PC RPG Gaming - Taking the dive

That's because you're trying to play it on laptop.

forget all those (specially Gothic). Get Knights of the Old Republic NOW!

Originally Posted by CountChocula
I had a really hard time with the controls for Gothic 1, and gave up after about an hour trying to figure it out.

The trick is not to try figure it out. Look it up.

Originally Posted by wolfing
forget all those (specially Gothic). Get Knights of the Old Republic NOW!

KotOR 2 has one of best writing in video games ever imo but KotOR came out on consoles too.

Yep, they were actually made for consoles and ported later.

So what's the best way to get a hold of these games? Steam? GOG? I have no idea what I'm doing, lol.

Gothic

Can't understand why no one mentioned this one :
Fallout
One of the only RPGs I've replayed till the end multiple times.

Knights of the Old Republic is available on steam. So you would need to download steam and buy it from them.

Originally Posted by Gorath
The trick is not to try figure it out. Look it up.

I tried and figured it out almost instantly. Perhaps knowing Adventure games was a plus ?

Originally Posted by Gorath
The trick is not to try figure it out. Look it up.

I did, even downloaded the official manual. There are some things that were not explained in the manual, like how to take inventory items from a container, etc. IIRC, it's a somewhat strange system, I think you had to press a couple keys for many of the functions. I always remap keys for every game as I use a Nostromo, and in all the Gothic and Risen games I seem to recall there were usually a couple of keys that were not possible to remap.

At any rate, I only played for about an hour, so I might go back and try it again in the future. By the time I got it installed properly with whatever patches you need so it can run on a modern computer without crashing on startup, I was probably ready to give up too quickly.

I bought gothic 1, 2, 3 and 4 together in a package deal on Steam. Gothic 4 is really bad, don't play it. It's the only game I played where I kept thinking it was going to get better and played the entire game but hated it.

I skipped gothic 2 and tried Gothic 3 for a little while, but there was some sort of texture issue I couldn't resolve with G3. Will probably go back and try Gothic 3 again at some point. I later bought Risen during a Steam sale and had a weird bug where my character's head kept disappearing, I think I fixed that, but later on an NPC's head disappeared and never figured out what the problem was.

Originally Posted by CountChocula

I bought gothic 1, 2, 3 and 4 together in a package deal on Steam. Gothic 4 is really bad, don't play it. I skipped gothic 2 and tried Gothic 3 for a little while, but there was some sort of texture issue I couldn't resolve. Will probably go back and try Gothic 3 again at some point.

Most of the graphics/texture issues were fixed in the 1.75 Community Patch.
Gothic2 is a great game and is easier to play than G1 because there is an alternative control scheme which uses the mouse in a more normal way.

Gothic 4 wasn't a terrible game IMO. It was a terrible gothic experience but not a terrible game.

Looking at the games Fluent has really liked in his posts I think gothic 4 could be a good choice for him if he can run it. Also risen 1, again if it will run.

Originally Posted by sakichop
Gothic 4 wasn't a terrible game IMO. It was a terrible gothic experience but not a terrible game.

Looking at the games Fluent has really liked in his posts I think gothic 4 could be a good choice for him if he can run it. Also risen 1, again if it will run.

I have to disagree strongly about Gothic 4. It was the first Gothic game I ever played, so I certainly wasn't comparing it to the previous games in the series.

It's really one of the worst RPGs I've ever played. I played through the entire game, because I kept expecting it to get better.

- the dialogue made me cringe every time a character spoke. I felt pity for the voice actors who had to read that crap
- there are only about 4 different character models recycled, so all the NPCs have twin brothers and sisters everywhere and it's hard to sort out who is who
- the combat is horrible, because you take one step backward and suddenly all the monsters stop fighting
- worst of all the story made absolutely no sense

The opening demo area was not too bad, and the graphics looked pretty, which was what convinced me to buy it. (and I paid full price)

Originally Posted by Fluent
So what's the best way to get a hold of these games? Steam? GOG? I have no idea what I'm doing, lol.

Depends on the game, but steam, gamer's gate & GOG should handle most of your PC-gaming needs. Some games might also need Origin, but those are not nearly as common.

I agree that Arcania wasn't all bad.

Considering that Fluent seems to think Kingdoms of Amalur is a fantastic game, I'd say Arcania is a natural choice - and all other Gothics would be a step up. It's better to start low

Thanks again for all the suggestions.

I should have mentioned that I have played pretty much all the cross-platform RPGs available on consoles, like the Elder Scrolls games, Risen, Divinity 2, etc. I'm more interested in playing games that only came out for the PC that I missed over the years.

Arcania was pretty bad, at least the demo was. My dad and I played and we didn't really enjoy it. I've been meaning to give it another shot at some point though. I remember the font size and text in the demo was damn near impossible to read, even on a 42" LCD screen. I also remember some pretty horrid dialog. But yeah, I'll try it again on the 360 sometime and see if I can't find some things to like about it.

Had a quick look around Steam - picked up a game no one in this thread has recommended yet, Divine Divinity. Any thoughts on this game? I watched a few Youtube videos and it looked interesting. Was this a good place to start my PC gaming? It's probably no Baldur's Gate, but it looked fun enough.

Divine Divinity's quite good, but prepare yourself for a slightly overlong tutorial dungeon. After that it opens up a lot. It's got some good tongue-in-cheek references to common fantasy tropes, too.

Divinity is great, just 50 hours too long.

If you've played the terrible Risen port you know what to expect from Gothic 1 and 2. They're very similar and much better (than the port).

You should create a GOG account through the banner at the top. Almost everything is on sale sooner or later. So unless you want to play something now, simply wait for a 50% or even 75% off deal.
Another site to watch is GreenManGaming. Make sure only to buy Steam keys from them, and don't forget that their discounts only work for 1 game at a time. CheapShark of the prices on all the big portals.

You might also want to check out http://www.deals4downloads.com/

It's a helpful site that tracks sales deals on Steam, GOG, Amazon, Origin and about a dozen other digital download stores.

Originally Posted by DArtagnan
I agree that Arcania wasn't all bad.

I disagree and Arcania was all bad.
It was a slap to the face of all Gothic fans. Yes they've polished it, etc, etc - but to call that game Gothic4 was a simple sacrilege and a con job. Hell I've bought it expecting more of Gothic and instead I got a game I'd never buy if it had another name.

Also it's not a natural switch from KoA or to KoA - Arcania doesn't have endless mobrespawns and the world is so small that is probably 1/100th part of KoA.
Arcania is a natural switch from any smartphone game. Short, small, dumb but goodloking.
You may say, if it's goodlooking then it's not all bad. To me it is. If I wanted goodlooking, I'd remain stupid and go put plastics in my… Um… Well, I'm male, where do we put silicons? Into butt?

Originally Posted by sakichop
I ran the witcher on my business laptop it's over a year old with amd vision integrated graphics.

Not sure what Fluent has for graphics but I'd guess its better than what I had.

In general sharing texture memory with main memory is a losing battle unless you want a slide show. Did you have tons of RAM or just lower all the texture resolutions? I can't image the experience was all that pleasant.

I still think many of the games listed in this thread would crush his poor laptop. Gothic 4? Seriously?!??