Top 5 most complex games

[Raapys]

Ye, hard to compete against those two. I'd add Space Empires 4, Distant Worlds and CataclysmDDA.

 

[Severian Silk]

I was never able to figure out X-COM strategic layer. Add that to your list.

 

[Beowulf]

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.

You do know that there's this, do you?
http://realmspeak.dewkid.com/

 

[Great Deceiver]

Yes, I have been aware of Realmspeak since the project started many years ago, and I used it to help mediate a number of live games. What's your point?

 

[Damned Registrations]

Dwarf Fortress wins hands down, no contest. I won't go into why because that info isn't hard to find.

I'll note that while Legend of Mana isn't super complex overall (most of it's varied systems are relatively shallow, though there are a lot of them) the smithing part is indeed ludicrously complex. It involves sequentially adding components to an item that are influenced by the last 4 items added, and invisible elemental and generic energy counters that the items manipulate, and the items themselves do crazy things like change the rules so that fire element doesn't consume wood energy levels to increase in level like it normally... I'm not even going to get into this. There is like a 100 page FAQ on the system in gamefaqs and like 10 pages of that are for example recipes, maybe 30 pages listing the various properties of components, and the other 60 pages are explaining the rules. It's not even longwinded, it's just that fucking complex. It'd take longer to memorize that system well enough to make an optimal item without consulting an FAQ than it would to memorize every stat on each unit and building and terrain and all the precise mechanics in a Civ game. I'd actually totally play a game just about item crafting that used that system or one similar to it. Unfortunately actually smithing that shit is incredibly grindy and repetitive, with recipes involving over 300 steps, and they aren't instant. And making a small error (especially near the end) can set you back over 50 steps. At least it's not at all random, not that you'd ever realize that from a casual inspection.

I'll throw Cataclysm DDA in the pot; while it's not quite as complex as DF, it's still insanely deep, with detailed rules for things like vehicles with locational damage down to the seatbelts and cabin lights, a crafting system that lets you start with rocks and sticks and no skills at all and progress from stone tools all the way to turning ash and natural acids into bleach and ammonia and salt and combining them with scavenged scrap metal to create homeade batteries and eventually even cybernetics. It's got a bunch of moral stuff as well, illnesses, martial art styles, complex terrain/movement rules, stamina, sound, visual, and olfactory stealth components for the zombies and wild animals. Crazy fun, and the first game on the list I recommend as a game as a whole.

I'll bring up Elona as well for an honourable mention; it's not as complex, but it's kind of the weeaboo fantasy version of Cataclysm DDA. It has a lot of non combat professions and they're actually totally viable ways of making shittons of money and becoming extremely powerful. You can be a musician, merchant, fisherman/cook/farmer, possibly miner (dunno how viable that is profit wise) and it's got fairly deep character stats to play around with too, with the usual roguelike options like stealth, lockpicking, magery, pets/followers, god worship and all that. Oh, and you can try being a whore too, but AFAIK that part is mostly a joke and you get sick too often to actually make it viable.

Lastly I'll mention the Disgaea series, which isn't quite as complex as simulationist games like Cataclysm or Dwarf Fortress, but is hands down the deepest game for character progression you can find. I made a lengthy post about it a while ago so I'll copy that here:

Spoiler

It just occured to me that the biggest draw of Disgaea (the crazy layered progression system) isn't readily obvious from things like screenshots, so I'm gonna explain it a bit a lot here. This is just from memory from the first game, later entries added even more stuff and kept pretty much all of these systems.

• First off, you've got levels. Bog standard. Level goes up, stats go up. Learn new skills/spells based on class/race (class and race are kinda the same thing in disgaea).
  
• Second, you've got weapon skills. These unlock new special attacks as they go up. Different classes have different levels of proficiency with different weapons. The main character, for example, is especially good with swords. But nothing stopping you from grabbing a staff instead to learn some magic. Weapon skills also multiply the stats gained from the corresponding equipment, which is important for a reason I'll get to later.
  
• Third, you've got reincarnations. This one is complicated and spirals out into other systems. First off, it resets your stats to those of a level one character, along with your level. You some of your skill levels (explained later) but keep your Mana (also explained later, not the stuff used to cast spells) In return, you get the following benefits:

1. Your base stats are raised according to the total levels you've 'spent' reincarnating. This improves the stat gains per level.
2. You get bonus points to spend on your base stats that do the same thing, except these you can spend on whichever stats you want.
3. You can change class. Classes spread out both horizontally and vertically; there are strictly better versions of most classes, unlocked by reaching a certain level as the previous tier. But there are also other kinds of requirements, like using each of the 3 elemental wizards to unlock the non-elemental one. These unlocks are shared between characters as well; you can level 3 different wizards then upgrade them all to the universal version, or change your whole team into them, etc. Better classes gain better spells, have better base stats, and better 'intangible' stats like movement, resistances, and other things that can't be improved by simply levelling up.

• Fourth, you've got the mentor/student system. When making a new character, you select which character to spend 'mana' (an extra sort of XP reward that gets used for various things but isn't inherently useful like xp) to recruit them. The student can inherit some skills from the mentor, and the mentor can use the skills of the student at the lowest level as long as they're nearby. This is really useful because...
• Spells/special attacks have levels too. By having access to them by being near a student, the mentor can learn the skill themselves permanently. Higher level skills do more damage, cost more, and maybe get more AoE or range, I forget that part.
• Hell Senate. This is a place where characters can spend mana. There are a huge variety of benefits here, but the simplest ones are recruiting new characters or improving existing ones. The improves gained here are for things like movement or counter attacking ability, things that don't increase with level. Other things to spend mana on include reincarnation (better classes cost more mana, whether recruiting or reincarnating) which incidentally, has a variety of qualities. Better reincarnation keeps more of your skills and adds more base stats, but is more expensive. You can also unlock major world changing effects here, like increasing or decreasing the levels of all your enemies, granting huge xp or mana bonuses to your next trip into the item world, unlocking new dungeons, etc.
• Item world. Jesus christ this list goes on forever. Items (any fucking item, even consumables) can be levelled up by entering the randomly generated dungeon inside them and progressing through floors. This is really complicated too. The simplest bonus is from simply reaching a deep floor. However, there are guardians every so many floors, with more powerful guardians placed less frequently. They give major bonuses. You can also encounter 'innocents' within these dungeons. These are visible on the item itself before you enter, and are basically pseudo npcs that live within the item and boost it's stats. Finding and defeating them within the dungeon (before an enemy does; they're neutral) will both increase their level, adding more stats, and unlock them from the item, allowing you to move them to other items or merge them with other npcs of the same class. Merging them with a 'locked' innocent will create a new locked innocent that is the average of their two levels, which you can then double by taming them again. By doing this you can make any item at all have tremendous stats of nearly any kind. You can stuff them all into an accessory that anyone can use and use it to make a low level fresh recruit into a beast that can casually one shot things 50 levels higher. Or you can make specialized items so different characters can max out specific stats like evasion or accuracy or hp. Remember the weapon skill/proficiency thing though? That ties in too. You can put them into a weapon of the right kind and the character will get far more stats than they would from an accessory or another character with no weapon skill. The item world itself is also a great source of loot and experience and so forth, because it scales pretty much endlessly, granting new items with stronger worlds. The thing is, you can't make a permanent save inside the item world, so you have to make the judgement call of when to leave, or you might lose your whole run. There are items that let you leave relatively easily, but they're not completely trivial to acquire, so there is some incentive to avoid using them and go on longer trips instead of leaving after every floor to be safe. You can return to the floor where you left off.

There's even more stuff, but those are the most important bits I'd say, and it gives you a good idea of what the game is all about and why it's so different from something like FFT or tactics ogre or any of the other games that look superficially similar to the NIS games but don't have the stigma of being 'grindy' (though I did WAY more monotonous grinding in FFT to learn various job skills, just punching my own dudes. That shit doesn't pay off in disgaea.)

 

[laclongquan]

That read like game porn and a huge hook to try Disgaea. I will try it after I finish my urge to kill some alien in UFO extraterritorials. Thanks!

Elona and Cataclysm I will have to see.

 

[Juggie]

Re Disgaea: Games in the series have loads of mechanics. All of these are basically ways for you to get more powerful so you can beat harder content to get even more powerful. The game is p. much a power growth/grind optimization problem. The combat isn't exactly deep though. That said I spent hundreds of hours total playing both emulated console versions and the Steam port of the first and the second game. I would say it's quite close a TB version to some of the crazy content mods for Diablo II.


On topic: As was already mentioned Dwarf Fortress is obviously the king of gameplay complexity. The game is not exactly difficult though, unless you choose a ridiculous starting area. The difficulty of the game is in it having an overwhelming amount of mechanics and other stuff for a beginner. This takes quite some time and several attempts until you learn what to do and then it becomes quite easy. And it has the worst UI known to man, which doesn't help when you're getting into the game.

Factorio is quite similar to Dwarf Fortress in having high complexity of gameplay mechanics but little challenge. It has much better UI and the difficulty curve is nowhere near as steep as in Dwarf Fortress. Building a basic, functioning factory doesn't require too much thought or planning. Optimizing production, logistics, power, pollution, defenses, etc. and progressing to more advanced resources and products, on the other hand, gets progressively more complex. Like Dwarf Fortress, once you become decent at it you realize it's probably too easy and lacks any proper goals (past launching a rocket). So unless you can come up with some arbitrary things you want to achieve there's nothing to strive for. Nevertheless I've clocked some 265 hours in the game and I plan to come back after the next patch. If you're interested there's a thread about Factorio on the Codex.

 

[IncendiaryDevice]

 

[Veelq]

Path of Exile
Dwarf Fortress
Moba and SC on highest level of play
Crusader Kings 2, EU4 etc

 

[Charles Eli Cheese]

jagged alliance 2
space rangers 2
temple of elemental evil
gold box

 

[laclongquan]

Present your argument, please~ Any noob can list stuffs.

 

[Delbaeth]

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

Would even mention the older games, Pacific War or War in Russia.

Command Modern Air/Naval Operations fits quite the bill too.

Pretty hard to explain deeply why they are so complex, we're talking about "Monster Games" here, especially compared to games on the same Theater of Operations.

As complex is Victoria, Pride of Nations goes farther on politics and how to maintain the dominion. But also, the game struggles a bit more on loadings...

 

[Incantatar]

On topic: As was already mentioned Dwarf Fortress is obviously the king of gameplay complexity. The game is not exactly difficult though, unless you choose a ridiculous starting area. The difficulty of the game is in it having an overwhelming amount of mechanics and other stuff for a beginner. This takes quite some time and several attempts until you learn what to do and then it becomes quite easy. And it has the worst UI known to man, which doesn't help when you're getting into the game.

There is not only difficulty for a beginner. The ultimate difficulty is hidden from beginners and lives on a meta level. It's against the poorly coded and optimized game which fights you with unavoidable FPS death. A relatively frustrating difficulty, since you need to cut of many game features to play longer games. There should be a donation system that is connected to getting the game more optimized, to give Toady a necessary incentive to finally work on this issue instead of making it even worse from update to update.

 

[GarfunkeL]

Dwarf Fortress, after the beginner's struggle of learning the keyboard shortcuts and the basic mechanics, does ramp up the difficulty with the sieges and forgotten beasts and what else. Plus, the constant optimization of the Fortress itself and task management do keep a player challenged. Well, maybe not challenged but certainly busy. Aurora 4x was also mentioned and rightly so, though now that I know it pretty well and have multiple campaigns under my belt, it doesn't feel too complex anymore, though I can certainly appreciate it would come across that way to a beginner.

Gary Grigsby's games were mentioned and they are a good example - alongside the old Pacific War and the various versions of Harpoons, where part of the complexity is that the player must know the ships, planes and weapon systems (and in case of Harpoon, sensors too) to really utilize them properly in the game. This meta-knowledge isn't usually given inside the game or even in the manual. Then you add the actual game mechanics on top of that. This double-layer of complexity puts them on their own league for sure. Steel Panthers in its various incarnations is much, much simpler as even the very first game gave you all necessary information inside the game and the mechanics have always been straightforward - there is no need to learn by heart the difference between Pz IIIe and Pz IIIg or Apache 64A and Apache 64D. In the same vein, the mechanics of JA2 are sufficiently close to real world that its complexity is drastically reduced from what it could be.

And while I in general agree with the sentiment that Paradox games aren't that complex, Victoria is the exception. It has more complexity in its mechanics than any other Pdox game.

 

[commie]

The Gary Grigsby games mentioned here are lightweights. 12 o'clock high and even the earlier Battle of of Britain are probably the single most complex games he ever made. In theory they seem great being able to control the air campaigns on the western front to the individual take off and landing times of every single aircraft(even historical aces are included so you can try and keep Nowotny alive), run recon flights to determine targets(primary and secondary) and effects of bombings, scramble raids. Problem is there's so much to do and the flights can be flown in real time that it takes forever to do even one turn especially when the manual is pretty useless despite its huge size. Very little but the basics are explained which results in the player just automanaging most things or randomly clicking and selecting things to do to see what, if anything, they do. Couple this with the fact that often raids get aborted due to cloud cover or other bad weather which while realistic is of course a real PITA after you've been struggling to create a slick raid for half an hour coordinating multiple flights, avoiding flak and airfield concentrations, adding primary and secondary targets. Eventually you just say fuck it and let the game play itself, with just firebombing Dresden for the lulz manually, which sort of defeats the purpose of playing it.