Rajaah's CRPG Blog

Tuco · Mar 21, 2023

TJT said:
Tuco Did you ever get around to playing Original Sin 2?

No, I was never really itnerested enough in it. I did play Divinity II - Wikipedia and really enjoyed it because I got to fly around as a dragon and rooooast people.

TJT · Mar 21, 2023

Tuco said:
No, I was never really itnerested enough in it. I did play Divinity II - Wikipedia and really enjoyed it because I got to fly around as a dragon and rooooast people.

I'm going to have to recommend you give it another go. I failed to appreciate its ability to go your own way and think outside the box (not including barrelmancy which I dislike). But it has been awesome once you legitimately try to use everything it gives you.

I'm going to need to run through this with a high thievery character sometime as I have been effectively just ignoring locked things this time.

Rajaah · Mar 21, 2023

Tmac said:
Uhhh wasn’t me.

It was one of the T names who mentioned Arcanum. Oh, here it is:

TJT said:
Arcanum should be on your list as well bro.

It's added.

Gutterflesh said:
The original Fallout was so damn buggy, but I was determined to play it. I remember the patch process being such a fucking disaster back in the day that I resorted to downloading unofficial fixes put out by other players. Hunting down information and fixes for this game was my first real introduction to gaming forums.

Good times.

Would I need to mess around with a bunch of that now? Kinda just want to pop it in and play it. Got a disc version (Fallout Trilogy), think it probably arrived today.

Last time a game was a buggy mess for me was Daggerfall 8 years ago. I really liked that game and figuring out how to make it work was part of the charm, in a weird way. That said I never want to deal with that kind of shit again, especially not now when I'm trying to just play.

Hopefully Wasteland 1 Remastered also doesn't need any major fixes, despite the age.

Made a note on my client-side version of The List to patch Arcanum when I get to it.

Raiding Avernus tonight to finish off BG1, and probably starting Baldur's Gate II, will do updates if so. If not tonight, definitely tomorrow night.

Ridas · Mar 21, 2023

IIRC you can play both Fallouts without a patch, but at least in F2 the fan patch finishes some quests and adds a bit of content. It wasnt hard to install and the added content is nice.

Caliane · Mar 21, 2023

watching an older mortismal gaming vid, and he just brought up Underrail.

Underrail: Expedition

Your boy Szeth here bringing attention to yet another diamond in the rough.

www.firesofheaven.org

This isn't really for Rajaah. anyone else played underrail, think its worth checking out? its 50% off on steam atm, base game and dlc. 11.58 for both.

I've also got a couple spiderweb games I've not touched either... I played one or two a very long time ago. anyone else go into these? Thoughts on which is the best?

Kriptini · Mar 21, 2023

Caliane said:
watching an older mortismal gaming vid, and he just brought up Underrail.

Underrail: Expedition

Your boy Szeth here bringing attention to yet another diamond in the rough.

www.firesofheaven.org

This isn't really for Rajaah. anyone else played this, think its worth checking out? its 50% off on steam atm, base game and dlc. 11.58 for both.

I've got a couple spiderweb games I've not touched either... I played one or two a very long time ago. anyone else go into these? Thoughts on which is the best?

The Spiderweb games are fine for $3 each. They aren't very flashy but you can tell they're made with passion. Jeff Vogel has been (more or less) the solo dev on these games for decades.

Burns · Mar 21, 2023

Caliane said:
watching an older mortismal gaming vid, and he just brought up Underrail.

Underrail: Expedition

Your boy Szeth here bringing attention to yet another diamond in the rough.

www.firesofheaven.org

This isn't really for Rajaah. anyone else played this, think its worth checking out? its 50% off on steam atm, base game and dlc. 11.58 for both.

I've got a couple spiderweb games I've not touched either... I played one or two a very long time ago. anyone else go into these? Thoughts on which is the best?

The three Spiderweb games I have played all felt kind of same-ish and I can never get through the whole thing.

I got about 70% through Avernum before losing interest. From what I can remember, the character building options felt too simple and once I had the unlocked the bottom row, the story wasn't enough to keep me playing. I would imagine most people are still going to easily get $3 worth of value out of it.

Underrail was good, but also never finished it. I think it was due to another game coming out (like Kingmaker, or maybe D:OS2), and pulling me away from it. I need to go back to it, but should probably just restart at this point. It felt fairly complex with a lot of character options.

Another good indie RPG is ATOM RPG. It's a Fallout 1/2 clone, set in Russia, and developed by a small team of 4(?). Just don't expect it to have quite the complexity of Fallout 2. I actually finished it.

Rajaah · Mar 21, 2023

Caliane said:
watching an older mortismal gaming vid, and he just brought up Underrail.

Underrail: Expedition

Your boy Szeth here bringing attention to yet another diamond in the rough.

www.firesofheaven.org

This isn't really for Rajaah. anyone else played underrail, think its worth checking out? its 50% off on steam atm, base game and dlc. 11.58 for both.

I've also got a couple spiderweb games I've not touched either... I played one or two a very long time ago. anyone else go into these? Thoughts on which is the best?

I read this as "Avernus" and got excited for a second. Raj loves Hell!

Rajaah · Mar 21, 2023

New Arrivals.

TOEE sounds like it might be one big dungeon crawl in the titular area. Are any of these games like that? Just one big dungeon to explore (maybe with a staging town outside D&D style)?

DickTrickle · Mar 21, 2023

Some games I'd suggest that probably didn't get a lot of exposure.

The Expeditions series (Expeditions: Conquistador, Expeditions: Vikings, Expeditions: Rome). Fun turned based tactical combat with overworld storytelling/adventuring/questing. The first one is less complex but I think these games have a really appealing tone to them that isn't really captured in a lot of other games with similar game mechanics.

Randin · Mar 21, 2023

DickTrickle said:
Some games I'd suggest that probably didn't get a lot of exposure.

The Expeditions series (Expeditions: Conquistador, Expeditions: Vikings, Expeditions: Rome). Fun turned based tactical combat with overworld storytelling/adventuring/questing. The first one is less complex but I think these games have a really appealing tone to them that isn't really captured in a lot of other games with similar game mechanics.

I really like Expeditions. Conquistador is perhaps more of a tactics game with RPG elements, while Viking and Rome are tactical RPGs, so the appeal can potentially differ based on you tastes, but happily each game is completely standalone, so you can bounce around to whichever game you want.

The games also have at least of passing relationship with historical accuracy in their settings, which I like. They're not perfectly accurate--and the stories are deliberately ahistorical--but by the standards of most historical fiction media, they're worthy of note.

reavor · Mar 22, 2023

Rajaah said:
TOEE sounds like it might be one big dungeon crawl in the titular area. Are any of these games like that? Just one big dungeon to explore (maybe with a staging town outside D&D style)?

Nah, I think almost all other games on your list have multiple different dungeons and towns and more of a world than TOEE, the exception being system shock 1, which all takes place on a big space station

Rajaah · Mar 22, 2023

Siege of Dragonspear notes while I beat the game:

-There's a portal to Avernus at the end of the second to last chapter and if you sit there, monsters start spawning infinitely from the portal. You can't leave the room to rest or anything, but it still seems like a good "grind spot" if anyone feels the need to grind in this game for some reason. It's the end of the entirety of BG1 and I imagine someone who wanted to could sit here for hours and rack up a bunch of levels. Which I guess would be good for carrying over to BG2.

-It's pretty awesome to get to fight things in Hell, but unfortunately that area is only a few rooms long. Was hoping it'd be at least a large overland area. Final boss was cool. Name is Belhifet, and I thought it was probably Bel the Pit Fiend (ruler of Avernus in AD&D) due to looking like a Pit Fiend and being named...Bel. Looked it up though and apparently it's not the same guy. Could have been easily enough. I guess they didn't want you killing an archdevil in a game that is ostensibly canon. If they needed a Pit Fiend final boss, I would have gone with Cantrum, another of the "Dark Eight" who is dead in the canon, said to have been killed by a Paladin. Which would have fit, with Caelar swinging her flaming sword at him and all that.

-I expected the game to end after that but I forgot, the MC still has to land in a jail cell. Then we got this whole big trial part of the game that I wasn't expecting at all. Would have been cool if the events in the trial were based off of your actions earlier, like the Chrono Trigger trial. I think Skie's dad might have been less hysterical at you if you'd talked to him more earlier / gained his trust, but other than that I'm not sure if anything would have been different with different actions.

-Good expansion.

Kharzette · Mar 22, 2023

I really liked elemental evil's combat and circle spells. Archers could opportunity attack casters which made it challenging.

The game's story and quests got a little broken right before release though. Someone from on-high realized some of the children in town could be hurt so he gave the order to remove all children, which screwed up some things and they just released it that way.

Not sure if anyone fixed it with mods, and I can't really remember what broke. Still a great game.

Burns · Mar 22, 2023

Rajaah said:
Siege of Dragonspear notes while I beat the game:

-There's a portal to Avernus at the end of the second to last chapter and if you sit there, monsters start spawning infinitely from the portal. You can't leave the room to rest or anything, but it still seems like a good "grind spot" if anyone feels the need to grind in this game for some reason. It's the end of the entirety of BG1 and I imagine someone who wanted to could sit here for hours and rack up a bunch of levels. Which I guess would be good for carrying over to BG2.

-It's pretty awesome to get to fight things in Hell, but unfortunately that area is only a few rooms long. Was hoping it'd be at least a large overland area. Final boss was cool. Name is Belhifet, and I thought it was probably Bel the Pit Fiend (ruler of Avernus in AD&D) due to looking like a Pit Fiend and being named...Bel. Looked it up though and apparently it's not the same guy. Could have been easily enough. I guess they didn't want you killing an archdevil in a game that is ostensibly canon. If they needed a Pit Fiend final boss, I would have gone with Cantrum, another of the "Dark Eight" who is dead in the canon, said to have been killed by a Paladin. Which would have fit, with Caelar swinging her flaming sword at him and all that.

-I expected the game to end after that but I forgot, the MC still has to land in a jail cell. Then we got this whole big trial part of the game that I wasn't expecting at all. Would have been cool if the events in the trial were based off of your actions earlier, like the Chrono Trigger trial. I think Skie's dad might have been less hysterical at you if you'd talked to him more earlier / gained his trust, but other than that I'm not sure if anything would have been different with different actions.

-Good expansion.

A few of the various games deal with the 9 hells in some way, but there is constant war between the various factions there. So I think it's difficult to have much exploration in one of the hells for a mere mortal, without making a deal with a various Devil. Then having that jive with any lawful good character not immediately noping the fuck out or just having one long slog of combat after combat would be problematic.

That said the second Pathfinder game's main theme is dealing with the Abyss (not 1 of the 9 hells) invading the mortal realm, so you may like that a lot.

As for Temple of Elemental Evil, it is most defiantly a combat heavy game, but it's one of the best implementation of DnD 3.5 rules. I think they had much more planned for the game, where it was going to be a more like BG2, instead of an Icewind Dale type combat heavy game, but was pushed out the door by the publisher (Atari) or because Trokia was strapped for cash (cant remember exactly anymore).

You may need to jump through additional hoops, just to get the CD version running on Windows 10, but someone over at GoG made a nice tutorial on how to make it whole, using the fan made patches. The 2 mods that are recommended are "Circle of Eight" and "TemplePlus":

Temple of Elemental Evil (ToEE) Mod Installation Guide (Co8, Portraits, Temple+), page 1 - Forum - GOG.com

Download the best games on Windows & Mac. A vast selection of titles, DRM-free, with free goodies, and lots of pure customer love.

www.gog.com

Rajaah · Mar 22, 2023

BALDUR UPDATE:

-Starting Baldur's Gate II. I'm sick today, but it doesn't matter, I'm still gonna be busy all day, but at least I've got some time now.

-If I could do it over again, I think I would have played Fighter for the Baldur games instead. I didn't really get much out of Paladin. Having some extra heals was cool, but later on they absolutely dump healing potions on you. Ranger wouldn't have been much better either, Minsc's spells were never particularly useful. Maybe I missed all the good ones. For the most part both guys were just melee/tanks, and it would have been great if my MC could have specialized beyond two points in any given weapon. So yeah, if I could go back in time, would have gone Fighter, hands-down. I'll go Fighter for Icewind Dale, since I have to play a high-wis guy for Planescape.

-Finished SoD at level 9 (main game was level 7, so not much of a benefit, but I enjoyed the story).

-The stuff with Minsc at the beginning of BG2 is pretty hilarious. I can't believe they went there with the hamster jokes. He starts with 69 HP...or at least he does in my game. I feel like that was intentional

-There's a room near the beginning with infinite spawning Lightning Mephits that give 420 exp. Probably a really good spot to level grind if playing from scratch. Course, the infinite-spawning Avernus portal in SoD has mobs that give 6000-8000 exp. Either way I don't think there's an actual need to grind exp in this.

Kharzette said:
The game's story and quests got a little broken right before release though. Someone from on-high realized some of the children in town could be hurt so he gave the order to remove all children,

Kinda reminds me of when I was like 12 and meeting with a school psychologist because the teachers didn't like that I wouldn't shut up about video games.

I told him all about game stuff and it seemed to all go in one ear and out the other, except for one thing: He was really impressed when I told him about how in Secret of Mana, you can't bring weapons into towns. Yeah, I knew he'd like that one. What a dullard.

Burns · Mar 22, 2023

Looking up Troika games made me remember another highly lauded RPG from them, that's not on the list: Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines.

While it's 3D instead of iso, it's at least as good as the KOTOR games and better than a bunch of other games on the list, like NWN1, NWN2 base campaign, the Pillars games, the Divinity games, TOEE, and Diablo 2 (the online portion seems to be why so many people love this game).

TheBeagle · Mar 22, 2023

Caliane said:
watching an older mortismal gaming vid, and he just brought up Underrail.

Underrail: Expedition

Your boy Szeth here bringing attention to yet another diamond in the rough.

www.firesofheaven.org

This isn't really for Rajaah. anyone else played underrail, think its worth checking out? its 50% off on steam atm, base game and dlc. 11.58 for both.

I've also got a couple spiderweb games I've not touched either... I played one or two a very long time ago. anyone else go into these? Thoughts on which is the best?

Ya I had a few days worth of fun with Avernum when I was stuck with nothing but a crappy laptop to play on years ago. Like all other CRPGs for me (except TOEE), I never finished it but enjoyed the game.

Just started Pillars I. If I can actually finish this one, which is doubtful since MLB 23 is set to release soon, I would like to go back and actually finish BG I and do BG II.

Burns · Mar 22, 2023

Rajaah said:
BALDUR UPDATE:

-Starting Baldur's Gate II. I'm sick today, but it doesn't matter, I'm still gonna be busy all day, but at least I've got some time now.

-If I could do it over again, I think I would have played Fighter for the Baldur games instead. I didn't really get much out of Paladin. Having some extra heals was cool, but later on they absolutely dump healing potions on you. Ranger wouldn't have been much better either, Minsc's spells were never particularly useful. Maybe I missed all the good ones. For the most part both guys were just melee/tanks, and it would have been great if my MC could have specialized beyond two points in any given weapon. So yeah, if I could go back in time, would have gone Fighter, hands-down. I'll go Fighter for Icewind Dale, since I have to play a high-wis guy for Planescape.

-Finished SoD at level 9 (main game was level 7, so not much of a benefit, but I enjoyed the story).

-The stuff with Minsc at the beginning of BG2 is pretty hilarious. I can't believe they went there with the hamster jokes. He starts with 69 HP...or at least he does in my game. I feel like that was intentional

-There's a room near the beginning with infinite spawning Lightning Mephits that give 420 exp. Probably a really good spot to level grind if playing from scratch. Course, the infinite-spawning Avernus portal in SoD has mobs that give 6000-8000 exp. Either way I don't think there's an actual need to grind exp in this.

Kinda reminds me of when I was like 12 and meeting with a school psychologist because the teachers didn't like that I wouldn't shut up about video games.

I told him all about game stuff and it seemed to all go in one ear and out the other, except for one thing: He was really impressed when I told him about how in Secret of Mana, you can't bring weapons into towns. Yeah, I knew he'd like that one. What a dullard.

Casters get stronger as they get higher levels, even melee ones. Once you can start buffing yourself and get them sweet Pal immunities, things will be better than Fighter. AFAIK, the only thing a fighter gets is the ability to hit things easier.

Did they let you pick a kit when moving to BG2? All the kits are better than the base and Pal gets 3 pips in 2H weapons, which is good enough.

Caliane · Mar 22, 2023

Burns said:
Looking up Troika games made me remember another highly lauded RPG from them, that's not on the list: Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines.

While it's 3D instead of iso, it's at least as good as the KOTOR games and better than a bunch of other games on the list, like NWN1, NWN2 base campaign, the Pillars games, the Divinity games, TOEE, and Diablo 2 (the online portion seems to be why so many people love this game).

yeah, this probably falls under the "scope is growing too much".

I'd almost say he should skip Divinity:OS 1/2 for now as well. wait for the ultima retrospective for those.

we can say that for wasteland/fallout too. not ultima, but still different genre.

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