1eyedking Interesting ideas in bad RPGs

[felipepepe]

I know we had a thread about Bad games with good ideas already, but I wanted something more focused on RPGs.

I've been playing a lot of games lately, and it's interesting to see how some of those had visionary ideas that were wasted on bad games. Even more, how a couple of years later someone else would do the same thing and succeed where they have failed. Here's some that I found interesting:

Dungeon!, based on the boardgame of the same name, was released back in 82 for the Apple II. It's a boring strict adaptation of the boardgame, but the combat graphics are fucking amazing for the time. This is just one year after Wizadry I and Ultima I.

Spoiler

Alien Fires 2199 AD used a text parser for conversation, but with text-to-speech software. It's bad and hard to understand sometimes, but it's quite an interesting idea, especially back in 1987. Shame the game is a unplayable mess.

Spoiler

Legends of Valour tried to take the Ultima Underworld gameplay and use it in a open-world RPG. It's a shitty game where all you do is wander a huge town and complete fetch quests, but paved the way for the Elder Scrolls game.

Spoiler

Hellgate: London tried to do what Borderlands does, mixing FPS gameplay with RPG elements (and MMO quests). It went even further, as you could change between first-person and third-person views. The banal gameplay were you just hold the trigger and run backwards, plus the boring quests killed the game.

Spoiler

Anyone knows of anything else like this? These shitty forgotten pioneers?

 

[tuluse]

Hellgate: London tried to do what Borderlands does, mixing FPS gameplay with RPG elements (and MMO quests). It went even further, as you could change between first-person and third-person views. The banal gameplay were you just hold the trigger and run backwards, plus the boring quests killed the game.

Ahem, Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines

 

[Helton]

Fallout had a decent idea with the open plot where major elements were stumbled upon rather than orated at the beginning monologue.

 

[V_K]

Hellgate: London tried to do what Borderlands does, mixing FPS gameplay with RPG elements (and MMO quests). It went even further, as you could change between first-person and third-person views. The banal gameplay were you just hold the trigger and run backwards, plus the boring quests killed the game.

Ahem, Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines

Ahem-ahem, System Shock 2
(or some even older titles, like Robinson's Requiem or Strife - though they weren't enough RPG probably)

More on topic: Gorasul had equipment gain XP and level up, something I wouldn't mind seeing more often. It wasn't that bad a game, though, merely mediocre.

 

[tuluse]

Ahem-ahem, System Shock 2
(or some even older titles, like Robinson's Requiem or Strife - though they weren't enough RPG probably)

More on topic: Gorasul had equipment gain XP and level up, something I wouldn't mind seeing more often. It wasn't that bad a game, though, merely mediocre.

I don't think SS2 had a 3rd person mode.

 

[felipepepe]

Ok, I should have explained better. It's not about making a FPS RPG, but a about making a game like Borderlands - a FPS Diablo, if you will.

 

[Lhynn]

This thread should probably be on jrpg land.

 

[V_K]

Ok, I should have explained better. It's not about making a FPS RPG, but a about making a game like Borderlands - a FPS Diablo, if you will.

Are you sure this counts as a "good idea"?

 

[tuluse]

Ok, I should have explained better. It's not about making a FPS RPG, but a about making a game like Borderlands - a FPS Diablo, if you will.

I see, it's more about the structure.

I think I could make a solid argument this is just combining Diablo 2 and Bloodlines

 

[V_K]

I think I could make a solid argument this is just combining Diablo 2 and Bloodlines

So, basically VtM:Redemption?
I know it's third person, but still - the description fits it perfectly.

 

[tuluse]

So the terrible RPG, Winter Voices, did a thing where all your low level abilities were defensive, and the goal was to last for X number of turns instead of defeating your enemies. It was an interesting subversion of combat in RPGs. Unfortuntately, it was incredibly boring and the story was horribly pretentious.

 

[felipepepe]

I think I could make a solid argument this is just combining Diablo 2 and Bloodlines

I think the goal was way more dude bros playing Battlefield and Call of Duty then Bloodlines.

 

[V_K]

There's also Knights of Legend, a treasure trove of good ideas buried under deadly tedium and uninspired encounter design.
The best ones are probably the Foresight mechanic, which allows you to see what an enemy is planning to do this turn and prepare accordingly, and magic system, that literally had you writing your own spells (although they ruined it by having a very limited number of effects). A similar (though much better) magic system was, to my knowledge, only done in Trazere games (coincidentalyy, they also had Legend in their titles) and foresight remains unique to KoL.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Bloodwych is a very primitive dungeon crawler that had two features that I haven't seen used since.

The first one is the ability to split up the party. IIRC your "main party" had 4 party members, which could then be detached into 4 parties of 1, 2 parties of 2 or a mix divisible by 4. Not very useful for combat situation, but very useful for scouting purposes and to see what that damn switch did in that other room.

The second one is the conversation system. I have rarely seen such a detailed conversation system in any game. You can greet humanoids, ask them how they're feeling, ask them for advice, compliment or berate them or even trade with them. Surprisingly advanced, yet almost wasted on a game like Bloodwych.

 

[V_K]

Bloodwych is a very primitive dungeon crawler that had two features that I haven't seen used since.

The first one is the ability to split up the party. IIRC your "main party" had 4 party members, which could then be detached into 4 parties of 1, 2 parties of 2 or a mix divisible by 4. Not very useful for combat situation, but very useful for scouting purposes and to see what that damn switch did in that other room.

Realms of Arkania did that too. There was a very funny mechanic where some of your characters could become overwhelmed by their phobias and run from battle, which automatically split them from the party and you had to find and rejoin them afterwards.

 

[Flux_Capacitor]

There's also Knights of Legend, a treasure trove of good ideas buried under deadly tedium and uninspired encounter design.
The best ones are probably the Foresight mechanic, which allows you to see what an enemy is planning to do this turn and prepare accordingly, and magic system, that literally had you writing your own spells (although they ruined it by having a very limited number of effects). A similar (though much better) magic system was, to my knowledge, only done in Trazere games (coincidentalyy, they also had Legend in their titles) and foresight remains unique to KoL.

I remember Demon's Winter having a skill that worked somewhat similar to the foresight mechanic. Tactics, if I remember correctly. However, it was binary. If you had the skill, you could see what your enemies were going to do. Otherwise, you couldn't.

 

[octavius]

Demon's Winter was a great game, it was like Wizard's Crown for non-autists.
Wizard's Crown had some good ideas, like the importance of facing and being "engaged" in combat, but sadly it was let down by the game giving no visual feedback of the facing, and no way to check if monsters were engaged or not. It takes a certain beautiful mind to really appreciate the tactical combat, while "normal" people would chose Quick Combat to preserve their sanity, thereby rendering the interesting ideas of the game irrelevant.

 

[DeepOcean]

Interesting ideas on bad RPGs?

Just one word: Lionheart.

Still waiting a decent game made on that idea of What if fantasy + end of real middle age/renaissance?

 

[V_K]

Speaking of Demon's Winter, I also loved how the shopkeepers could lie to you about an item's quality and you needed a skill to avoid that. Don't remember seeing anything like that in later games.

Interesting ideas on bad RPGs?

Just one word: Lionheart.

Still waiting a decent game made on that idea of What if fantasy + end of real middle age/renaissance?

Mistmare, while not exactly decent, was arguably much better than Lionheart . Speaking of which, the game belongs right on this thread, as having time as a resource to manage was a rather interesting mechanic, if not terribly well implemented.
More seriously, Darklands has some pretty pronounced fantasy elements.

 

[SuicideBunny]

sorcerian.
japanese jrpg series, with one part being ported over to the west by sierra. it's bad as an rpg since it is essentially a sidescrolling shooter, but it has some interesting design aspects.
the town is a menu driven hub. you can create adventurers here, take jobs for a year (jobs have stat requirements and give different stat boni and mali), do different stuff, or just go into one of the modules and fuck around in it. stuff you could do inside the adventure modules had different stat requirements, and it was possible to get stuck inside an adventure if for example none of your peeps had enough str to open a particular door, so you had to get out and return later. every time you went out on an adventure or took jobs for your peeps, a year passed. the different races had different lifespans and as they got older their stats and portraits changed, eventually leading to their death. that was just friggin awesome imo. not many rpgs use time itself as a resource, especially in a way beyond the blatant time limit to reach some objective.

alpha protocol is pretty self-explanatory. it sucks terrible ass as an rpg due to being a buggy shooter and having shitty basic mass effect mechanics, but the c&c system and the tiny rewards for even small choices were pretty damn sweet.

 

[Daemongar]

Demon's Winter also had the ability to change the font from fancy Fantasy script to just boring old Courier or whatever. Was nice to have, as I just played King's Bounty and could never tell if things were +1 or -1.

Also Wasteland had party splitting to great effect and it came out before Bloodwych. Liked that you could split off melee chars and move them closer in combat or only solve problems by party splitting. I agree that feature should be used more often.

 

[Carrion]

The origin stories in DA:O were kind of cool.

 

[SuicideBunny]

The origin stories in DA:O were kind of cool.

not really. a) stolen idea from troika's temple of elemental evil, b) too long and linear without a chance to counteract blatantly obvious stuff (dwarf noble origin), c) dealing in a totally half-assed manner with supposedly mature themes (city elf stuff)

 

[mondblut]

There's also Knights of Legend, a treasure trove of good ideas buried under deadly tedium and uninspired encounter design.
The best ones are probably the Foresight mechanic, which allows you to see what an enemy is planning to do this turn and prepare accordingly, and magic system, that literally had you writing your own spells (although they ruined it by having a very limited number of effects). A similar (though much better) magic system was, to my knowledge, only done in Trazere games (coincidentalyy, they also had Legend in their titles) and foresight remains unique to KoL.

The need to refit heavy armor for individual characters (each having their own height and weight) for lots of money, too.

 

[Hobo Elf]

Combining trash loot into acceptable items in Two Worlds. It doesn't make much sense how it works, but at least it gave normal vendor trash items a purpose.