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Which older RPG surprised you with how well it has aged?

Jaesun

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Every once in a while, I re-play Vampire the Masquerade Redemption, and even with the somewhat outdated 3D engine, the character models and areas still have some really nice graphics.
 

laclongquan

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Now compare it to Fallout Tactics' trading screen:
Fallout_Tactics_%28PC%29_33.jpg

Still has the "a handful of items on the exchange screen" and the "no visible stats and value for items".

The automap screen can be changed to text screen. And if you click on item in YOUR inventory, the little screen in the left of the top middle with show some descriptions. The value of each item is changed according to seller's Barter skill AND the number of items in the right side's inventory so there's no fixed number. The formula is pretty arcane actually. "Raising your Barter" is a good rule of thumb but not all.

And it's twenty item in each side's inventory, what the fuck do you complain about?

Sure, FTBOS trade screen has problems, but the number of items shown is NOT one of them. You dont know what you dont know~
 

Diggfinger

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So recently I tried re-playing some of my older favourite games ever like M&M 6 and Ultima UW, but I actually had to put them down at one point due to sheer frustration with some obvious faults that have been there due to lack of technology..

Has any of you guys been surprised with how WELL an older (2000-ish and before that?) RPG has aged?

Why the heck did you 'have' to put down M&M6 out of frustation?
That's the first game that springs to my mind for being highly playable today due to excellent game design mixed with a fast-paced game engine. Totally holds up.
 

octavius

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Fallout 1's inventory screen was actually quite bad. It always sorted things so that you had to scroll all the way to the bottom to access the newest/most frequently used items in inventory, which was annoying. It was fixed in F2, so apparantly it was wasn't just me.
 
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IncendiaryDevice

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Ultima 7's Inventory was appalling. Just stuff piled on top of other stuff. I really don't enjoy simulating an old woman at a supermarket checkout every time I wanted to add to or remove something from my inventory.

key.jpg


Further, by having everything as a separate pop-up the screen could turn into the most ungodly mess doing some very basic stuff that both older and newer games don't have so much hassle and ugliness with.

Inventory.jpg
 
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Harry Easter

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HansDampf

So... Which games actually did age badly but were great back in the day?

Hmm, Baldurs Gate 1 comes to my mind: a lot of free space, not much happening there, besides killing monsters and playing a mage is pretty useless, because you don't learn the good spells until BG2.

NWN2 is still fun, but the graphics have aged badly and the camera was shit and is still shit.

And as loathed as it is today, Mass Effect 1 WAS a big step up in dramatic storytelling, but today it is just ... boring.

And Fallout: New Vegas was a big step up compared to 3, but I can't play those games anymore.

As for games that aged well:

Arcanum (combat is shit, but the mechanics and writing are still good)
Baldurs Gate 2 (did everything better than BG1. And I mean everything. But the epic content was too much in my book and the story is almost nonexisting)
Fallout 1/2 (fun mechanics, fun world and a a good duology, that didn't need a continuation)
Gothic 2 (Exploring is fun, writing is solid and the quests are good)
Divine Divinity (Solid plot, big world, and fun skills. The interface is clunky, but even the graphics have aged well)
 

Elex

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i wonder if in 2040 people will discuss 2010-2020 RPG

maybe skyrim remastered 2039 will have a good interface.

people from the future quote me!
 

HansDampf

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So... Which games actually did age badly but were great back in the day?

Hmm, Baldurs Gate 1 comes to my mind: a lot of free space, not much happening there, besides killing monsters and playing a mage is pretty useless, because you don't learn the good spells until BG2.

NWN2 is still fun, but the graphics have aged badly and the camera was shit and is still shit.

And as loathed as it is today, Mass Effect 1 WAS a big step up in dramatic storytelling, but today it is just ... boring.

And Fallout: New Vegas was a big step up compared to 3, but I can't play those games anymore.

BG1: Played it in 2015 as a mage, and I liked it. How are mages useless when they can cast Sleep at level 1? Sure, BG2 is better in many ways, but the first game also had its charme.
NWN2: Haven't played it.
ME1: It must have been 2012 when I played it for the first time, and it's the best in the series. Why is it boring today? What has changed?
F:NW: Replayed it in 2014 with a couple of mods and still enjoyed it, maybe even more so than in 2010. How did it age badly? Engine and graphics were shit in 2010 already. So what else is the problem?
 
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Davaris

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i wonder if in 2040 people will discuss 2010-2020 RPG

maybe skyrim remastered 2039 will have a good interface.

people from the future quote me!

Best interface is no interface. Vim like commands or go home.
 

Invictus

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Divinity: Original Sin 2
I though we were discussing games before 2000...and some undoubtedly prestigious Members are mentioning Mass Effect?
I would say that the rpgs that have held up the best to the test of time would be:
Might and Magic III Isles of Terra (wonderful cartoony graphics still look nice and clean easy to use interphase) as well as World of Xeen
Quest for Glory series
Same as with Might and Magic, the artstyle and quirky settings make it really accessible especially to kids
Dungeon Master
 

Xeon

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Divine Divinity (Solid plot, big world, and fun skills. The interface is clunky, but even the graphics have aged well)
Yeah, Divine Divinity looks pretty damn good.

---

Fallout's character creation is so much better than Underrail, its kinda strange, now we have bigger resolution monitors but devs choose to split things up instead of making everything in one page or something.
 
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Lilura

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NWN2 is still fun, but the graphics have aged badly and the camera was shit and is still shit.

Dumb muthafuck detected.

NWN2 cam = most powerful and versatile in history of genre: Strategy Mode cam, Camera Mode: Can Be Moved Freely (Free Camera), Ceilings Always Off and Marquee Select On.
 

Doktor Best

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I could give you many examples of games that have aged well, but ill try to stick more closely to the OP question and only mention games that surprised me in that regard:

Wasteland: Its a game from 1986, it is the foster father of Fallout. That sparked enough curiousity in me that i decided to give it a try. I wasnt expecting to have as much fun as i did have with the game in the end. Of course many aspects of it are dated now, but there is also so much stuff in it that is working to well especially because its such an simplistic game. I dont know if it "invented" skill checks but it most definitely put it on another level back in the day. It also invented many genre tropes the later fallout games built upon and it really feels like the birth of a new type of rpgs. The UI is also splendid if you take the time to get into it.

X-Com: Same thing pretty much. I played the remake first and had much fun with that one. Then i read some reviews of the game during a boring lecture and was puzzled by some negative reviews that claimed its a dumbed down and inferior version to the old classic. That got me curious so i decided to try the openxcom version of the game and boy, i was hooked on the game from the beginning until the defeat of my first ironman campaign on hard difficulty. I loved the artstyle, i loved the combat, i loved the destructive enviroment. While i still like the nu-Xcom, especially with the long war mod, it was indeed the superior game. There was just so much more tension in it. I still remember the names of some of my elite soldiers and i remember that one dramatic terror mission when they all died to save some fucking rookies with overly expensive gear. Never put expensive gear on rookies.


Fallout's character creation is so much better than Underrail, its kinda strange, now we have bigger resolution monitors but devs choose to split things up instead of making everything in one page or something.

Well you spend how long, maybe 30 minutes creating your character? The vast majority of your gametime you spend actually playing the game, and underrail has a vastly superior UI in that aspect.
 

octavius

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Fallout 1's inventory screen was actually quite bad. It always sorted things so that you had to scroll all the way to the bottom to access the newest/most frequently used items in inventory, which was annoying. It was fixed in F2, so apparantly it was wasn't just me.

He he, this somehow triggered Lilura. :D
 

Cael

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Of course if you consider all the very old (pre 1980) CRPGs, of fucking course most will be bad and will have aged badly. 90% of everything is crud.

But the games that were great in 1985-1995 are still great today IMO. And I wouldn't be surprised if the same is true for the 1975-1984 CRPGs, none of which I personally played back then.

But I played many of the CRPGs released from 1985 to 1995 - and replayed many of them -, and generally they do stand the test of time IMO.

CRPGs I enjoyed back then, and enjoyed when I replayed them:
The Bard's Tale
Dungeon Master
Gold Box games
Might and Magic 2
Chaos Strikes Back
Wizardry: Bane of the Cosmic Forge
Ultima Underworld

CRPGs I enjoyed back then, not quite as fun when I replayed them:
Ultima IV
Phantasie III
BattleTech: tCHI
Eye of the Beholder
The Bard's Tale II: The Destiny Knight

CRPGs I enjoyed more when replaying:
Dragon Wars
Black Crypt
Ultima Underworld 2

CRPGs I enjoyed when I played them for the first time the past five years:
Wizardry 1-5, 7
Phantasie
Might and Magic I
Ultima V
Demon's Winter
The Magic Candle
Knights of Legend
The Dark Heart of Uukrul
Disciples of Steel
Might&Magic 3-5
Darklands
The Legacy: Realm of Terror
Betrayal at Krondor
Lands of Lore: The Throne of Chaos
Dark Sun: Shattered Lands
Nahlakh
The Aethra Chronicles
X-COM (remake)
Jagged Alliance
Anvil of Dawn

CRPGs that needed an unoffical patch or a remake to be enjoyable:
The Bard's Tale III: The Thief of Fate
Ultima VI

Conclusion: old crud is still crud, but the classics have in general stood the test of time.

So many good memories of the games here.

The Gold Box games most definitely. The Krynn series was more or less the pinnacle of that one, although I also liked the Savage Frontier duology due to its more... unusual unique magic items. Oh, and romance subplot long before Bioware was even around :D

Magic Candle was a favourite of mine, but there was a massive bug in my copy that screwed up a vital dungeon (the one with the ultimate sword). Plus the later enemies, especially the ogres, were just massive slabs of hp that basically required all units remained doped to the gills and buffed out the wazoo to be viable. This is especially bad because all stats maxed out at 99, meaning there was no way you are going to kill a dozen ogres anywhere remotely quickly. The ogre tower with the ash as just pure slog.

The Ultima series 4-7:2 was a blast. 7 and 7:2 in particular aged well. I believe that 7:2 was one of the first games with paper dolls that wore what you dropped on them, and 7 was open sandbox long before open sandbox was a thing. And the sheer amount of interaction with the environment hasn't been rivaled by any game since. Even 6 was open sandboxy in many ways. One of the things that really aged well in the Ultima series are the premises behind the individual games. 5, 6 and 7, in particular have insights that are applicable even in today's social climate. Perhaps ESPECIALLY in today's social climate. After 7:2, though, everything went sideways fast thanks to a demon company that shall not be named but who is famous for destroying anything they touch

I played a lot of Ultime Underworld 1 and 2 back in the day, but haven't in a long time. 2 was a lot better than 1 in many ways, and is actually part of the canon for later games. 1 is never mentioned in the mainline games.

Fallout 2 is a recent discovery for me. I never liked 3's FPS style game, so I never looked at the series, but recently, I read a LP of 2 and I liked what I saw.

XCom. Man, XCom. I have all 3 still on my computer and still play them, although 1 has been replaced with OpenXCom. Apocalypse is still pretty good and on the highest level in ironman, it can still be a massive challenge (no personal shield + enemy with entropy launcher = 1 shot kill on your troops, no questions and don't bother trying to recover any equipment either). I wish there were more maps for it, or it was capable of random map creation.

Demon's Winter was a massive time sink when I was younger because I was trying to get all my guys equipped with the max upgraded items from the dwarven place. The grind was... long :D That said, I love the rather unique way it handled skills and abilities, and still do.

The two Dark Sun games were the only games that ever used that engine. Given how obscure the setting was even in those days, it was as if it wasn't even a DnD game. I only ever played 2 and would play it again, if I ever find a copy of it. I have fond memories of my human gladiator 14/druid 14/preserver 15. It was a pretty good setting, but it was also the beginning of the green aesop that has permeated DnD to its core now like metasized cancer.

The two Battletech games (especially the second one, Crescent Hawks Revenge) remain the only Battletech computer game to this day that use the real Battletech rules with regards to heat and weapon ranges. Still, I don't think they aged that well. Inception was actually quite boring once you figured out how to get the 50 ton Chameleon and roflstompown everything. Even without that, once you get to the Starport, you are basically invincible with the Commando so long as you have half a brain cell working.
 

Jimmious

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Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
I can say with certainty that Anachronox has aged very badly.
Probably most games of "early 3d" era actually, unless they have some extremely good gameplay elements
 
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Lilura

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I can say with certainty that Anachronox has aged very badly. Probably most games of "early 3d" era actually, unless they have some extremely good gameplay elements

Yeah, like Deus Ex and System Shock 2. Which, imo, still look ok. Their UIs are great, too.
 

Ash

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he was also saying "over the past decades there have been no improvements at all". Now, I know he may have been sarcastic about that as well, but it is an opinion that many an user of the Codex shares. And given the context (a legitimate question), I doubt it was sarcasm.

I'm racking my brain, but I have to ask: what would be an improvement to RPGs that was made in the last 10 years?

What would be an improvement to game design in general in the past 10 years? You can find something if you dig deep enough, but it's mostly been decline all the way to the bottom.

I can say with certainty that Anachronox has aged very badly.
Probably most games of "early 3d" era actually, unless they have some extremely good gameplay elements

No...there is only good games, decent games and then everything else. In the early 3D era there were TONS of good games.
They're only "aged" if you think modern garbo is better, where if that's the case you should be drowned in your own biowaste.

So, by the time Ion Storm were over with the interface 'improvement', they had gutted a bunch of systems while ultimately making a burdensome monstrosity for PC players.

Invisible War wasn't a great game by console player's standards either. Check the reviews of console gaming-centric magazines of the time, for instance.
 
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Freddie

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I played the first Gold Box Buck Rogers game earlier during this year and IMO it's still a good game. What made Buck Rogers games different from other Gold Box titles was that there is ship to ship space combat, which was IMO implemented very well and something people can still learn today.
 

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