Dark Sun: Wake of the Ravager - The Greatest Forgotten RPG

drum said:

Hmmm, is it that much 'forgotten'? In my colledge days it was still widely played while Baldur's Gate sequel was on its way, as well as X-COM, these 2 were like enduring classics. Ultima 7, which was released in the 1st half of 90s as well, was more 'forgotten' for us at the time.

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That's funny, because we were the exact opposite. I'd never heard of this game until coming to this site a few years ago, but ll the people I knew in the late 90's were huge Ultima fans that were pissed we couldn't get it to work with Win98!

bjon045 said:

Shattered Lands has superior graphics and is better balanced and sticks to the setting better - in WotR metal weapons are everywhere and the environment is far too lush and magical. And for some reason WotR decides to bump the difficulty (without telling the user) to maximum if you decide to import your party. Both are very buggy but the bugs are not too severe as long as you maintain a lot of saves.

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I thought I was crazy after reading everyone saying Shattered Lands was the sequel to Wake, I remembered the opposite. Turns out I was right. People, use a wiki if you're going to post false information.

I only played Wake in the old days till the Masterpiece Collection came out. Wake blew all the other SSI games out of the water, for me. They were by far the buggiest games but had the most heart. I still remember getting giddy when I found El's Drinker... nothing like evil, unique swords...

I haven't forgotten this game its just that no one has picked it up or made a game in the setting in years. I still have the books that were released in the early 70's and 80's. The last I heard the Darksun campaign was cancelled . I hope they also make a new computer game it would be great with the technology nowadays.

Sir_Brennus said:

Strange enumeration to highlight D&D's best.
DKoK is by far the worst Krynn game. Unimaginative and repetetive.
Menzoberranzan is under its (nowadays also ugly surface) an uninspired hack'n slay.
I always considered the Ravenloft series the weakest of all SSI D&D games.

Why not talk about Pools of Darkness? The first Krynn game? Or maybe (gasp) Buck Rogers? The stability of DQoK is shaky, but it much better than most of the games mentioned above…

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Whaaaaat? ok, "the first krynn game", Champions, I played and took my party on to deathknights, which was easily my favourite of the three. Deathknights was awesome. I think you need to learn to play Clerics of Majere and turn those undead hordes to screaming red squares. Also, I played all these on Amiga, which had superior sound and graphics. It wasn't until Dark Queen that PC version caught up with the custom sprites rather than just the "pick your parts" method. And the PC sound was awful. If you didn't have an amiga back then you're not a gamer!!

SirJames said:

If you didn't have an amiga back then you're not a gamer!!

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Oi, not all of us had parents that were rich enough to buy us these experiences. Some of us had to make do with 4-color CGA and PC-speaker sounds. It's probably hard to imagine these days, but having a an IBM-clone didn't prevent me from enjoying the titles thoroughly anyway. It wasn't all about the gfx and fx really. It was about what it did in your head

SirJames said:

Whaaaaat? ok, "the first krynn game", Champions, I played and took my party on to deathknights, which was easily my favourite of the three. Deathknights was awesome. I think you need to learn to play Clerics of Majere and turn those undead hordes to screaming red squares. Also, I played all these on Amiga, which had superior sound and graphics. It wasn't until Dark Queen that PC version caught up with the custom sprites rather than just the "pick your parts" method. And the PC sound was awful. If you didn't have an amiga back then you're not a gamer!!

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Played Pool of Radiance; Curse of the Azur Bonds; Champions of Krynn and Buck Rogers on the Amiga

Finally sold my A1200 (which was my second Amiga and third Commodore) in 1993, after having a DOS machine and an Amiga side by side for about 2 years (IIRC).

About the advantage of the Amiga versions: The only one that look substantially better (and played better) was Pool of Radiance, because it was developed in Europe by UBI-Soft. The others featured digitized sound and little more colourful grafics (if so). The music (I especially loathe Buck Rogers for it) was awful, though.

IMHO the PC version of Pools of Darkness was superior to the Amiga version and was released about a year earlier than Dark Queen of Krynn.

I'm also of the opinion that DKoK was the best of the series. More non-linear than the rest with more difficult combat.

Ravenloft: Stone prophet is one of the greatest RPG's ever made and far better than it's prequel and most of the gold box games. The highlight of it was certainly the complex dungeons with numerous hidden rooms and the brilliant story telling which culminates in one of the best ending cinematics of all time.

Sir_Brennus said:

Strange enumeration to highlight D&D's best.
DKoK is by far the worst Krynn game. Unimaginative and repetetive.
Menzoberranzan is under its (nowadays also ugly surface) an uninspired hack'n slay.
I always considered the Ravenloft series the weakest of all SSI D&D games.

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*gasp*

Ravenloft: Stone Prophet was one on my favorite D&D games of all times. The world was quite immersive for me. I still remember some of those haunting sounds.