LAST EDITED ON May-30-00 AT 07:43 PM (Pacific)

Some great games there, and a lot of duds. Wasteland is probably the best of the lot -- I highly recommend that you play that as soon as possible.

Eye of the Beholder was also excellent, and EOB II was one of the best games I ever played. The real-timish type combat is pretty annoying, but if you learn the side step trick (go up to a monster, hit it, side step before it hits you, repeat) combat isn't much of a challenge, and you can just enjoy the fun art and inventive gameplay -- though, come to think of it, if you're opposed to pressure plate puzzles, stay away from it. Also, EOB III was awful, and I could never get myself to play it for more than about 2 hours.

The Gold Box games were good -- at least the early ones, but they very quickly became repetitive... I enjoyed Pool of Radiance, Curse of the Azure Bonds, and parts of Secret, but beyond that they were pretty redundant, and didn't really evolve at all.

And, of course, I highly recommend the earlier wizardry games, particularly W5, if you can look past the absence of graphics.

The real duds in the group: Hillsfar is truly among the worst games ever made -- just a bunch of basic jumping puzzles (as in, jumping over rocks and ducking under trees). Menzoberranzan was also awful, but you can easily finish it in a weekend. I also personally always hated Ultima, but there are a LOT of people that would disagree with me on that.

OE

How about playing Wizardry I-V, if you're in the mood for classics? BT III I liked, it had a large world with automapping, as did Dragon Wars (slow character growth though).

Dungeon Hack is work looking at too. It's real time and has food, but its soo customizable that you can crank the food setting so you don't have to worry about it, plus you can pause the game (but hey, what do I know, I've actually played Diablo).

There's also a free, new DragonQuest-Wizardry scenario that runs on Apple emulators, written by Snafaru, that I'm really enjoying:
http://www.iosphere.net/~eric/wizardry/dragonquest.htm

- John
http://www.tk421.net/wizardry/

I have to agree -- if you haven't tried Wiz 1 and Wiz 4, and you can stand the fact that they aren't really graphics games, you must. Wizardry 4 is still one of the most compelling storylines ever in a CRPG (though you have to play Wiz 1 first to appreciate it). It's also one of the hardest games ever, so it should keep you a while.

Wasteland. Definitely Wasteland. Dragon Wars is good too, as is Dungeon Hack, if you're in the mood to do some serious dungeon crawling for the halibut. I heard Stonekeep was a "coulda-been-a-contender" title, but it was s'possed to be buggy as all heck.

Try out another really great piece. Even if it not a true rpg, it has a lot good rpg elements. Sword of Aragorn is a awesome strategy-rpg. Think its done by SSI. Its really old and terrible graphic, but it rocks so hard. Your troops gain xp for living through battles and your main character give you different benefits depending on class. A true 5 star game!!

How 'bout the Ultima series & Betrayal at Krondor? Also, i've played Bard's Tale in my NES(not SNES). I've also finished Final Fantasy 1 in NES. I'm proud of that because it's hard to finish it because of saving. Hey, the Fallout RPG also came from the WASTELANDS.

How can you give up on World of Xeen? For gameplay it is the BEST of the Might & Magic series

>> I picked up Wiz Gold a while back as part of the Ultimate RPG Archives collection. I also picked up the Ultimate Wizardry Collection and The Forgotten Realms Archive.

>> So, my question is, which to play next? I've been through CoDS/Gold 4 times and Bane once.

>> I started Might and Magic: World of Xeen; Bard's Tale; and Eye of the Beholder. None of them really grabbed me right off. In case you're not familiar with my choices, here they are:

>> RPG Archives: Stonekeep, Might & Magic: world of Xeen, Bard's Tale I, II, II, and Construction Set; Ultima Underworld I & II, Dragon Wars, Wasteland

The last two there are still great. BT-I was a classic, but not grapical to much of a degree.

>> Forgotten Realms: Pool of Radiance, Curse of the Azure Bonds, Secret of the Silver Blades, Pools of Darkness, Hillsfar, Eye of the Beholder I, II, & III, Dungeon Hack, Gateway to the Savage Frontier, Treasures of the Savage Frontier, Menzoberranzan

PoR was a pain in the fundament to get started on. There were fights against 300-400 little goblinoids ("Kobolds"?) all at one time. Resolution of some battles took FOREVER with PC's slower than 20 MHz (and almost all were slower when it was a new game!) Curse was a very good, enjoyable game. Silver Blades was poor. Pools of Darkness was better, but the engine hadn't really improved at all.

Hillsfar was crap. Gateway and Treasure were more of the same old Azure Bonds and Pools of Darkness thing. The last really good Gold Box game was the last of the Krynn games, Queen of Darkness, or something like that. I never liked any of the EOB games.

> Some great games there, and a lot of duds. Wasteland is probably the best of the lot -- I highly recommend that you play that as soon as possible.

> Eye of the Beholder was also excellent, and EOB II was one of the best games I ever played. The real-timish type combat is pretty annoying, but if you learn the side step trick (go up to a monster, hit it, side step before it hits you, repeat) combat isn't much of a challenge, and you can just enjoy the fun art and inventive gameplay -- though, come to think of it, if you're opposed to pressure plate puzzles, stay away from it. Also, EOB III was awful, and I could never get myself to play it for more than about 2 hours.

> The Gold Box games were good -- at least the early ones, but they very quickly became repetitive... I enjoyed Pool of Radiance, Curse of the Azure Bonds, and parts of Secret, but beyond that they were pretty redundant, and didn't really evolve at all.

If you have never played it, Betrayal at Krondor was tremendous. Elder Scrolls: Arena was very good. Might and Magic VI was excellent . .

Kiwi

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