/v/ - Video Games

Ultima clone?

>>15711763

I loved the geneforge series. Didn't like avernum as much, but it was still pretty good. Avoid Avadon, it's pretty bad. Only play Nethergate if you wanna play as the Celts; the Roman storyline keeps pulling bullshit out of its ass so that you don't win after the first bigger quest and it's fucking infuriating.

Jeff also found some time in-between remaking Avernum for the 50th time to kickstart a new game, "Queen's wish". The pitch looks fine, but there's too little info to tell whether it'll be any good yet.

>I see anons often mentioning that the original exile games are better than the avernum remakes

The Exile games were a bit less casualized, but Avernum's interface, especially the keyboard-based tile selection, is much more efficient once you get used to its unique implementation.

>>15711779

Yes. The Exile games were virtually spot-on for Ultima V, to be specific. Nethergate, the earlier Geneforge games, and the first few Avernum games were something of a mix between VI & VII.

>>15712057

personally I quite like the general writing of Avadon and I think its sort of interesting, but its a lot less interesting than the other game settings, even the map is a dumb blob with all the foreign countries being convenient peninsulas.

My BIG issue with Avadon is that the combat, at least in the first game, is utter trash. Nothing but throwaway packs of rats, wolves, lizards, spiders, ect, just endless trash. I'm in the middle of my second attempt to brute force my way through Avadon 1 in order to be able to play 2, but even by cheating my way through the combat its still a slog that's taking me stupidly long.

Bless this fucking man, he's been releasing classic CRPGs for years now.

>>15712189

My main issue was the shit-tier combat and the fact that the setting in general kind of sucked. You were sort of fantasy CIA agent, except you didn't really get to deal with interesting stuff. The only section that stood out to me was the utterly fucked magic land full of horrors, everything else was kinda generic. The whole thing was also much more linear than the other games, IIRC, with only real choice being whether to stay loyal or betray the fantasy CIA, except it wasn't a choice you'd build up to throughout the game by doing faction quests, etc., it was just some minor bullshit near the end, if I remember it right (been years since I played it)

>>15712057

>if you wanna play as the Celts

Why would anyone play as those animals when being a Roman is an option?

>the Roman storyline keeps pulling bullshit out of its ass so that you don't win

Does Jeff have surrender monkey genes in his lineage?

>>15712236

It's blatant the game was made with Celts in mind, and the storyline reflects that. The plot is that Celts need to assemble several artifacts or whatever to open the Nethergate. If Romans secure even just one, Celts are shit outta luck. So in Roman storyline, you go and grab one of the artifacts. Only then Jeff realised "Wait, I can't have the game end this soon! The celts need like three or four of them, Romans can't win after getting just one!" so you get this shitty textbox saying "Fairies started circling around you, distracting you, while one stole the artifact you just lost. Better luck with the next one!" and repeats it every single time. I dropped the game after it did that for the second or third time.

>>15711763

>Spiderweb Sofware games

Haven't heard from this guy in ages, good to see his autism is still undiluted. So how were his recent games from the last 4 years?

>>15712378

cant say much about anything thats not the most recent exile remake but they're okay. The harder modes are satisfying to clear but you're railroaded into very specific builds which causes my autism to become inflamed.

Jeff is still going at it, but at this point he has completely forgotten why his original games were indie hits in the first place. He has completely deluded himself into thinking that his storytelling abilities are the only reason people care about his games. Exile's setting is pretty cool, but that's not the reason I continually replay it.

>>15712378

Didn't like the Avadon games at all, Jeff finally fell into the trappings of late '90s/early '00s isometric games and completely removed keyboard movement support. Tedious clickfests can get fucked.

>>15712228

>The whole thing was also much more linear than the other games

The other thing that's really disappointed me about Jeff's recent games. I absolutely love the big open worlds of the Exile series where you can do what you want in for the most part the order that you want, and his games just keep getting more linear and railroad-ish over time.

>>15712779

Back in the very early days, Spiderweb Software actually published an interesting tile-based strategy game for another developer whose name I forget. They stopped serving as a publisher shortly after that.

Geneforge is the best series overall. Unfortunately your choices don't really matter because nothing carries over to the next game, Jeff has already decided on a canonical ending for each game except for the last one. Avadon has the same problem. Kind of makes me wonder why he bothered to design his games this way.

The Avernum series is good if you're into adventuring games but it doesn't have any of the moral dilemmas or choosing a faction that Geneforge or Avadon has. Avernum 1-2 are good but the games are basically a giant scavenger hunt that drags on for too long. Avernum 3 is the best in the series. The gameplay drastically changes starting with 4 and the series becomes much more grindy and less flexible.

Also the remakes of 1-3 are shit. Avernum 1-3 are open-world and the gameplay supports that by letting you go to dangerous places before you're strong enough, possibly to do a quest or to find a good piece of equipment, and if you're careful, you might survive. The remakes give you the illusion of an open world but going out the expected main quest path will get you killed by a random encounter before you can even make a move. It adds a few things that weren't in the original but nothing really important or interesting.

>>15712867

>The remakes give you the illusion of an open world but going out the expected main quest path will get you killed by a random encounter before you can even make a move.

Are you saying it's too difficult to avoid random battles? This usually wasn't the case in the Exile games. You can go out and grab the Orb of Thralni at the very start of the game in Exile 1 if you really know what you're doing.

Anyone know how the hell to run the Exile games in Wine lately? One upon a time (like before v1.6 I think) the games ran completely flawlessly. Then a Pulseaudio/Alsa update ruined that, and now all three games insta-crash for me on recent versions of Wine? What's an Exile fan to do?

>>15712788

Yeah, five other games by 3 other devs, the one you're probably thinking of was Galactic Core. Before that, Spiderweb was itself published by Fantasoft, the flagship product of whom (Realmz, a more Goldbox-style RPG) they shared in the results of a graphics overhaul for both games with.

>>15712867

>Kind of makes me wonder why he bothered to design his games this way.

Because it would've resulted in a crippling combinatorial explosion. Really, before Mass Effect, how many games can you think of that had sweeping series-spanning savegame carryover built into their scenarios?

>>15712867

>Unfortunately your choices don't really matter

They do, your actions can lead to different outcomes and that's satisfying by itself. I wouldn't even advice anons to play more than one or two games because it's not a saga but rather the same game five times with a bigger scope with each game. The fact that saves doesn't carry over doesn't matter. It's like how saves from Fallout didn't carry over to Fallout 2, or to New Vegas.

>>15712913

>Really, before Mass Effect, how many games can you think of that had sweeping series-spanning savegame carryover built into their scenarios?

Did even any games after Mass Effect do this?

>>15712751

wasn't avadon originally a tablet game?

>>15713251

No, though it was his first game to be ported from Mac/Wintel.

>Avernum's presentation > Exile's presentation, though it has better gameplay options

>Avernum/Exile 3 > 2 > 5 > 1 > 4

Avernum lost its identity once it moved to the shitty Geneforge engine.

Also, did anyone play the Crystalshard games that piggybacked off his website? Specifically SubTerra?

Which of the Spiderweb games are worth playing? I was an idiot and bought the Humble Bundle they had years ago because I was in a retro RPG phase, and I only played Avadon 1 and the remake of the first Avernum. I don't know why I can play through a crude game like Ultima IV, but both Avadon and Avernum were just boring me. I think the lack of any music is part of it, but the games just felt "sterile" for lack of a better term. I think I liked Avernum slightly better, but in the end I just stopped playing it.

>>15713092

>and the only series with more than two installments that actually altered the plot based on your save was Quest for Glory.

I played the series, and it was enjoyable, but I don't remember ever seeing or reading about it changing the plot, besides one two two subplots, but that was because of the items that were carried over from the previous games, like a cat statue from II to give to the cat merchant in III to give you a discount. Still at least your stats, and spells carried so that was something great.

>>15716565

Geneforge is great, if you don't like Avernum you can either play the old remakes, or just go straight to the Exile versions which are usually preferred by older fans.

Avadon is mildly interesting but the weakest of the bunch by a wide margin, in setting, story, and combat, the game is just a slog. I don't know if the sequels are better because I haven't been able to force myself through Avadon 1 yet.

Just stick to Geneforge and if you don't like it either just hang up your hat I guess.

>>15712982

Wizardry 7 let you carry over your party from Wizardry 6. And Wizardry 8 in turn let you carry over your party from Wizardry 7. Then take into consideration that 8 was released nine years after 7, and that 7 was developed for DOS while 8 worked on Windows.

>>15712867

>Kind of makes me wonder why he bothered to design his games this way.

Anon, there are only two routes you can take. Either do "your choices carry over" and have choices that don't matter at all, like Mass Effect did it, or do "Your choices matter, but only within this game. Sequel gets a canon ending" like Jeff did. Trying to somehow do both leads to getting bogged down in insane amounts of additional necessary content that would grow exponentially with each sequel. Don't believe me? Try doing something as simple as a VN that has a decent amount of choices. You'll quickly find out how quickly your workload doubles or quadruples with every choice, and that's just a shitty VN.