cRPG
Other Games => ... and all the other things floating around out there => Topic started by: War_Ferret on August 12, 2013, 08:12:11 am
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I am talking about those epic sandboxy kind of games that combine all kinds of elements and where one game takes days to finish - the ones that are so good, you have to replay them every few years.
I like to believe I know all the good ones, but maybe someone can recommend another one like these favorites of mine:
Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic
Civilization series
Jagged Alliance 2
Mount&Blade (obviously...)
Total War series
X-Com series (up to Apocalypse)
Not quite as great, but worth mentioning:
Ascendancy
Disciples II
Dominions 3
Heroes of M&M 3
Master of Orion 2
Space Empires 4/5
UFO series
It doesn't matter how old, if they're good.
The most recent one I tried was Eador: Broken World, but it's very one-sided and repetitive.
I was wondering if Fallen Enchantress is any good.
Also, Crusader Kings 2 looks kinda interesting.
Opinions?
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Fallen Enchantress is pretty fun, worth at least trying.
Of "sandboxy" strategy games, i would recommend Sword of the Stars, probably all the Paradox grand strategy games, Populous (third game, especially) and Lords of Magic, maybe.
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I played all the populous games. They were fun, but not exactly deep or epic. Lords of Magic was ok. Gonna take a look at Sword of the Stars.
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Try paradox grand strategy (mainly CK, EU, HOI and Victoria, there are dozens of spin-offs, stand-alone mods and the like around too) like ptx said. I can also recommend SOTS even though I never had the time to play that a lot. Try the X series if you either like economic sims or space combat. Anno 2070 is pretty good. The Guild games are nice but buggy. Patrician 3 is cool, I don't know about the others. If you want something really deep, go for Dwarf Fortress and never look back (or, stop after 20 minutes to go cry in a corner).
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I used to play X2 and X3 a lot - good games. If only there had been something to do with all your stations, ships and money, once you had it all. Guild 1 is pretty good, too - better than Guild 2. I watched some videos about Dwarf Fortress... I mean I don't mind dated graphics, but ASCII? Maybe I'll have another look. Of the paradox games, I think I might give CK2 a try sometime.
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Silent Storm and its Sentinels expansion, the only really worthy JA2 successors.
Dominions 3 is great, it needs more love. We should try a game on here some time, there were at least a couple other players.
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Yeah those were incredible. Most amazing physics and destructible environment in any game of that kind ever. Shame there wasn't any kind of meta-game on top of it, like in JA2 or X-Com.
edit: Have you tried Conquest of Elysium? Is it as good as Dominions 3?
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King Arthur: the role playing strategy game is decent. Though it gets pretty frustrating sometimes.
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Earth 2150 (never played the prequel or sequel)
It's nice to have a campaign where all your choices matter forever, not just for the mission you're in. IIRC, you have to gather X amount of resources to escape from earth over your campaign, but you have to invest those resources as well into troops and buildings etc.
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Earth 2150 is the one with the Moon Project stand-alone, right? That's pretty good for an RTS. I liked how you could customize your units.
I bought King Arthur at a discount on Steam years ago, but somehow I never got into it. Made two attempts and never kept playing for more than 1 or 2 hours. Don't know why. I should have liked a TW kinda game with magic and fantasy. Maybe I was too alienated by everyone being left-handed in that game ;)
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Yeah those were incredible. Most amazing physics and destructible environment in any game of that kind ever. Shame there wasn't any kind of meta-game on top of it, like in JA2 or X-Com.
Yep, and I guess there never will be. Fingers crossed for the Jagged Alliance kickstarter I guess.
edit: Have you tried Conquest of Elysium? Is it as good as Dominions 3?
I haven't, no. I've heard those games weren't quite as interesting though.
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Nice, I didn't know there was a JA kickstarter. And it's funded, too. The only major change I'm hoping for is that your mercs don't die so easily. A strategy game should be playable without having to reload when things go badly imo. So either units have to be replacable like in the X-Com games or they should die only in rare cases. Maybe making them go unconscious without bleeding to death, and taken prisoner when the whole team is down, would be a good solution. IIRC that's basically how it was in JA2, only once a merc was badly wounded (and if he wasn't killed right away), it was only a matter of a few turns until he died.
I will definitely read all the info about the project later.
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King Arthur: the role playing strategy game is decent. Though it gets pretty frustrating sometimes.
This game has great potential and would be one of my favorite games if it was not the absolute worst optimized game ever made. It gets so goddamn laggy and twitchy with barely even half and army let alone a full army.
That aside I would say Crusader Kings 2 is really in depth. Game is nothing but you making choices on all kings of levels. Who to attack, who to marry, what kids to pay attention to, what generals to evolve, the list goes on for days. And even with those points there is a hell of a lot of depth with just them. Tons of character traits that can either benefit you and the next generation of your family or hurt them.
My top rts games of all time (in no particular order) that I can think of off the top of my head would be:
Total war series
Warhammer series
Age of Empires series
Kessen series
Command and Conquer series
Sid Meier's Pirates (rts/rpg hybrid kinda)
Supreme Commander 2
And Starcraft 2 even though it was only a trial version a got to play a couple levels for a few hours and was still fun.
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Dwarf Fortress
If ASCII graphics bothers you (it bothers me) there are at least three tilesets that turn DF into something watchable. I don't think there are many more complex games than this. Also, dwarves.
Apart from that:
Black&White 1+2
Dungeon Keepers
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wondering why not xcom enemy unknown
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wondering why not xcom enemy unknown
EDIT: have anyone mentioned silent storm?
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I second Fallen Enchantress. Probably better get Legendary Heroes though (= same + expansion). And CK2 is quite recommendable, too.
Also, you may want to find a copy of the (quite old) Sacrifice.
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This game has great potential and would be one of my favorite games if it was not the absolute worst optimized game ever made. It gets so goddamn laggy and twitchy with barely even half and army let alone a full army.
That aside I would say Crusader Kings 2 is really in depth. Game is nothing but you making choices on all kings of levels. Who to attack, who to marry, what kids to pay attention to, what generals to evolve, the list goes on for days. And even with those points there is a hell of a lot of depth with just them. Tons of character traits that can either benefit you and the next generation of your family or hurt them.
My top rts games of all time (in no particular order) that I can think of off the top of my head would be:
Total war series
Warhammer series
Age of Empires series
Kessen series
Command and Conquer series
Sid Meier's Pirates (rts/rpg hybrid kinda)
And Starcraft 2 even though it was only a trial version a got to play a couple levels for a few hours and was still fun.
C&C, AoE, TA, Dark Reign, Warcraft, Starcraft, Seven Kingdoms, Stronghold etc. were all fun and fresh back in the day.
However, most of my fascination with conventional RTS games died sometime in the early 2000s. Although there have been some exceptionally good ones like CoH 1 and Supreme Commander 1.
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wondering why not xcom enemy unknown
X-Com: Apocalypse may well be my all-time favourite game. It definitely would be, if its development hadn't been rushed in the end, leaving some parts of the game somewhat unfinished, and the rest a little unbalanced. Other than that, it combines so many good elements in a really good way and uses simulation over scripting.
Do I really want to play a remake of the series with 90% of the gameplay streamlined out of it, so it is "more accessible to a wider audience"? Also, as far as I know the remake has pretty much dumped most of the open-ended simulation aspects of the originals, and has replaced "emergent gameplay" with a story-driven scripting fest.
Nah, I liked the UFO series, although they weren't as good as X-Com. Xenonauts may also become a good game, but I don't care about EU. Played the demo - looked like a typical case of style over substance.
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Dwarf Fortress
If ASCII graphics bothers you (it bothers me) there are at least three tilesets that turn DF into something watchable. I don't think there are many more complex games than this. Also, dwarves.
Apart from that:
Black&White 1+2
Dungeon Keepers
Black & White are ok, original and slow-paced. One or two weeks ago I tried to replay Keeper 2, but I found it too boring and easy (although still a great game in my memory ;)).
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I second Fallen Enchantress. Probably better get Legendary Heroes though (= same + expansion). And CK2 is quite recommendable, too.
Also, you may want to find a copy of the (quite old) Sacrifice.
I bought Sacrifice on release (although apparently nobody else did :( ) and now I got it on Steam as well. I already replayed it 3 times (Stratos, Persephone, Charnel). It's really good, but I wouldn't call it deep. The fun things about it are all the creativity and fantasy in it, and how you can play and shape the story from five different angles (or a mixture of these).
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Supreme commander 1 was fucking insane, but hilarious at times. When most RTS games have like 1 or 2 superweapons to bomb the enemy with, then SC had like bloody 50 or something. 1 faction could make like 5 nukes that destroyed entire bases, 5 giant cannons that devasted with insane firepower from the other side of the giant map, build a giant plane that threw a giant nuke that was as strong as 3 regular nukes, giant death robots that could take on atleast 100 of anybodies regular units solo...etc. I mean jesus. Thats just damn stupid. I mean generally the point in RTS-s is you have to consentrate your fire to eliminate the other persons superweapon and prevent its use. But when the map is filled with superweapons, making regular units and preparing tactics turns into a completely pointless foreplay. None the less, the game still had a lot of charm and made it stand out.
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Galatic civilzations 2
OH and King Arthur: the role playing wargame
perfect mix of strategy and rpg
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X-Com: Apocalypse may well be my all-time favourite game. It definitely would be, if its development hadn't been rushed in the end, leaving some parts of the game somewhat unfinished, and the rest a little unbalanced. Other than that, it combines so many good elements in a really good way and uses simulation over scripting.
Do I really want to play a remake of the series with 90% of the gameplay streamlined out of it, so it is "more accessible to a wider audience"? Also, as far as I know the remake has pretty much dumped most of the open-ended simulation aspects of the originals, and has replaced "emergent gameplay" with a story-driven scripting fest.
Nah, I liked the UFO series, although they weren't as good as X-Com. Xenonauts may also become a good game, but I don't care about EU. Played the demo - looked like a typical case of style over substance.
I also like Apocalypse a lot, and you are right, the new one is a completely different experience. It IS dumbed down and streamlined as you described it, but I still enjoyed it for what it was. The unit classes actually help to make the tactical combat more interesting (because let's face it, in the originals, and even in Apoc, in the end you usually just equipped everyone with heavy plasma, or with devastator cannons, maybe 1 or 2 launchers, and be done with it). But yeah, the strategy part was pretty meh.
Supreme commander 1 was fucking insane, but hilarious at times. When most RTS games have like 1 or 2 superweapons to bomb the enemy with, then SC had like bloody 50 or something. 1 faction could make like 5 nukes that destroyed entire bases, 5 giant cannons that devasted with insane firepower from the other side of the giant map, build a giant plane that threw a giant nuke that was as strong as 3 regular nukes, giant death robots that could take on atleast 100 of anybodies regular units solo...etc. I mean jesus. Thats just damn stupid. I mean generally the point in RTS-s is you have to consentrate your fire to eliminate the other persons superweapon and prevent its use. But when the map is filled with superweapons, making regular units and preparing tactics turns into a completely pointless foreplay. None the less, the game still had a lot of charm and made it stand out.
If players of ANY skill play SupCom, there won't be any superweapons in the game. SupCom is known for the superweapons (a.k.a. "experimentals"), but it's also a very good strategy game at its core. There are just so many different vectors of attack that scouting becomes your prime job and basically makes the difference between an overwhelming win and a devastating loss. It's always fun to sneak up behind a noob's base with an engineer and build a couple t2 tactical launchers, then simply destroy his commander with a couple of missiles. Most don't even notice what's going on until it makes KABOOOM right in the middle of their base.
Too bad the campaign was pretty lackluster, else it would easily have become the most played strategy game of its time. The core gameplay is ten times better than any C&C or Warcraft crap. But then there came SupCom 2 and destroyed any hopes of SupCom fans.
BTW I realize this is about strategy/rpg, but if you are interested in tactical combat as well, you might want to give Wargame: European Escalation a try. It's a pretty authentic modern war experience, with lots of scouting, hundreds of somewhat realistic units and no base building.
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Supreme commander 1 was fucking insane, but hilarious at times. When most RTS games have like 1 or 2 superweapons to bomb the enemy with, then SC had like bloody 50 or something. 1 faction could make like 5 nukes that destroyed entire bases, 5 giant cannons that devasted with insane firepower from the other side of the giant map, build a giant plane that threw a giant nuke that was as strong as 3 regular nukes, giant death robots that could take on atleast 100 of anybodies regular units solo...etc. I mean jesus. Thats just damn stupid. I mean generally the point in RTS-s is you have to consentrate your fire to eliminate the other persons superweapon and prevent its use. But when the map is filled with superweapons, making regular units and preparing tactics turns into a completely pointless foreplay. None the less, the game still had a lot of charm and made it stand out.
Shit I forgot about that one. I must update my list now! I remember it being hilarious when all I did with my base was set up a shit ton of artillery and they would just keep bombarding the hell out of something even though I couldnt see anything, a lot of the times being their base. Just a constant barrage of death, even shields couldnt stop it. So when It got to actually sending forces to their base their wasnt a whole lot left since the rest of it got blown to hell XD
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Fallen enchantress is good
Conquest of Elysium is not, it's missing like 75% of the stuff Dom 3 has, shallow and boring.
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King Arthur and King Arthur II are, unfortunately, pretty dumbed down. AI is pretty bad, if not terrible, and it's quite easy.
I've finished both of them, and Magic is really 70% of the battles. 20% is ranged and 10% is tactics. 3 heroes, 6 stacks of archers, 2 scout cavs, 2 heavy cav, and regulmar infantry to hold and pown the mob, and you'll stick with that till the end...
Fallen Enchantress : Legendary Heroes, was a great find. Combining a bit of Civilisation, with RPG elements, and pretty well. There's a nice modding community, and all the heroes and regular units that you "design" can be used by the AI later. Play with a challenging AI at least though.
Can be frustrating when Wildlands and monsters destroy your outposts/cities, while the AI have dozens of monsters roaming in their lands, but only get their troops, sometimes, attacked. Pretty fun game.
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Keeper 2, but I found it too boring and easy (although still a great game in my memory ;)).
Yeah I have to say I found the same. They were harder when I was a kid. Looking forward to the 'remake' though :)
Sid Meier's Pirates (rts/rpg hybrid kinda)
Actually an awesome game. I had it on the original Xbox and played it for hours multiple times through. Very cartoonish but a good laugh.
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oh yea, both dawn of war games
i really liked the second game more, but it was completely different than the first
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to be honest dawn of war games seem a bit overrated to me. it practically plays like warcraft 3 with much better graphics and guns, along with few gameplay upgrades.
had load more fun with supreme commander.
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The first one is pretty okay with all the expansions, but the second one is pretty bad IMO.
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What keeps me from giving Fallen Enchantress a try are the pretty poor scores given by players (not the "professional" reviewers, what do they know...) to the game. I guess I might just wait for AoW3 instead.
I played the CK2 demo for a bit. It sure seems complex. I don't normally mind spending a good amount of time with menus and numbers, but this one apparently is played exclusively like that. Not sure, if I will stick with it.
I don't remember much about GalCiv2, only that I played it once and didn't like it very much, even though I'm a big fan of MOO2 and SE5.
I played the original Pirates! a long time ago. But before I'm ever going back there, I still have Age of Pirates 2 on my to-play list. I know it's not the best game around, but I do think the series (although basically the same game over and over) is underrated and deserves some attention for the fun sea battles, that can't be found in any other game (that I know of).