I wrote this at Christmas, while between classes. I did not publish it, so that I could keep the ol' blog going in case the semester got anxious.
It got anxious. And I never posted it. Silly of me, really.
So here it is anyway:
RPGS
Might and Magic II: This game was absolutely immense for the time. There was something like 100 hours of gameplay, with many optional sidequests and specific character-driven storylines. I remember liking the randomized encounter and treasure systems, and the character options. Not a lot of fantasy games allow the party to have a ninja. Ninjas are awesome, and they’re exponentially more awesome to pre-teen boys. Still, the game lacked a certain something. Maybe it was the music or the graphics, both of which were good but not great. 2.5
The Bard’s Tale: This game was one of the first party-based rpgs I ever played, and it’s incredibly cool. The graphics and music on the Amiga were immersive, and I can still recall some of the songs for which the game was known. The fact that the bard had a series of instruments he could play, and each tune would change for the instrument was incredible for the time. The game’s puzzles were awesome and at times difficult, and there was at least 30 or 40 hours of gameplay. Great stuff. 3.5
Moebius: The Orb of Celestial Harmony: This game was weird. The player takes the role of a disciple of “Moebius” and then must work their way through the four elemental planes (earth, wind, etc) to reclaim the world from whatever evil has taken control. It was something like a combination action-RPG, as “combat” was a separate side-scrolling almost street-fighter-esque mini-game. I remember that the game was incredibly difficult, and that it had a spiritual component. In order to ascend from one plane to the next, the player had to complete a “meditation” mini-game in which they kept a randomly spinning yin-yang within a certain area of the screen. Moebius gets special mention because it was so unique and because the melodies that Mobius gave to the Amiga platform haunt me to this day. 3.0
Ultima IV: I’ve skipped Ultima III because I didn’t play it as much as IV and I have even less good things to say about it. And I don't really want to talk about Ultima after IV either. Fock that noise. IV had some really cool things going for it, in that the player actually did a strange virtue-based character creation process to get their character set up. After that, the player had to wander the world and collect a party of characters which all represented virtues and use them in combination to complete a divine quest. There was a lot to like about the game, but I didn’t really enjoy playing it that much. The combat system was lame, the magic system was whack, requiring the purchase and mixing of reagents to cast spells, and the music in the game was forgettable. Apparently I was quite affected by the music of RPGS on the computer. 1.5
Defender of the Crown: I’m not sure how to characterize this game. Is it a Simulation? An RPG? A strategy game? The player takes the role of a Saxon noble in middle-ages Norman-dominated England and tries to become powerful by conquering or allying with the other nobles on the map. It’s incredibly difficult, as the Norman antagonists are all much better at everything in the game than the Saxons are, and there isn’t any progression in the game. So the player can’t eventually become a better swordfighter or jouster through gameplay. The player has to either lead troops to battle or siege, joust at tournaments, or lead daring personal raids in the night to gain fame, a lady, recognition, and more land. I could only win as the sword-fighter Saxon (Geoffrey of Flapjack?), as that was the part of the game I didn’t suck at. Plus, the sword-fighter guy got more chicks than the jousty guy or the jack-of-all-trades type guy. It was an odd game, but I managed to while away a few hours with it. 2.0
Heroes of the Lance: This was a side-scrolling “adventure”-RPG where the player got to take control of one of the characters from the iconic dragonlance books to complete their first quest in Xak Tsaroth. It was a weird game. When the character that the player was using died, they were replaced with the next Hero of the Lance in line. There were 8 or 10 in all. The wizard Raistlin was a great choice, and Riverwind the barbarian was one of the best jumpers in the game. It was important to be able to jump because the game had a lot of platforming sections where the heroes had to traverse caverns filled with holes or traps. The sad thing about this game is that there was only one way to win it: kill the black dragon at the end. And there was only one way to kill the black dragon: throw the priestesses’ blue crystal staff at it. So after figuring out the maze of the game and condensing it to a list of 20 or so caverns to traverse, the game became incredibly easy to beat, and therefore not fun. Not that it was much fun to begin with: the jumping bits were frustrating and controls not always responsive. The music was awesome for about five minutes and then it became grating. The theme song was a little too energetic. And the game’s replayability after winning was pretty much nil. 1.0
Nethack: I’m going to condense all modern roguelikes (Angband, Moria, etc.) into a single header here as Nethack. I was always terrible at this game, but nonetheless I played the hell out of it. To this day I have never completed it, though now I have access to piles of spoilers which I could use to learn the ropes better. The learning curve on nethack is quite simply astounding. It’s a game where you must replay and work with contexts to learn just how to succeed, and even then there is a possibility of death. And death is permanent, so after dying the player must restart from the beginning. It’s terribly frustrating, and yet I still find it fascinating and I occasionally play through a game, only to lose of course. 3.0
For roguelike sampler goodness, check out the Desktop Dungeons freeware game.
-Merlin out
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