IGN - RPG Cheers and Tears

[Dhruin]

IGN has assembled an arbitrary list of RPG "cheers" and "tears" (http://pc.ign.com/articles/101/1019606p1.html) in this article. Oblivion, Fable, Fallout 3 and Freedom Force vs The 3rd Reich get the thumbs up, while Pompolic: Call for Heroes, The Chosen, Dawn of Magic, Dungeon Lords and Gothic 3 get the tears:
Dungeon Lords
Is it fun? No. Is it polished? No. Is it even finished? No. When the most fun you can have with a game is setting the box on fire and flinging it at your co-workers, you really know that you've wasted your money. There's no drama, no charm, and not even any furniture inside the buildings. It's almost like the developers left the game unlocked overnight and a bunch of thieves came in and stole all the art and physics. Combat is a joke with terrible animations and improbable creature spawns and there are even features listed in the game manual that are nowhere in the game itself. This one is a huge mess right from the beginning.
More information. (http://www.rpgwatch.com/show/newsbit?newsbit=13026)

[Prime Junta]

You mean people are actually *paid* to write this kind of drivel?

[JDR13]

No shit, this article is a complete joke.

He says this about Fable....

Peter Molyneux made a lot of promises about his ambitious roleplaying game and, fortunately for us, he delivered on most of them.

:rotfl:

[skavenhorde]

he delivered on most of them

Are you kidding me?

Like what???? Fable was ok as a game, but Peter was promising the moon during the PR campaign.

[Zephyr]

I also disagree on his assessment of G3. After a few tweaks to my 7-year-old home-built PC, it ran quite well and I enjoyed it very much. The frozen north was frustrating and a bit of a grind, but I loved the rest. Dungeon Lords was a steaming pile.

[Prime Junta]

To be fair, G3 was a train wreck when it came out. It's about an 8/10 *now,* but that's after years of patching, both by PB and then by volunteers. I find it rather ridiculous that the article made no mention of that, though.

[Grandor Dragon]

Who cares. I mean, who would pay serious attention to this article. It has almost no value as a piece of information and is not written in an entertaining way.

[BillSeurer]

Actually, his jeers for Gothic3 are all still true even with the latest patches. Except for you getting stuck maybe.

[txa1265]

I think there is a very solid case for Gothic 3>Oblivion based on latest patches and no Oblivion fan-mods.

[bkrueger]

I think there is a very solid case for Gothic 3>Oblivion based on latest patches and no Oblivion fan-mods.

I personally feel Gothic 3 out of the box >>> Oblivion with all fan mods.

That said, your suggested comparison is not quite fair because the newest Gothic patches are fan made and therefore you have no justification to exclude fan made oblivion mods from a comparison.

[JDR13]

I personally feel Gothic 3 out of the box >>> Oblivion with all fan mods.


I don't know about that one.... as much as I like Gothic 3, it was pretty bad right out of the box. :)

[bkrueger]

I don't know about that one.... as much as I like Gothic 3, it was pretty bad right out of the box. :)

Hihi, I marked it as personal taste.

But seriously I played Gothic 3 out of the box (i. e. with release patch 1.12) one and a half times through in one straight row.

On the other hand I bought Oblivion, played it half a day, got bored and never started it up again (and no fan mod could motivate me to do so).

But I forget, that we have a special thread for that...

Anyway, as you will have noticed, I even argued in defence of Oblivion in my post. ;)

[Michael Dean]

Dungeon Lords. Well, as unremarkable as this article was, I have to say that it was right in pulling up this title as one of the worst of the worst.
Sad thing was, I really wanted to love this game. I looked forward to it for a while. Then, I met a couple of the devs at an E3 (2004?), and they looked horribly exhausted, haggard, and like they'd not been paid or fed in months. I knew then that Dungeon Lords would be a mess on release, and thankfully avoided it until my company got one for the company library. I checked it out for a few days...managed to play for an hour or so...and finally decided that it was just a sad failure of game development.
Originally when I'd seen its early progress reports, I'd had hopes that it would be a spiritual successor to Wizardry 6/7. Obviously this didn't happen. Sir-Tech came through admirably with Wizardry 8, but sadly too late to save one of my all-time favorite developers/publishers.
<end of babble>

[txa1265]

Some day I should write something about Dungeon Lords ... yeah.

[JDR13]

Sir-Tech came through admirably with Wizardry 8, but sadly too late to save one of my all-time favorite developers/publishers.


It's a shame too, because Wizardry 8 is a true classic imo, one of the best party-based crpgs I've ever played.

[txa1265]

It's a shame too, because Wizardry 8 is a true classic imo, one of the best party-based crpgs I've ever played.

I really missed that whole thing, but it is easy to see why it was such a disaster.

[JDR13]

I really missed that whole thing, but it is easy to see why it was such a disaster.

You lost me there.... Do you mean Sirtech, or Wiz 8?

[txa1265]

You lost me there.... Do you mean Sirtech, or Wiz 8?

Wiz 8 - delays, funding issues, and eventually single sourced through GameStop in the US with zero marketing. Might as well just flush the CD's at that point - lucky any of were able to get it at all!

[JDR13]

Wiz 8 - delays, funding issues, and eventually single sourced through GameStop in the US with zero marketing. Might as well just flush the CD's at that point - lucky any of were able to get it at all!

Yeah, shame about the marketing, a game like that deserved sooo much better. Was Gamestop really the only place that sold it? I wasn't aware of that...

[skavenhorde]

In the US it might have been the only place.

It was at every software store over here in Taiwan. It had a really cool box too. It looked just like a book. I still use it to store manuals.

[JDR13]

It had a really cool box too. It looked just like a book. I still use it to store manuals.


How come we never get cool stuff like that over here? :)

NA version had pretty decent box art though....

[txa1265]

Makes me wish I kept boxes every once in a while ... ;)

[JDR13]

I've kept almost all of mine.... I've got quite the collection now.

[Alrik Fassbauer]

Yeah, shame about the marketing, a game like that deserved sooo much better. Was Gamestop really the only place that sold it? I wasn't aware of that...

In the US it might have been the only place.

It was at every software store over here in Taiwan. It had a really cool box too. It looked just like a book. I still use it to store manuals.

Here in Germany, Wizardry 8 was - untranslated - sold in electronics chain shops, at least I remember a major one ("Saturn").

However, I still don't know why this second-hand and renting shop had an original 4-CD version of Wizardry 8 there for only 5 Euros ... Meanwhile the normal DVD boxes used to be sold for at least 25 Euros (could be that this was a little bit reduced already, but I don't remember, because it's so long ago).

Well, I bought this 4-CD specimen, and I'm happy with it. :) I was also surprised about the slight humour I found in the handbook ... ;)

Considering the level of detail, Wiz8 is still my personal "dream game". :) However, I couldn't endure this constant, neverending stream of fights in it anymore ...

[Michael Dean]

Well, I bought this 4-CD specimen, and I'm happy with it. :) I was also surprised about the slight humour I found in the handbook ... ;)

If I recall correctly, Brenda Garno was in charge of the handbook. She can go over the top with her witticisms at times, but generally she's quite fun to read. I used to chat online with her back in the CompuServ days; truly a wonderful mind.

[skavenhorde]

Here is the dirty, but still funtional box.

BTW my cat was wondering what I was doing with her scratching post.:)