Jaesun
Fabulous Ex-Moderator
Every once in a while, I re-play Vampire the Masquerade Redemption, and even with the somewhat outdated 3D engine, the character models and areas still have some really nice graphics.
Now compare it to Fallout Tactics' trading screen:
Still has the "a handful of items on the exchange screen" and the "no visible stats and value for items".
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?
Compare:
So... Which games actually did age badly but were great back in the day?
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.
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!
Yeah, Divine Divinity looks pretty damn good.Divine Divinity (Solid plot, big world, and fun skills. The interface is clunky, but even the graphics have aged well)
NWN2 is still fun, but the graphics have aged badly and the camera was shit and is still shit.
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.
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.
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.
Played Jagged Alliance 2 yet?
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
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?
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
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.