mad and create precious artifacts. With this in mind, you build a fortress, populate it with your initial dwarves offspring and immigrants, set up trade routes, fight off monsters, dig in the deep for precious metals (but watch out for aquifers, lava, and nasty beasts), build, build, and rebuild, pump out lava and fluid and relocate it for your own uses, and more. And I haven't yet talked of adventure mode, how combat works, or endless other details I'm likely forgetting. Not to mention I haven't even played DF in years, so there's likely far more added to the game that I'm not even aware of.

It's truly a monster of a game.

SOIL EROSION

 

[lili]

Dominions stacks pointless amount of mechanics

 

[Robert Jarzebina]

Gary Grigsby's War in the West
Gary Grigsby's War in the East

 

[Severian Silk]

Battlecruiser Millennium? Or is it simply obtuse?

 

[Great Deceiver]

Dota

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Probably some of the older MMO games before Blizzard came in and casualized everything.

 

[Great Deceiver]

Not a videogame, but

I still wish Talisman hadn't been so influential on fantasy boardgames and more games tried to follow Magic Realm's idea. It's brilliant.

 

[Alienman]

Not complex in the sense of Dwarf Fortress or simulator games, but I always found Starcraft 2 multiplayer very complex. So many damn strats, build orders, and what have you that you have to control and master. When it was popular (the only actual "e-sport" that I enjoyed) it had some really interesting matches with a lot of back and forth, ambushes and so on. Shame the scene died.

 

[Raghar]

Victoria was complex game to get into. Then we also have naval simulations... And of course Dwarven fortress. (it has even world map) And steel panthers. I think it's easy to find a game made in old ages without graphics with high complexity. The problem is relative lack of recent complex games.

 

[Konjad]

There are very few complex games. I definitely wouldn't call Paradox games complex, they just seem difficult to manage for the first hour before you grasp basics, then it's a straightforward learning curve.

When it comes to complex games, ones that are actually difficult to learn to play because of how much stuff you have to take care in them, then only few games come to my mind:

1. Dwarf Fortress
2. Fleet Command
3. Kerbal Space Program


I wouldn't also include here simulators, because they - similarly to Paradox games - are usually difficult to learn, but not really that complex once you manage to learn the controls/management/whatever they simulate. The only difference would be games like Fleet Command, where not only ships, aircraft, torpedoes, missiles, submarines etc are simulated, but there's usually enough forces to turn the battlefield into quite a complex situation (just like managing all the dwarfs in the Dwarf Fortress), and you have to cope with it all and quickly react to the situation (plus, you give orders to the whole fleet).

Kerbal is a bit different as it's a slow game, and does not have much going on at the same time, but you've gotta consider lots of various aspects, hence it ends up being quite complex.

 

[Lord Romulus]

Dominions 4 for me, also a game I played on the NDS called Knights in the Nightmare a while back that I don't think I ever understood fully. Just try watching this and understand what's going on.

 

[Mark Richard]

Men of War, the World War II real-time strategy game, one of those Eastern Europe titles where the rules of game design are less established and mad experiments roam the land. Men of War is so complex that I have to turn the speed down to its lowest setting just to keep up. While many Western games hang their hat on one or two features, Men of War says let's do ALL of them. In this game...

- Every unit has its own grid inventory. Ammo is limited, so unless you want to end up bringing a pistol to a tank fight, keeping troops supplied is a top priority.
- There's a stealth system. Soldiers are less visible while prone and can sneak by enemy lines to attack fortifications from the rear.
- Manually control any unit on the battlefield Dungeon Keeper style.
- No house is safe in a fully destructible environment.
- Vehicles and machines in general have individual targetable parts, each with their own function.
- Ranged combat takes into consideration distance and angle. Shelling a tank dead on is an ideal shot, whereas hitting it diagonally is likely to be deflected by the armour.

 

[Jimmious]

Dwarf Fortress and Aurora 4X are far beyond the competition in my opinion.