What other games complement your Dominions 3?

[Ruminant]

Originally Posted by DonCorazon

I have had the RPG itch of late. Was about to re-load NWN2 and see if I could get into it when I came across this German game - Drakensang. Wonder if its any good?

I too have recently had that most horrid of gamer-diseases, the RPG itch. Specifically the urge for a new Morrowind-esque atmospheric exploration RPG. I looked up Drakensang, it looked very promising at first until I discovered that it's really, really old-school in its style. As in, some reviewer said he fought only 6 different enemy types (mostly animals) for the first -fourty- hours. I don't really think I could stand that kind of repetitiveness.

I've started playing Arcanum through again, I didn't really get that far last time. It's more comparable to Baldur's Gate with the world map and isometric perspective than Morrowind's massive 3D countryside. The graphics aren't exactly top-notch either. However, the atmosphere is rather awesome if you like steam-punk-esque fantasy and they've put a fair amount of work into the world and its lore. If you haven't played it you might give it a try. Picture a world of magic VS technology, where half-ogres, dwarves, elves and half-orcs wear tophats, carry shotguns and ride in steam trains. You can create a mage of incomparable power, but because of the negative effect magic has on technology you have to ride in the very back of the train in a special compartment or alternatively you could create the gnomish equivilent of Nikola Tesla but none of your party's mage's healing spells are guaranteed to work on you. Or make a dashing rogue who robs banks with a pistol and metal armour ala Ned Kelly, a foppish half-elven dandy who can't do anything much on his own and relies on his way with words and cotrie of thugs or anything in between, it has quite a robust character creator (just not much difference in graphical representation).

Anyone played any comparable games to Morrowind they wouldn't hesitate to recommend?

[Trumanator]

Well Oblivion is the obvious one, though its system reqs could be an issue. Probably the single thing that makes Oblivion trump Morrowind for me every time is that it doesn't take forever and a day to get anywhere.

[Ironhawk]

Fallout is like a slimmed down version of Oblivion, except with guns instead of swords. A decent game, overall.

I'm trying out Mass Effect now, myself. Seems ok so far. Very much like KotOR 1/2.

[Ruminant]

Oblivion was cool. When it first came out I took one look at the bland graphics and began to diss it, but two years later I finally got onto it and enjoyed it quite a bit. It really wasn't the same as Morrowind though, the environment was much blander, less diverse and had a little bit less of the sense of exploration and mystery. I'm no sadist, the quick travelling was a really handy feature but they could have given you more than just endless identical forests and the odd mountain paths to explore so that you actually felt the need to venture off the beaten track.

Fallout 3 was really awesome, though unfortunately you got so powerful so quickly that it became a turkey shoot before the end. It was slightly harder going again as a pure unarmed guy on hard though ;p The deathclaw gauntlet is teh greatest weapon ever. Still not enough to make me replay the main quests again, seeing as you can basically get to max level from randomly exploring a relatively smallish part of the map O_o

I didn't give Mass Effect more than a few hours, it seemed alright but not really my thing. KOTOR was cool for a while in the first game but I could never really get into it, combat just seemed a bit... static.

Keep those suggestions coming

[Trumanator]

You thought the Morrowind graphics were better? As for the variety of places, I thought that it was still better than Morrowind, however I also thought that it was much more focused on dungeon diving than exploring the outside world. If you're looking for something new to do, try visiting elderscrolls.com and dling a mod or two.

I have a friend whos very much into Titan Quest, apparently its basically a Diablo clone with better graphics and a greek mythological setting. That or there's a number of D2 mods.

[Ruminant]

Well, not the quality of the graphics I just meant the atmosphere and world. For some reason I prefered the somewhat varied environments of Morrowind to what seemed to me to be an endless sea of same-same green grass and trees in Oblivion. True, there did seem to be more dungeon crawling than in Morrowind and that may have contributed.

I've done a bit of looking through total conversion mods for oblivion and fallout, haven't found anything particularly enticing yet though. I did my oblivion playthough with a fair few of the non-conversion mods enabled so theres not much new in that area.

Eh, I'm not a fan of diablo 2 gameplay. Possibly I am the one person in the world (at least among people I know ;p) who, while originally liking it, become convinced it was just freakin tedious after a while.

[JimMorrison]

Originally Posted by Ruminant

I've started playing Arcanum through again, I didn't really get that far last time. It's more comparable to Baldur's Gate with the world map and isometric perspective than Morrowind's massive 3D countryside. The graphics aren't exactly top-notch either. However, the atmosphere is rather awesome if you like steam-punk-esque fantasy and they've put a fair amount of work into the world and its lore. If you haven't played it you might give it a try. Picture a world of magic VS technology, where half-ogres, dwarves, elves and half-orcs wear tophats, carry shotguns and ride in steam trains. You can create a mage of incomparable power, but because of the negative effect magic has on technology you have to ride in the very back of the train in a special compartment or alternatively you could create the gnomish equivilent of Nikola Tesla but none of your party's mage's healing spells are guaranteed to work on you. Or make a dashing rogue who robs banks with a pistol and metal armour ala Ned Kelly, a foppish half-elven dandy who can't do anything much on his own and relies on his way with words and cotrie of thugs or anything in between, it has quite a robust character creator (just not much difference in graphical representation).

I think it really needs to be stated, for the old guard who are not aware - Arcanum was done by a studio who made a bid for the Fallout IP. They didn't get it, and they chose instead to implement the majority of Fallout2's character design features, and seemingly many of the game mechanics. In my eyes their only real failing with their conversion, was that the combat is not true turn based, sometimes it's just a bit silly, really. I should get back into it, I look at the icon sometimes, and try to remember exactly what I was up to in my last save.

I tried Titan Quest. I even liked D2 (I played that damned game until I beat Baal on Hell difficulty with every class in the game, twice with Druid since Shapeshifter and Elementalist were so fundamentally different - playing D2 as an Elementalist Druid is just painful though.....) - But I felt Titan Quest missed the boat, since they didn't manage to provide randomized maps, which meant any alt, and any subsequent playthroughs lacked any real feeling of adventure. Also the final boss battle was retardedly, sadistically, mercilessly difficult, in contrast with a mostly fairly easy game. Apparently in the patch before I got ahold of it (most of my games come used ) they really buffed the end encounter, because the fight had really abusable/exploitable flaws on initial release. I give a HUGE thumbs up for their character creation though, so many skills, and so much interesting synergies..... If only there was a cool hack and slash game in there to use them in.

Oh and BTW - Et tu, Brute!

Maybe we should make an OT thread for the Brutes, for as long as they remain entertaining?

[chrispedersen]

Anyone remember Darklands (post patch however, prior to the patch it was unplayable).

[sansanjuan]

Originally Posted by chrispedersen

Anyone remember Darklands (post patch however, prior to the patch it was unplayable).

I have it still somewhere. Bought it from a discount rack years after it was in its prime. Played it for a few days, got distracted by something else and forgot about it. Had heard raves about it way back when. Seemed interesting.

My brother and I played Ultima 1 way back when. Turned up a year ago in a pile of old junk. He sold it on ebay for $90 (?) bucks if I recall.

-ssj

[chrispedersen]

Had the best system for clerics I ever saw...