Home Alone With Time on my Hands
My wife is out of town for a couple of weeks leaving me with plenty of time to get my RPG head on. I rarely get more than an hour at a time to play so usually stick with games that are easy to dip in and out of. The three main titles staring at me are Dragon Warrior II, Faria and AD&D: Pool of Radiance, none of which I've played before. Which one should get my attention first, or do you have any other suggestions? All input gratefully received.
Comments
Originally posted by: Brock Landers
Well Faria needs completing for the thread so...
Interesting. Nice call. Although I fear the celebrity of being on the board may change me.
Pool of Radiance is inferior to the PC counterpart by enough that I don't think I"d ever bother playing it.
Faria, I don't have as much experience with, but it's an action-RPG, and I found the dungeons to be really drab and boring.
Faria is very grindy. Then again, it is an RPG/action-adventure on the NES, so that is kind of what you get. I liked it, but didn't finish it. I've never played the others.
For that genre, though, I had the impression it was grindy, even by comparison to its peers. (Crystalis, Zelda 2, Tower of Radia, Faxanadu)
Visually, it is definitely more boring than any of those options, as well.
Well Faria needs completing for the thread so...
Interesting. Nice call. Although I fear the celebrity of being on the board may change me.
There's also a nice selection of remaining titles for SNES including Breath of Fire 2, Dragon View, Dungeon Master, Drakkhen, Equinox, Might and Magic III, Obitus, Arcana, Ultima titles, etc
Speaking of, where's Ozzy when you need him?
Originally posted by: arch_8ngel
For that genre, though, I had the impression it was grindy, even by comparison to its peers. (Crystalis, Zelda 2, Tower of Radia, Faxanadu)
Visually, it is definitely more boring than any of those options, as well.
Other than Radia, that is a list of games that I have not played in a while, if at all. I suppose if I get the bug to make a metroidvania then I'll have to play through them, but until then I am certainly not touching Zelda II .
I played Faria to study its single-screen dungeons, and just remember the rest of it being a chore. Grinding to get the best equipment in the first town, in order to proceed, that type of thing (fire sword?). That is about the only memory of it, the rest just kind of blended together. Overworld fights were green and blue, dungeons were brown, and that's that.
Originally posted by: SoleGooseProductions
Originally posted by: arch_8ngel
For that genre, though, I had the impression it was grindy, even by comparison to its peers. (Crystalis, Zelda 2, Tower of Radia, Faxanadu)
Visually, it is definitely more boring than any of those options, as well.
Other than Radia, that is a list of games that I have not played in a while, if at all. I suppose if I get the bug to make a metroidvania then I'll have to play through them, but until then I am certainly not touching Zelda II .
I played Faria to study its single-screen dungeons, and just remember the rest of it being a chore. Grinding to get the best equipment in the first town, in order to proceed, that type of thing (fire sword?). That is about the only memory of it, the rest just kind of blended together. Overworld fights were green and blue, dungeons were brown, and that's that.
Crystalis is strictly overhead/psuedo-iso view.
It is much more like FF Adventure/Seiken Densetsu than Zelda, for instance.
Tower of Radia seems like almost a direct analog to how Faria is designed, but much better looking.
I never played through it fully, though.
Faxanadu is like if you made Zelda 2 play like Metroid.
(all part of why I despise the "metroidvania" moniker, because the concept of RPGs in that style predates Castlevania being anything other than arcade-style linear game)
AD&D: Pool of Radiance on Nintendo is made from poo and other bodily fluids.
It's a crap port that changes some D&D laws, eliminates some classes because, well, no actual reason. And makes the combat clunky and hard to move in vs the pretty fluid PC ports which improved in the sequals.
Originally posted by: arch_8ngel
Crystalis is strictly overhead/psuedo-iso view.
It is much more like FF Adventure/Seiken Densetsu than Zelda, for instance.
Tower of Radia seems like almost a direct analog to how Faria is designed, but much better looking.
I never played through it fully, though.
Faxanadu is like if you made Zelda 2 play like Metroid.
(all part of why I despise the "metroidvania" moniker, because the concept of RPGs in that style predates Castlevania being anything other than arcade-style linear game)
Crystalis and Zelda II were two games that I watched my little brother play, but never really got into myself. I've been meaning to come back to Crystalis for years, but somehow I never get around to it.
Radia was decent, though tedious at times. I just beat it in January? I think that it was the first game of the new year that I checked off of my list. It was decent, but so many poor design decisions. The battles were rather different than in Faria, since the screen did not shift to another when they occurred. It was kind of nice, and added to the flow of the game, but some times you'd take two steps between battles before the next. Your character position also reset after the battle, so it made it hard to feel like you were progressing. That aspect alone gave it a very different feeling than Faria had.
Still waiting to play Faxanadu. I watched a buddy play it once, but that is my only experience, other than analyzing how the text works in that first instance of the text box in the game.
Anyways, have fun with DQ II OP. I still need to give it a try, is it any good? I remember hating the first, though it has been fifteen or more years since I've played it.
Sicko.
Multi monster battles is a big improvement on the first DW. I'm also pleased you no longer have to go through the action menu to walk up stairs. Enjoying it at the moment, although getting poisoned sucks and I can't find the son of a b*tch king who's meant to join me on my quest. He's run off to look for the fountain of bravery. Guess I'll have to run after him.
Wife's not gonna be home for a couple weeks, huh? Time's not the only thing you'll have an your hands....
Sicko.
I was going to try and convince you that me wrists were sore from button mashing.