Gamespy's 'Top 10 Ways to Know You're a PC Snob'

[A Black Falcon]

I'm with DJ on this one. I have always found the battle systems in console RPGs to be more complex. KOTOR and the other PC RPGs are great fun, but the battles are pretty much as DJ said. You send your characters in and if they are more powerful than your enemies and you have good equipment you will win. I would occasionally need to use force powers or magic in PC RPGs but it was generally for healing or because some enemies took very little physical damage.

KotOR != PC RPG! Did you read what I said? KotOR's battle system was simplified for console audiences. It's simplistic and lacking compared to most good PC RPGs. What actual PC RPGs have you played? KotOR doesn't really count. It was PC RPG-ish in its story and branching plot, and in how the enemies use recognizable skills and drop their equipment, which you can then pick up, and other things like that, but not in its depth and complexity of combat.

The reason that I have said so many times that KotOR so badly needed movement while paused and turn off AI is because as it is designed, the easiest way to win is to just hit 'attack' and watch. Maybe give some 'power attack' or whatever commands every so often; it's annoying because of the stupid queue thing, so maybe not. That's not particularly good design. It's fast paced, but not strategic... a far cry from what you find in Baldur's Gate, that's for sure. It's frusterating really, because when I played it I could see so many ways how they could have so easily made the game so much more strategic and fun, but they just didn't do it...

Honestly, what you two are saying is so utterly wrong (in the "complete exact opposite of the truth" sense that the only conclusion I can come to is that you're basing all of your opinions on PC RPGs on The Elder Scrolls and KotOR. There's just no other way to explain how you could think that way, not that those games fully validate such thinking! I mean, KotOR may be simple compared to Baldur's Gate, but it's still got depth!

As for equipment. The way console RPGs handle equipment is kind of stupid, I've always thought... in a PC RPG, getting new equipment actually means something! In console ones it's just 'have you done enough grinding to afford the next level of armor?' Boring. And not fun either, since I HATE grinding. And farming, but that's MMOs (which are a completely different genre). :)

And equipment and level matter too of course, like in console RPGs, but in PC ones you change equipment less often (in console RPGs it's like 'go to next town, buy next armor type -- iron, bronze, gold, whatever'. It's silly and kind of odd, really. In PC RPGs, generally, you keep equipment for a long time. For instance, in Baldur's Gate II my main character has been wielding one weapon since maybe 15-20 hours into the game (and I'm like 130 hours in including the expansion). Another one has a weapon from even earlier. And armor? You upgrade that just as infrequently. There is much less of a focus in what your equipment is in a PC RPG... what it is is important, but once you get set up, you can know that it'll stay that way for a long time. You also know that there's a very high likelihood that the items you'll truly want to equip will come not from stores, but will come from quests or enemy drops. Stores are useful for selling items to and replenishing consumables, but not often for upgrading your characters' equipment, and that's how it should be... but you can't do that if enemies don't drop usable stuff, of course...

I will say that console RPGs haven't progressed a whole lot in the battle department, but it is still more strategic than the battle systems of most PC RPGs. Even in FFXII, which is as close to the PC battle system that the Final Fantasy games have come, you need to program gambits to do well or battles would last a long time. Generally in good console RPGs you need to fight bosses a number of times before you can develop a solid strategy against them. I rarely fought bosses more than once in the KOTOR games, and I believe I beat the final boss in both of them on the first try.

That's because KotOR is easy and they removed a lot of the strategy and depth and complexity that were in their PC RPGs, knowing that console gamers aren't used to that kind of stuff and the audience would have been a lot smaller than it would be for a more fast-paced game like they made.

Play Fallout, Fallout 2, Arcanum, Greyhawk: The Temple of Elemental Evil, Planescape: Torment, Baldur's Gate and its expansion Tales of the Sword Coast, Baldur's Gate II, its expansion Baldur's Gate II: Throne of Bhaal, Wizardry 8, Wizards & Warriors (no, not the NES game), Neverwinter Nights 2, anything from Spiderweb Software Spiderweb Software, maybe older stuff like Betrayal at Krondor, Pools of Radiance or other Gold Box games (or even Wizardry, if you want to suffer even more) if you want real oldschool, etc... those are PC RPGs.

That is, of course, ignoring the Diablo-style action-RPG subgenre, which as I said can have a surprisingly large amount of depth too at times. Those games do often have more of a focus on "play to collect loot", though, which doesn't interest me that much...

And then there's The Elder Scrolls, which I think I've talked about enough times before.