RPGs you thought aged well but didn't?

Cannot agree about Morrowind but it is may fave game ever so pretty biased.

For me Risen was a surprise. I got a real inkling to play it a few weeks ago and installed it. It was very hard work, clunky, slow and not that enjoyable. I really loved the Gothic and Risen series of games so to think they are no longer replayable is a bit sad really.
 
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Wasteland and Daggerfall. Tried to replay these even with mods and the enhanced editions and could not make it past an hour.
 
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I can’t say that clunky outdated graphics or mechanics have ever really stopped me playing a game.

I agree with many about things like original Deus Ex or Morrowind that once upon a time felt so edgy are now very clunky ... but I have replayed at least some of each over the last year or two and I still love what I originally loved about them.

FPS games in particular seem to suffer being ‘of a certain age’ - but I also tend to play each era a little differently. Just played original DOOM on the Switch and had a blast, but also played DOOM 3 on Switch and loved it - for different reasons and played very differently.

My bigger issues tend to be with games that technically have become a pain in the butt to deal with. A few examples:
- Jedi Knight Mysteries of the Sith - hard time getting the texture update to work on this one, so it looked awful and could be really hard to figure out where you are at.
- Wizards & Warriors - infamous PITA to get going.
- Most games of the early Windows era
- Old Mac games (I have a nice Mac OS8 emulator and played some old stuff over the weekend!)
- Gothic 2 - ugh, I really want to play this, but it opens in a weird semi-window full screen thing on my Surface Pro 7 (and occasionally throws an access violation), won’t run at all on my main gaming system (even after following all the ‘use this patch’ tips on World of Gothic), and seems to work best on my old Alienware 13 that has been problematic and slow in spite of replacing logic board and hybrid drive. I have spent MUCH more time fiddling with system crap than actually playing (not even into Khorinis yet!)
- Many more ...

I honestly think NWN is one of the games that has aged best. The main campaign I can't tell much about, I don't even remember it. I think to have the feeling that it was okay.

I agree. I am actually replaying HotU right now on Android after Beamdog launched a massive patch that makes a ton of visible and invisible changes. I find that NWN remains a great D&D game, sure I play it solo but still have a blast replaying as different character types.
 
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I honestly think NWN is one of the games that has aged best. The main campaign I can't tell much about, I don't even remember it. I think to have the feeling that it was okay.

That said, NWN was always about the multiplayer aspect, with how easy to build a world was as they provided the tools for it, tileset based world builder with scriptable everything… NPCs, items, transitions, sound, lightning, etc. You can do literally anything you want, the only limit was the amount of time you were willing to sink into it. I've seen pretty well done Star Wars mods in NWN.

The Enhanced Edition added modern resolutions, and many options to modernise the general aspect of the game, including reflections, contrast lighting, and such that make the game look pretty good (if obviously not AAA good).

The vanilla character models would look bad now, but luckily with the enhanced edition you can add hi-res texture packs that players don't even need to find manually to play the server, it gets automatically detected and downloaded via steam upon login. This is just an example of the first hi-res human head pack that came up on a google search -
V11G08v.jpg


It holds pretty well nowadays. It blows, say.. Age of Decadence out of the water, which is a pretty well praised modernish game. And there's the same for all kind of creatures, objects, props, scenario, tilesets.. and if there isn't, you can create it. Again, only limited by how much time you want to put in it.

I can say a lot of things about Neverwinter Nights, but not that it didn't age well. Playing the vanilla, non-enhanced edition without mods/haks, yeah, that doesn't hold very well nowadays, but that's not really what the game is today.

It indeed looks much better now. I bought it when it was released for the campaign and was has horribly disappointed. At the recommendation of others I played multiplayer with a group, played the expansions and a few user made modules, and like an Elder Scroll game, Neverwinter Nights has survived because of its modibility. But, your enjoyment of the game, I think depends largely on how much you are willing to explore the material beyond the vanilla content.
 
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- Gothic 2 - ugh, I really want to play this, but it opens in a weird semi-window full screen thing on my Surface Pro 7 (and occasionally throws an access violation), won’t run at all on my main gaming system (even after following all the ‘use this patch’ tips on World of Gothic), and seems to work best on my old Alienware 13 that has been problematic and slow in spite of replacing logic board and hybrid drive. I have spent MUCH more time fiddling with system crap than actually playing (not even into Khorinis yet!)
Have you tried Spine for Gothic? It's an all-in-one patcher and seems to work very well. Unfortunately, Gothic2 has become clunky to me. Sad to say, it was my favorite game for years but I just can't get into it anymore.
 
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Have you tried Spine for Gothic? It's an all-in-one patcher and seems to work very well. Unfortunately, Gothic2 has become clunky to me. Sad to say, it was my favorite game for years but I just can't get into it anymore.

Thanks for the advice! Surprised in my search I never saw Spine - will try it out on my Surface Pro (which is where I want to play it anyway!). I still love the game quite a bit :)
 
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I feel like I am kinda immune to this. I never liked NWN2, not because of the graphics but because the RTwP combat was horrible, especially with that super stupid AI, which just wanted to screw things up. Like: Go attack! -> Ok, as I don't see a good path I will run into this other corridor and activate all traps!
Great ^^

But for old games I haven't replayed a lot and the ones I did I pretty much knew what I got into. And I think I have a pretty good sense in how good or bad it aged.

The only 2 surprises I had so far were not RPGs, so not super fitting in this thread, but will mention them regardless: Master of Orion 2 - because of it's terrible sound quality. Game might still be good, but that low quality sound with all the white noise in it...horrible. ^^
The other example is Alpha Centauri. I was genuinely surprised by how bad the interface was back then.
 
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Unfortunately, the author told me these are going to break in the next official patch. That's not a bad thing mind you - it means shaders and such I believe. They are slowly implementing stuff that they used to call the "new renderer".

In other news, Toro has added a bunch of new animations in his hak. It includes some lip syncing.

If you join the Vault and nwnx discords you can see some of the other stuff they working on.
 
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Unfortunately, the author told me these are going to break in the next official patch. That's not a bad thing mind you - it means shaders and such I believe. They are slowly implementing stuff that they used to call the "new renderer".
I remember you mentioning this before. Can't wait to see the final render. Yes I'm a die-hard fan of both NWN games as most already know thanks to all the mods.:)
 
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I don't think any game has aged well. Only nostalgia and appreciation for the gameplay has kept them going. Civ4 for instance I played for years. Fallout 1 and 2 maybe be far better than the new ones as games but they are ugly as sin now.

Its the nature of technology and marketing pressure for planned obsolescence to create ever new ways to get you to spend your money.
 
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I remember you mentioning this before. Can't wait to see the final render. Yes I'm a die-hard fan of both NWN games as most already know thanks to all the mods.:)

They just allowed for the transforming of Visual Effects, so you can create accessories like hair, hats, facial hair, nicotine delivery devices, glasses, etc. and position them no matter the race, size or shape of your character.
 
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I don't think any game has aged well. Only nostalgia and appreciation for the gameplay has kept them going. Civ4 for instance I played for years. Fallout 1 and 2 maybe be far better than the new ones as games but they are ugly as sin now.

Its the nature of technology and marketing pressure for planned obsolescence to create ever new ways to get you to spend your money.

Well, you could say that "aged well" means that they didn't age badly and they are percieved just as good as (or close to) before.

Pretty apparent if you compare 2D game with a 3D game from 1992 or so.
In German we got the Term "Grafik-Blender" for games which you mostly play because of the graphics, often having lackluster gameplay. 20 years later, all what is left is the lackluster gameplay.

There might be the rare occasion when a game actually works better than when it released, which is when gameplay is great, but it's graphics were not "bad enough" to be considered non-essential at release. Like a racing game which just cannot keep up with it's shiny super modern competitors. After 10 years and you go back you might not be able to tell the lack in graphics anymore. The competitor just looks as crappy. But now the good gameplay might have an easier time to stand out.
Second type of game which be the ones which can "grow on you". Don't think I personally had that experience though.
 
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Its the nature of technology and marketing pressure for planned obsolescence to create ever new ways to get you to spend your money.

That isn't planned obsolesence. Planned obsolesence is when you make something to less of your maximum ability so it will prematurely wear out and need to be replaced. Nobody making Fallout 1 & 2 thought, hmm, we could make the graphics and UI a lot better, but then we won't be able to sell Fallout 3.
 
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I think there are quite a few games that have aged well especially when you compare them to the often dumbed-down gameplay of most modern games. I'm not sure how anyone could think that no game has aged well.
 
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For me more importantly than graphics is the user interface and game mechanics. If I can get the hang of the game, got hooked and made progress (with gameplay, story .. etc.) in the first hour then for me the game is successful and I care less about graphics. A couple of very old examples that come to mind are Dark Heart of Uukrul and Circuit's Edge.
 
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Yeah, I'm not sure any games age badly while at the same time think that all games probably age badly, and while this may seem like an impossible statement it's really not.

The main hindrance to a young person getting into an old game is that young people naturally prefer to play things that their mates play. There is a much stronger currency bias in the young. And graphics and gameplay have little to do with it. I mean, minecraft has literally shit graphics, but has remained the no.1 game for kids for about a decade now. Likewise, the new hot game for kids is something called Roblox, a game who's graphics make NWN 1 look like current gen.

Some kids will get exposure to old games, but usually from parents or uncles or because of a natural interest in the history of their chosen hobby, and for these people personal taste will be dictating their choices more than such things as graphics or UI or whatever.

This isn't to say one can't claim a game has aged poorly though, and still be factually correct, but as someone mentioned earlier, this will often be games that were mostly sold just on their graphics in the first place many years ago or it will be because the game has a too-complex system to be faffed with learning yet another computer game's systems via an older and less refined UI.

Gothic always was clunky, even when it was new. NWN always was a bit ugly, even when it was new. The old blobbers always were over-intimidating and over-complex for the visual reward, even when they were new.

So I'm not sure I can answer this question for myself nor anyone I know, as I've never been one to associate graphics with enjoyment beyond the single monumental leap from blobbers to isometric, which is more about playstyle than graphics really.
 
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Roblox isn’t new, my kids played it when they were little and they’re now 18 and 22.

Anyway I’m not sure how to answer the question properly because if I thought it aged well then how do I know it didn’t?
 
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