Go KAO! One of the best games ever!
Titan
6443
Tax day angst I hope.
I have fired up a few old games that played well but now, uggh.
Don’t ‘preciate badmouthin’ the best Wing Commander game is all.
Titan
6445
I only played the first one and loved it. I never made it back to the series for some reason.
As to Gog rpgs, I’m trying to work through Planescape. I made it about 1/2 way when it was first released but now I’m struggling just getting started for some reason.
The earlier ones – I started playing 3, then moseyed around in 4 for awhile – are just old-school brutal, and I don’t like wrapping my head around 90-degree turns and fixed grid movement any more. The biggest improvement is the turn-based mode in 6 which makes the combat much more manageable. It’s good stuff. A lot of these old GoG titles I pick up, I put back down after the nostalgia wave passes, but M&M6 has enough modern RPG sensibilities to keep me interested through the inevitable grind.
Thraeg
6447
I’ll disagree and say to start with the Xeen games (4 and 5), especially since you were previously curious about them. They’re the pinnacle of the classic era of the series before everything got thrown out and rebooted with 6, and I think that their supreme refinement of that classic formula holds up better than the later games’ shaky steps into the 3D era (which are still good, but there was definitely something lost in the transition). And while challenging enough to keep you paying attention, they’re also much less brutal than 3, where the moose rats in the first town could quite easily slaughter a starting party.
I’ll join that parade too! I’m looking forward to my batch of Ultima’s (4,5,6+7). For some reason i just missed all the Ultima games first time around, and i even had the right type of 8bit to start playing them on (It’s a mystery i don’t fully understand). So i’m looking forward to patching that particular hole in my crpg education. Grimrock is looking good too, i was waiting for a patch or two, but i might have to grab it.
M&M 4 is pretty good as well, if you haven’t, give it a try. I started with 6 not that long ago since it was the latest GOG had at the time and liked it but finally gave 4 a chance and was completely hooked. When I have the time plan to finish up 4 and move on to 5.
Great games, kicked myself for having waited so long to play them. Dying for GOG to bring the Wizardry games, specifically the later ones (6 & 7) since I totally adore 8 which is the only one I’ve played (I did play the first two but that was in the 80s - no recollection… must have been all that coke I did when I was 12!
Doesn’t 4 have a turn based mode too? It’s been about 8 months since I’ve played it but I don’t think my memory is THAT bad…
BDGE
6451
Also, out of curiosity I gave Lands of Lore 2 a shot(since it was bundled with my LoL1 purchase). It’s a dramatic shift to a single character driven experience in a free-roaming, FMV laden, cheesecake world. CD-roms man!
I sort of fell in love when the game stole control away for a moment while exploring a cave to watch a poorly-acted LARPER in full armor waltz around with a torch in search of my character, all within engine. Ah, the mid-90’s.
The actual game feels extremely clunky though. The pixelated 3D engine holds up slightly better than I imagine other contemporaries do, but the experience as a game is not enticing me beyond seeing more FMV hijinks.
Given how dramatic a shift this game was in comparison to LoL1, I wonder what the feedback was at the time? Or did anyone even care about Lands of Lore back then anyway.
I think the general consensus was that it was significantly worse than LoL1 - but I can’t be sure.
It’s a pity, actually, because the story is pretty fantastic - if you give it a chance.
It looks like shit now, but the combined experience was very moving once you got over the step back in gameplay - and the music was particularly good.
LoL3, however, is a complete and total shit-festering turkey.
ioticus
6453
I’m playing Might and Magic 1 now which I attempted when it first came out and gave up on, and it’s as brutally difficult as I remember. I have grinded my way to 4th level by attacking the same monster groups over and over and reloading from the one save slot when I die (which is often). Even at 4th level our party feels week and I’m not able to get far in the first dungeon. The most frustrating part for me is when you run into areas of darkness, making mapping very hard. Darkness is often combined with anti-magic areas which makes combat even more difficult.
BDGE
6454
Yea, I recall really poor feedback for LoL 3 at the time, and I guess it’s not surprising that GoG doesn’t have it listed.
Might and Magic 1 has a special place in my heart, since it was my first CRPG that had graphics of any kind (I’d played Dungeon aka Zork on the college mainframe a few years before, but that was it.)–I played the Mac version starting sometime in the summer of 1989 and actually finished it. I can still remember the names of my party members: Sir Marqüibe, the Knight, Lord Wylannor, the Paladin, Snorc, the half-Orc Archer, Guildric the Thief, Althea, the Cleric, and Calpurnia, the Soceress.
Yeah, those “no magic allowed” areas are a b*tch. Luckily, if you know where to look, you can find a rather anachronistic item that mimics a particularly useful offensive spell but counts as tech, not magic, so if you dupe it (like I did, of course) you’re golden. ;-)
Tyjenks
6456
Kelan
6457
Heh, nice. Well done!
I remember one time playing this on my C64 when our family was up at our cabin one weekend. Everyone started getting up for breakfast and I was still playing this on the kitchen table. My mom asked me if I was up all night and I told her “Oh no! I just got up!” Haha, I was indeed up all night playing it. I must have been in my 2nd year of college at the time although I thought it was earlier (I see it was released in 1986). I never did finish it, though.
I fired it up again last year with the GOG version and got to level 6/7 or so. I still had a blast with it and should continue it sometime with all the new modern maps that are available.
Otagan
6458
Ultima VIII Gold Edition rears its head for $5.99.
First time I’ve seen screenshots of this game. Graphically, it looks terrible. I had no idea it was a such a huge leap from Ultima 8 to 9. 9 is the first and only one I’ve played (and only the first hour of it, my machine couldn’t handle it, the frame rate was horrible).
tgb123
6460
Or as it was known at the time, Sonic the Avatar.
U8 was my first Ultima and incidentally the first PC game I purchased (Amiga didn’t have U7 - and I never got my hands on working Amiga versions of U1-6).
I loved it, even before the “jumping patch”.
I was VERY fond of U9, even though it was horribly buggy and broken.
I greatly regret never having played U4-U7 - and now I can’t get into them.
