Party-Based, Old School, RPG's...do they still exist?

[Alistair]

Games like Balder's Gate, Icewind Dale, or even their predecessors like Bard's Tale, or Might & Magic.

Games where you control a party (usually of 6 characters), and go about old school dungeons and castles and towns crawling, killing various baddies ("235 different bad guys in this edition!" used to be a big box-seller), collecting loot, and generally doing old school D&D hack n' slash.

Is anyone still making these kind of old-style RPG's? Or is the new style of "lone Hero", Morrowind/Fallout/etc style all there is nowadays?

I could really do with a modern tech re-do of the old M&M games, or the old style D&D Adventure games (Secret of the Silver Blades was the shit).

I could really go for an old-school party-based top-down tactical RPG, in any number of universes, D&D, in the Fallout verse (imagaine a 6 charcter party based fallout done like the old D&D games!), Warhammer (Inquisition! Like playing the Eisenhorn Novels!), or even a generic verse like Might & Magic.

[RazoR]

Enjoy your dragon fagge.

[Devec]

Dragon age origins was the last decent party RPG. I guess you always still have the final fantaties and japanese games that you won't see over here but every game today needs you to be able to look down the sight.

Not sure if dungeon siege 3 allows you to play as a party or if its more diablo style single hero.

[Peppy]

Dragon Age II is a roleplaying gem with a masterful plot, fascinating characters and a revolutionary combat system, the level and quest design raises the bar to Olympian heights of - Ah fuck, just replay Baldurs Gate 2 and avoid disappointment.

DA:Origins is fine if you have poor taste like me, but I find it hard to recommend buying into the franchise when the sequel was a steaming turd I couldn't even stomach a single playthrough of.

[Devec]

DA:Origins is fine if you have poor taste like me, but I find it hard to recommend buying into the franchise when the sequel was a steaming turd I couldn't even stomach a single playthrough of.

Your not missing much unless you like having your choices have very little impact upon the storyline especially still in the fuck end. I forgive them for not changing the core storyline but it would be nice to have some kind of different ending instead of you probably chose this so tada!

[Polybius]

There are plenty of good indie ones being made. Check out knights of the chalice and the geneforge series.

[FatFreddy]

I could really go for an old-school party-based top-down tactical RPG, in any number of universe

Jagged Alliance 2 V1.13

[Maximillian]

I could really go for an old-school party-based top-down tactical RPG, in any number of universe

Jagged Alliance 2 V1.13

Just don't buy it off steam as it doesn't work without effort fixing the shit they fucked up.

[FatFreddy]

ofc not, buy from gog.com DRM-free (and fuck steam in general) and V1.13 is a free community mod that greatly enhances the original game

[friznit]

Neverwinter Nights 2 was the last of the traditional AD&D style party RPGs that I recall enjoying. I think it still has a following and a number of interesting mods around.

[Aramendel]

Temple of Elemental Evil is quite nice if you haven't played that yet.

[RazoR]

ofc not, buy from gog.com DRM-free (and fuck steam in general) and V1.13 is a free community mod that greatly enhances the original gameWhat the fuck do you think you are doing making sense? Do you live in a 3rd world country? :derper:

Also obligatory PST and Arcanum. Gameplay is shit there though.

[Daneel Trevize]

[strike:ey0gw7sj]I'm curious, how far does Dungeon Siege and its sequels fall from this description/target?
I understand Diablo's similar (if you hadn't guessed, this isn't really my genre)[/strike:ey0gw7sj]
Missed Devec's response. Though still, Dungeon Siege, good game and what you're describing?

[Polysynchronicity]

obligatory Arcanum.

took the true part of your post

[cullnean]

drakensangs alright

http://www.drakensang.com/

[Gaydai]

Instead of making a new thread (mebeh I should) - I just got informed of a project at the Uni in the town I live at atm (the uni where DICE recruits their programmers/designers from). They just started with a project called "Rymden" (Space), which will be a "Battle control CO-OP explorer dungeon game in space".

To explain better:

Imagine a starships bridge, a Commander, a weapons technician, engineering, science a la Star trek. Now make each of these "stations" linked up together onto a master-box, from which a picture of space is projected to a screen (projector on a wall etc). Each "station" would be a PC of some kind, so one for each member of the crew. The interface would be very basic, to start textbased with the keyboard acting as the controller. (Much like how shit works in Navies these days).

But this into a random generated universe where you freely explore, interact and do stuff with maybe some prewritten objectives / stories that you load up (Much like how boardgames works, so would need a GM of some sort.)

In short - digital board-game in space.

Sounds too good to be true, right?

[Quarantine]

There are plenty of good indie ones being made. Check out knights of the chalice and the geneforge series.

The Geneforge series is done by Spiderweb Software, a 1-guy indie developer that specializes on RPGs. He has published 15 (?) or so that mostly follow similar rules and use the same engine. They are very old school and linear in their gameplay and you'll probably not find anything hugely innovative, but the stories are told with a lot of heart and love for details, the gameworlds are huge and once they draw you in, you can spend many happy hours RPGing around in them. Most if not all of them offer a very large demo mode that gives you unlimited access to the first 1/5th of the game or so, no harm in trying them out: http://www.spiderwebsoftware.com/. The prices are relatively steep for indie games and for some reason they don't go down over time, but I found them to be well worth it.

[Narmio]

I wouldn't call the Spiderweb titles "linear". They have some of the most undirected open-world designs I've seen in RPGs. The newer ones tend to have more structure, but the older games, like Exile: Escape from the Pit or its remark Avernum I are pure open-world. You're dumped in a town in the middle of nowhere and told "Here's a knife, a loaf of bread and two pointy sticks. Try not to die".

[Alistair]

Giving the newest Spiderweb Demo a go. Interesting, not exactly what I'm looking for (and indeed, horribad graphics and pretty poor UI), but has potential.

[Narmio]

Heh, yeah, the graphics are lolbad. And the newest one, Abadon, is actually significantly better in that regard than the old stuff. The old stuff, which has a sort of amazing retro quality to its gameplay, has graphics worse than some Dwarf Fortress graphical packs. I mean, check this shit out:

http://img.brothersoft.com/screenshots/softimage/e/exile_ii-_crystal_souls-243599-1243928090.jpeg

Abadon, by contrast, looks like fucking Crysis:

http://www.spiderwebsoftware.com/images/avadon/AvRatFight.jpg

But if you can stomach that stuff the games are really awesome, in an oldschool way.

[Aramendel]

drakensangs alright

http://www.drakensang.com/

Ah, yes, seconding that.

[Quarantine]

I wouldn't call the Spiderweb titles "linear". They have some of the most undirected open-world designs I've seen in RPGs. The newer ones tend to have more structure, but the older games, like Exile: Escape from the Pit or its remark Avernum I are pure open-world. You're dumped in a town in the middle of nowhere and told "Here's a knife, a loaf of bread and two pointy sticks. Try not to die".

I've not played the really old ones. My first one was Avernum 4 which supposedly is one of his weaker titles, but after playing the demo it sucked me in and I just had to purchase it. Being used to Nethack I didn't think the graphics are too bad, for RPG fans Spiderweb is certainly a good address (even though I'm not a huge fan of Jeff's attitude).

[Alistair]

Played the SpiderWeb Demo (http://www.spidweb.com/avadon/index.html) last night for ~1 hour or so.

Intereting, very old school (in many good ways), but alot of annoyances too. Hard as hell to see items on the ground, inventory opens with i but must be closed manually, etc. No gear represented on charcaters, etc. But an interesting mix of old D&D Sty;e Games with modern twists (alot of Diablo in it actually, design wise). Seems like a decent old-school style storyline.

Would love to find a modern Might & Magic (I or II) style game, tbh, but after looking for quite a while, found nothing worth mentioning.

[arian snow]

Yeah it would be nice if Baldurs Gate and Might & Magic 6 style games where still around! Those are my favorites subgenres, along with space sims. :cut:

Party based RPGs are a dying breed, Dragon Age 2 had potential, it just needed about a yeah or two more development time, because as it is it's a halfarsed effort, however as long as shit games like DA2 sells in the millions the devs won't give a fuck.

I am just happy the companies like Egosoft still exists the X series games have stolen hundreds of my lifes hours at a resonable price, what we need is the Egosoft of partybased RPGs.

Also seconding Arcanum, brilliant game especially the writing (but it's not party based, but billion times better than the Spiderweb games and cheaper too).

O' and fuck the whole DLC mindset that's prevalent in the gaming business these days!

[RazoR]

O' and fuck the whole DLC mindset that's prevalent in the gaming business these days!Thankfully some understand that in order to keep the fanbase they should not charge them for new yet small shit.
Witcher 2 DLCs come with patches. Those guys are awesome.

[Tyrus Tenebros]

Oh the guy responsible for Avernum? I played a demo of one of the older ones to death at some point (I have no idea which # it was, but it was the one where you started in the underworld being attacked, then you went down a river and ran in to some crazy-ass alien-looking things that enlightened you or some shit... ok it was a long time ago!)

It was pretty badass though from what I remember.

[Polybius]

Eschalon is worth checking out too.
http://basiliskgames.com/

This thread reminded me of age of decadence. They didn't manage to beat duke nukem forever but they could still manage to release before episode 3 and flying pigs.

[Narmio]

Oh the guy responsible for Avernum? I played a demo of one of the older ones to death at some point (I have no idea which # it was, but it was the one where you started in the underworld being attacked, then you went down a river and ran in to some crazy-ass alien-looking things that enlightened you or some shit... ok it was a long time ago!)

It was pretty badass though from what I remember.
That sounds like the second one, Avernum 2, which was based on the game that originally got me into RPGs, Exile II: Crystal Souls. Even though as a child I never had more than the shareware version which cut off about a third of the way through, I played that game until my fingers bled.

[Diziet]

Bump for arcanum loved that game. Original baldurs gate was dope icewind Dale was cool but you could see the wow writing on the wall as blizzard kept releasing shorter and shorter game play in each 'new' expansion.

Real old school was wizards and warriors on sega played that shit a million times in college.

Then there was the grand daddy final fantasy 7. Truly at the time it was awesome storyline, gameplay, style. And it had so much gameplay like 200 hours. You never see anything like that anymore.

[Serious Bob]

Instead of making a new thread (mebeh I should) - I just got informed of a project at the Uni in the town I live at atm (the uni where DICE recruits their programmers/designers from). They just started with a project called "Rymden" (Space), which will be a "Battle control CO-OP explorer dungeon game in space".

To explain better:

Imagine a starships bridge, a Commander, a weapons technician, engineering, science a la Star trek. Now make each of these "stations" linked up together onto a master-box, from which a picture of space is projected to a screen (projector on a wall etc). Each "station" would be a PC of some kind, so one for each member of the crew. The interface would be very basic, to start textbased with the keyboard acting as the controller. (Much like how shit works in Navies these days).

But this into a random generated universe where you freely explore, interact and do stuff with maybe some prewritten objectives / stories that you load up (Much like how boardgames works, so would need a GM of some sort.)

In short - digital board-game in space.

Sounds too good to be true, right?
Nerd game exists, afaik. Trying to dig up the website and youtube clips, I believe I read it on shc originally.

Found it!
http://artemis.eochu.com/
How you imagine it. (http://www.youtube.com/user/LaughPong#p/u/3/72XhdVqDT1g)
What it's like. (With free Captain Hat!) (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AnZszGvpTrQ)

[Hel OWeen]

drakensangs alright

http://www.drakensang.com/

Ah, yes, seconding that.

I'm late to this thread, so I apologize, but for the sake of completion wanted to mention the other DSA ("Das Schwarze Auge") based C-RPGs: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dark_Eye#Computer.2Fvideo_games, as in at least most of them, if not all (don't know them all) you play a party.

[Wen Jaibao]

Dawn of war 2 games are kind of like old school dungeon crawls in my opinion. You control up to 4 units in a mission and level up your heroes the way you want, and pick their equipment the way you want. But they're obviously squad based RTS games, not Neverwinter Nights style games.

[Surveyor]

drakensangs alright

http://www.drakensang.com/

Ah, yes, seconding that.

I'm late to this thread, so I apologize, but for the sake of completion wanted to mention the other DSA ("Das Schwarze Auge") based C-RPGs: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dark_Eye#Computer.2Fvideo_games, as in at least most of them, if not all (don't know them all) you play a party.

Played all and they are really great (at least to me). All are party based and you even can keep your party form part 1 to 3 :)