General News - 10 Best Turn-Based Western RPGs

Couchpotato said:

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Me too then I saw Shadowrun. For god's sakes.

To add more salt to the wound also didn't see:

the_dagon said:

Where are Fallout 1 / 2 ?

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My deceased grandma who never played a videogame would make a better list.

joxer said:

My deceased grandma who never played a videogame would make a better list.

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The problem is most of these lists are more about clicks then anything else.

I'm an old fart, so how about these old classics like:
* SSI Gold Box series (the gold standard -- heh, geddit? gold! heh! )
* Knights of Legend (you want details? you got details!)
* Magic Candle (yeeeaaahhh! seriously, if no one wants to remake this gem, I will in my twilight years)
* Deathlord (so you think you are tough? sucker punch!!!)
* Dark Heart of Uukrul (see: Magic Candle above)

… and so on. Really, the 80's were really high on great TB RPGs.

duerer said:

Really, the 80's were really high on great TB RPGs.

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Seems the list author was high.

I think the 80's were really high on shitty games and rosy retrospection from people who look back at it. None of that stuff is even playable anymore, let alone "excellent", but it's all there was, so it's not like you could choose what to get addicted to. Some games like Wizardry aged a little better, but those are rare cases.

Nereida said:

I think the 80's were really high on shitty games and rosy retrospection from people who look back at it. None of that stuff is even playable anymore, let alone "excellent", but it's all there was, so it's not like you could choose what to get addicted to. Some games like Wizardry aged a little better, but those are rare cases.

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It is perfectly okay for not agreeing with me. One point I'd like to emphasize though:

TB games in the '80s were inspired by the boardgames, wargames and pen&paper games of old, therefore their rules were are much more complex than today's games.

As such, these games are really clumsy / slow by today's standards, the very best of'em offer something that is lost in time: nuanced tactical gaming.

Believe me, none of the aforementioned modern games come even close to the tactical richness of say, Knights of Legend -- but again, horses for courses. If you want quick, simple, beer&pretzel tactics, then modern games will play just fine.

One thing is very true: In the 80's developers had to be much more creative, which allowed game creators to emphasize on storytelling rather than eye-candy, and some good stories were written for games.

But in most cases, it was better to just play the tabletop game, or read the original book, because videogames weren't ready to deliver the experience due mostly to clunky UI's, clumsy controls and lack of memory and processing power.

That's why I consider most of the 80's games to be "shitty" (strong word maybe), but their storywriting and RPG value definitely weren't shitty, only really everything else.

Knights of legend was certainly an interesting game back in the day. I've played for a long time and most of the time when people say games were more complicated back in the day I strongly disagree. They just seemed more complicated because of poor interface and lack of online rules. But Knights of Legend was a pretty big exception. I disagree that it was a good game, but it was certainly a very detailed and complex one and teenage me thought it was pretty cool and played it a lot.

CRPG Addict did a replay of it which was a lot of nostalgic fun for me to read, and which I think is pretty accurate. I've linked the final article below which summarizes it, but if your nostalgic about the game like me then it's definitely worth reading through all of his earlier articles where he details his experience playing it.

http://crpgaddict.blogspot.com/2013/05/knights-of-legend-final-rating.html

The original Arkania games could make a showing here too: Blade of Destiny, Star Trail and Shadows over Riva had great combat for the time.

crpgnut said:

The original Arkania games could make a showing here too: Blade of Destiny, Star Trail and Shadows over Riva had great combat for the time.

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For the time maybe, from todays perspective...probably not.

It's not super tactical and because 2/3 of all attacks miss, it also is much longer than it should be.

Also remember that you can only shoot diagonally from the second part onwards.