Castle Magus

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I've played all the old CRPGs like Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, Planescape: Torment, and Neverwinter Nights, back in ye olden days. They were super great. I've actually finished all of those at least once (multiple times in the case of P:T).

However, when I've tried to get into the new batch of this type of game, e.g. Pillars of Eternity, Torment: Tides of Numenera, Pathfinder: Kingmaker, Tyranny, etc., I've been inevitably overwhelmed and just gave up after a while. With Pillars, I've actually gotten pretty far the two times I've tried it so far (the first game, at least, as I have no interest in touching the sequel[1] until finishing the first one), but with Numenera and Kingmaker and Tyranny, I've only made it as far as finishing what are essentially the introductory/tutorial areas of those games, and that's basically it. I'm not actually sure why that is the case. I mean, I really want to get into these games, and I'm sure I'll try them all again at some point down the line, but... I dunno. Maybe this type of game just isn't for me, anymore? Even though I really, really want it to be?

[1] - Despite the fact that every member of the cast of Critical Role voices at least one character in Pillars II.

"Verdict: Torment is one of the most inventive, entertaining RPGs ever created."

And that's still true, fourteen years later.

(EDIT) And most everyone in the comments is going nuts over the fact that Dragon Age II got a higher score in its own review on PC Gamer. (P:T got a 93 while DA2 got a 94.) All it shows to me is just how arbitrary and meaningless point values at the end of video game reviews are. (/EDIT)

It's just idle Twitter talk at the moment, but... would I pledge to help fund a new Planescape CRPG[1] through Kickstarter similar to the Double Fine Adventure thing (which is currently at around $1,350,000 of their $400,000 goal)? Well, given that I've often said that I consider Planescape: Torment to be by far the best "Bioware-style" CRPG ever made (even more so than the ones actually made by Bioware itself), then yeah, I probably would. It doesn't even have to be a direct sequel to P:T (and in fact, I would actually prefer that it was not a sequel at all, given that that game was a fully complete story arc), just so long as it is the same quality as Torment. Given that it was primarily Executive Meddling that hurt games like KotOR2 and Alpha Protocol (and even then, those games weren't totally super-horrible, despite that), it would be nice to see a game from Obsidian that didn't require them to answer to The Man™.

[1] - Or at least something similar even if it's not the Planescape IP, since that'd probably be nigh impossible to get a hold of these days and would likely be exorbitantly expensive even if they could get access to it. Honestly, I think I might prefer something new, rather than something explicitly set in Planescape, but if they could get Planescape again without much trouble, I wouldn't have a problem with that either.

Announcement page here.

Actual sale page here.


Even if I were to ignore every other game on that list, I would give the highest of recommendations to Planescape: Torment. I know I've already said this several times in the past, but it is still to this day my absolute top favorite of the Bioware-style RPGs (even though P:T wasn't actually made by Bioware), and this includes even the more recent similar games like Dragon Age, Mass Effect, Jade Empire, etc.

Baldur's Gate is pretty awesome too, especially when taken as a whole, since you can import your character from BG1 into BG2. (I actually tried playing through this again a few years ago, using the BG1 Tutu stuff, but didn't get all that far into it. Still want to give that a shot again someday, though.)

I've played the first Icewind Dale also, but it's like a more combat oriented version of Baldur's Gate (i.e. more fighting, less towns and less NPCs to talk to), so I didn't like it quite as much. Haven't played Icewind Dale 2, though.

I've played Neverwinter Nights as well, and I guess it was okay, but the sheer horrible amount of bugs in it at launch* really soured me on the NWN series as a whole. As such, I haven't played any of the expansions for that, even though I bought Diamond a few years ago. No clue if they finally fixed the remaining bugs in that version. I notice NWN2 isn't in the list, but then it doesn't appear to be available on GOG at all.

As for the rest, I haven't even heard of the other games on the list before, so can't really give a recommendation on those one way or the other. If anyone else has played the others and would like to give a thumbs up/down for them, let me know.

* - A lot of which were still in it even a year or two later when I tried it again, and some of which I actually ended up fixing myself by exporting the storyline campaign out to the built-in level editor (which included a script editor which was pretty much just a C/C++ API), even though you technically weren't supposed to be able to do that, at least until after you'd completed it once. But I found a way, anyway. Let me just say that having to debug the code on the game you bought just to play it isn't fun, though I suppose that's a bit better than not being able to do anything at all about the bugs. These days, when I run into a bunch of bugs like that in a game, I just stop playing it altogether, at least until they release a patch for it, and sometimes not even then. I guess I just had way more patience back then than I do now for that sort of thing.