CRPG Addict - Review Roundup (Part One)

Dhruin mentioned in a previous newsbit that we don't cover CRPG Addict's blog as much as we should. I agree completely. I've enjoyed his blogs immensely. So I'm going to be playing catch-up and list all of the games he has played up until this point. This will be the first part in a series of newsbits to catalog all of the games he has played. It would be impractical to list them all in one newsbit.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with CRPG Addict, here is an introduction to his blog and here are his self-imposed rules:

THE RULES
1. I am following a list of CRPGs in chronological order derived from several sources—primarily Wikipedia (both regular CRPGs and roguelikes) and MobyGames.
2. Only games released for DOS or Windows.
3. I cannot use cheats.
4. I cannot look at FAQs or walkthroughs until I have finished playing.
5. I don't have to win every game, but I must play for at least six hours.
6. I can only reload a game if my entire party is wiped out or the game otherwise forces me to reload

Basically he is attempting to play every RPG ever made for the PC. He is using various lists to play them all in order from when they were published.

He hasn't always succeeded in playing them in order and has modified his rules a few times to include other lists (he started out only using Wiki's PC RPG list) and he later included text-based rpgs, but mostly CRPG Addict has succeeded in playing them in order.

I will include his thoughts about the games he's played and try to keep them mostly spoiler free. Now onto the games:

Aklebeth - I played Akalabeth more than four months ago now (the idea of a blog not having occurred to me back then), and I was surprised by how quick it went. There really isn't much to it; it's more of a demonstration project than a game. After you create your initial character and buy a few supplies (your weapons are limited to a rapier, an axe, a bow, and a magic amulet), you head over to Lord British's castle to get your first monster-killing quest, and then start plumbing the dungeons.

Rogue - The end result is that although the game would probably take only a few hours to complete if you could constantly save and reload, it took me four months to complete playing it "fair." And let's be clear: for three months and 28 days of those four months, I was playing with different characters than the one that ultimately won the game. Most of the time it takes to win Rogue involves playing, dying, screaming, and restarting at Level 1.

Temple of Apshai - Verdict: an interesting early dungeon crawl, pretty cool for its time, but without enough story or lore to tempt modern gamers.

Ultima I - Verdict: Should you play Ultima I? Absolutely, without question, if you intend to play any of the later Ultima games. It introduces you to the lore of the land and the basic mythology of what will become Britannia. The dungeon crawls are fun and the space stuff is silly but inoffensive. Finally, as you've seen, it takes a mere few hours to win.

Wizardry I - As a landmark in the history of CRPGs, it was fun and interesting to play. I'm not sorry I did. But neither am I sorry I played it only once.

Telengard - Telengard isn't really a game you play for a long time, since there's no way to "win." Instead, it's a game you blow an hour or two on here or there, perhaps competing for highest score or fastest leveling with a friend. The manual actually encourages this with several suggestions for "multi-player" games: "see which player can advance his character to the highest experience level in a given time period"; "see who can map the most dungeon spaces of a given dungeon level" (this is followed by the helpful suggestion to "use graph paper").

Ultima II - Even if you're an Ultima fan—hell, especially if you're an Ultima fan—I encourage you not to play this game. I've played many games with boring gameplay and many games with idiotic plots. It is a rare to find one that combines both.

Ultima III - My first impressions of Ultima III: Exodus are that it redeems Ultima II. It feels like a real game instead of Richard Garriott screwing around. It (at least so far) keeps the game grounded in more standard fantasy conventions without involving light swords and rocketships. Combat is more tactical and interesting (if longer), equipment and items are more varied, the magic system is more sophisticated, dungeons have a reason to exist, and the overall gameplay, to me, is a lot more satisfying.

Alternate Reality: The City - So what, in God's name, is going on in this game? What does this medieval setting have to do with aliens? Why is everyone trying to kill me? What is the goal of the game?

It turns out that the City was the first in a planned six-game series, but only the City and the Dungeon ever got made. There is no way to "win" Alternate Reality: the City, and the only reason to play really is to build up your character for the Dungeon, which never received a DOS port and thus isn't on my list. Life's too short to play just to mess around. Next game.

Autoduel - My six hours is up, and I'm tossing in the towel. I know I'm opening myself up to accusations of half-assing two games in a row, but Autoduel was about the least fun I've ever had with a CRPG—and to be honest, I'd debate applying that label to this game. In any event, I can't find any evidence that there's a main quest or a way to "win" Autoduel, so all it's doing is keeping me from The Bard's Tale.

I'm stopping here for today and will continue tomorrow starting with The Bard's Tale.

From this point forward CRPG Addict has implemented his own rating system for CRPGs. He calls it the GIMLET (Game Innovation, Merriment, Likability and Engagement Test). It's one of the only scoring system that makes any kind of sense to me. It still is highly subjective, but it beats the pants off of a numeric score based on a whim or with little to no feedback from a reviewer on how they rate the games they play.

I confess, I have become addicted to his blog. He's covered some games that I've not only never played, but a few that I've never even heard about.

And his GIMLET system has become something of a guide for me. It's quite subjective, but covers about the same areas I value in an RPG.

Same here. I never would have known about the greatness of Zork if he hadn't of blogged about it.

Couldn't agree more about his GIMLET. It's the only scoring system that I actually acknowledge has having some value. I don't put much weight behind those ludicrously high scores from other sites where an 8 is just an average game.

I've not followed this blog before, but even these tidbits intrigue me. Well, except for the lack of love for Autoduel. I loved that game and it remains one of my most frequently replayed games (although on Apple ][ not DOS - though I doubt there's much difference).

Thanks skavenhorde for the roundup.

Yea, I sorta went "GRRRRRR" when he mentioned Autoduel as well. The game has it's flaws, but my experience with it was a lot better than his (I replayed it a few years ago). I can sorta understand though since he is doing this blog and it is a very difficult game to survive in if you go too fast. It takes much more than 6 hours to really start to get going in that game.

I'm glad you enjoyed it. Expect more golden-oldy gaming goodness tomorrow.

I have been to the side occasionally in the past, but missed a lot of updates it seems.

I've just finished reading his final words on Pool of Radiance and nearly cried. I wholehearty stress everything he writes about the game, that continues to be my personal top rated CRPG for 21 years.

It's not a game for me, it's a religion. And if someone calls any other Goldbox game better, because of higher level caps, the "FIX" function, better graphics or even sound, i'd just say: I don't care.

PoR FTW!

Have you tried the FRUA conversions for PoR?

I wrote this in the comments when he first started playing PoR:

There was a conversion done on Pool of Radiance and Curse of the Azure Bonds for FRUA (Forgotten Realms: Unlimited Adventures). These were done by Ray Dyer who has an amazing list of modules he did based on old TSR module for the P&P versions of D&D.

You can find all of his modules here

The goldbox conversions are Game39 (Pool of Radiance) and Game40 (Curse of the Azure Bonds) His are the modules named "game00 - game40" and "gamer1 - gamer10" Truly wonderful modules for FRUA.

You can learn more about these games over at the website The Realm.

The Goldbox conversions are basically the same games, but with all of the added benefits of the FRUA engine and hack.

I have to agree about PoR

It represents the perfect CRPG experience - if you take into account when it was released.

Originally Posted by skavenhorde
Have you tried the FRUA conversions for PoR?

I wrote this in the comments when he first started playing PoR:

There was a conversion done on Pool of Radiance and Curse of the Azure Bonds for FRUA (Forgotten Realms: Unlimited Adventures). These were done by Ray Dyer who has an amazing list of modules he did based on old TSR module for the P&P versions of D&D.

You can find all of his modules here

The goldbox conversions are Game39 (Pool of Radiance) and Game40 (Curse of the Azure Bonds) His are the modules named "game00 - game40" and "gamer1 - gamer10" Truly wonderful modules for FRUA.

You can learn more about these games over at the website The Realm.

The Goldbox conversions are basically the same games, but with all of the added benefits of the FRUA engine and hack.

Thanks for the advice, but…
did I say religion? I played the FRUA version and liked it. Too bad it does't work properly with Dungeon Craft

Hell, I even played the NWN1 remake, which was pretty inaccurate, though. The NWN2 remake was good (and beautiful), although buggy.

I am not as nearly as fond of CotAB as I am of PoR.

W00t! I agree about Pool of Radiance. What a great game! Someone wrote Pool of Radiance using either NWN or the NWN2 engine too, and it's also quite fun. I never did play any FRUA modules. It sucks that everything D&D goes through the sadists at Wizards of the Coast. They've totally botched computerized AD&D.

I had Telengard and Temple of Apshai many moons ago.

I had completely forgotten about Telengard until I read the name and it jogged my memory. Temple of Apshai I read about somewhere recently.

Anyone remember Adventure Construction Set? I probably spent ~100 hours messing around with that. There was a sample game based on Mesopotamian mythology that it came with, and you could create your own adventures with it. In the old days, before girls were interesting…

There's a game that would be cool for an indie to license - the Apshai IP. It would be fairly useless as far as licenses go, but way cool. (Update: Looks like UK-based System 3 may have the rights to that one.)

And yes, I used to play with the Adventure Construction Set quite a bit. Made 2 or 3 pretty sizable adventured, IIRC, though I really wasn't able to share it with many people.

I would like to thank everyone involved in this thread for reminding me of Autoduel.

I also had a very different experience. This is one of the games I remember from my youth most fondly. I remember it having an open world with an arena and jobs to take, character and car development, and no main quest line. But that doesn't bother me at all. While I understand some people's complaints, I played and enjoyed the hell ouut of Oblivion, and I always quit the main quest line after getting my free horse from those monks. Give me a large open world, and I'm a happy monkey who will imagine his own story.

I remember Autoduel being difficult and, hence, rewarding. I remember it's old-school-RPG feel when you went on certain roads too early — how harshly you were punished with a destroyed car and/or dead driver. I remember how close to certain death it was to get out of your car with bandits about….and how thrilling it was to manage an escape on foot.

But this was all a long time ago. I'm looking forward to testing my memories:

http://www.abandonia.com/en/games/492/Autoduel.html

Mount that to DosBox to drift partially into my past.

And thanks, Skaven. I'll have to try that revamp of PoR, too. I have way more games to play than free time right now.

Edit: Creating a driver now, mind wandering. Someone should make a modern Autoduel. In the unlikely event that happened, I'm sure it'd be ruined by some flashy company assaulting me with the visceral thrills they are so convinced I crave. In my little perfect world, Autoduel would be remade by the folks who made Darkwind. It'd be real time (with the addition to Darkwind's engine of being able to get out of your car and walk around) until combat, which is when Darkwind's turn-based system would kick in. Without hope, do we have anything at all?

That's one sweet blog! He went all the way back to the Temple of Apshai?? Yow. I remember playing that on a friend's Atari. I think it loaded from a cassette tape.

Alternate Reality… now that would be a remake. We haven't had Karaoke in our RPGs for so long… Maybe that's one of Larian's new projects?

That is one sweet game unlimited adventures that is….found dungeon craft…wish there was some easy way to convert the UA modules to it, seems like an awesome updated program.

Is this the same guy that claimed Ruins of Myth Drannor was the last released turn based cRPG and didn't bother to check up on Temple of Elemental Evil? If so, bah humbug!

Not to sound even more like the proverbial heretic, but I also preferred Curse of the Azure Bonds to Pool of Radiance. One reason is that I played it first, the second for the overall plot and setting.

More seriously, this is a decent blog. Good to see some of the old classics getting some love.

I just read his entries, great blog. Having been in my early teens when a lot of these were released, fond memories are brought back. If I were to embark on this journey I would have made an additional rule: Only EGA graphics or later. Those games with the 3 color CGA are just unbearable.

I was so mad I started playing Autoduel again. Y'now what? He's right!

Back in the day we must have been used to hard games or, more likely, had our twitch finger geared to the low frame rate to target better and avoid getting shot.

Right in what way? If you don't do the arena for quite awhile to get a better car then you'll be a smoking ruin once you hit the streets.

I still like it to this day. Though I hear Roadwar was a lot better. I never did play that game.

Originally Posted by skavenhorde
I still like it to this day. Though I hear Roadwar was a lot better. I never did play that game.

The Roadwar games remain on my list of classics to try someday. While I was still gaming on the Apple ][, my best friend was playing both Roadwar 2k and Europa on his PC XT in good ol' CGA. If I remember correctly, combat was turn-based and far more tactical whereas Autoduel was real-time action. But I fondly remember watching him play it even though I never actually played it myself.