30th August 2005, 7:18 PM
MMORPGs are one kind of PC RPGs, but I was really referring to the single-player kind... Wizardry, Might & Magic, Baldur's Gate (not the console hack-and-slash games), Eye of the Beholder, Arcanum, Temple of Elemental Evil, Fallout, etc... slow-paced, strategic games. It's hard to describe it simply because it's a very broad genre... going from Wizardry to Baldur's Gate is a bigger jump than it is between most console RPGs, I'd say. (Wizardy actually is more console-ish, but the series started before any console RPGs existed, so it'd be more fair to say that console RPGs took a lot of influence from Wizardry, while the PC RPG has developed more in line with Eye of the Beholder... but with story. :))
Anyway, I like them... maybe because I love strategy games and PC RPGs have strategy as a major element -- Baldur's Gate for instance has been accused of being an RTS -- but I like them.
My favorite two PC RPGs are Baldur's Gate II and Planescape: Torment... though Wizards & Warriors is also fantastic. W&W is a modern version of a Wizardry game... simple but effective story that provides a good reason to go out there and kill stuff (in a fun way). :) Torment is great because it's got one of the best -- and longest -- stories in any game ever... more reading text in that game than in any other I've played, and I would consider that a good thing, since it worked brilliantly and was well written. It also de-emphasizes combat more than any other RPG I know of... BGII? That's more of a well-rounded package... good story but also good combat. It's also really long (took me 100 hours), but it was fun the whole way...
Anyway, WoW and Star Wars Galaxies (that is what you're referring to, right?) are a different kind of game... endless, unfocused, etc. Not bad games, but I prefer single-player titles...
Oh, as for PC RPGs on consoles, there are Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, I and II, on PC and X-Box, and The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind also on Xbox. KotOR is a pretty good game (both are similar) that IMO suffers a bit because it's somewhat dumbed down for consoles (it's on a console so they try to make it more like a console RPG, and the result is some simplification of the details...), but is still a solid game... Morrowind? Very, very popular among a certain audience, but I just don't like it that much. Too time consuming with little reward and too nonlinear... I really do like having some kind of a goal in games.
Anyway... I mentioned Star Ocean, Tales, and Mana as different because they don't have standard console RPG battle systems... they have action-combat. Mana games are more like (2d) Zelda, in that you fight in the overworld (run around and hack at the baddies), while Star Ocean and Tales are like console RPGs... with fast-paced, action combat. :) (That is, they have console-rpg levels of detail, story, worlds, battle frequency, etc...) ... but instead of dealing with menus you run around (or on a plane, 2d-style, with you and the enemy you've targetted) hacking them. :) I'd recommend Secret of Mana for SNES, Legend of Mana for PSX, Star Ocean: The Second Story for PSX, and Tales of Symphonia for Gamecube... not sure about the Star Ocean PS2 game, haven't played it and have heard it might not be quite as good. I'm similarly unfamiliar with the two Tales of Destiny games for PSX.
Of course, not everyone enjoys every genre as much as other people... everyone is different (like how I don't enjoy FPSes as much as a lot of people do). But it's best to try something within the genre before saying that you dislike it.
Anyway, I like them... maybe because I love strategy games and PC RPGs have strategy as a major element -- Baldur's Gate for instance has been accused of being an RTS -- but I like them.
My favorite two PC RPGs are Baldur's Gate II and Planescape: Torment... though Wizards & Warriors is also fantastic. W&W is a modern version of a Wizardry game... simple but effective story that provides a good reason to go out there and kill stuff (in a fun way). :) Torment is great because it's got one of the best -- and longest -- stories in any game ever... more reading text in that game than in any other I've played, and I would consider that a good thing, since it worked brilliantly and was well written. It also de-emphasizes combat more than any other RPG I know of... BGII? That's more of a well-rounded package... good story but also good combat. It's also really long (took me 100 hours), but it was fun the whole way...
Anyway, WoW and Star Wars Galaxies (that is what you're referring to, right?) are a different kind of game... endless, unfocused, etc. Not bad games, but I prefer single-player titles...
Oh, as for PC RPGs on consoles, there are Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, I and II, on PC and X-Box, and The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind also on Xbox. KotOR is a pretty good game (both are similar) that IMO suffers a bit because it's somewhat dumbed down for consoles (it's on a console so they try to make it more like a console RPG, and the result is some simplification of the details...), but is still a solid game... Morrowind? Very, very popular among a certain audience, but I just don't like it that much. Too time consuming with little reward and too nonlinear... I really do like having some kind of a goal in games.
Anyway... I mentioned Star Ocean, Tales, and Mana as different because they don't have standard console RPG battle systems... they have action-combat. Mana games are more like (2d) Zelda, in that you fight in the overworld (run around and hack at the baddies), while Star Ocean and Tales are like console RPGs... with fast-paced, action combat. :) (That is, they have console-rpg levels of detail, story, worlds, battle frequency, etc...) ... but instead of dealing with menus you run around (or on a plane, 2d-style, with you and the enemy you've targetted) hacking them. :) I'd recommend Secret of Mana for SNES, Legend of Mana for PSX, Star Ocean: The Second Story for PSX, and Tales of Symphonia for Gamecube... not sure about the Star Ocean PS2 game, haven't played it and have heard it might not be quite as good. I'm similarly unfamiliar with the two Tales of Destiny games for PSX.
Of course, not everyone enjoys every genre as much as other people... everyone is different (like how I don't enjoy FPSes as much as a lot of people do). But it's best to try something within the genre before saying that you dislike it.