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Looking for tips and recommendations, here. I just finished the NWN2 second expansions and i am looking for another RPG worth the title. I have played Baldur's Gate, the Witcher, Vampire Bloodlines and Redemption...so i am looking for strong story and non irritating gameplay (i am not picky when it comes to settings and graphics).
I have heard the world concerning Planescape Torment but i wonder if it will play in a 4 year old computer (my desktop) or a brand new laptop with Vista. Arcanum refuses to be installed, probably scaed by the shiny new hardware.

Also, i was given Two Worlds to play, and i was wondering if someone had played it and would like to share the experience.
Thank you beforehand for the ideas .

A slow day so I thought I may as well perform a wee bit of necromancy on the side and raise this thread, as at the moment I am suffering good rpg withdrawl (and ME2 and DA:Origns are delayed yet again).

I am uncertain as to which genre you were interested in so I'll go with a few. I stuck in Wiki links so you can get a vague idea of what they are without me blathering on.

Realms of Arkania Trilogy (Blade of Destiny, Star Trail, Shadows over Riva)
These are based on the German version of D&D (The Dark Eye). BoD is the first in the series and the most clunky, while SoR is the most 'modern' (1997). Definetly dated graphics and BoD has clunky controls at times.

Drakensang
Based on The Dark Eye but much more modern - (4th ed TDE IIRC). Same world, but a few hundred yeard in the future and a new location, and the engine is very different.

Gabriel Knight Trilogy (Sins of the fathers, Beast Within, Blood of the Sacred Blood of the Damned)

A modern mystery game from Sierra before they folded.

Tex Murphy (Under a killing Moon, Pandora Directive, Overseer)

A gum shoe detective in the vein of Sam Spade set in post WW3 San Fran. They are FMV games, which are actually rather good IMHO, unlike the mass of crap released during the FMV fad.

Will put up some more when I can review my VG library, but these are the ones which come immediatly to mind.



Unfortunalty I didn't like it much. While the game itself was okay there was no real 'RPG' beyond the vague main story. The side quests were all pretty much 'Yes I will fetch the tv remote for you/No I wont fetch the TV remote for you' and it suffered form being a "big world little content". And riding a horse is like controlling an 18 wheel semi, on ice, with no brakes and you are jack knifing. Still the scenery is nice and some quests are interesting on ocassion.

Thanks a lot! Is Gabriel Knight as atmospheric as it sounds? I have heard mixed reviews.

I think I know of the review you mean concerning GK-3 (Blood Sacred/Damned) - and his gripe was concerning some of the puzzles. The reviewer thought they were stupid and silly. Trying to look at it from an objective point of view (difficult) I agree with him slightly with one or two of the very early puzzles, but not to the degree he bellyached about.

As for atmospherics and music I would say that they alone make the game worth it. Though I must say the series is _not_ an action RPG. If you want the chair gripping/guns blazing type action adventure, GK is definetly not for you (in the entire series you only get a gun once in a minor chapter). For the most part is is a combination of mystery/horror. On thinking though, whilst GK-1 and GK-2 have stood up fairly well, GK-3 has weakened a bit due to the popularisation of a certain fiction book, which sadly means that most people will have a pretty good idea of the basic premise on what was once an obsucre idea. (Yes I am dancing around it a bit trying to avoid spoliers etc and the game has a vastly superior take on it).

But for the basics -
GK-1 (sins) has the old 2D kings quest interface, is set in New Orleans and deals with Voodoo and ancient curses
GK-2 (Beast) is FMV, set in Germany, and deals with werewolves and a RL historical conspiracy
GK-3 (Blood) is an early attempt at 3d randering, set in France, and deals with vampires.

Anyways, enough GK rambling from me. A few other games though...

Jade Empire
An action adventure game from Bioware but with a very strong story IMHO. Bears some similarities to Knights of the Old Republic though set in ancient China.

The Bards Tale
While essentially an action/adventure game, it is a humor parody on computer RPG's. For example you smash a barrel early in the game (the common trope of players smashing barrels to loot them), and the local barrel maker (a cooper I know) offers a deal: smash all other barrels, so barrel-maker can sell more barrels. Another is you kill a wolf and the standard 'loot drop' occurs and both the protagonist and narrtator express disbelief.
Narrator: "The Bard slayed the wolf, which had apparently consumed a weapon, several sundry goods, and the contents of a small treasury... wait, this can't be right..."
The Bard: "That's nothing, once I killed a rat and a chest popped out. An entire CHEST!!"

Lots of very dry humor and I think the devleopers promotional image sums up the protagonist ( representing most male CRPGers at the time) nicely.


Ultima 7 - Black Gate & Serpent Isle
The last of the Ultima series (ultima 8 and 9 never happened - lalalalala). You have probably played them but I should recommend them anyway.

Thanks a million !

I might throw in one more thing before I shut up, lest I tempt the rage of the great old ones for spamming their forum.

A reasonable site which deals exclusively with adventure games is Just Adventure+. They have reviews of adventure games and the ocassional interesting article about the adventure industry and (IMHO) are much better than the "magazine franchise reviewers" who appear to suffer from "Gunz and Xplosionz" disorder.

Another which may/may not be of interest is Gog. Gog (good old games) is an idea by CDprojekt where old games are updated to run on modern systems. They are pretty cheap overall, and ocassionally a old classic pops up (like fallout 1&2). Beware though these are old games - no fancy graphics, old controls, and 8 bit midi sounds.

Okay, will be quiet now. No one here but us kobolds.....

I'm a bit in the stone age.

Fable is alright. The leveling system annoys me. I've heard Fable 2 is better.
Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic is great. Knights of the old Rebublic 2 is not as great, but I've enjoyed it so far.
Elder Scrolls Oblivion is highly recommended. I couldn't get passed the beginning, but I'm also not used to first person realtime combat.
And oldie, but goodie is Diablo 2. Soon 3 will be out. Yay!

I've been amused by Fallout 1&2 for years. Then again, you've probably played them if you've played RPGs (right? RIGHT?!). Fallout 2 has a unofficial patch that (Restoration Project) fixes humongous amount of bugs, adds several locations and practically makes it FO 2.5.

+1 For the PS:Torment.. I personally didn't have any problems installing it (the old cd version).

Temple of Elemental Evil is nice, even though as a Troika game it's riddled by same swamp of bugs Arcanum and V:TM. There's an unofficial patch called Circle of Eight, or Circle of Nine or Circle of Whatever that fixes A TON of bugs and even adds to the game. Combat is strict 3.5, so if you like it you'll be at home here.

Deus Ex. I've heard you shouldn't touch the sequel though.

Quest for Glory 1-4. Old, but I love them to death. There's a free remake of QfG 2 with better graphics but all the old content btw. DosBox recommended

If you're playing older games with low resolution even at max, you might wanna try a program called D3DWindower. It allows you to play games in a window, even though they don't support it. It's a bitch to find without documentation and it's half in russian (I think), but it's fairly easy to use.

Also, since Diablo was mentioned, I'll mention Thief. I just got all 3 of them in the same box for less than 12€. Not an RPG (neither is Diablo!), but great fun anyway.

Played it for about two hours. Never touched it again. Ever. (Now, I will never speak of this again.)

On the other hand, I also have the Two Worlds tabletop RPG! (Came with the Collector's Edition.) To this must go the distinction of being the absolute briefest implementation of the 3.5 rules ever conceived. It's a hardback the size of a DVD case, and 72 pages, cover to cover, including the OGL license boilerplate. Combat maneuvers? Who needs 'em? Goods and Services? Piffle! Campaigning? Waste of time! (That said, it can be a good introduction for newbies.)

Fallout comes very higly recommended but... i am a fantasy person, making exceptions only for Victorian and vampire stuff.
-Cheesy, i know! The rest of the recommendations sound funn, even the half russian window thingie by Slither Slither .

Vampire:BL, Arcanum and Temple of Elemental Evil were made by the defunct Troika games, so if you liked one you would probably like the others. However they all suffered from another common factor of Troika - having a plethora of bugs, though most of these have been fixed by fan patches. If as you say you are a fantasy/Victorian lover - then I would definetly work on getting Arcanum working. The story of the cold war between steampunk tech and magic alone is worth it. More on these games (patches, faqs, etc) here.

On this genre though - never ever install "Pool of Radiance". It had a primative form of DRM with it that did nasty things like ERASE YOUR HARD DRIVE.

Deus Ex (and the sequel) are cyberpunk themed so may not be to your taste. The sequel (Deus Ex: Invisible War) suffered from console-itis. The game was develeoped simultaneously for the PC and the Xbox (the original) resulting in a low resolution FPS style shooter.

One out from the left field though is possibly some of the Mods for NWN2. If you are a Lolth/Drow lover maybe look at - A hunt through the Dark and Lolthanchwi. They are part of a series (still being made) about a ordinary drow (ie: you) during the events of War of the Spider Queen.

I loved the modules. Some of them are better than NWN1...

Do you only have a PC, or do you have some consoles too? I have found that Oblivion is an enjoyable play, though for some reason I enjoyed the prequal Morrowind more.

A PC, and a pretty fast one. A friend of mine has a playstation so i can always play there but i need an immersive story and consoles rarely are about the story.
I am waiting for Dragon Age: Origins oh so impatiently right now...

If you're a fan of the NWN style games, you may or may not like some of the hack-n-slash style RPGs like Diablo, Nox, and Throne of Darkness, all pretty similar, Diablo is the classic, with simple point and click combat, but randomly generated dungeons to explore. Nox isn't random but the world is really fun to explore and is very pretty, plus the three classes offer completely different story arcs. Throne of Darkness is pretty big, and gives you 7 characters to control (4 at once) and you spend lots of time character building.

If you love the Baldur's Gate games, also look into Icewind Dale and it's sequel. Planescape Torment is GREAT, in order to run it just type Planescape Torment and your OS into a search engine, there's great guides on the internet to get your computer able to run these games. Torment is less about combat, although it is present, it's more about story, and there is a TON of it.


If you really want something immersive in story and lore, I'd go for The Elder Scrolls: Morrowind. Oblivion, it's sequel, has incredible graphics, improved combat, physics, and AI, but is a serious step down in terms of immersion. Morrowind lets you create your own class, using a combination of 10 of 30 skills, and 10 races to choose from with their own perks and weaknesses. It gives you FULL control over your character's customization and you can be a mage wearing heavy armor, or a thief using a battleaxe, or a slick tongued merchant. Morrowind is incredible, and I've invested well over 1,000 hours into it through many playthroughs and STILL not seen everything, the world is huge, and gives you tons of secrets to explore, and it's hand crafted, everything is placed. The main quest takes a good 30-40+ hours to complete, and that's only scratching the surface of the game, there's hundreds of small side missions you can perform for people, and about 15 factions you can join and rise to the highest ranks by performing duties, earning excellent item rewards and even in some cases your own stronghold to live in. The lore of the game is excellent with TONS of books to read, and you can spend an hour just talking to ONE person. You can use any kind of weapon or armor, enchant your items, even create and use your own spells.

Plus, if you get the PC Game of the Year Edition (which I STRONGLY recommend) then you can experience the two expansion's and their content PLUS have access to thousands of mods that do everything from add a new item to the game, new quests, dungeons, houses, companions, some even completely re-do the game world and give you a whole new adventure.



Enough fan-boi-ism on that.


Other CRPGs you might enjoy:

The Exile/Avernum series by Spiderweb Software

Ultima VII

Disciples (Actually part RPG, part Strategy, but VERY fun)

Lands of Lore Series (First-person maze-like crawler, really fun)

Betrayal at Kronder (Old game, still lots of fun if you can get the darned thing to work!)

UnReal World (http://www.jmp.fi/~smaarane/urw.html) This is one of the most detailed and character driven RPGs I've ever seen, but instead of fighting monstrous hordes, your goal is Survival, you have to find food, shelter, water, you can build up TONS of skills, and chop trees and mine rock to build houses, go hunt for food, trade with villagers, fight evil warriors, VERY fun but the interface can be a little... lacking at times.