Looking for RPGs with cooperative LAN play

Actually that demo was pretty well panned by everyone, so consider it a Beta demo,
additionally in that early demo of DL, as with the missing map, it also has the bad respawning problems, which is probably what your seeing in the "enemies pop out of the blue a bit too often, and in an irrational way. ".

In regards to SS2, if you don't mind getting involved with the console, since they didn't add any extra Cyber Modules, you will need to add some so you can each level, though I maybe remembering wrong.
It quite fun and you can find all the great addon textures that make the game look and play better, here.
http://www.ttlg.com/forums/index.php

Yeah, the value of the demo is of course proportional to how representative it is of the game. But the DS2 and DL demos were enough to give me a ballpark idea of the type of gameplay and hardware requirements, which together with the knowledge of this site is enough for me to make up my mind. I'll just see what the demo's MP is like before I place an order (lag and bugs aside there are many ways of structuring an MP game that make or break the mode for us)

I seldom if ever indulge in Rpg Lan play. I like to cogitate on character creation, dialogue options, equipment selection, as well as explore the world fully and such playstyle simply doesn't support playing with others well.

I can understand that a Lan game with a significant other could be fun though; as well as keep the peace

So here are 3 Rpgs which suprisingly have not been mentioned in this thread:

1) Evil-Islands


2) Pool of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Drannor


3) Lionheart: Legacy of the Crusader => (no link sadly Black Isle Studios is no more)


So there you have it my three Rpg suggestions for Lan play. Hopefully others will offer up more direct multiplayer experience with these. If not perhaps you can be the first and relay your thoughts and experiences.

Ubbax
"We don't stop playing because we grow old...
We grow old because we stop playing."
-George Bernard Shaw

I can fully understand that point of view, and it somewhat resonate with our experience too. I find that lighter RPGs lend themselves better to coop, Icewind Dale being a case in point.

And, she is not a RPG player, and she doesnt like me sitting up all night with Gothic! At the same time neither of us appreciate run of the mill RTS or FPS games, and turn based strategy games tend to just become too slow in MP.

I can speak for Evil Islands as being worth a play. It's not too slow moving and has a great crafting system. I don't know how easy it would be to actually find a copy of it these days, or even Lionheart--which was tremendous fun for at least the first half, though almost impossibly hard and monotonous for the single player in the second--I could see where playing co-op might make it actually a better game.
POR:RoMD is still available( and cheap) at gogamer. This is one I bought recently but haven't got around to playing. The demo was fun, though, I thought.

Zaleukos said:

I'll just see what the demo's MP is like before I place an order (lag and bugs aside there are many ways of structuring an MP game that make or break the mode for us)

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Let us know which you 2 end up with. I, for obvious reasons , am curious...

There's nothing much to report yet...

We didnt have the time to test MP yesterday as my gf decided that it was more important to wrap up her thesis work Anyway I found demos for the new suggestions and will check them out tonight (the PoR demo doesnt suffer from any uninstall bugs, does it?).

One title I own but didnt mention before is Demise - Rise of the Kutan which is a very basic dungeon grinder/crawler with MP capacity. I enjoyed it for what it was, but my gf doesnt like it. The game is available at Decklins domain after fans bought the rights from the rather amateurish/inept developer David Allen. There should a fully featured demo with the first five dungeon floors floating around the net somewhere. It's the only game I've preordered directly from the developer and at nearly 60 clintonian dollars including shipping also the most expensive one, but I got many hours of it and feel no regrets.

I got a call from a gf who's train is delayed, so I will probably not get to test Dungeon Lords multiplayer tonight either. Technical aspects aside I think the main worry is experience and loot distribution in MP. For coop in games that rely on "builds" to work you need those two to be available in sufficient amount and distributed relatively evenly... I'm tempted to get this game anyway, as it can be found for 16 euros and SP is bearable.

Anyway I loaded up all three of todays downloaded demos and gave them 15 minutes each. The sessions havent really given me enough meat to discard either option.

Lionheart very old school feeling that reminds me of BG and Arcanum (not very surprising). It does however suffer from the shortcomings of a 2D isometric perspective, with sluggish movement on maps with dead angles. It also seems to suffer from Arcanums shortcomings when it comes to mana and health regeneration. The alternate history setting is cool. Could still be something for MP if my gf approves of the engine.

Pool of Radiance 2 has the same map movement issue as Lionheart, only more so. Unless that speed patch improves walking speed as well I'm very skeptical about this one. The game feels sluggish and it takes forever to cover a few feet on a cleared map, something I think I listed in the "most retarded things in games" threat. The interface is also rather counter-intuitive so far.
Otherwise we like and understand the 3rd edition rules (which easily is our favourite AD&D ruleset). Is it correct to assume that MP basically consists of splitting the party as per the infinity engine games?
Evil islands My first thought was that this is a very cute and colourful game that reminds me of polygon graphic Amiga classics such as Virus or five to ten year old final fantasies. My gf might like this one Character building options seem a bit limited though, and I really dont like the default camera behaviour.

I think the slow,monotonous turn-based combat was the big flaw people complained of with PoR:RoMD--as I said, I haven't gotten around to playing it,and I do remember being fairly frustrated with the interface in the demo til i got a few hints online and got used to it. (btw, no uninstall probs with the demo,or with the properly patched version, which is now the one sold at retail I believe)

And Lionheart is the most schizoid game I've ever played--loved the first half--hated the second...the # of health potions alone that I had to hoard (upwards of 200) from the first half due to lack of availability and insane enemy imbalance in the 2nd, rate it a spot in "the most retarded things" thread for me.

The bad thing is, unfortunately, that almost every RPG that you can think of has something to overcome--so it just depends on what you and your gf want to put up with in exchange for the good times. Hope you find something you can both enjoy.

After seeing the 1.6 patch news for Two Worlds, thought it might make a good addition to this list, though I haven't played it yet.

I have two worlds, but it requires shaders that the old graphics card doesnt have. And while I havent looked at MP I've heard it didnt offer the kind of coop LAN of a real campaign that I'm after, at least not in 1.5.

We did get to try Dungeon Lords for about an hour. It was a very mixed experience. The MP system is clearly added as an afterthought.

-There doesnt seem to be any way to trade items other than dropping them onto the ground (we would like to play a fighter and a mage, but what would happen if the fighter accidentally pick up spell related stuffs?).

-XP from kills isnt shared. While this makes sense and doesnt have to be a problem in itself it also means that my fighter earns XP way faster than her mage in the beginning, and from what I've read (had to peek at the walkthrough to see how much that is left before getting to a "civilised" area where we can outfit her with spells) there will be a lonely creature that is worth tens of thousands of XP before my gf becomes dangerous. We havent done any quests yet, but if the quest XP isnt shared that is an example of a mechanism that breaks MP as far as we are concerned. EDIT: according to the official forum XP is shared if both players hit an enemy at least once, which is fair enough...

- Loot, chest, XP, and monster distribution seems identical to SP. That means that the characters will have about half the XP as in SP at the same point in the game. If my impression that character power grows faster at higher levels is correct this mean that we will be considerably weaker than an individual SP character at the same point in the game. And when it comes to the chests that I already hate opening it means that these little things will outpace us in difficulty pretty soon. To top it off we'll have half the amount of gold per char compared to SP, which might be a problem if money is tight in the game. Of course we could camp and grind through respawns to catch up in experience, but that makes for rather dull gameplay.

-Buffs seem to affect the caster only. This is bad and a pretty basic thing to get right for MP.

So in all it seems like MP just means that they put an extra non-hostile into SP, with no thought about interaction and synergy between the players.

I'll be looking for remedies for the issues, particularly XP and loot sharing. It's not fun to play coop if a player cant pull his weight.

EDIT: This is all in the demo, I'd be happy to know if these issues were fixed in the CE.

Hi Zal. A couple of quick notes:

- a couple of skill points in inspect traps and pick locks does wonders for the early chests. Makes the mini-game much more manageable. It doesn't take more than a few to get at all the chests in the opening area.

- MP was definitely worked on in subsequent patches and the CE, but don't expect huge changes.

- There are party buffs available in the Celestial line of spells I believe. They're the ones that have "Boon" in their title. Never tried them myself, but I think most, if not all, have been reported to work. Again, however, I don't think they're available in the demo, as they got added in later versions, and you don't get them right away. I think you start to pick them up a few hours into the game.

- It's true there's no trade feature. Just drop and pickup. OLDE SKOOL!!

- If you level up to 3 before hitting the sewers and work together as a team, you should find the going pretty manageable. There's also the difficulty setting to use if things are too tough. And, you can crank the Encounters setting up to grind some XP quickly, and then tone it down again when you're ready to explore.

- As with almost all cRPG's, mages start out weak, but begin to dominate later in the game. In the CE, they added a goblin mage to one of the opening area huts that has a nice little staff that, with a point in Magic Weapons, does some serious damage in the hands of a mage.

Yes, remember your playing a close to a beta with the Demo, many things have been patched, unless you bought the game and I missed that post.
The demo was released even before the game was released, iirc, which is why I mentioned beta a couple of times.

Also there Save Editor link, I gave you can work in MP, but I could never get him to specifically make it work with, it happens to find the Main Player, ie one whom started the server, so you can still get it to work certainly with a Hex Editor.
Also adds XP, iirc.

I could have sworn there was a way to trade though it's been 1 or 2 years since I have played.

You can change the Spawning rate or just play the game on Easy difficulty as well, if it's too difficult, go for the fun factor first then the challenge, later.

Ok, that sounds manageable. As Magerette says all games have flaws and we really dont have that much to choose from. Going through the rather dead official site I also get the impression that you only need one copy for LAN play, and that the devs seem to condone LAN parties with that kind of setup. So I've placed an order

I downloaded a character editor last night, but it gave some pointer warning when opening MP saves, probably due to an unexpected filesize caused by having multiple characters in the save file. I'm thinking about simply giving us a boost to the thievery skills and pretend that part isnt in the game at all. I guess that this is doable by exporting SP characters.

And before I attract any ethical criticism I'd like to state that I in no way feel bad about cheating my way around game features that I find ill conceived or tedious We at most have an hour or two to spend on a game a day, so that better be quality time...

Btw, given the way you gain classes during the game it might be feasible for my gf to start out as something beefier than a mage, preferrably something whose bonuses resonate well with that of the mage class. Maybe adept could work?

Zaleukos said:

Btw, given the way you gain classes during the game it might be feasible for my gf to start out as something beefier than a mage, preferrably something whose bonuses resonate well with that of the mage class. Maybe adept could work?

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Definitely could work. One of the best aspects of DL, imo, is the mutli-class system. Makes for fun character development and combination of skills/spells/abilities. Have fun!

Of course using codes to help balance gameplay for your personal preferences is what they are there for, so "Have fun, storming the castle!"

In case you didn't see it, GB has very nice Walkthroughs, Class and Bouns descriptions.
http://www.gamebanshee.com/dungeonlords/

I've looked through the gamebanshee sites, and we played some after receiving our copy yesterday. It's fun, but I can understand the frustration of those who bought the game at full price. "Rough around the edges" is a severe understatement of the games' state I'll put my impressions in the DL thread as it seems silly to have two threads on the game...

posted by Zaleukos
One title I own but didnt mention before is Demise - Rise of the Kutan which is a very basic dungeon grinder/crawler with MP capacity. I enjoyed it for what it was, but my gf doesnt like it. The game is available at Decklins domain after fans bought the rights from the rather amateurish/inept developer David Allen. There should a fully featured demo with the first five dungeon floors floating around the net somewhere. It's the only game I've preordered directly from the developer and at nearly 60 clintonian dollars including shipping also the most expensive one, but I got many hours of it and feel no regrets.

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Lets not start comments on David; those threads can tend to become rabid..
David is talented and actually a pretty nice guy. Lets not forget he made Mordor and Mordor II before the original version of Demise. The last version of Mordor II had multiplayer as well.

I also ordered Demise on its release and still enjoy an occasional game. Somewhere around here in the depths of the dungeon I have the Interplay version "Infinite Worlds" which was never released retail. If I recall this is the version the demo is based on.

posted by Magerette
And Lionheart is the most schizoid game I've ever played--loved the first half--hated the second...the # of health potions alone that I had to hoard (upwards of 200) from the first half due to lack of availability and insane enemy imbalance in the 2nd, rate it a spot in "the most retarded things" thread for me.

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<sigh> this is not how I wanted to spend the start of my Saturday; cleaning coffee of my monitor & Keyboard :lol:

posted by Zaleukos
Evil islands My first thought was that this is a very cute and colourful game that reminds me of polygon graphic Amiga classics such as Virus or five to ten year old final fantaZasies. My gf might like this one Character building options seem a bit limitedted by though, and I really dont like the default camera behaviour.

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Yes I remember the default camera slightly annoying me as well. I'm not sure how much configurability the Demo offered concerning the Camera but the Retail release had quite a bit. I know there were cursor sensitivity options and distance settings to control how far from the edge of the screen the cursor was before it implemented a change of direction.

I have a tendency to set my cursor velocity very high. The result is that a mouse movement of less than a 1/2 inch sends the cursor from the center of my 22" screen to the edge. (people trying to use my PCs complain it's far to twitchy)

I mostly made use of the Keyboard controls to control the camera;
Arrow keys, page up/down or mouse wheel to zoom, and preset camera positions
"Ctrl" + "F9"-"F12" to set and then "F9"- "F12" to recall.

I think the "point of view" for the camera could be controlled by pressing the Right mouse button and dragging.

Nicely written precis of the multiplayer aspects for the various games. Thanks for sharing them.

Ubbax
"A man must be both stupid and uncharitable who believes there is no virtue or truth but on his own side."--Joseph Addison

Didnt mean to bash David, it's just that he is more of an artist than an engineer. I wouldnt want to work in a project with him, but having a beer or a cup of coffee while talking concepts with him would probably be fun.