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Short List of Good Story-Driven RPGs?


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I have to agree that if you are looking for story-driven games, Arcanum. Fallout and Planescape:Torment have to top the list.

 

Baldur's Gate is more of a lifestyle than a game-I have sampled each and finished only the original and TOSC-the endless micromanagement of characters through huge long-loading maps tossed the replayability for me and having infinite options to fetch and carry and argue with scripted  NPCs is not more interesting to me than strategic combat. But anyone who is into rpg's at all has to consider this a landmark series.

 

 

Thanks for confirming those points. I actually did install BG2 at one time and then, once I started playing it, I realized that party management was definitely "micromanagement" for this game and I do NOT want that.

 

I will probably not play the BG games for that reason but I will remember that this was a major breakthrough for story-driven cRPGs.

 

Thanks.

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"I didn't know you were still Arcanumized Volourn."

 

LOL You remember that. :D Yes, I still like it though it's come down to Earth as there's a lot of small-biggish things thata re annoying.

 

 

"Do you still play it often??"

 

Nope; but I did start playing it a week ago and for some reason it seems more challenging than it used to be. Weird...

 

 

"Did people manage to create mods for it??"

 

I haven't played any; but yeah mods have been made including one with a car..

 

 

"Being in the presence of Elitist Gods is so humbling."

 

GodS? There is only one of those around here, and that's me. :)

 

RP, from what I've read the Arcanum mods are mostly drek. The only one I'm really even kinda interested in is the Car Arcanum one and maybe just maybe the hak that removes the level limit. otehrwise, it's total drek (only the IE community makes worse mods except for maybe MW modders).

 

 

R00fles!

 

 

Absolutely. Come on. At the time, I think we were the only to beings alive who like the game. Okay maybe the only 2 guys on the Interplay boards.

 

Damn you!! Damn you for reminding me how much I miss the IPlay boards. :(

 

Do you remember the "Bio-banned of brothers"??? :):lol:

 

Ouch!!! Will have to get info on the Mods then. Hopefully there are some good ones.

 

Weel being in your presence is very humbling. Why do you think I rarely come here now??

 

Soome of the IE Mods aren't that bad. Did not even know that there were mods with Morrowind.

 

Glad to see you Vol. It hass been too long.

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Diablo and D2 are addictive and challenging games but I can't in all conscience endorse them as story-driven. The best cinematic cutscenes evar tho. NWN kind of falls in here for me, too, being all about lewt and making your character into a god. NWN does have a somewhat stronger story element, but realtime and crummy dialogue options make it basically combat driven.

 

Lionheart?????? :) Like ToEE, marred by the spectre of what it could have been if not ruthlessly shafted by developer/publisher problems and the need for greed.

Both those games had some great strengths and possibilities but end up just leaving you feeling...used.

 

Damn!! I had forgotten to mention that Diablo 2 had the best cinematics of it's time.

 

Although compared with what was done in later game, it probably would not seem very impressive to a new Diablo 2 player.

 

Agrees. Lionheart and ToEE had lots of potential, but were nowhere close to fullfilling it. But then had their good mements despite that.

 

Heck! some are throwing rocks at me for daring to mention Diablo 2 or IWD, but no one tried to crucify me yet for mentioning PoR2.

 

Strange. :lol::(

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Thanks for confirming those points.  I actually did install BG2 at one time and then, once I started playing it, I realized that party management was definitely "micromanagement" for this game and I do NOT want that.

 

I will probably not play the BG games for that reason but I will remember that this was a major breakthrough for story-driven cRPGs.

 

Thanks.

 

BLASPHEMY!!!! (w00t) (w00t)

 

But seriously, if you don't want to micromanage your party, you can use the AI to control your party members other then your main character.

 

Or you can play the game solo, meaning you do not accept new party members. You only play witgh your main character.

 

Otherwise, you can just forget about playing any party based game then.

 

So no PS;T, BG, BG2, IWD, IWD2, Arcanum, ToEE, DS. Prince of Qin for you.

 

You are pretty much left with single character games. Fallout 1 and 2, NWN, Morrowind. No I won't mention Diablo 2... oups. :)"

 

Although you do gather a party in Fallout 1 and 2 and NWN also. But you do not control any other character then your main. But you have at the very least to manage their invetories.

 

So depending on how much management you want/don't want to do, even those games may not be for you.

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Sorry for not having noticed this before:

 

RP, from what I've read the Arcanum mods are mostly drek. The only one I'm really even kinda interested in is the Car Arcanum one and maybe just maybe the hak that removes the level limit. otehrwise, it's total drek (only the IE community makes worse mods except for maybe MW modders).

 

 

R00fles!

 

Well, his question was pertaining to the existence of mods, not their quality, but I'll grant you that, their quality (from what I played) is very limited. What makes it worse is that there are extremely few of them, so the drek is more noticeable.

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I have to agree that if you are looking for story-driven games, Arcanum. Fallout and Planescape:Torment have to top the list.

 

Baldur's Gate is more of a lifestyle than a game-I have sampled each and finished only the original and TOSC-the endless micromanagement of characters through huge long-loading maps tossed the replayability for me and having infinite options to fetch and carry and argue with scripted  NPCs is not more interesting to me than strategic combat. But anyone who is into rpg's at all has to consider this a landmark series.

 

 

Thanks for confirming those points. I actually did install BG2 at one time and then, once I started playing it, I realized that party management was definitely "micromanagement" for this game and I do NOT want that.

 

I will probably not play the BG games for that reason but I will remember that this was a major breakthrough for story-driven cRPGs.

 

Thanks.

 

That's why you play solo. :blink:

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Otherwise, you can just forget about playing any party based game then.

 

So no PS;T, BG, BG2, IWD, IWD2, Arcanum, ToEE, DS. Prince of Qin for you.

 

You are pretty much left with single character games. Fallout 1 and 2, NWN, Morrowind. No I won't mention Diablo 2... oups. :blink:"

 

Although you do gather a party in Fallout 1 and 2 and NWN also. But you do not control any other character then your main. But you have at the very least to manage their invetories.

 

So depending on how much management you want/don't want to do, even those games may not be for you.

 

Exactly. Even in games where you only control one character there's quite an amount of micro-management to deal with. The only alternative are Diet-RPG's with a dumbed down interface and simplified controls that do all the micro-managing for you (Dungeon Siege for example), but the problem is that these games can hardly be called RPG's and are IMO not really worth playing.

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BLASPHEMY!!!!  (w00t)  (w00t)

 

But seriously, if you don't want to micromanage your party, you can use the AI to control your party members other then your main character.

 

Or you can play the game solo, meaning you do not accept new party members. You only play witgh your main character.

 

Otherwise, you can just forget about playing any party based game then.

 

So no PS;T, BG, BG2, IWD, IWD2, Arcanum, ToEE, DS. Prince of Qin for you.

 

You are pretty much left with single character games. Fallout 1 and 2, NWN, Morrowind. No I won't mention Diablo 2... oups. :rolleyes:"

 

Although you do gather a party in Fallout 1 and 2 and NWN also. But you do not control any other character then your main. But you have at the very least to manage their invetories.

 

So depending on how much management you want/don't want to do, even those games may not be for you.

 

Well, maybe I will give it a second look. You have to understand that this was some time ago and I had a 15" monitor. I now have a 19"....much easier to micromanage from a 19" monitor ;) .

 

To be honest with you, I really liked the way the KOTOR games handled parties. You COULD micromanage but you did not have to.

 

I picked up Arcanum the other day. We'll see how that goes.

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The first half of Lionheart is pretty much story/dialogue driven, but the second half is not I'll grant you that.

 

But some people liked it despite that.

 

I never said I didn't like Lionheart. In fact, I definitely enjoyed it, even the second part of it (although not as much as the first half). I still feel Lionheart was a game filled with great ideas, but terrible execution.

 

That being said, when going by what was said in the original post it's obvious that it's not the type of game he wants. And that's all I ever said

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Well, maybe I will give it a second look.  You have to understand that this was some time ago and I had a 15" monitor.  I now have a 19"....much easier to micromanage from a 19" monitor  :- .

 

To be honest with you, I really liked the way the KOTOR games handled parties.  You COULD micromanage but you did not have to.

 

I picked up Arcanum the other day.  We'll see how that goes.

 

I have a 15' monitor as well. I wish I could have a bigger screen, but I have a laptop. So no 19' screen for me until I get desktop. :ermm:

 

When I first started BG, I could not manage my party very well. I was a complete newbie and did not know about scripts and AI. Heck I did not even pause at first. I was playing 6 characters in real time. No need to say that my characters were dying a lot. After a billion trips to the temple to raise them, and once my party was broke from spending all that money raising my party members, I decide to let them rot. So before long I ended up playing BG with my main character only.

 

Eventually, I stopped playing solo and started using the pause function and the AI/scripts for my party members other then my main character.

 

By now, I can play a full party in any IE game in real time. But it took a lot of playing time and practice.

 

Don't give up. It is worth it.

 

BG is the biggest/longest saga I know of when it comes to CRPGs. And it is a great experience. Don't miss out on it just because it is difficult at first to manage a full party.

 

You will get used to it in time.

 

Arcanum is a good game.... once you know how to bypass the bugs. Hope you like it.

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Of the games already mentioned, I second Planescape, and Fallout 1&2. I also second the brief mention of Chronotrigger and Final Fantasy (6, specifically) for emulators. 7 isn't bad, but 8 is crapola.

 

I am a bit surprised to find that the Thief trilogy of games is not mentioned here. While it is a first-person game, it's a very strong story that comes out slowly over the course of the game. The second one has some very annoying enemies, but the game itself is well worth playing. The largest problem you might face is getting Thief Gold and Thief: The Metal Age to install and run properly on older machines. Of the three computers in my house, not one will run all three of the games. In addition, the fan community has put together levels for the first two Thief games that made the developers sit back in surprise and wonder.

 

As for Diablo, if you need story-based, try this site first. :)

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Times of Lore - Origin 1988, who remembers that?

Magic Candle - Interplay's 1989 groundbreaking classic

Magic Candle II - like KOTOR II to KOTOR, many improvements and you have entire freaking lost continent to wander and explore

Legend of Faerghail - ReLINE 1990, great epic story that can be a match for tolkien

Darklands - Microprose 1992, discover the world of medieval germany. Templars, dragons, witches, heretics... instead of fantasy monsters, the game

presents gallery of monsters and creatures taken from the medieval imagination. Unique.

Fallout - no comments

Fallout 2 - no comments

Baldur's Gate series - no KOTOR can beat this

Icewind Dale series - you will never find more climactic tale about Faerun

Neverwinter Nights - first succesfull 3D RPG

KOTOR - a great story that was buried under linearity. All that was compensated by great climate and realistic feel of the world. Since 1977's New Hope, there was no movie or game that had such distinctive star wars climate!

KOTOR 2 - greater story that was buried by a human greed

HERMOCRATES:

Nur Ab Sal was one such king. He it was, say the wise men of Egypt, who first put men in the colossus, making many freaks

of nature at times when the celestial spheres were well aligned.

 

SOCRATES:

This I doubt. We are hearing a child's tale.

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Times of Lore - Origin 1988, who remembers that?

Magic Candle - Interplay's 1989 groundbreaking classic

Magic Candle II - like KOTOR II to KOTOR, many improvements and you have entire freaking lost continent to wander and explore

Legend of Faerghail - ReLINE 1990, great epic story that can be a match for tolkien

Darklands - Microprose 1992, discover the world of medieval germany. Templars, dragons, witches, heretics... instead of fantasy monsters, the game 

presents gallery of monsters and creatures taken from the medieval imagination. Unique.

 

All these are abandonware, available from Home of the Underdogs. Incidentally, they preferred Magic Candle 1 to the sequel.

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I'm replaying through Planescape at the moment. Haven't done so in years and I'm reminded of how incredible a game it is. I can't offer much else that hasn't already been mentioned though. Planescape, the Baldur's Gate series, Arcanum. [sHAFT] It's all good, baby. :cool: [/sHAFT] I see someone has mentioned the fantastical Thief trilogy however. Perhaps I could recommend Deus Ex or Invisible War? I'm not sure how relevant that is to the topic though.

 

Out of interest ... Septerra Core. A western effort at a Final Fantasy style game. Has anyone played it? I've read mixed reviews.

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Planescape: Torment : Delightfully creative, but too linear, and terribly bug ridden (sort of like kotor 2) I never could pass baator because of a screen loading bug. No romancec are finished. And lots of quests have dead ends. (At least the MAIN storyline is finished)

Baldur gates series: Three words: Fan for life. The first was like AD&D with books AND graphics. The story is perfect. You have lots of playtime and free movement, and don't even level more than lev 7. And it is enough! The sequal was heavier, but never boring ! 180 hrs of gametime just passing right through!

Icewind dale series. Too linear. The first just became boring but the second is playable and reccomended.

Albion. I never understood what it was with this game that got me, but it did. Newthinking and has several solutions to most problems and LOTS of secrets.

Lands of lore series. Only have played the 1 and 2, but they are very interesting(especially the #2) when it comes to storyline.

Might and magic series. Only played VI and up. Story is not the focus here perhaps. But the quests are very varied and interesting. Free movement helps along with the non linearity.

Ultima series. Takes a lot of time and learnign to appreciate. Nr 7 made me addicted to RPG, something I have been since.

Kotor series. The first was a little linear, but had story, gameplay and "feeling" to boot. The second was disappoining as Nothing was finished. You notice from the start that the menus look shabby. Same with the videos.

 

 

Diablo series is ok. But have abolutely no replayability. My friend from High school watched as his 6 year old sister rounded the #2.

Dungeon siege has no story and gets boring pretty early on as nothing drives you forward! Too linear!

Divine divinity: Reminds me of a mid-ultima ripoff

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