Adarious Mistdancer

I will agree that to this point romances in RPGs (at least the ones I've played) are shallow at best, however there are still a few that stick out in my mind: FF7: Aeris ... The only part that sucked was at the end of the game ... the end FMV and what happens to Aeris. FF9: There are more than one romance option here, though I've only investigated that with Garnet. The end movie sequence, with the Melodies of Life background music is a good experience. This next one is a snes game, and mostly sticks out in my mind due to how different the game/gameplay was from the norm ... that's Harvest Moon, in which one of the goals is to befriend and eventually marry one of the female town residents.

I guess I'm divided here. My initial reaction fell right in line with the above statement. We already get spam mail adverts in leaps and bounds, most public sites also have popup or banner adverts ... and I don't even want to think about advert spyware, which I find myself wondering why said companies/individuals who create it aren't penalised. There are very few places advertising isn't anymore, I don't think I'd want to see the game worlds infiltrated as well. On the other hand we have the concept of game prices/costs of production being positively effected, which may make such a trade-off worthwhile. However, if it isn't done in a creative and discreet way, we may find ourselves wanting for the days prior to said implementation. Somehow though, I doubt that the consumer/gamer will have much of a say in the matter ... unless as a unified group (or vast majority) either in support or against.

What of Might & Magic VII ... that was the first I played and I loved it. I tried 9 and tossed it to the recycle bin. One thing I liked about VII was the whole 'we own a castle' deal... but the gameplay in it was good too as was the story and most other aspects.

I was wondering when someone might mention some of the latter ones there ... I edited to list those I am familiar with. The two sets that particularly got my attention were the Monkey Island series and the System Shock series. I found SS 2 to be pretty good .. and the 'surprise' element was exceptional. Doom 3 also had a very good surprise element (in encounters), though I wouldn't necessarily refer to it as RPG material.

Of all the titles predating BIS ... there are a few that I really liked: Neuromancer - not sure how well known this one is, however it was incredible on the C64. It was one of a select few games on the 64 with digital speech(opening music) ... which was a marvel for the technology. It was also one of the best cyberpunk type games I've played. A few others (non-Interplay) are Uplink and Street Hacker .. though they lack the rpg/story element of Neuromancer. Bards Tale series - my second rpg set played (Monkey Island series being the first) Descent Series - Always got my butt kicked in MP but it was fun...though it's too bad a tcp/ip patch for MP never seemed to arise (in specificly for Descent 2) Battle Chess series - the animated pieces and accompanying redbook audio added a great element of fun to things. They did some good ones prior to BIS ... though CRPG wise I still prefer BIS-type ones (infinity engine) over such things as Demon Stone which although fun, does not take long to beat and set on a shelf to gather dust.