New to RPG Watch boards, figured I'd talk about my RPG experiences

There are still small companies, like PB and Arcane around though. I think Larian is fairly small too.

Well unfortunately I've abandoned Wizardry 8 after putting about 15 hours into it. I can see how it appeals to people, but imo it's certianly no BG2. The RPG aspects of the game are good, and the production quality is high... but the engine and combat systems are not to my liking. A party-based CRPG without individual character movement during combat? Wizardry 8 fails for me on a tactical level, and unfortunately for me, that is a fatal flaw. Perhaps my tastes run more towards a medieval tactical combat simulator more than a RPG.

Well at least you gave it a try
15 hours is more than enough to see if a game is enjoyable or not.

Have you tried the Icewind Dale series?
IWD was a great tactical RPG and you get to build your own party.
Also had terrific music and artwork.

The Icewind Dale games were great fun. The first had a better story, but it's also easy to miss if you just barrel through everything, and the visuals and music are amazingly good. It's the only game I've played for which my girlfriend, when walking into the room, looked at the screen and said "wow" (it was the ice caverns).
Icewind Dale 2 has much better gameplay, is a bit stronger in the RPG department in regards to skill checks and other checks made for dialogue situations, and the story is more up-front.
Both games are combat-driven so there's more tactics to a degree (neither come close to, say, Temple Of Elemental Evil in this regard - Icewind Dale 1 & 2 made with the TOEE engine would be phenomenal!).

For a medieval combat simulator you may take a look at Mount & Blade if you haven't already.

Orgok said:

Well unfortunately I've abandoned Wizardry 8 after putting about 15 hours into it. I can see how it appeals to people, but imo it's certianly no BG2. The RPG aspects of the game are good, and the production quality is high... but the engine and combat systems are not to my liking. A party-based CRPG without individual character movement during combat? Wizardry 8 fails for me on a tactical level, and unfortunately for me, that is a fatal flaw. Perhaps my tastes run more towards a medieval tactical combat simulator more than a RPG.

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Wizardry VIII fails on tactical level?!? It has the most tactical combat in recent RPG history (lets say last 10 years) besides Temple of Elemental Evil, of course... And combat is the biggest flaw in vanilla BG2, IMHO. Fast, no tactics, too easy, too much randomness... It`s a different story with some excelent mods, but Wizardry VIII is still far better in my book.

Dark Savant said:

Wizardry VIII fails on tactical level?!? It has the most tactical combat in recent RPG history (lets say last 10 years) besides Temple of Elemental Evil, of course... And combat is the biggest flaw in vanilla BG2, IMHO. Fast, no tactics, too easy, too much randomness... It`s a different story with some excelent mods, but Wizardry VIII is still far better in my book.

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BG2 was too easy? Try not to pause it so often. No tactics?! Are you sure you've even played it? BG2 had tremendous depth and tactics in combat with all the spells and counter-spells in the late game. The end game in Wiz 8 was a cakewalk by comparison.

Yeah, I love Wizardry 8, but it's combat was a bit slow and simple. Much better than the abstract-ness of it's predecessors, but still. BG2 wasn't as great on the tactical level as some seem to feel, but it's still better.

Though in comparing the two, I never used anything more than click-fest in BG2, whereas I did have to alter my party layout twice in Wiz8. Still, that's probably due to the ease of game play in BG2; more than any tactical deficiency.

JDR13 said:

BG2 was too easy? Try not to pause it so often. No tactics?! Are you sure you've even played it? BG2 had tremendous depth and tactics in combat with all the spells and counter-spells in the late game. The end game in Wiz 8 was a cakewalk by comparison.

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I have played BG2 many, many times. The whole game including combat is so easy without some mods like tactics - http://weidu.org/tactics.html. Yes I pause the game often because I like turn-based aproach in RPGs and I like to think before I act. In real-time mode, BG2 is just a dumb click-fest. But taht just my opinion.

@azraelck
If you have a problem with slowliness in Wizardry VIII, you can use a great tool by the name - Wizfast http://www.foerster.cc/wolfie/

Dark Savant said:

@azraelck
If you have a problem with slowliness in Wizardry VIII, you can use a great tool by the name - Wizfast http://www.foerster.cc/wolfie/

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Thanks, but at this point I'll be lucky to get to Wiz8's title screen. I'm not running Windows at all, but Ubuntu. I can run the old classics now that I'm off openSuSE (which is the Vista of Linux, IMO). But Wine just isn't that capable yet; if it ever will be. And I'm not paying for yet another copy of XP.

Have you tried DOSBOX with it ?

Um... Wizardry 8 came out a little late for DOSBox. It's a Windows app.

Wine is what your thinking of, and I can't seem to get it to work, or couldn't before I switched to Ubuntu. I may try again, once I get my sound to working.

In real-time mode, BG2 is just a dumb click-fest. But taht just my opinion

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.

Wow. Like most RPG's, Baldur's Gate 2 has a sliding scale, which can further be tweaked by choices made to your party itself. While completing the game with one of the known power classes (Kensai-Mage, Monk, etc) and a party comprised of the best NPC's might be easy, it's not so simple with the likes of Mazzy as your front line fighter or Aerie as your only priest. As for tactics? It is laughably unlikely that you simply walked through your first encounter with an Illithid or Kangaxx by clicking on them. The Bridge District roguestone door fight where you pick up the staff of the magi is one of the best fights in any RPG, with tactical issues impossible to recreate with the Wizardry 8, or any first person engine. Real-time with pause was never done better than with Infinity, and none of the 4 other IE games could touch BG2's fights. For an example of a click-fest look no further than KOTOR and KOTOR2, both of which I probably completed with a total of 3 reloads. It's unfortunate that KOTOR, with it's far superior Odyssey engine failed on this level. Baldurs Gate 2 fanboys such as myself are waiting eagerly for Dragon Age, which hopefully will combine the spirit of Baldur's Gate with the technological advancements of KOTOR. Bioware is the last hope for a big-budget party RPG.

Speaking about the Infinity engine, back when it was announced that it was no longer going to be used, some enterprising souls took it upon themselves to build a freeware implementation. I wonder what happened with it? I've been through too many computers, and I lost the link.

To return to the Linux question... have you tried qemu? Some DOS-based games which also run under Win95 ran well with it, but sound remains a problem. I also tried running a Windows shell under Debian which works so-so... in the end I returned to a dual (now triple) boot setup.

Not yet. I've been busy just trying to get sound, period. I did get the windows version of ADOM working in Wine, but other than that and installing both DOSBox and DOSEmu I haven't made any real attempts to get anything working. No sound isn't fun, particularly when I can swap back to WinXP and get my sound back. Unfortunately, I don't want to pay for a new key; and the one I have is bad. I have 28 days to activate it. So I'm either stuck hacking it, accepting blatant extortion from M$, or abandoning Windows all together. I choose door #3. DOSBox, DOSEmu, and Wine should get everything working that I want; and whats left ain't important enough to bother me. I don't even care all that much about sound if my CD burner works and I can burn my MP3s to CD.

azraelck said:

Um... Wizardry 8 came out a little late for DOSBox. It's a Windows app.

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Hm, right. Where was my memory ?

But I think there should be functions to make a game more compatible (sounds freaky, huh ?) with windows, newer windows.

For example, my Windows 98 contaions a small programm called "Make compatible" = mkcompat.exe With it you can control a few parameters of compatibility.

I never found BG2 to be at all easy. Many of those fights were bloody hard, and, years after playing it, I still have horrible memories of countless reloads at key battles. I don't think I ever did win the Roguestone door battle.
What really did me in with BG2 was the overwhelming importance of mage battles; I've never, ever been good with magic in any D&D game, and so trying to successfully manage my spells just did not go well.

I agree with the original poster regarding BG2, it's simply amazing.

Also, if you haven't tried it yet, you should try the Gothic series. They certainly beat the Big O by far in my opinion. Two Worlds isn't bad either.

And welcome to the forums.

I've read so many good things about Gothic 1 and 2, so a while back I decided to try the demo for G2. It made me motion sick and gave me a splitting headache! To make matters worse the controls were arcane and despite looking at the control configurations, the game would not respond accordingly.
So, I gave up on that one.

Gallifrey said:

I've read so many good things about Gothic 1 and 2, so a while back I decided to try the demo for G2. It made me motion sick and gave me a splitting headache! To make matters worse the controls were arcane and despite looking at the control configurations, the game would not respond accordingly.
So, I gave up on that one.

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Heh, same problem here. I remember that being due to my old PC not handling it well so there was a lot of slowdown/stuttering but I have a better PC now so I should try it again. The control sucked though.

I can't play too many 3D games (mostly 1st person but sometimes 3rd person as well) without getting sick. For some reason the exceptions are Wiz 8, Morrowind and Oblivion. Although Oblivion makes me sick for other reasons

I think it's a combination of several things:

- Perspective (height of character view, zoom level, etc.)
- Motion speed (if walking or camera turn speed are too slow or too fast I get nauseous)

With Morrowind I hack the walk speed so it's just right. The environments are very spacious too so you don't get a sense of too many objects moving past you. With tight spaces you see more movement. Make sense? Hehe.

I picked up Zelda Twilight Princess when it came out for the GC and never got far due to motion sickness (and game was just like every other Zelda, *yawn*).

With games like NWN/NWN2 where you can adjust your view and zoom out it's not an issue.