1682

If you’ve played Drakensang, the Realms of Arkania games are based on the same pen and paper ruleset IIRC. They can be brutally hard and feature a lot of fiddly bits that can kill you. They had a nice following way back when despite all that, though. They’re Hardcore CRPGs with a capital H.

1683

Oooh, cool. That reminds me, “pick up Drankensang while it is stil cheap”.

1684

I always had my eye on that game because of the grid based combat and I think I even asked about it a while back. I don’t remember it being that low of a resolution though. I guess my mind filled in the pixels back in the day.

1685

In Realms of Arkania, one does not go venturing forth without a well equipped party. No, I don’t mean silly things like weapons and armor. I’m talking about important stuff. You know, sleeping bags, well-maintained boots and socks, things like that. The ruleset has all sorts of fiddly, detail oriented rules. It’s D&D but with all the stuff thrown in that you just assume happens in the background.

I’ll be getting it, partly for nostalgia. The game was kind of a mess in that it wasn’t easy to figure out what you wanted to be doing, character build wise. Dozens and dozens of spells and yet your casters pretty much needed to use like 3-5 at most. It doesn’t help that the names are often incomprehensible. And getting some of the nasty surprises sprung on you when going from A to B when not properly (diseases and such, because you didn’t realize you needed to shop for basic necessities). Anyone who wants to play is advised to consult a faq for party build purposes.

Also, Realms 3 inspired a pretty angry Scorpia rant as I recall.

1686

I see you can get Drakensang for $5 now. You can’t be an RPG fan and not pick that up.

1687

That’s good news. Perhaps it will distract the GOG forum-goers from burning effigies of Bethesda for a while.

1688

I remember a walkthrough for Realms of Arkania 3: Shadows over Riva in a local printer games magazine (Score) that took 7 issues (over half a year) to reach conclusion.The game is extremely long (and awesome).Dunno about the first two though.

1689

I would recommend Realms of Arkania to all RPG fans. I own the original boxed trilogy set with the color manuals and it’s been in my “games to replay” backlog for awhile. It was hardcore, as others have said, but once you got the hang of making sure you were following the games guidelines for not starving/diseasing/exposing your party to death on every outing it became a pretty interesting game. Save often though.

1690

Those games sure bring back memories. Wow. I remember that tactical grid as if it was yesterday.

1691

I played them a bit back in the day, but I’m going to give them another go now. Not sure if I’ll have the patience anymore, but it’s worth a shot.

1692

Now this is the kind of thing I like to see added to GoG! A year or so back I went and tracked down boxed copies of the whole trilogy, but I’ll cheerfully snag digital copies so I don’t have to figure out installing from CD in DOSBox.

1693

I remember I kept dying to the cold or getting sick, even after I thought I’d bundled them up enough. :( I’ll have to check it out for old times’ sake.

1694

It was way to hard for me. I only fought 1 or two battles in the time I played, but I feel like each one took an eternity, and resulted in the death of 1 or more party members.

1695

Someone get a Let’s Play going so I can decide whether to play it.

1696

I got into M.A.X. but I hit a stumbling block very early on. How do I deal with gun turrets when I’m forced to get close to them? They kill all of my units within a few seconds.

1697

Ha! I just picked up Drakensang as the $5 was too hard to ignore and completely forgot to check the system requirements…Come on 5 year old Radeon!!!

EDIT: Pretty sure I wanted to post this in the Bargain thread.

1698

http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3205221

1699

Arkania 3 is the strongest of the trilogy, right?

1700

Star Trail was my favorite, but YMMV.

1701

Opinions were mixed on that back in the day, actually. I recall a consensus that Star Trail was superior to Blade of Destiny. But plenty of people preferred Star Trail to 3.