Looking for RPGs with cooperative LAN play

I'm looking for games with cooperative mode to play with my gf, preferably with a storyline that gives a sense of progress. We are currently limited by the graphics card in our older PC (a Geforce 4200 sth that was fast for its time but only has shader model 1.3), but that box will be replaced the coming spring so you can feel free to suggest titles for us to look forward to...

We had great fun playing Baldurs Gate and Icewind Dale, but we know those games too well to start over again. Neverwinter Nights 1 didnt really take off for us (even though we played the expansions the engine simply doesnt do it for us), Neverwinter Nights 2 doesnt run on the old machine and has so far offered rather lackluster SP. Arcanum has rather annoying limitations in MP (no fast travel and no turn based combat). Diablo and most clones are too repetitive and has too simple combat.

Any suggestions, even archaic ones, are welcome

EDIT: We've also finished BG2 and IWD2 quite a few times

EDIT2: We are not interested in MMO type play. Cooperative play should have something akin to shared experience and quests. PvP is not interesting either due to both of us being sore losers

Baldur's Gate 2 and Neverwinter Nights 2?

Übereil

NWN2:s singleplayer made us a bit sceptical to say the least. We'll probably buy an extra copy next spring and give it a whirl, but I am not all that optimistic.

BG2 on the other hand is excellent, but we've played all the infinity engine games except Planescape Torment to death I think the Icewind Dales are better for multiplayer though. The pace and tactical focus make it involving for both players, while the heavier dialogue in the BGs make the "passive" player feel a bit left out.

hmmm I'm actually thinking on this now....you may be stuck with diablo clones...hey what about depths of peril??

NWN2 single player actually is quite decent.

Hmm, that could be interesting if it has cooperative play, but according to the interviews I could find it will be single player only.

ok my bad....hmmm sacred can be fun....I think beyond divinity is also two player but its just an "ok" game.

I meant IWD btw... And considering that you'd played the first games (of both BG and IWD) I was pretty certain you'd checked out the sequels. Which is what the whole point of my post was... And I was going to suggest Ps:T (as a serious suggestion ) but I thought the great thing about it was the story/characterinteraction, and I figured that doesn't play out well in multiplayer.

Beyond Divinity is singleplayer only IIRC.

Übereil

What about Dungeon Seige 2? It's got its moments, but it does need a pretty fast video card, and it's definitely in the action rpg category--can't lay my hands on the manual, but I'm pretty sure it has LAN.

Going through my collection, I was amazed at how few rpgs had co-op. (Wizardry, M&M, ToEE, etc) Have you thought about some of the turn based strategy games, like the Disciples series or Heros of Might and Magic? They're quite fun to play that way and they can be played easily on older systems.

My significant other and I played a lot of Disciples and Age Of Wonders: Shadow Magic on hotseat, and both do have the full range of MP capability. Not really RPGs exactly, but RPG-ish in a fantasy setting. Much better than going the Diablo clone route at any rate.

Zaleukos said:

EDIT2: We are not interested in MMO type play. Cooperative play should have something akin to shared experience and quests. PvP is not interesting either due to both of us being sore losers

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MMOs do have shared quest and experience actually. As long you both have the quests, and if you start in the same area you'll get the same quests, and can be completed by both of you with full reward and XP (at least that's how it works in WoW). And in WoW you can completely avoid all PVP combat, as long as you don't play on a PVP server, and never enter a battleground or arena.

NWN1 has several thousand mods, many of which are brilliant for co-op LAN play!! Somewhere here (probably in the NWN forums ) is a list of some of the best!!

Titan quest is quite a fun game, and would be solid in multiplayer. Great skill system, cool setting, and if you pay attention, good mythological lore. It's hack and slash, but if you're looking for a good lan game, this one would be pretty tight.

Dungeon Lords: Collector's Edition. Seriously. Very fun co-op MP. My gaming group always has a blast when we play.

Thanks for the suggestions I dont really expect to find that many titles, since RPGs by themselves are getting rare, and cooperative mode tends to a low priority multiplayer option (as an example from my another genre Medieval 2: Total war doesnt allow cooperative play against the AI).

Dungeon Siege II doesnt look that bad going by the Dungeon Siege heaven website, and the specs dont seem all that daunting. For what its worth we buy a new desktop PC every two years and keep two around. Currently our older machine is a three year old Athlon XP2400+ with 1GB of RAM and a Geforce 4200 graphics card, which seems to meet the specs. I found that me never skimping on RAM makes my PCs last fairly long and that the GPU tends to become the show stopper as new technologies are introduced (the most common hurdle in the last 15 months has been "Shader model 2.0 required" rather than the speed of the GPU per se).

magerette said:

Going through my collection, I was amazed at how few rpgs had co-op. (Wizardry, M&M, ToEE, etc) Have you thought about some of the turn based strategy games, like the Disciples series or Heros of Might and Magic? They're quite fun to play that way and they can be played easily on older systems.

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I love SP TBS but our experience of playing such games together has been rather bad. Too much time is spent on low-intensity parts of the game, or even worse, on waiting for the other player to carry out city administration and the like. Our attempt with Master of Orion II was for instance a bore... OTOH we've had a blast playing the Seven Kingdoms games, Rome: Total War, or Capitalism II together, so slow paced RTS works

Gallifrey said:

MMOs do have shared quest and experience actually. As long you both have the quests, and if you start in the same area you'll get the same quests, and can be completed by both of you with full reward and XP (at least that's how it works in WoW). And in WoW you can completely avoid all PVP combat, as long as you don't play on a PVP server, and never enter a battleground or arena.

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I was thinking of stupidity such as both players having to accept the same quest separately, and the quest still being around for other players once completed by someone. That is at least how it works in my only installed MMO, Minions of Mirth. Most MMOs are at any rate made moot by the fact that we dont want to, and cant, be connected to the internet during all gaming sessions. Some of the sessions namely take place in a forest retreat with rather crappy internet access...

Corwin: NWN is not really our first option (we simply dont like the game engine), but we might go down that route if we dont find anything else before the christmas holidays

Zaleukos said:

I love SP TBS but our experience of playing such games together has been rather bad. Too much time is spent on low-intensity parts of the game, or even worse, on waiting for the other player to carry out city administration and the like. Our attempt with Master of Orion II was for instance a bore... OTOH we've had a blast playing the Seven Kingdoms games, Rome: Total War, or Capitalism II together, so slow paced RTS works

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Anno 1701 has multiplayer mode. It's a real-time slow-paced city builder/trade game. Each player basically has to set up a civilization, make it grow and in turn meet the expanding needs of your citizens. It's a really great game, and via MP you can play co-operatively or in competition.

I was thinking of stupidity such as both players having to accept the same quest separately, and the quest still being around for other players once completed by someone. That is at least how it works in my only installed MMO, Minions of Mirth. Most MMOs are at any rate made moot by the fact that we dont want to, and cant, be connected to the internet during all gaming sessions. Some of the sessions namely take place in a forest retreat with rather crappy internet access...

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Ah, the lack of internet access would be a problem

Gallifrey said:

Anno 1701 has multiplayer mode. It's a real-time slow-paced city builder/trade game. Each player basically has to set up a civilization, make it grow and in turn meet the expanding needs of your citizens. It's a really great game, and via MP you can play co-operatively or in competition.

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That's a pleasant surprise We enjoyed 1604 in SP, but it tends to crash on the Athlon, and after seeing that 1503 lacked MP we sort of gave up on the series. EDIT: Is the combat any better than in 1604? That was the main let-down of the first game...

The combat in 1701 is still weak, but I don't have much of a frame of reference for comparison as in games like these I rarely enter combat situations.

1701 improves pretty much everything though, so combat is probably at least a *bit* better than in 1602 and 1503.

Dungeon Siege II doesnt look that bad going by the Dungeon Siege heaven website, and the specs dont seem all that daunting. For what its worth we buy a new desktop PC every two years and keep two around. Currently our older machine is a three year old Athlon XP2400+ with 1GB of RAM and a Geforce 4200 graphics card, which seems to meet the specs. I found that me never skimping on RAM makes my PCs last fairly long and that the GPU tends to become the show stopper as new technologies are introduced (the most common hurdle in the last 15 months has been "Shader model 2.0 required" rather than the speed of the GPU per se).

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Sounds like you could play it. My old machine had some problems with lag, but it had way lower ram and a very generic radeon card. I like DS2 a lot better than the original, but it is still mostly action and fairly linear. Nice settings and skills and so forth, though. I could see one person going the magic route, and another melee. or one doing nature magic and one combat magic. You can avoid taking any of the NPC's along(they share experience) and use some of the various pets,( who don't).

From the little I played of the 1701 demo, I think it would be fun co-op. Combat seems to always be the weak point in those games.

I think 1701 would be great fun co-op style. Because the game essentially demands that you trade for goods it'd be much more fun and rewarding to trade with a real person rather than the AI. It'd be easier to deal with difficult AI rivals as well.

System shock 2. Allthough you can play it through net too if you set up a VPN.

magerette said:

Sounds like you could play it. My old machine had some problems with lag, but it had way lower ram and a very generic radeon card. I like DS2 a lot better than the original, but it is still mostly action and fairly linear. Nice settings and skills and so forth, though. I could see one person going the magic route, and another melee. or one doing nature magic and one combat magic. You can avoid taking any of the NPC's along(they share experience) and use some of the various pets,( who don't).

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Thats precisely the kind of stuff we are after in RPGs, making complementary characters and figuring out good tactics while sticking to some sort of overall "theme" for our dynamic duo Otherwise I am the big RPG player and my gf is more of a strategist who appreciates the occasional character and loves Minsc.

On a side note you should never skimp on RAM, its an inexpensive component, wont become obsolete as fast as a GPU as it grows in size faster than in speed, and it will help general windoze performance My rule of thumb when building a PC is to get four times the amount of RAM that Dell put in their bottom line crap.