The Adventurers' Guild

So after I canceled my more than three years lasting WoW subscription two months ago, I finally had the time to attend to other games again.

Instead of buying a brand new one, I started to look for games I played in my childhood.
I was so happy to get a C64 emulator to work and replay my all time favorite Bard's Tale 3.
I also replayed part 1+2 (both even twice ) and some other classics like Dungeon Master, Might and Magic, Wizardry and pretty much every other game I once played on C64, Amiga or Dos.

I feel a bit empty now since there is nothing left to play from my youth.
I tried Wasteland but I don't understand it. And other games like Dragon Wars or Pool of Radiance don't seem to be as much fun a they used to be.

Have you guys tried any new RPGs, such as Drakensang, Oblivion, etc.?
I've tried Knights of the Old Republic, Neverwinternights and Gothic 2 but didn't like any of these games. They are just too huge and non-linear for me.
I thought about giving Devil Whiskey a chance which looks a lot like Bard's Tale.

I think the last classical RPGs I enjoyed on PC were "Wizards and Warriors" and "Wizardry 8" which is already 7 years ago

Apparently I didn't move much on since my old Bard's Tale days.
I was suprised how much joy these games still brought to me. So simple and yet so ingenious and fetching.

I'd love to hear about your experiences with new and classic RPGs.

Devil Whiskey is a very good game with some nice player mods to go off also. I still find Dragon Wars and the AD&D games plenty of fun, and with FRUA, there are literally hundreds of free player mods out there, and it is also abandonware.

I'm glad you've played Wiz 8, although it's too bad you don't have its discovery in your future any more.

Aficionados of the Wizardry series swear by Wizardry 7, but most prefer Wizardry Gold if you can get your hands on it. I haven't been able to get it to run, myself.

My favorite "Gold Box" game is Champions of Krynn. I think you'll like it--your list is quite similar to what my list would be. It's interface is not as primitive as Pool of Radiance, and the story is much more interesting (and has some star cameos assuming you were ever a Dragonlance reader).

If you can get Oblivion somewhere cheap I'd recommend at least trying it out. It feels quite a bit like playing Morrowind. I was initially obsessed with it, but I grew bored and stopped playing fairly quickly.

I'm not a fan of the Baldur's Gate series.

If you want to be somewhat old-school you might give Shard of Spring and Demon's Winter a try. They are SSIs pre-D&D-license entries into the RPG market, and use a rule-set that's more suited to computer games than AD&D.

Have you ever tried King's Bounty? It's a New World Computing classic, which eventually spawned the Heroes of Might and Magic series. I think it's far better than any of those games.

I notice you did not list Ultima. It think Ultima IV is the greatest of those games by far. Play the Apple 2e version, if possible, the Garriot original. The C64 version is just fine, however. I dislike the PC version, but it's OK on DOSBox. There's a modern Ultima IV engine called something like XU4 that's pretty cool, but I didn't dare brave its likely bugs.

Some abandoned classics you might look at, particularly for their historical importance, are the very early Temple of Apshai Trilogy (C64) and the excellent, though obscure, The Summoning (PC only, I believe). They are the direct ancestors of Diablo and The Elder Scrolls series.

You failed to list the Eye of the Beholder series, though I'm assuming you've played it. It's good for a TSR-licensed game, and very similar to the Dungeon Master series.

Every tried Darklands? It stands alone by implementing a very immersive, history inspired setting. It's set in medieval Germany and makes only a few concession to fantasy, i.e, alchemy really works, and saints really do grant miracles and curses. If you've only ever played the "lazy-medieval" fantasy schlock typified by D&D's much too influential generic setting, you're in for a new experience.

Unfortunately, it can be quite hard to get involved in a classic game that you missed out on when it was new. Nostalgia doesn't tend to work like that for most people.

I played all the SSI AD&D Godlbox Series, Gothic I, II, III, Legends of Valour, Eye of the Beholder 1, 2, The Magic Candle, Phantasie, Might & Magic I, II, Ars Fatalis, maybe others...

I wll play Wasteland, Legend of Faerghail and many others...

MazinKaesar wrote:I played all the SSI AD&D Godlbox Series, Gothic I, II, III, Legends of Valour, Eye of the Beholder 1, 2, The Magic Candle, Phantasie, Might & Magic I, II, Ars Fatalis, maybe others...

I wll play Wasteland, Legend of Faerghail and many others...

Any particular favorites among those? I've never played Phantasie 2 or 3 (i played 1 in an Atari ST emulator which I think didn't do it justice), nor Legends of Valour, Magic Candle or Ars Fatalis, though I have them all lying around somewhere.

I took a run at Wizardry 2, but gave up fast as it seemed like there was no character progression happening and a lot of annoying fights and mapping.
(Coming from someone who enjoyed mapping Bard's Tale 2.)

In the dungeon crawling vein, I enjoyed Ultima 1-5, BT 123, Wizardry 1, 5, 6, 7, Might and Magic 1, Dungeon Master & Chaos Strikes Back, Black Crypt, Dragon Wars, Champions of Krynn & Pool of Radiance, Questron 2, Legacy of the Ancients.

I know I'm forgetting some.

I feel like Angband and Dungeon Crawl scratch some of the same itches, but they're truly different games.

Sadly I did not enjoy Grimrock when it came out this past year. I may try again on easy. The fights were just too twitchy for me to enjoy.

My favourite SSI game was Buck Rogers Countdown to Doomsday on the C64. I completed it and found the storyline very interesting. It's essential to have the log book which contains extra textual descriptions of certain locations. I completed the game on my C64. The C64 version has great graphics and a nice interface, but the disk loading during and after combat is a pain, so perhaps emulators will eliminate this delay, or perhaps the Amiga version has faster loading...


A game that I would have loved to have learned and played to completion on the C64 was "Mars Saga". It looked technically amazing.

Flanimal wrote:My favourite SSI game was Buck Rogers Countdown to Doomsday on the C64. I completed it and found the storyline very interesting. It's essential to have the log book which contains extra textual descriptions of certain locations. I completed the game on my C64. The C64 version has great graphics and a nice interface, but the disk loading during and after combat is a pain, so perhaps emulators will eliminate this delay, or perhaps the Amiga version has faster loading...


A game that I would have loved to have learned and played to completion on the C64 was "Mars Saga". It looked technically amazing.

GoldBox is in a pretty good sweet spot for the amiga, while on the c64 shuffling around 7-8 floppies or whatever was a bit much (and still is even in an emulator).

DOS of course has HD install too; though slightly more work (no doubleclick simplicity), but at least for the earlier games worse EGA graphics and definitely worse sound.
On the Amiga they had nice graphics (though as always sometimes the 8bit have their own charm) but more importantly they supported installing to the hard drive, all of them! That brings disk access time down to nothing, ever.

I loved the Forgotten Realms series from SSI GoldBox:

Pool of Radiance
Curse of the Azure Bonds
The Secret of the Silver Blades (my favourite)
Pools of Darkness

Magic Candle is really nice but very long, Ars Fatalis is something different and I really suggest it.

The Pool of Radiance Trilogy was nice, but as a C64 user I was very annoyed that the 4th saga wasn't ported for it (Pools of Darkness).

I'm actually fumbling through POR again right now.

I really liked Dungeon Master and Chaos Strikes Back. Also Legend of Skullkeep was a great fantasy role-playing-game. I remember many sleepless nights in my youth playing these games.

Nice, the guy above me advertising an illegal "gold buying" website.

I'll just lock th-


...oh yeah, right.