Vote for the Best DOS RPG - Discussion

Thank you. Really appreciate it.

Who's arguing? I was just curious.

You guys are vying for the ultimate crown of geekdom here you know.

More power to you. Let the old things live, I say. Respect the ancestors.

I know it's not 100% role-playing, but System Shock gets my vote.

I think I'm gonna give a really good try to all the games that make it to top10 no matter what they are.

Originally Posted by Jaz
I LOVE the fact that Mystic Towers is on it . It's not anywhere near my favorites, but I played and liked it, and it never appeared on any other list before.

It is ? I wouldn't call it an RPG, though. (I have it, too.)


Maybe after this poll we should send the results and comments to Moby, asking them to update their classifications.

I didn't even suspect that Mystic Towers was a CRPG, but hey, personally I'm not a category purist, anyway. I like games of all sorts, no matter which genre they're supposed to be, as long as they are fun… and what's not to like about a game where you play an old geezer with a walking cane who farts and cackles all the time?
Grabbed it on floppy all those years ago (when my rig still had a floppy drive).

So many great Games back in the Days… :sigh:

While I had no Problems to choose my first 3 Choices, I really had Problems to choose only 2 more

The only Game on my Shopping-List for the next few years is the NWN 2-AddOn…

so..anyone think these games are harder than today's?

If the DOS RGPs are generally harder than the modern 2000+ windows RPGs?
I do. I haven't seen a challenging puzzle,for example, in any of the modern RPGs - arx fatalis being the only exception… i remember it had a two or three pretty hard puzzles. And also, you can't actually get lost into the dungeons in any of the modern games. I can play most of the modern RPGs (Fable, Oblivion, etc etc etc…) with my brains turnded off. I couldn't do that in M&M3 for example. No way.

EDIT: I also feel that combat in these older games is generally speaking a bit more challenging (and fun). To have at least some challenge is really important to me.. I don't know.. somehow accomplishing something feels so much better if I've actually had to do something to get there (Besides bashing the left mouse button)

Recently I got lost in a Dungeon in the NWN 2 Mod "Keep on the Borderlands" - the last time that happened was IIRC in "Chaos strikes back"

The new games are by far easier than the old classics.

I'm currently trying out the Eye of the Beholders Trilogy, and I must say that one get easily lost without any automap … This is kind of a "tour de fiorce" for my memory.

Also the difficulty … Maybe it was a mistake to import the mid-game chars from EOB1 into EOB2 …

The dreaded dungeon where you could not sleep… EoB2 sure was a tad difficult at times. Hit and run, mostly: lure single enemies away from the main host, kill them, sleep and recover, lure another guy back from his friends, and so on. Impossible to do without sleep, so rushing through that dreaded dungeon was the only way for me to survive.

I also believe that generally speaking, earlier games were more difficult than 'modern' ones. Interestingly enough, when replaying them, I sometimes find them to be rather easy after all - but that's probably just due to the fact that I played them before and thus know how to navigate around the real problems.

Yes, probably. I play them now for the first time.
(Okay, EOB1 not really : I've tried it before and ended in Level 4 or so).

@Lucky Day:
Your votes are relatively very oldschool.
Ultima III,Ultima IV,Wizardry IV etc…
And from your previous posts I understand you were already
playing & buying games when the early wizardry games were released (?).

As a gamer who is just starting to get into those earlier DOS games
I'd be interested to know if you still actually play games as old as these and do you feel that a gamer such as myself having never played these games before could get into this kinda stuff TODAY? In other words, how much do you think nostalgia weighs in?

Oh.. and I'm not talking about graphics here. I can tolerate pretty much anything graphics wise. How do you feel that those early DOS games standup gameplay wise to the later mid-90's DOS games?

Voted in the other thread..shame I couldn't vote for another 20 or so..hehe..

@zakhary
I couldn't agree more with your comment about puzzles in games nowadays..nothing comes close to the puzzles in games like Dungeon Master, EOB2, M&M et al.
They just seem to be a token gesture on the part of the design team.

RPG difficulty has certainly fallen off nowadays, IMO. Most seem to follow a Diablo-esqe style of combat, highly simplified. The core mechanics seem highly simplified as well. Puzzles are rare and usually much simpler than the stuff like in Bard's Tale II: Destiny Knight. There's also the automap, more often than not which allows for notes to be made so that you can mark where everything is. That's one little thing I like having though, since I no longer have the energy or time to draw a map out only to realize that I made a mistake in counting tiles and have to redraw half the map. Or the dreaded spinners, which made mapping a nightmare.

Only one note about my vote I didn't add roguelike games to my list, because I think that RL's are not pure DOS games - they are platform independent, lightweighted and most of them can be played under Win, Linux, Mac OS etc as well. So If this thread is about DOS games, they shoud be symptomatic for DOS OS. Like Wizardry 7, M&M, Arena etc. That's all.

Valhalla(aka Ragnarok) was originally a commercially released game even though it is a roguelike. It was released for MS-DOS. It is not available on any other platform. It was later re-released as freeware - also for MS-DOS only.
It is not in anyway platform independent.
I love the game - and it is an MS-DOS game - hence it is on my list.

http://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/valhalla

Check it out, it's a great game even for those who do not like roguelikes. and its available as freeware (not just abandonware).

But concidering nethack.. you do have a point. It's gonna fall off my list soon anyway as I'm getting into more and more of these great old games

Originally Posted by Zakhary
Check it out, it's a great game even for those who do not like roguelikes. and its available as freeware (not just abandonware).

*sigh* So many good games and so little time…

I would like to mention Stonekeep (DOS, 1995) - also very good Dungeon/RPG game.