Which RPGs surprised you that they're actually great?

[Ludo Lense]

Neverwinter Nights : Hordes of the Underdark.

The OG was pretty bad while SoU was just meh all around.

But Hordes turned it around for me. Sure it is still Neverwinter Nights and if you don't like the gameplay this won't convert you. But it is the most fun Epic D&D adventure in the Monte Cook traditional style I've played on a computer. Punching gods has its own charm.

 

[RAG]

I have never been pleasantly surprised by an RPG.

Yet you are still here.

This is exactly the place for him to be. Where bitter subhumans gather to throw shit at the rest of the world

 

[anvi]

I have never been pleasantly surprised by an RPG.

Yet you are still here.

That doesn't mean I hate them all, dummy. It means I have no surprises. I can tell the bad ones a mile off and the rare occasional gems are well documented. You would have to be pretty negative to play something like DoS and expect a bad game and be pleasantly surprised. But getting something like PoE and being disappointed is a lot more common.

So you are saying that you could tell that PoE was going to be what it is right from the start of the Kickstarter?

No I am saying the opposite. I expected it to be decent but instead I hated it. I am usually disappointed by RPG's, not pleasantly surprised.

And with DoS I knew it would be good because it was turn based and party based and sounded good even on paper so I knew it would be pretty cool. And it was. In other words, I get no happy surprises in gaming. Most games disappoint me, and the ones that end up being good I have already researched thoroughly anyway before buying.

 

[Deleted Member 16721]

I wasn't expecting D:OS to be as good as it was. It was another one that the graphical style at first turned me off (cartoon-ish 3D when I prefer isometric 2D for games like that), and the elemental stuff seemed like a gimmick that wasn't too interesting, but once I played it I had a lot of fun with it. I'm actually looking forward to them improving the elemental stuff in the sequel.

 

[santino27]

Alpha Protocol surprised me. Picked it up for super cheap a year or so after it launched and fizzled, and the shooter gameplay was better than expected (even if the security minigames were worse), but the dialogue and reactivity really surprised me; all I'd heard at release was about bugs and problems.

 

[Norfleet]

Nothing surprises me. Everything is shit.

 

[ilitarist]

I wasn't expecting D:OS to be as good as it was. It was another one that the graphical style at first turned me off (cartoon-ish 3D when I prefer isometric 2D for games like that), and the elemental stuff seemed like a gimmick that wasn't too interesting, but once I played it I had a lot of fun with it. I'm actually looking forward to them improving the elemental stuff in the sequel.

You've perfectly described the game as it is but didn't say what surprised you. Or was the game OK even with gimmicky combat?

 

[Deleted Member 16721]

You've perfectly described the game as it is but didn't say what surprised you. Or was the game OK even with gimmicky combat?

What surprised me was that the game was a pretty long, pretty engrossing and fun RPG. I don't know exactly why I expected less (I really enjoyed Divine Divinity and Divinity II), but the elemental thing and graphical style just didn't appeal at first. It was illogical to think the game wouldn't be good because of that, but the brain can be a weird thing at times.

The elemental combat was actually very satisfying and a lot of silly fun. I don't remember if there were harder difficulty levels but I wouldn't mind re-playing the game on those to see if the combat becomes even better and more challenging. And the rest of the RPG stuff was pretty nice, IMO. Nice exploration and questing, interesting things to find, etc. Definitely worth a play in co-op as well since local co-op PC RPGs really don't exist.

 

[ilitarist]

The elemental combat was actually very satisfying and a lot of silly fun. I don't remember if there were harder difficulty levels but I wouldn't mind re-playing the game on those to see if the combat becomes even better and more challenging. And the rest of the RPG stuff was pretty nice, IMO. Nice exploration and questing, interesting things to find, etc. Definitely worth a play in co-op as well since local co-op PC RPGs really don't exist.

There's some sort of tactical mode or something, they added it in enhanced edition. It's not just a slider giving enemies more health so it sounds good. I myself played release version without enhanced edition and didn't quite like the game; I think UI was bad, especially with crafting and trying to hit monsters with mouse at the moment they're not doing their animation trying to register move command from me. And after first act there was not much difficulty or new tactics, but lots of very fat enemies with autoheal requiring me to fight them for half an hour. Story was incomprehensible too and Monthy Pythonish inserts didn't get to me. I didn't even like the music apart from TARDIS theme which had Russian vocals for some reason.

If you played base version - try the new one. It has additional companions, better UI, voice acting for everything, said tactical mode.

 

[Deleted Member 16721]

There's some sort of tactical mode or something, they added it in enhanced edition. It's not just a slider giving enemies more health so it sounds good. I myself played release version without enhanced edition and didn't quite like the game; I think UI was bad, especially with crafting and trying to hit monsters with mouse at the moment they're not doing their animation trying to register move command from me. And after first act there was not much difficulty or new tactics, but lots of very fat enemies with autoheal requiring me to fight them for half an hour. Story was incomprehensible too and Monthy Pythonish inserts didn't get to me. I didn't even like the music apart from TARDIS theme which had Russian vocals for some reason.

If you played base version - try the new one. It has additional companions, better UI, voice acting for everything, said tactical mode.

Damn, that's right, it does have Tactical Mode (or whatever it's called). I played the Enhanced Edition in co-op with my pops. We beat it in close to 140 hours. I was pretty shocked it was as involved and lengthy as it was. We didn't want it to end, hah.

Definitely had some UI issues. The big one for me was possibly a bug (?) that didn't let me sort my inventory. You can imagine how that looked by the middle to the end parts of the game.

I actually really liked what they did with crafting by basically having you experiment and find cool or unexpected combinations. The problem was that a lot of the stuff we ended up crafting wasn't that great. It was great to discover some weird or "secret" combination just by experimenting with different items, but then the end item wasn't as useful as I would have liked.

The elemental tactics didn't change all that much later in the game, you're right, but for some reason it never got old for us. It was just fun to shoot elemental poison cloud arrows into a fire area to cause an explosion and things like this. We did have a few challenging battles as well which was nice, but a harder difficulty with tigheter balanced combat would be even better.

Also would have loved to see them do more with that rare/dangerous element that is introduced later in the game. You get a skill for it which was really unexpected, but they didn't do as much with that as they could have. Still in all, we enjoyed it a lot and are looking forward to the sequel. For co-op RPGs it's really one of the best we've played. On PC, it's *the* best (considering again that local co-op RPGs on PC aren't being made yet for the most part).

 

[ilitarist]

I actually really liked what they did with crafting by basically having you experiment and find cool or unexpected combinations. The problem was that a lot of the stuff we ended up crafting wasn't that great. It was great to discover some weird or "secret" combination just by experimenting with different items, but then the end item wasn't as useful as I would have liked.

Crafting was infuriating. Most of recipies were useless and some where practically required. E.g. you can use Nine Inch Nails on any Boots to get immunity to falling on ice. There's ice in almost every battle so it's necessary. So for every boots you get you open unfiltered inventory, look for nails, looks for boots and apply them. You have hundreds of items because you never know what you need. And your recipies are never saved anywhere.

But yes, there's nothing else on PC with co-op. Maybe Neverwinter Nights but it's old and even harder to play today.

 

[Murk]

I had absolutely no information on Fallout 1 or Arcanum -- I didn't even realize they shared devs or anything else of the sort -- and I played through both of them one summer in early high school.

Holy hell was I floored.

Later, I played Divine Divinity (found it by happenstance) and was expecting a diablo rip off. Again, floored. I didn't even realize you can _leave_ Aleroth until I cleared the dungeon -- I was thinking it would be like D1 where you're basically in 1 town and 1 dungeon the whole game. Yeah, that was like the best revelation that game could have given and it was amazing.

There are a lot of other games that I enjoyed immensely, but those I went into completely blind and with 0 expectations.

 

[Deleted Member 16721]

Crafting was infuriating. Most of recipies were useless and some where practically required. E.g. you can use Nine Inch Nails on any Boots to get immunity to falling on ice. There's ice in almost every battle so it's necessary. So for every boots you get you open unfiltered inventory, look for nails, looks for boots and apply them. You have hundreds of items because you never know what you need. And your recipies are never saved anywhere.

But yes, there's nothing else on PC with co-op. Maybe Neverwinter Nights but it's old and even harder to play today.

NWN would need 2 PCs, though, right? In terms of just playing an RPG with 2-player mode on one PC locally, there's really nothing for that on PC. That basically is the only reason to keep a few consoles lying around (we've played a bunch of co-op RPGs over the years on the original Playstation, PS2, Xbox, Xbox 360, etc.).

Most of the recipes were useless, I agree. But I liked the experimentation factor. Recipes could have been noted somewhere, agree with that as well. But if they could polish that and make it a lot better, I think they're on the right track. I liked mixing two weird things together and it actually surprising me by making something unexpected. Once you realized that there were recipes that were "hidden" like that, it promoted experimentation to see what you could make. Unfortunately not much of the created stuff was any good. I think I did create a cool deer antler helmet or something that did something unique that my character used for a short while, but not much else. In terms of the Blacksmithing and that sort of crafting, that was more useful. But I would have loved to see them take Tenebrium crafting to some sort of interesting level.

 

[Deleted Member 16721]

I had absolutely no information on Fallout 1 or Arcanum -- I didn't even realize they shared devs or anything else of the sort -- and I played through both of them one summer in early high school.

Holy hell was I floored.

Later, I played Divine Divinity (found it by happenstance) and was expecting a diablo rip off. Again, floored. I didn't even realize you can _leave_ Aleroth until I cleared the dungeon -- I was thinking it would be like D1 where you're basically in 1 town and 1 dungeon the whole game. Yeah, that was like the best revelation that game could have given and it was amazing.

There are a lot of other games that I enjoyed immensely, but those I went into completely blind and with 0 expectations.

Nice ones. I can't imagine how great it would be to play Arcanum or Fallout 1 without knowing anything about them. That would floor me as well.

I heard the same Diablo-clone thing about Divine Divinity. I played it for the first time a couple years back and was also very pleasantly surprised. It's a nice hand-crafted RPG, for sure. The combat is tolerable but you really play that for the awesome world they created, in terms of lack of level-scaling, hand-placed everything and freedom to explore. I haven't played that game enough and need to get back to it sometime.

 

[eggdogg]

Happy to have seen this thread. Playing Might and Magic X for the first time right now because of it.

 

[anvi]

I really liked MMX.

trying to hit monsters with mouse at the moment they're not doing their animation

That was annoying as hell.

 

[ilitarist]

Happy to have seen this thread. Playing Might and Magic X for the first time right now because of it.

I'd say you have to be prepared a little for this game. Mid game may be very punishing if you don't have healers - not just for HP healing but for all the status effects. Other than that it's buggy, slow but satisfying RPG.

Oh, and don't worry about ranged skills like bow and crossbow. My biggest complain is probably poor balance of that sort. And maybe too little challenge in the end, it would be nice to have Very Dangerous Caves or something.

 

[MWaser]

Neverwinter Nights : Hordes of the Underdark.

The OG was pretty bad while SoU was just meh all around.

But Hordes turned it around for me. Sure it is still Neverwinter Nights and if you don't like the gameplay this won't convert you. But it is the most fun Epic D&D adventure in the Monte Cook traditional style I've played on a computer. Punching gods has its own charm.

Hordes of the Underdark were definitely the best part of NWN1. It was silly, weird all around, but ultimately it had a lot of aspects I really liked personally (sacrificing the child you can steal at the very start of SoU... that was some fucking shit, I loved it)

 

[Dwarvophile]

Shadowrun Dragonfall and The Banner Saga were good surprises for me. If you consider the banner saga is a RPG.

 

[Snorkack]

I played Fallout NV for 10 minutes and then ditched it, expecting it to be the same borefest Fallout 3 was.
Then I discovered the codex, where it was praised so much I had to retry it. Good decision.

 

[Lurker King]

Fallout 2, Age of Decadence, Arcanum, Darklands, King of the Dragon Pass, Planescape: Torment