Ravenloft: Strahd's Possession

I'm about 3.5 hours in. Playing on a PCPartner 486/66 that was donated to me for the cost of shipping by @liqmat. Using an ISA ET4000AX (Diamond SpeedSTAR), the performance has been very good. Using a DreamBlaster X2 for GM music, which is top notch.

I'm a huge RPG fan, but my love lies with turn-based games. I never played the Ravenloft games back in the day, but interestingly, I have very fond memories of playing and beating Menzoberranzan when it was new. The whole real-time combat and only two created party members does not normally sit well with me, but so far I'm really liking this game! Graphics are decent, but there are some really nice tidbits here and there. The character portraits are very well done and some static screens (sign posts) almost look SVGA in clarity. The artists did a good job here. I admit, I did a lot of research before starting this game, reading through the manual and cluebook and watching bits and pieces of a well-timed Let's Play by GhostLPs. This all got me in-tune with the game's story and motivated to not only play, but enjoy this game.

I just entered The Village of Barovia. One thing I figured out is even if you're not interested in all of the NPCs you meet to join your party, it's good to have them join, collect their items, and cast Improved Identify. I discovered that Velika's sword is actually a Longsword +1 and her cloak is a Cloak +2, which I promptly gave to my two created party members after identifying them. The downside of recruiting NPCs is they slow down level progression as experience points are divided evenly among all party members. So I'll probably be letting Velika go soon.

Another key for me to enjoying these old, primitive RPGs, is to immerse myself in the lore, which I've been doing by keeping the original manual and clue book open on my modern PC, which is right next to my retro PC. I've also got a few walkthrough tabs open:
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/pc/564797-raven … sion/faqs/80593
https://the-spoiler.com/RPG/SSI/ravenloft.1.html
http://www.thecomputershow.com/computershow/w … trahdp1walk.htm

No shame for me doing that. If it helps enjoy the game more, I'm all in.

My created characters are a male Paladin named Arnellis and female Half-Elf Mage/Cleric named Ariana. From what I've read, these are two good classes due to the high amount of undead in the game and the fact that there are no good Mage NPCs in the follow up game (Ravenloft: Stone Prophet). My plan, after finishing this game, is to transfer my characters to the sequel to continue my adventures.

Was able to extract save games of an old 775i65g build HDD for half life 1 goty. Save game was from 2021 lel, blast pit area. Played for a bit before tinkering on k7t266 pro board

clueless1 wrote on 2023-10-11, 23:41:

Ravenloft: Strahd's Possession […]
Show full quote

Ravenloft: Strahd's Possession

I'm about 3.5 hours in. Playing on a PCPartner 486/66 that was donated to me for the cost of shipping by @liqmat. Using an ISA ET4000AX (Diamond SpeedSTAR), the performance has been very good. Using a DreamBlaster X2 for GM music, which is top notch.

I'm a huge RPG fan, but my love lies with turn-based games. I never played the Ravenloft games back in the day, but interestingly, I have very fond memories of playing and beating Menzoberranzan when it was new. The whole real-time combat and only two created party members does not normally sit well with me, but so far I'm really liking this game! Graphics are decent, but there are some really nice tidbits here and there. The character portraits are very well done and some static screens (sign posts) almost look SVGA in clarity. The artists did a good job here. I admit, I did a lot of research before starting this game, reading through the manual and cluebook and watching bits and pieces of a well-timed Let's Play by GhostLPs. This all got me in-tune with the game's story and motivated to not only play, but enjoy this game.

I just entered The Village of Barovia. One thing I figured out is even if you're not interested in all of the NPCs you meet to join your party, it's good to have them join, collect their items, and cast Improved Identify. I discovered that Velika's sword is actually a Longsword +1 and her cloak is a Cloak +2, which I promptly gave to my two created party members after identifying them. The downside of recruiting NPCs is they slow down level progression as experience points are divided evenly among all party members. So I'll probably be letting Velika go soon.

Another key for me to enjoying these old, primitive RPGs, is to immerse myself in the lore, which I've been doing by keeping the original manual and clue book open on my modern PC, which is right next to my retro PC. I've also got a few walkthrough tabs open:
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/pc/564797-raven … sion/faqs/80593
https://the-spoiler.com/RPG/SSI/ravenloft.1.html
http://www.thecomputershow.com/computershow/w … trahdp1walk.htm

No shame for me doing that. If it helps enjoy the game more, I'm all in.

My created characters are a male Paladin named Arnellis and female Half-Elf Mage/Cleric named Ariana. From what I've read, these are two good classes due to the high amount of undead in the game and the fact that there are no good Mage NPCs in the follow up game (Ravenloft: Stone Prophet). My plan, after finishing this game, is to transfer my characters to the sequel to continue my adventures.

This is a very, very good game but I think the sequel is better in every way. I actually played it up until Barovia myself recently, and should get back and finish it just to see how our experiences differ. That said, I found the controls to be very, very rough when I tried to get back into it 🙁

clueless1 wrote on 2023-10-11, 23:41:

Ravenloft: Strahd's Possession […]
Show full quote

Ravenloft: Strahd's Possession

I'm about 3.5 hours in. Playing on a PCPartner 486/66 that was donated to me for the cost of shipping by @liqmat. Using an ISA ET4000AX (Diamond SpeedSTAR), the performance has been very good. Using a DreamBlaster X2 for GM music, which is top notch.

I'm a huge RPG fan, but my love lies with turn-based games. I never played the Ravenloft games back in the day, but interestingly, I have very fond memories of playing and beating Menzoberranzan when it was new. The whole real-time combat and only two created party members does not normally sit well with me, but so far I'm really liking this game! Graphics are decent, but there are some really nice tidbits here and there. The character portraits are very well done and some static screens (sign posts) almost look SVGA in clarity. The artists did a good job here. I admit, I did a lot of research before starting this game, reading through the manual and cluebook and watching bits and pieces of a well-timed Let's Play by GhostLPs. This all got me in-tune with the game's story and motivated to not only play, but enjoy this game.

I just entered The Village of Barovia. One thing I figured out is even if you're not interested in all of the NPCs you meet to join your party, it's good to have them join, collect their items, and cast Improved Identify. I discovered that Velika's sword is actually a Longsword +1 and her cloak is a Cloak +2, which I promptly gave to my two created party members after identifying them. The downside of recruiting NPCs is they slow down level progression as experience points are divided evenly among all party members. So I'll probably be letting Velika go soon.

Another key for me to enjoying these old, primitive RPGs, is to immerse myself in the lore, which I've been doing by keeping the original manual and clue book open on my modern PC, which is right next to my retro PC. I've also got a few walkthrough tabs open:
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/pc/564797-raven … sion/faqs/80593
https://the-spoiler.com/RPG/SSI/ravenloft.1.html
http://www.thecomputershow.com/computershow/w … trahdp1walk.htm

No shame for me doing that. If it helps enjoy the game more, I'm all in.

My created characters are a male Paladin named Arnellis and female Half-Elf Mage/Cleric named Ariana. From what I've read, these are two good classes due to the high amount of undead in the game and the fact that there are no good Mage NPCs in the follow up game (Ravenloft: Stone Prophet). My plan, after finishing this game, is to transfer my characters to the sequel to continue my adventures.

You are inspiring me to give this a spin on my own 486 DX2 that I've been working on. I actually have the disc from the AD&D Masterpiece Collection. Out of curiosity, what version are you running, and how have any bugs manifested? Allegedly the version I most likely have, 1.2, maybe 1.2a, has a bug where arrows do 0 damage, and certain movies don't play?

Now I play:

RoboCop: Rogue City

clueless1 wrote on 2023-10-11, 23:41:

Ravenloft: Strahd's Possession

I've always been intrigued by the post-Gold Box SSI D&D games, so I'm looking forward to your thoughts on this! As a big fan of the Universal horror movies from the 30s and 40s, I really like the setting of Ravenloft, and I definitely plan on playing this game and its sequel eventually.

Wish I had more time.

Got a game of Quake II and Colin McRae Rally 98 going on the Pentium Pro 180MHz 64mb Win98SE box.
Actually have been trying a bit of anything and everything that supports Glide on this box, now that I have a Voodoo II 12mb PCI.

I don't think I've never not had a game going of Super Mario World on the SNES... only this time it's running on the emulator box tower of power: a Win7 box running the CRT EMUDriver, driving a 24" CRT TV through YPbPr input provided by transcoded RGB from an Extron RGB 192 computer video RGB interface. All contained on an AV cart that can be deployed in less than 3 minutes.

appiah4 wrote on 2023-10-12, 14:22:

clueless1 wrote on 2023-10-11, 23:41:

Ravenloft: Strahd's Possession […]
Show full quote

Ravenloft: Strahd's Possession

I'm about 3.5 hours in. Playing on a PCPartner 486/66 that was donated to me for the cost of shipping by @liqmat. Using an ISA ET4000AX (Diamond SpeedSTAR), the performance has been very good. Using a DreamBlaster X2 for GM music, which is top notch.

I'm a huge RPG fan, but my love lies with turn-based games. I never played the Ravenloft games back in the day, but interestingly, I have very fond memories of playing and beating Menzoberranzan when it was new. The whole real-time combat and only two created party members does not normally sit well with me, but so far I'm really liking this game! Graphics are decent, but there are some really nice tidbits here and there. The character portraits are very well done and some static screens (sign posts) almost look SVGA in clarity. The artists did a good job here. I admit, I did a lot of research before starting this game, reading through the manual and cluebook and watching bits and pieces of a well-timed Let's Play by GhostLPs. This all got me in-tune with the game's story and motivated to not only play, but enjoy this game.

I just entered The Village of Barovia. One thing I figured out is even if you're not interested in all of the NPCs you meet to join your party, it's good to have them join, collect their items, and cast Improved Identify. I discovered that Velika's sword is actually a Longsword +1 and her cloak is a Cloak +2, which I promptly gave to my two created party members after identifying them. The downside of recruiting NPCs is they slow down level progression as experience points are divided evenly among all party members. So I'll probably be letting Velika go soon.

Another key for me to enjoying these old, primitive RPGs, is to immerse myself in the lore, which I've been doing by keeping the original manual and clue book open on my modern PC, which is right next to my retro PC. I've also got a few walkthrough tabs open:
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/pc/564797-raven … sion/faqs/80593
https://the-spoiler.com/RPG/SSI/ravenloft.1.html
http://www.thecomputershow.com/computershow/w … trahdp1walk.htm

No shame for me doing that. If it helps enjoy the game more, I'm all in.

My created characters are a male Paladin named Arnellis and female Half-Elf Mage/Cleric named Ariana. From what I've read, these are two good classes due to the high amount of undead in the game and the fact that there are no good Mage NPCs in the follow up game (Ravenloft: Stone Prophet). My plan, after finishing this game, is to transfer my characters to the sequel to continue my adventures.

This is a very, very good game but I think the sequel is better in every way. I actually played it up until Barovia myself recently, and should get back and finish it just to see how our experiences differ. That said, I found the controls to be very, very rough when I tried to get back into it 🙁

I'm using the keypad for movement (using left hand, with right hand using mouse). 7, 8, 9 for turn left, straight, turn right. 4 and 6 for strafe left, right. 2 for back-peddling. I wish there were keyboard shortcuts for the Map, Resting, Memorizing, etc, but at least throwing the mouse to the top of the screen gets to those fairly quickly.

Namrok wrote on 2023-10-12, 15:02:

clueless1 wrote on 2023-10-11, 23:41:

Ravenloft: Strahd's Possession […]
Show full quote

Ravenloft: Strahd's Possession

I'm about 3.5 hours in. Playing on a PCPartner 486/66 that was donated to me for the cost of shipping by @liqmat. Using an ISA ET4000AX (Diamond SpeedSTAR), the performance has been very good. Using a DreamBlaster X2 for GM music, which is top notch.

I'm a huge RPG fan, but my love lies with turn-based games. I never played the Ravenloft games back in the day, but interestingly, I have very fond memories of playing and beating Menzoberranzan when it was new. The whole real-time combat and only two created party members does not normally sit well with me, but so far I'm really liking this game! Graphics are decent, but there are some really nice tidbits here and there. The character portraits are very well done and some static screens (sign posts) almost look SVGA in clarity. The artists did a good job here. I admit, I did a lot of research before starting this game, reading through the manual and cluebook and watching bits and pieces of a well-timed Let's Play by GhostLPs. This all got me in-tune with the game's story and motivated to not only play, but enjoy this game.

I just entered The Village of Barovia. One thing I figured out is even if you're not interested in all of the NPCs you meet to join your party, it's good to have them join, collect their items, and cast Improved Identify. I discovered that Velika's sword is actually a Longsword +1 and her cloak is a Cloak +2, which I promptly gave to my two created party members after identifying them. The downside of recruiting NPCs is they slow down level progression as experience points are divided evenly among all party members. So I'll probably be letting Velika go soon.

Another key for me to enjoying these old, primitive RPGs, is to immerse myself in the lore, which I've been doing by keeping the original manual and clue book open on my modern PC, which is right next to my retro PC. I've also got a few walkthrough tabs open:
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/pc/564797-raven … sion/faqs/80593
https://the-spoiler.com/RPG/SSI/ravenloft.1.html
http://www.thecomputershow.com/computershow/w … trahdp1walk.htm

No shame for me doing that. If it helps enjoy the game more, I'm all in.

My created characters are a male Paladin named Arnellis and female Half-Elf Mage/Cleric named Ariana. From what I've read, these are two good classes due to the high amount of undead in the game and the fact that there are no good Mage NPCs in the follow up game (Ravenloft: Stone Prophet). My plan, after finishing this game, is to transfer my characters to the sequel to continue my adventures.

You are inspiring me to give this a spin on my own 486 DX2 that I've been working on. I actually have the disc from the AD&D Masterpiece Collection. Out of curiosity, what version are you running, and how have any bugs manifested? Allegedly the version I most likely have, 1.2, maybe 1.2a, has a bug where arrows do 0 damage, and certain movies don't play?

I'm using the GOG version, which is 1.2A (burn GAME.GOG ISO file to make an installation CD). I have avoided bows thus far, but I have heard of that issue you mentioned. I *think* 1.2A fixes that issue, but I haven't tried myself. No other bugs I've encountered so far, but I'm still early in the game.

Continuing on with BioShock, I just reached Smuggler's Hideout. Progress has been slow as I didn't have a lot of time for gaming this week. Took me a while to get used to the plasmid/tonic system, since I haven't been playing continuously, but I think I've got the hang of it now. I really like how different powers affect the world, like fire melting ice blocks and igniting oil slicks.

The UI is a bit confusing though. I would prefer to know which tonics are currently active, without having to use one of those gene bank machines, but whatever. The bigger issue is that it keeps shifting the bindings of my plasmids randomly whenever I pick up a new one. I was just getting used to lightning being on F1 and telekinesis on F2, but now they are bound to F3 and F4, and I can't seem to find a way to change that.

The soundstage continues to be fantastic. In particular, EAX5 makes explosions sound very realistic, with excellent use of the subwoofer, likely via Creative's Pure Path tech. Occlusion effects, when characters are behind cover and such, are great too. Positional audio is handled nicely, and you can often pinpoint an enemy's position without seeing them.

BTW, the game crashed on me once or twice, which somehow erased all my custom keybinds and graphical/audio settings. After setting everything back to the way it was, I backed up the relevant INI files, in case that happens again.

Thoroughly played through the 'SkyForce Anniversary Edition' shooter. Pretty good. Except for the last two levels, I was able to complete all easy, hard, and insane levels collecting all "awards." I've also collected much of the hidden cards in the game, but I'm done now. The last two levels are more bullet hell punishment than I'm willing to put up with. Completing "easy" was enough (but missing 2 awards on each).

Now, I'm playing through 'Half-Life' for the first time (not just testing it on an old graphics card). I'm playing the Steam version with the Widescreen and HD touch-ups. I'm nearly done, and I'm in the alien world about to face Nihilanth. Fighting the aliens is good, but I particularly enjoy running into the military enemies and blockade scenarios.

Meatball wrote on 2023-10-15, 00:07:

Thoroughly played through the 'SkyForce Anniversary Edition' shooter. Pretty good. Except for the last two levels, I was able to complete all easy, hard, and insane levels collecting all "awards." I've also collected much of the hidden cards in the game, but I'm done now. The last two levels are more bullet hell punishment than I'm willing to put up with. Completing "easy" was enough (but missing 2 awards on each).

Now, I'm playing through 'Half-Life' for the first time (not just testing it on an old graphics card). I'm playing the Steam version with the Widescreen and HD touch-ups. I'm nearly done, and I'm in the alien world about to face Nihilanth. Fighting the aliens is good, but I particularly enjoy running into the military enemies and blockade scenarios.

Pretty much everyone finds the alien part to be the weakest. I don't hate it like most, but I definitely prefered the stuff in Black Mesa.

Finished the Marine campaign in Aliens vs. Predator 2.

This was my favorite campaign back in the day, and I fully expect it still being my favorite. And it's no wonder, it has this amazingly thick atmosphere that draws you right in. Even though you're the one with the firepower, it still manages to make you feel like you're the one locked in with THEM, not the other way around. When you are paranoidly taking a look behind you after each bolt you blowtorch off the hatch that is blocking your way you know they got the atmosphere right and I absolutely love it.

I mean it has three of my horror pet peeves, constant darkness, an annoying flashlight that drains the battery in record time and needs to be recharged all the time and even some light jumpscares, all things I generally hate but somehow none of them bothered me at all here. The way they were implemented here actually enhanced the mood without getting annoying and if that's not a sign of a good game I don't know what is. Well, maybe I could still do without the stupid "worst battery technology ever" mechanic, but at the same time it was kinda great to occasionaly stand back against the wall, trying to point the motion tracker at as widely as possible while waiting the battery to recharge before moving forward.

It doesn't quite hold up all the way to the end though, as it gets more shootery by the end it also loses some of that awesome atmosphere but it never loses it completely. To me the first half of the campaign was definitely the best part while the latter half felt a little underdeveloped and clumsy in certain parts, in one part I even feared I had ran into a game breaking bug when certain doors were bugging out but I managed to get through. But the latter half isn't without its highpoints and it's not terribly long campaign, maybe 6-8 hours total, so I walked away happy once it was done. Actually part of me wanted to immediately replay the campaign, so yeah, overall I did enjoy it a lot!

The Alien Predator campaign is up next.

Still playing BioShock. I don't like how you sometimes get important radio messages during an intense fight. I know that you can replay them from the map menu, but it's still weird that the developers went with that design choice.

In terms of combat, I mostly stuck to the melee route, with an occasional switch to the grenade launcher for tougher opponents. Thanks to the wrench upgrades and the electricity plasmid, it's going fairly well.

Having just reached Hephaestus, I think I'm now entering the final stretch. I don't trust any of the three major NPCs in this game, but I have been rescuing the little sisters since that seems like the most reasonable thing to do. Aside from getting a couple of gifts here and there, I'm not sure it how that has affected the gameplay so far.

If AVP2 had a co-op/multi-player Marine campaign, it would have been far more successful. I heard a mod team was working on implementing that some time ago, but I don't know the current status.

RetroGamer4Ever wrote on 2023-10-16, 14:39:

I heard a mod team was working on implementing that some time ago, but I don't know the current status.

It was a very glitchy, buggy mess of a mod, about as buggy as the attempt of giving Shogo: Mobile Armor Division a "co-op", sadly.

I came across it years ago, it was called "XCoop" or something to that degree. No idea if the situation with it ever changed, but I'm not sure just how much you can do with AVP 2 modding to make co-op properly work all of the time.

Finished BioShock. It was a fun ride, with some M. Night Shyamalan level plot twists thrown in during the last quarter of the game. About the only thing that I didn't like was that escort mission near the very end, which predictably sucked. The hacking mechanic also got a bit tedious over time, but you can bypass that by using money or auto-hacking tools, so it wasn't that bad.

My electricity + melee build seems to have worked well all the way through, and I only had to switch to more powerful weapons for the big daddys and the final boss. I liked the photo taking mechanic which gives you bonus damage against certain enemies, as well as some unique abilities.

Saving all the little sisters did pay off in the finale, and I got the good ending. On that note, I never felt like receiving only half of the skill points for saving them hindered my progress all that much. Those gifts that they bring you also kinda make up for that. Overall, it was a pretty good game, and I see now why it got all the praise back in the day. Personally, I still like System Shock 2 a bit more, but to each their own.

DracoNihil wrote on 2023-10-16, 22:48:

RetroGamer4Ever wrote on 2023-10-16, 14:39:

I heard a mod team was working on implementing that some time ago, but I don't know the current status.

It was a very glitchy, buggy mess of a mod, about as buggy as the attempt of giving Shogo: Mobile Armor Division a "co-op", sadly.

I came across it years ago, it was called "XCoop" or something to that degree. No idea if the situation with it ever changed, but I'm not sure just how much you can do with AVP 2 modding to make co-op properly work all of the time.

That's the older attempt. This is the new one and it apparently works pretty well.

https://www.moddb.com/mods/avp2-cooperative

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2023-10-17, 15:09:

Finished BioShock. It was a fun ride, with some M. Night Shyamalan level plot twists thrown in during the last quarter of the game. About the only thing that I didn't like was that escort mission near the very end, which predictably sucked. The hacking mechanic also got a bit tedious over time, but you can bypass that by using money or auto-hacking tools, so it wasn't that bad.

My electricity + melee build seems to have worked well all the way through, and I only had to switch to more powerful weapons for the big daddys and the final boss. I liked the photo taking mechanic which gives you bonus damage against certain enemies, as well as some unique abilities.

Saving all the little sisters did pay off in the finale, and I got the good ending. On that note, I never felt like receiving only half of the skill points for saving them hindered my progress all that much. Those gifts that they bring you also kinda make up for that. Overall, it was a pretty good game, and I see now why it got all the praise back in the day. Personally, I still like System Shock 2 a bit more, but to each their own.

lel, told you bludgening + electric shock is fun

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2023-10-17, 15:09:

Finished BioShock. It was a fun ride, with some M. Night Shyamalan level plot twists thrown in during the last quarter of the game. About the only thing that I didn't like was that escort mission near the very end, which predictably sucked. The hacking mechanic also got a bit tedious over time, but you can bypass that by using money or auto-hacking tools, so it wasn't that bad.

My electricity + melee build seems to have worked well all the way through, and I only had to switch to more powerful weapons for the big daddys and the final boss. I liked the photo taking mechanic which gives you bonus damage against certain enemies, as well as some unique abilities.

Saving all the little sisters did pay off in the finale, and I got the good ending. On that note, I never felt like receiving only half of the skill points for saving them hindered my progress all that much. Those gifts that they bring you also kinda make up for that. Overall, it was a pretty good game, and I see now why it got all the praise back in the day. Personally, I still like System Shock 2 a bit more, but to each their own.

Thank you for sharing your thoughts. I played Bioshock many years ago, and realized that I don't remember a lot of the details. Like the final boss fight, for example. I do remember saving the little sisters, for the good ending.

I remember my feeling that the game got too tedious and repetitive towards the end, but its gorgeous good looks kept me going.