Recommendation RPG for a PIII era PC?

Hi,

I've got a good old Pentium III 500 PC with 392 MB RAM (W2K), also an 800/392 one.

Can you recommend me a good ole RPG? I'm not a gamer, didn't find the time and it's very long ago I played an RPG; it was Lands of Lore "throne of chaos"... Later I liked the Myst series (Myst and Riven especially... OK, isn't an RPG I guess).

Hey I played LOL I under DOSbox the other day and it was still great! (But I got stuck in the catwalk caverns and didn't finish it yet).

I pretty much like things like riddles, also fighting but not tooo much, good landscapes, good athmosphere, medieval athmosphere, also the whole ork and elves stuff...

Gothic I?

Thanks in advance

That rig ought to be able to handle Fallout 1 & 2 (allthough that's more sci-fi). Allso, it handles Planescape:Torment, which can be difficult to get though (at least legaly...). Both are truly great cRPG's though.

Übereil

Baldurs Gate 1/2, also I am not quite sure about Arcanum but its worth a try.

Should be able to run Gothic 1 as well, amazing RPG, but relatively steep learning curve.

I skipped the PIII generation of CPUs, so I dont have any personal experience of what was "cutting edge" at that point of time.

I've run Arcanum, Fallout, Baldurs Gate I/II and Icewind Dale I/II on a PII, so those should all be fine. Sea Dogs (a pirating game with some rpg elements) also ran on that rig. Then there are the late Might & Magics (VI-VIII) if you are into hack n slash. And my old favourite Demise: Rise of the Kutan, also hack n slash in its purest form.

Probably runs:
Lionheart and Pool of Radiance 2. Both have playable demos that you can use to test them on your hardware.

Might work:
Morrowind might run, but if it does that's "barely".
Gothic I (big "might", check the minimum specs.)
Neverwinter Nights could be playable on a below min specs machine with the right graphics card (I somehow got it to run on my P2 but the framerate was beyond terrible.

The infinity engine games (Icewind Dale & Baldurs Gate) are excellent for coop if thats your cup of tea

EDIT: If it is atmosphere you want then Gothic I stands out among the mentioned titles. Baldurs Gate would come second, but is quite far behind... Gothic has lots of combat but you can often run away from enemies during your exploration. Arcanum and Fallout (which I didnt get into due to the setting) also have decent storylines and well thought out worlds. Morrowind is a sandbox game so there is as much exploration as you can ask for.

Might and Magic is probably not what you are after

EDIT2: Ultima IX should run on a P3 but is IMHO a true stinker. It has riddles (particularly of the jump platforms and find an obscure button type) aplenty though...

There really are NOT (m)any CRPGs that will NOT run on that system.
You can pretty much run all the best ones.
BG2, Fallout2, Morrowind, Icewindale, Planescape: torment etc....

In your situation I would just get the Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind game of the year edition and play it like there's no tomorrow.
It has the game itself + 2 expansion packs.

Should be very easy to get. And cheap! Great value, really.
I have it too sitting right there on my shelf

Just buy it. You won't regret it. It's pretty much the best CRPG made in the 2000's. And its in first-person realtime like lands of lore.
It has atmosphere and scenery like no other game after or before it.

Some screenshots:
http://www.gamershell.com/pc/the_elder_scrolls_iii_morrowind_goty/screenshots.html

Minimum system requirements:
Windows ME/98 128 MB RAM; Windows XP/2000 256 MB RAM; 500 MHz Intel Pentium III, Celeron, or AMD Athlon processor; 8x CD/DVD-ROM Drive; 1 GB free hard disk space; Windows swapfile; DirectX 8.1 (included); 32MB Direct3D Compatible video card and DirectX 8.1 compatible driver; DirectX 8.1 compatible sound card; Keyboard; Mouse

Some reviews:
http://www.metacritic.com/games/platforms/pc/elderscrolls3morrowmind?q=morrowind

Case closed!

Is Morrowind guaranteed to run well on such an old system? While the minimum specs might be met I recall lots of complaints from people playing the game on 1GHz+ systems... Tho I guess the GOTY is so cheap by now that it's worth a shot.

Morrowind does have alot of content but I found it rather dull and lacking in Atomsphere, get gothic, or even better get the Baldurs Gate games you won't regret putting the time in either of them and tehy have an amazing storyline and NPCs really the world just feels alive

I remember playing morrowind with a 600mhz P3 with 256MB RAM.
Ran fine.
You might have to do some tweaking here and there and disable some effects
and lower the view distance a bit but you can definately play it with that system.
Just don't have any heavy applications running in the background like Antivirus or firewall etc...

I can't really speak about Gothic 1 as I pretty much hated the game and everything about it, never understood what's so great about it. But there's a demo for Gothic 1 right? So I guess you could try before you buy...

When speaking about 2d RPG's I should also add Divine Divinity that despite it's Diablo look-alike interface is an excellent deep RPG experience with loads of sidequests and a huge world.

Gothic will definitely run fine on the P3-800 machine as long as the rig has a GeForce 2 GTS or faster graphics card. When Gothic came out in Germany in March 2001, I played it on a then fairly high-end Athlon 800, 256MB RAM and GeForce 2 GTS on the highest detail settings with only minimal performance issues.

An old game with some puzzles you might enjoy would be Betrayal at Krondor.

I had a nice PIII 700 laptop that I got loads of mileage out of when traveling once a month for a joint development project ... played loads of Jedi Knight on that, but it wouldn't run Unreal Tournament. Could also play all of the Infinity engine things.

I'd recommend trying out the Spiderweb games, Avernum 1-4 and Geneforge 1-4. They should run very good on a PIII rig, heck, I've played them on a 90 Mhz Pentium I machine.

OK, thanks for your recommendations. I've had a look at some websites of Morrowind and Gothic, because I've heard of both... I'll have a look on the others as well. Looks all pretty interesting, if only a day had 100 hours!

I think on the P3/800 I'll get some problems, because of the video device. It's an IBM thinkpad with just a poor ATI device... The P3 500 machine has an elsa erazor II device...

So a lot recommendations, e.g. Morrowind, are probably on the upper scale of what is possible on that machine.

Wurstwasser said:

So a lot recommendations, e.g. Morrowind, are probably on the upper scale of what is possible on that machine.

Click to expand...

That was what I was thinking ... my Toshiba Portege had a 4MB card ...

Wurstwasser said:

OK, thanks for your recommendations. I've had a look at some websites of Morrowind and Gothic, because I've heard of both... I'll have a look on the others as well. Looks all pretty interesting, if only a day had 100 hours!

I think on the P3/800 I'll get some problems, because of the video device. It's an IBM thinkpad with just a poor ATI device... The P3 500 machine has an elsa erazor II device...

So a lot recommendations, e.g. Morrowind, are probably on the upper scale of what is possible on that machine.

Click to expand...

If you dont have a "decent" 3D card you might as well write off Morrowind (wont start at all if the graphics card doesnt have at least 32MB of RAM IIRC), NWN, Ultima IX, and Gothic.

Betrayal at Krondor is good, but if you are ready to go that old school I'd also recommend the Realms of Arkania trilogy

Corwin said:

An old game with some puzzles you might enjoy would be Betrayal at Krondor.

Click to expand...

BaK is borderline unplayable nowadays due to the first generation 3D graphics. :/

I would recommend Return to Krondor as a warm-up though. It´s a rather easy, turn-based RPG. One of the most beautiful RPGs of it´s time, but a bit short on content. It will take you only 20-30 hours to finish.
Of course RtK is not in the same league as Gothic, Morrowind, Baldur´s Gate 2, Planescape Torment, Fallout or Betrayal at Krondor but it´s a good and easy game to get back into serious RPGs. Some of the other mentioned titles are rather unforgiving to inexperienced players.

Gothic (with JemyM´s FAQ, and maybe even a gamepad if you have one) is an obvious recommendation. It may take some time to get used to the controls though, especially in combination with accepting that you´re at the bottom of the food chain and that it´s correct to lose against everything which looks dangerous.

Fallout is another game everyone recommends. Also a great game. It´s no shame to use a tool to bump up your skills in the beginning though.

Divine Divinity is somewhere between RPG and action-RPG. It can still be bought for cheap. DivDiv takes a few hours to get out of mediocrity. Then it´s great.

Diablo 1 (single player) or Diablo 2 (multiplayer) are also obvious recommendations. The only good Diablo clone I remember from that time is Nox. Nox is pure action combined with great graphics, at its time. The typical item hunting is significantly reduced.


edit: Reading your post again, the game you want is probably Gothic. Just be warned that it´s hit or miss. Maybe you´ll be screaming at the controls after 30 minutes and smash your keyboard. Or maybe, more likely, it will be one of the best gaming experiences you´ve ever had. Or maybe even both.

Wurstwasser said:

OK, thanks for your recommendations. I've had a look at some websites of Morrowind and Gothic, because I've heard of both... I'll have a look on the others as well. Looks all pretty interesting, if only a day had 100 hours!

I think on the P3/800 I'll get some problems, because of the video device. It's an IBM thinkpad with just a poor ATI device... The P3 500 machine has an elsa erazor II device...

So a lot recommendations, e.g. Morrowind, are probably on the upper scale of what is possible on that machine.

Click to expand...

If your graphics hardware is that old I would forget about all the graphics intense stuff. Go for the classics. Fallout, Ultima 7, 7b (but not Ultima 8 aka. "Super Avatar Brothers"), Diablo. Maybe the Infinity Engine games run correctly.
Realms of Arkania series (DSA in Germany) is great for patient, careful players.

The infinity engine games will run perfectly well on almost any P3. I ran them on a P2 with an S3 graphics card (with 4MB of Video RAM), and I cant imagine his video card is any worse than that.