Questions

[GlumtheMad]

A friend told me about this site, Im an old school gamer and I am really looking for an in depth old school RPG. Turn based, preferably party based, deep character customization and lots of exploration.

 

Can someone tell me what the differences are in the titles here? Which fit what I am looking for? And of course, which has the better eye candy?

[Earth]

Avernums and Exiles are party based (although you can play those as singleton) and Geneforges are mixup between party and single-player since at GFs you summon/make creatures to help you in battle and occasionally get other humanoid to join.

 

Since you want partybased then Avernums/Exiles and Avernum 6 has of course best graphics since its latest game but A1-5 aren't that bad to look, older Geneforges use 16-bit colors so those might look bit bad and Exiles are oldest games so their graphics aren't that good. I would recommend downloading Avernum and Geneforge demos and try those and if you like those then order cds.

[Tirien]

Personally, I recommend Avernum 2 to try out first. Its the game that got me hooked on the series. If your looking for eye candy, well...you wont find very much of it here. However, this seems to actually make the game better in my opinion. Games that dont strain my poor comp due to high graphics are the best kind. Exile is the original (and older) version of Avernum. It has more spells and weapons, but the graphics are...bad (an understatement) and talking to people can be a pain.

[Dikiyoba]

Try the original Avernum trilogy and/or either version of Nethergate. They are all party-based, turn-based, open-ended, and allow you to customize your characters. The graphics are pretty old-school and the engines are starting to show their age too (especially the original Nethergate), but they're still good games.

 

Dikiyoba.

[GlumtheMad]

I like the looks of GF and Nethergate the best. What are the main differences in the 3 series?

[GlumtheMad]

One other question, is digital download an option?

[jecowa]

Yes. All games have extensive demos. When you purchase a game, the registration code will be emailed to you. But I believe this is done manually, so the code will not arrive instantly.

[Student of Trinity]

Obviously the Machine of Glumthemad has an ethernet port!

 

The great thing about Spiderweb is that the demos are really quite large — most will take at least a couple hours to finish — and they are reasonably representative of the rest of the game. So just jump in and try a few games, to see what you'll like. If you don't like the demo, you probably won't be missing anything if you ditch it, but if you do like the demo, you're unlikely to be disappointed in the game.

[Ceiling Durkheim]

I've gotten near-instantaneous replies with registration codes, even in the Ungodly hours. So either it's automatic, or Jeff and co. keep a schedule as messed up as mine own.

[jecowa]

Oh, lol, you're right. Mine was instant too.

[Alorael at Large]

Jeff has previously admitted to keeping a mad hermit's hours. With children he might have adjusted a bit more to the rest of the world, but maybe not. Having one parent deliberately awake at all hours would make parenting much easier.

 

On the series:

 

Avernum starts out with the Empire that rules over the world banishing people to a giant series of caves. The caves become the nation of Avernum, and the series covers a very long period of history, from some of the moderately early arrivals who want to escape and get revenge to their fights with the Empire, with others, and eventually the fate of Avernum itself (cue dramatic chord). You play with up to four characters that you make yourself (or you can pick up several NPCs in the first three games of the series), and you generally progress through a large world killing monsters, solving problems, and doing what adventurers do. The first three games give you less linearity and more open exploration; the last three have a newer engine and different graphics, and the final two entries give you real choices about how to win first time.

 

If you're really old-school, Avernums 1-3 are in fact remakes of Exiles 1-3, which have the same plot but an overhead rather than isometric view, a much larger and different spell list, and up to six characters. You can decide which you prefer.

 

Geneforge is much more choice-driven. You play a single character, but you can have a party of up to seven additional, less customizable monsters that you create and, occasionally, NPCs. The games really are about what you want to do: each game has a number of factions, and you can switch from one to another if you're canny about it. The series is also known for having many different endings, some of which you reach by playing through rather different end-games. The combat is turn-based, but non-combat travel is real-time and Baldur's Gate-esque.

 

Nethergate uses a proto-Avernum engine, and Nethergate: Resurrection uses the last incarnation of the engine used for Avernums 1-3, so it bookends the engine. You play up to four Celts or up to four Romans (with an optional fifth party member eventually and, for special occasions, a fifth or sixth guest star). In this case, the game isn't really about choices except for one big one: at the beginning, you pick a Celtic party or a Roman one, and you'll start out in different areas, get a few different quests, have slightly different stats and spells and equipment available, and go through parallel but different plots. In fact, the storyline is the same for both sides, so you'll hear about an opposing intrepid band however you choose to play.

 

Thoughts? Avernums 2 and 3 are generally the best-received of the original trilogy, and 5 and 6 are also well liked. Geneforge 1 gets a lot of acclaim for its originality and setting, and Geneforge 5 has the most polished gameplay of the lot. Nethergate, original or the Resurrection remake, is a fantastic stand-alone and probably has Jeff's strongest plot.

 

Blades of Exile and Blades of Avernum are a bit different. Both are scenario editors and the ability to play scenarios. For both, you're getting access to many smaller games rather than one large one. BoE in particular has a lot of great scenarios; BoA tends to have smaller scenarios written for it. They're hard to really get a feel for by the demo, but they're both very solid and bargains in terms of gameplay per dollar. But if you want a big game or series to bite into, they're not for you. (Except BoE, maybe, and Alcritas's magnum opus series.)

 

What to play? Download some demos and decide for yourself!

 

—Alorael, who recommends starting a series with the earliest engine you can stomach and moving forward. It's nice to play through the full story, but if you can't deal with, say, the lack of quest log in A1, you can jump ahead to A2. All the games reference earlier installments in the series, but all of them are also self-contained and make perfect sense without the rest. (That said, it's very helpful to at least play the demo of A1 for the best sense of what Avernum is, and earlier Geneforges give a slightly better feel for shaping and the world that the Shapers control.)

[jecowa]

I don't recommend playing the Exile games or the original Nethergate unless you plan on playing it on a computer with an operating system from the 90s or you feel you are hardcore or something. Modern operating systems don't run the games in the "older games" section so well.

[The Mystic]

Originally Posted By: jecowa

I don't recommend playing the Exile games or the original Nethergate unless you plan on playing it on a computer with an operating system from the 90s or you feel you are hardcore or something.

They run just fine in WinXP and (with some tweaking) Vista.

[Tyranicus]

Originally Posted By: The Mystic

Originally Posted By: jecowa

I don't recommend playing the Exile games or the original Nethergate unless you plan on playing it on a computer with an operating system from the 90s or you feel you are hardcore or something.

They run just fine in WinXP and (with some tweaking) Vista.

32-bit Vista. They will not run on 64-bit Vista or 7.

[keira]

Don't forget, Blades of Exile has gone open-source and the updated version (avail. in the BoE forum) runs great on all the Windows.

[Alorael at Large]

And Nethergate: Resurrection brings Nethergate to modern computers.

 

—Alorael, who prefers the abusable skill system of the original. He'll admit that the newer one is probably balanced, and the new areas are nice.

[Ishad Nha]

"Nethergate uses a proto-Avernum engine, and Nethergate: Resurrection uses the last incarnation of the engine used for Avernums 1-3,"

Original Nethergate uses the Blades of Exile special node system, it is basically BoE with floors and heights.

N:R simply uses a tweaked BoA engine.

[Tyranicus]

Originally Posted By: Gravity is all relative

And Nethergate: Resurrection brings Nethergate to modern computers.

—Alorael, who prefers the abusable skill system of the original. He'll admit that the newer one is probably balanced, and the new areas are nice.

While I loved the skill system of the original, it was the nerfed spells that bothered me the most about N:R.

[Randomizer]

Jeff finally got to see how overpowered the spells were in the original.

[Alorael at Large]

Originally Posted By: Ishad Nha

Original Nethergate uses the Blades of Exile special node system, it is basically BoE with floors and heights.

It also has four characters (mostly), the skill system of later games, traits that give usable abilities (but unlimited trait quantities), Avernum-style floors, walls, heights, spell list, and targeting, the paper-doll equipment system and Avernum-like equipment (one ring, but you get a bracelet too!).

Nethergate has a proto-Avernum engine. It's not totally Avernized, and it has some definite Exile remnants in it, but I'd say the overall effect is far more Avernum-like than Exile-like.

—Alorael, who tried to accept nerfed spells in exchange for armor on Celts. It didn't work.

[Erebus the Black]

Exile also has wall bumping, which is a wonderful thing that was lost to Avernum's nearly visible button

[Ceiling Durkheim]

Speak for yourself. I found it tedious to examine every patch of wall in turn*. I spent as much energy on Piercing Sight as on most other spells combined.

 

*(Well, maybe not every one. Sometimes game geography cues the locations of secret passages pretty well. Though even then that often means 'one of six possible spaces' instead of 'one of thirty possible spaces.')

[Dikiyoba]

Originally Posted By: Erasmus

Exile also has wall bumping, which is a wonderful thing that was lost to Avernum's nearly visible button

Just A4-6. A1-3 have wall-bumping secret passages as well.

Dikiyoba.

[Tirien]

Originally Posted By: Dikiyoba

Originally Posted By: Erasmus

Exile also has wall bumping, which is a wonderful thing that was lost to Avernum's nearly visible button

Just A4-6. A1-3 have wall-bumping secret passages as well.

Dikiyoba.

How could you forget about poor, neglected BoA? Wall-bumping was there as well. Its only Geneforge and the later Avernum games (using the geneforgish engine) that did not have wall-bumping.

[jecowa]

So in Avernum 4-6 and the Geneforge series I won't be able to find secret passages by bumping into walls? It is rather time consuming bumping into every bit of wall, but it is also fun finding a secret.

[Tirien]

Nope, no wall-bumping. Instead you have to move your mouse over every inch of wall and around every pillar to find hidden levers and buttons to find those secrets.

[jecowa]

That sounds a lot faster than wall bumping.

[Earth]

not really that faster since at underground you don't see as well as on surface and Jeff likes to hide buttons to difficult places and there are alot walls to check everywhere.

[Sudanna]

I bugged through a wall in the original Geneforge once. It made me go back and check every suspect area for secret doors.

[Ceiling Durkheim]

Or you can be a cheapass and press 'u' in areas where you think there might be secret buttons/levers.

[jecowa]

"u" is an auto-explore key?

[Dikiyoba]

U is the shortcut for the use button. It highlights everything that is searchable or useable.

 

Dikiyoba.

[jecowa]

sweet

[Tirien]

Originally Posted By: Dikiyoba

U is the shortcut for the use button. It highlights everything that is searchable or useable.

This message has been brought to you by the letter U.

[The Ratt]

Well, now I'm just upset. One So many hours wasted on searching by hand and I could have just pressed "u." Well at least I'm persistent.

[Ceiling Durkheim]

It's surprising how many people don't know about this. I didn't for all of Avernum 4, and the first of my two plays of A5.

[Erebus the Black]

I really hope Jeff will tweak the next game engines to be keyboard friendly again like they used to be

[Mistb0rn]

Originally Posted By: Erasmus

I really hope Jeff will tweak the next game engines to be keyboard friendly again like they used to be

This.

Emphatically.

[Randomizer]

Originally Posted By: Mistb0rn

Originally Posted By: Erasmus

I really hope Jeff will tweak the next game engines to be keyboard friendly again like they used to be

This.

Emphatically.

Better email Jeff before Avadon is released. All he really did was add the reassign keys from Avernum 6.

[Earth]

yes but u works only at line of sight (and behind back).