DOS games

no you need to play original sin

new torment is good (and underrated, apparently) but it’s all in the writing, it’s basically comparable to dragonfall mechanically

what’s the western computer role-playing game with the best combat

honestly, it’s original sin

prior to that I don’t know what I would’ve said but it just snuck up and took the crown

Yeah the NES received a number of DOS ports, including The Bard’s Tale, Might and Magic, and the first two Wizardry games. I played The Bard’s Tale when I was a kid and it was stripped down from the DOS version but still pretty good.

Truly great writing forgives all else.

But like, complication along the “tactical”/Fallout axis is not necessarily what I mean by improvement, though it is a kind of improvement. In my estimation both Witcher 3 and ME3 are better RPGs than Dragonfall, in part because they have better combat - better because of their willingness to hybridize out of the action tradition.

I mean if I want to click on hexes why wouldn’t I just play Invisible Inc honestly

you sound like a man who has not played original sin

Look it’s on the list.

Every game should just be Transistor, Neufenstein or Myst. I’d be happy in that world.

it’s also a total fallacy to look at games with purely tactical and not-at-all reflex-based combat as somehow underdeveloped along one axis, if for no other reason than that almost no RPGs had remotely decent action combat until fairly recently. I generally agree that most pure strategic-layer combat is at or behind the level of fallout (whose main advantage was how open-ended combat scenarios could become when errant NPCs were involved), but that’s just a problem with a lack of imagination around when the genre was calcified, not a permanent limit on implementation per se

I said, let’s get past Fallout, and you said pretty much no one has surpassed Fallout, so guess what hombre, we agree.

post can not be deliberately obtuse

I am sorry for making that post. It was ill-considered and short-sighted, and I apologize for the resulting mess.

Don’t apologize. This was a good discussion.

Secret Agent is a game that I have an irrational attachment to. It’s a fairly simple Apogee platformer based off of the Crystal Caves engine released in 1992. It almost feels like someone was tasked with making a “lite” version of Duke Nukem 1. You have the typical level design with key-cards and barriers (and that weird Apogee lighting), but all of the levels are 2-by-2 screens and the shooting feels very basic.

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Out of curiosity, do you like this more than Crystal Caves? They’re so similar!

I dunno. I never played Crystal Caves as a kid.

Maybe I should fix that.

You’re going to travel back in time and force your child self to play Crystal Caves?

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Yes.

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By the same token, I think I’ve gotta check out Secret Agent. Had somehow never heard of it, despite being pretty big into Apogee’s platformers back in the day.

I never even beat the first episode of Crystal Caves. It felt so huge.

I just got back from playing Crystal Caves with my child self. The child was in me all along.

It seems to have more ideas/variety than I remember Secret Agent having (e.g. anti-gravity, recoil, better enemies). Granted, it feels less polished, since there are a number of levels where you can get into situations where you have to restart to complete them. This isn’t a super big deal (you have infinite lives and the levels are relatively small), but it’s not a problem I recall Secret Agent having. Secret Agent also felt like it had a better sense of place, FWIW.

There was also this level that was a cheeky Mario reference.


It was a fun romp (2-3 hours tops), though I don’t think I’ll bother with the other two episodes.

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Some DOS games! Sorry some of the screencaps are small.

Battlecruiser 3000 AD

Dungeon Hack

Ravenloft: Strahd’s Possession

Wasteland

Dark Sun: Shattered Lands

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