CRPGs/WRPGs - Computer/Western Role-Playing Games - No Squares or Atluses allowed

[skykiii]

I've been playing BG1 an unhealthy amount and there was a moment that made me laugh so fucking hard.

Spoiler: If you care

A little girl was standing on top of a waterfall and her cat fell down so I went to go grab it and I saw that it was dead. At first I was a little heartbroken about this and I thought that I was going to have to lie to her or tell her that she ran away or something, but I brought it back up to her and she just goes "Oh this shit happens all the time, I'll get dad to go raise her from the dead again. Here's a scroll." I laughed so fucking hard at this I had to grab a drink.

It really is a game you cannot play with spoilers. It's just an unhinged world that really throws you on a roller coaster for most of the duration. It's also a game that you kind of have to deviate a little bit away from the main story because you'll miss shit like this.

I want a subquest where you rescue the cat from its clearly abusive owner now

one thing old turn based games do is use the turn based as a time padding mechanic.

... Say what now? A lot of turn-based RPGs go by faster than Sonic.

 

[hawkisnight]

Did they include the dreaded body type 1/2 or is that coming in a patch?

There was male and female symbols to choose from. Ok in my book.

I refunded it. I don't care about controller UI and felt scammed. Beamdog EE's are masterpieces compared to this.
Playing old pc rpg with controller is psychopath tier. It felt so awkward. Last time I had such experience I tried BG1 on ps1 but it was much more interesting.

Edit:removed accidental quote.

 

[FuckMeGentlyWithAChainsaw]

What works for a game where you control squads or small armies doesn't necessarily work for a game where you control a six-man party.

Six-man plus summons. And in the original BG you could fill the whole screen with summons until you were stopped by your framerate crashing.
There are actually a lot of differences between the OG BG and the Enhanced Edition, because the EE "enhances" from the BG2 template which was never balanced for 1.
Walking speed is a big one. In BG1 you were much slower, so you couldn't avoid monsters as easily, wolves were actually faster than you. In EE you can just kite around wolves and gibberlings in the early sections, but in OG these were desperate battles for survival. While all the custom enemies for BG1 end up being too slow, all the humanoid enemies get automatic buffs from having their templates copied from BG2 instead.
There were no bags of holding and items wouldn't stack beyond twenty, with many items you'd think of as stackable, such as rings, not stacking at all. So when you were looting far away from civilization you'd always have to consider much more carefully what to keep and what to discard and if your enemies didn't carry arrows you'd probably run out yourselves. I think these were all deliberate decisions to make the game feel more like you are planning expeditions into the unknown, but the new game mechanics make it convenient to the point the original effect is lost.

 

[Give Them Enough Rope]

Julian LeFay is leaving development for The Wayward Realms, and for very good reason.

Spoiler: Article transcript

Julian LeFay, a programmer and chief engineer at Bethesda until his departure in 1998, is stepping back from game development and his current project, The Wayward Realms. LeFay has been suffering from cancer for several years and, per CEO of OnceLost Games Ted Peterson, has made the decision "for his health and to live his final moments surrounded by his loved ones."

Peterson announced the news in a video, accompanied by some reminiscing about how the pair's careers have intertwined. "I first met Julian LeFay in 1992 when I came in, barely out of college, to interview for a junior writer position at Bethesda Softworks," says Peterson. "I had never been in a game development company before, and when I left Julian said, 'If you get the job, you have to lose the suit.'"

LeFay was "an eccentric figure" and "very tall and slender, scruffily handsome with a default scowl, and the most magnificent pompadour mullet in history." He was "a hotshot hacker style programmer" with a particular love for pen-and-paper roleplaying games, "and the game that eventually became the Elder Scrolls 1: Arena was his dream project."

Peterson has previously spoken about LeFay being the driving force behind the first Elder Scrolls, which began as more of a combat-focused title before the team added more and more roleplaying elements. This is what led some to dub LeFay "the father of the Elder Scrolls," and he would also work on The Elder Scrolls 2: Daggerfall and The Elder Scrolls: Battlespire, before leaving Bethesda in 1998.

"I could tell stories about our friendship and how we’ve worked together recently with our team on Wayward Realms as creative and technical directors, but I need to come to the point of this," says Peterson. "Julian has been courageously battling cancer. His doctors have informed us that his time with us is limited, and we are preparing to say goodbye to a true legend of the industry.

"Even in the face of this challenge, Julian’s dedication to The Wayward Realms and to all of you, our community, has never wavered. He has worked tirelessly to ensure that his vision for 'The Grand RPG' will live on, but now Julian must step away from OnceLost Games for his health and to live his final moments surrounded by his loved ones."

Peterson invites people to share "thoughts, prayers, well wishes, memories, or the impact Julian’s life and work have had on you. Your words of support mean more than you know, not just to Julian, but to all of us who have been privileged to work alongside him.

"Obviously, the team has already had a chance to say goodbye and give their individual messages, and I sat by his hospital bed, reading them to him. In that case, I was reading them out loud and Julian was giving me dictation to reply back, which is rather hard to do through my tears."

It is obvious from the video that this is deeply personal and distressing news for Peterson to deliver. He ends with "a final quote from the eminently quotable Julian LeFay" from the last meeting the team had with him.

"It is personal," said LeFay. "And if it’s not personal, then you’re just doing work for hire and you’ll never have the motivation to accomplish a significant goal."

 

[hawkisnight]

Six-man plus summons. And in the original BG you could fill the whole screen with summons until you were stopped by your framerate crashing.
There are actually a lot of differences between the OG BG and the Enhanced Edition, because the EE "enhances" from the BG2 template which was never balanced for 1.
Walking speed is a big one. In BG1 you were much slower, so you couldn't avoid monsters as easily, wolves were actually faster than you. In EE you can just kite around wolves and gibberlings in the early sections, but in OG these were desperate battles for survival. While all the custom enemies for BG1 end up being too slow, all the humanoid enemies get automatic buffs from having their templates copied from BG2 instead.
There were no bags of holding and items wouldn't stack beyond twenty, with many items you'd think of as stackable, such as rings, not stacking at all. So when you were looting far away from civilization you'd always have to consider much more carefully what to keep and what to discard and if your enemies didn't carry arrows you'd probably run out yourselves. I think these were all deliberate decisions to make the game feel more like you are planning expeditions into the unknown, but the new game mechanics make it convenient to the point the original effect is lost.

Back in the day I remember always installing mods from weidu to stack arrows above 20 since BG1 was so bow and arrow focused. At least in the beginning.
There were so many tricks to make your early game smooth if you knew where to go and what to do.

Spoiler

My favorite one was killing Graywolf near Nashkel by casting entangle on him and bowing him down from the distance. Sweet ass Longsword+2 with cold damage. Entangle worked differently in original. It affected only enemies and it either worked and he was glued in place or it didn't and you had to reload.
I knew about Drizzt and exploiting the bad pathing but I almost never killed him. His weapons felt like straight up cheating yourself out of the game. +3 weapons were ridiculous. I always challenged Drizzt party in bg2 though. They were pretty weak at that stage of the game.

 

[Froggy Fresh Sextape]

I miss the time when CRPGs were not commonly played by normalfags like these

You're right, normal people don't care about what flavor of politics are in their video games. There is a definite autistic need to bring politics into video games and talk about it all the time and CRPGs are ground zero for it.

Hence why you posted about it.

 

[30+GameOvers]

You're right, normal people don't care about what flavor of politics are in their video games. There is a definite autistic need to bring politics into video games and talk about it all the time and CRPGs are ground zero for it.

Hence why you posted about it.

I know some people here have trouble with reading comprehension, but I don't really care about what politics someone has in those videos. It's this general low-test soy attitude that all these big CRPG sphere content creators I mentioned have, which just makes them look like posers, like someone else said. If you think the older games were "cringy" or "edgy" then fuck off and play the newer games with all the hard edges sanded off, I don't need a lecture from someone who was a swimmer in his daddy's ballsack when these games were out. Someone like Warlockracy still gets put in this same category since he spams his videos with wojaks like a 12 year old and that's just pure cringe, might as well be on the same level. Make your video and keep your stupid personal takes that have nothing to to with the game to yourself.

BTW, since you did mention politics, I suggest checking out Chris Davis' channel if that's more your speed. If you want to hear someone sperging out about muh non-vaxxers or drumpf or internet nazis when listening to an analysis of a 20+ year old game, that's your channel(Deus Ex and Splinter Cell are a good example where he has a full blown mental meltdown at one point). You will be surprised to know he no longer makes videos and spends all day on Bluesky instead, who could have seen that coming?

There was male and female symbols to choose from. Ok in my book.

I refunded it. I don't care about controller UI and felt scammed. Beamdog EE's are masterpieces compared to this.
Playing old pc rpg with controller is psychopath tier. It felt so awkward. Last time I had such experience I tried BG1 on ps1 but it was much more interesting.

Edit:removed accidental quote.

If they genuinely expect you to play a CRPG with a controller, then that just says more about the devs and their target audience than anything else. I think a mobile port would be better, since you can simulate the mouse with a touch screen easily.

 

[Anon88]

Very glad I waited on the NWN2 EE judging by this thread. Honestly a console version of the game is pretty pointless. Sure MOTB is great but there’s no way to get any of the fan content which is where most of the fun is with the title. It really should’ve just kept it on the PC only.

 

[Farmholio]

I completed a run of Wizardry 8 recently trying to figure some stuff out. I deliberately filled 4 slots with just fighters and made two of them Mooks so I could give them Giant's Sword. Even at mid-level I was dishing out so much damage per round that I was able to pop a whole rapax group in 1 round, basically clear the entire upper castle in like ten or fifteen minutes. In this game survival is all about abuse of combat walking and chameleon to avoid encounters until you're ready, and MELEE DAMAGE. Melee damage is necessary and if you optimize multiple party members for it, it is absolutely busted.

There are at least 4 Giant's Swords in the game, so I really should have made 4 Mook fighters. I sort of forgot, been a while since I last played.

This game could really use a mod for difficulty. In order to make the big battle with the Rapax at Ascension Peak challenging you would literally have to triple the amount of Rapax in the area and probably give some of them more hit points too. As it stands, the main "difficulty" of that fight is simply how long it takes to painstakingly combat walk up to the mobs, who are all spellspammers perfectly content to stand 100 yards away from you and wait for you to reach them. And the Savant is a joke, I popped him in one round. He would need to have at least 10,000 HP and be surrounded by extra powerful henchmen to be a challenge. My party which was STILL not completely optimized was dealing at least a few hundred damage per round. Only like 2/3's through all the non retro dungeon content I literally could not locate an enemy who would survive more than 2 rounds. Oh except Adamantium Slimes because of their ridiculous damage resistance, but it's not like they were hard to beat, just took more turns.

On the other hand, spells are so weak in late game (aside from buffs which are crucial) that my casters might as well have been waiting in the lobby. In fact, once you get one of those Giant's Swords, it actually becomes pretty hard to train magic because you kill everything before you even get a chance to fully buff. I was watching a video about Wizardry 7 which I've never played and reading some info on various sites and apparently this is the exact opposite situation as that game, where spells are insanely overpowered and the best party is literally all fairy magic users. Pretty funny.

I'd be curious how much of a pain it would be to totally forego magic users/bards, just nothing but beatsticks. It would be a lot more painful early and mid-game, but once you hit your stride it might work alright, it'd just be really tricky getting past the spellspammers who cast instant death, insanity, and turncoat. Might need to push Piety and give everyone Iron Will, or resort to using items for magic protection buffs.

On the topic of mods, it would also be nice for something completing the incomplete content, as in actually put the T'Rang/Umpani allies at Ascension Peak like was probably intended. Cuz I found out there's basically no downside (and actually a big upside) to doing the T'Rang Umpani Alliance questline, then just killing both factions anyway. Despite already doing the alliance quests, I still got the rewards for blowing up the Umpani and T'Rang ships. The way it should probably work, the T'Rang and Umpani should both show up at Ascension Peak and be either friendly or hostile depending on your current status with them. So doing what I did, I should have needed to fight my way through an army of T'Rang AND Umpani AND Rapax all pissed off at me at once lol. I'd still have done it just to see how quick I could cut down the mobs with my overtuned fighters.

My party:
HITBITCH (Female Human Fighter, wielder of the IVORY BLADE)
TANYA (Female Dwarf Fighter, wielder of EXCALIBER)
MIMMET (Female Mook Fighter, wielder of GIANTS BLADE 1)
CH'WENDE (Male Mook Fighter, wielder of GIANTS BLADE 2)
GLAM (Female Hobbit Bard, wielder of the INFERNAL FUCKING HORN)
SPROCK (Male Elf Bishop, we needed someone to cast the buff spells lol) -- I called him Sprock because I picked the portrait that kind of looks like Leonard Nimoy. Last time I did the same thing and called him Spelf.

lots of female characters since the necklace of endurance and locket of reflection are female only for whatever reason.

Anyways I love this game, probably my favorite CRPG of all time, wish there were some modern games more like it. The in-engine tactical movement sucks and adds nothing to the gameplay but tedious waiting, so it would have been better to have a dedicated battle screen as in previous titles. But other than that and some balance problems it's pretty fuckin' awesome.

The thing it does that I really love is it blends the point and click adventure and turn based D&D style gold box rpg genres flawlessly. These two genres work really well together. Only wish there were more ways you could interact with your environment by clicking and combining items. If you took this to its extreme depths you could make a very immersive game. Character building, tactical combat, and immersive environment all wrapped into one. And yes I like the mouse click based movement. You can play this damn game one handed and it works great! Just gotta get out of the WASD mentality. This game practically never requires you to strafe or back up.

 

[Farmholio]

I've watched the latest Arkham666 video, the one about Planescape: Torment. His overview on the game is actually pretty good and he even offers some interesting history behind the game.

Soz for double posting but I have got to shill a guy I know. Best video about PS:T ever, covers everything, and unlike Longman Mauler it absolutely is NOT just repeating himself and sighing over and over again.

 

[George Lucas]

I think the JRPG and CRPG distinction is largely dead now, with the only remaining distinction being anime and western art styles.

1. RPGs in the West are now more story-driven and the story is considered an important part of the game by players more than it used to be.

2. Japanese RPGs have pretty much absorbed any gameplay aspects that made CRPGs stand out: customizable characters, individual quests, nonlinear progression, real-time combat; not all games have all these elements, but picking up a modern JRPG is going to give you an experience closer to Elder Scrolls than Dragon Quest.

3. Combat is king. Stuff like improving your character and reputation for its own sake never really went anywhere past Ultima IV. In the end, players do stuff because they want to kill things better. Both genres center around improving your character’s combat abilities.

4. CRPGs now tend to have more boss fights with gimmicks just like JRPGs, albeit maybe not as extreme.

All in all the two genres are converging if they haven’t already converged completely. It’s actually why I’ve checked out of a lot of more recent JRPGs: they have too much content that doesn’t actually reward the player much and it gets tiring deciding what’s worth spending your time on, what you will skip, and when exactly you’ll return to the main quest. That is, I find there is a mental burden to filtering out all the unimportant and uninteresting side quests. In older games, completing sidequests was often more rewarding.

 

[DefinitelyNotMe]

I think the JRPG and CRPG distinction is largely dead now, with the only remaining distinction being anime and western art styles.

i do agree that JRPGs did took a lot from the CRPGs and vice versa but theres still clear differences between them
JRPGs doesn't like to do positioning very much, it usually just 4 dudes in a row or maybe 2 dudes in front and 2 in the back. or something that Yakuza 7 did which honestly was mostly annoying. think of any encounter in fallout where you can win the fight if you start the battle at the right spot. hell i remember putting 1 of my tanks in the back purposefully in pathfinder wotr in that one part where gargoyles attack you cause they like to flank you so much. this is also extends to AoE damage effects where you have to group the enemies together or maybe doing some friendly fire to deal more damage. Little decisions like that.
Leveling up and choosing the class is still different. JRPGs either don't give you the option or give you choice between very similar things like a paladin and a knight, its still a dude with the sword. i kinda get it for the companions, cause you meet them and they already somewhat developed character, but i see no reason to do the same for your guy. like is there a single JRPG where you can play as an archer? Leveling up in JRPGs are almost always on a railroad, you don't have to think when you see that "level up" massage cause its just mean stats that you don't even sure what they do increase a bit.
Theres also dialog and the whole "your choices matter" thing that is more of the west thing.
west still like to give you way more options, and east like to give you the cinematic experiences placing story and characters first.

 

[Jason Wynn]

Big CRPG fan, played most of the classics, enjoy quite a few of the new ones. Anyone have any recommendations for a CRPG where you can play a truly evil character? Not talking Saturday morning cartoon villain or D&D chaotic stupid murderhobo but where you can play a truly dark and bleak character? Already played the obvious ones like Tyranny, cruel run Bleak Walker in Pillars of Eternity and did a lich run in Wrath of the Righteous that felt pretty good. Something along those levels.

 

[Farmholio]

There will always be a difference between CRPG and JRPG. If there is no apparent distinction between the two, that just means CRPG's went extinct and you're not looking at a CRPG, even if it bills itself as such.

 

[hawkisnight]

I played Pathfinder:WotR for 2 hours and the setting of crusader states keeping the demons at bay is really cool but the "woke" is really noticeable and distracting. Every single major character is a female and/or gay. The companions you meet are 3/4 females(one black paladin). I am usually not bothered too much by this but this is ridiculous. I facepalmed when I got out of introductory dungeon and meet female half orc commander of city watch who is married to one of the females you fall to the dungeon. That female character is not playable companion(so far?) and did absolutely fucking nothing to help you. She's just there to announce she's gay with major character. Kingmaker wasn't like that at all or at least it wasn't that noticeable. What the fuck?

 

[OutInTheRain]

I played Pathfinder:WotR for 2 hours and the setting of crusader states keeping the demons at bay is really cool but the "woke" is really noticeable and distracting. Every single major character is a female and/or gay. The companions you meet are 3/4 females(one black paladin). I am usually not bothered too much by this but this is ridiculous. I facepalmed when I got out of introductory dungeon and meet female half orc commander of city watch who is married to one of the females you fall to the dungeon. That female character is not playable companion(so far?) and did absolutely fucking nothing to help you. She's just there to announce she's gay with major character. Kingmaker wasn't like that at all or at least it wasn't that noticeable. What the fuck?

The original adventure path was written like that. It was chock full woke intersectional politics. Coincidentally the first part of the adventure path was written by Amber E. Scott, who wrote the notorious Beamdog Baldur's Gate expansion Siege of Dragonspear which has every tranny tell you they are trans. She is also, and this might be the worst, the most vile thing she could be...a Canadian.

As things go on, due to the nature of WoTR with its varied paths, the woke drops off hard and you can play it free from most of it. WoTR is pretty good overall, but the black paladin, and the black gay cleric have to be some of the worst chars. Black paladin is just boring, and black gay cleric is just....awful.