Isn't the second Dark Sun pretty buggy? How do you deal with that, or is there a patch or something?

I really liked the first one but reading about the second put me off.

It absolutely is. So much that I never finished it, watched a Let's Play after getting stuck due to bugs the last time. I also don't like the change in the art style from part 1 to 2. I only replay the first part Shattered Lands, but usually not the second.

I really wish gold box style games had continued to be successful and the missteps of the Dark Sun campaigns had been given the chance to be ironed out. As it turned out before that could happen Baldur's gate ushered in the period of real-time pausable combat that destroyed the classic turn based RPG. I never liked these games and they went on to dominate for many years. It feels like only recently we've begun a return to true turn-based RPGs, a trend which I can only hope continues.

Shagittarius wrote on 2020-01-24, 14:49:

I really wish gold box style games had continued to be successful and the missteps of the Dark Sun campaigns had been given the chance to be ironed out. As it turned out before that could happen Baldur's gate ushered in the period of real-time pausable combat that destroyed the classic turn based RPG. I never liked these games and they went on to dominate for many years. It feels like only recently we've begun a return to true turn-based RPGs, a trend which I can only hope continues.

I'm right with you on that. I did play and beat Baldur's Gate, but that real-time pause just never sat well with me. It was a great game, but now when it's time to pick a new RPG to dive into, I almost always pick something turn-based. One day, I'll finish them all and be forced play only real-time or real-time with pause. Okay, Ultima VII Pt1-2 and Ultima Underworld 1-2 were real-time and it didn't bother me, so maybe it's just the implementation. Legend of Grimrock wasn't bad either.

I love me some gold box SSI RPGs but have you tried replaying them anytime soon? I actually replayed and finished Azure Bonds and Silver Blades but could not finish Pools of Darkness - threw the towel in at the Moander's Body level. The sheer amount of random encounters, combat grinding and rules whackiness have aged pretty terribly.

Only the Eye of the Beholder games from that era actually stood the test of time, and those are quasi-real time..

Just loaded the save with my glorious Vasco da Gama team on Championship Manager 99/00, next match against our rivals Flamengo and we are winning 3-1 so far. I had to pause the game and hide it on another desktop window when the boss appeared here... 🤣

appiah4 wrote on 2020-01-24, 18:16:

I love me some gold box SSI RPGs but have you tried replaying them anytime soon? I actually replayed and finished Azure Bonds and Silver Blades but could not finish Pools of Darkness - threw the towel in at the Moander's Body level. The sheer amount of random encounters, combat grinding and rules whackiness have aged pretty terribly.

Only the Eye of the Beholder games from that era actually stood the test of time, and those are quasi-real time..

One nice thing about them is it's the only way to play a game in Krynn and meet npcs from the books. We need a Baldur's Gate for the Krynn world. If anyone's listening....

I think a part of the failure of the dark suns games were due to the bleakness of the setting and too singular a focus on setting and story. In addition to that engine being clunky and demanding at the time too. At least i don't remember it running very well at the time.

Shagittarius wrote on 2020-01-24, 19:11:

I think a part of the failure of the dark suns games were due to the bleakness of the setting and too singular a focus on setting and story. In addition to that engine being clunky and demanding at the time too. At least i don't remember it running very well at the time.

Dark Sun games ran fine on my 486DX33..

appiah4 wrote on 2020-01-24, 18:16:

I love me some gold box SSI RPGs but have you tried replaying them anytime soon? I actually replayed and finished Azure Bonds and Silver Blades but could not finish Pools of Darkness - threw the towel in at the Moander's Body level. The sheer amount of random encounters, combat grinding and rules whackiness have aged pretty terribly.

Only the Eye of the Beholder games from that era actually stood the test of time, and those are quasi-real time..

I never played the Gold Box games, even back in the day (I didn't get my first DOS PC til '92ish). I own them all on GOG but they seem a bit too tedious and graphics a bit too archaic. Doesn't mean I won't give them a chance someday, but I actually think Wizardry 6-7 stand the test of time as do Ultima 7 Pts1-2, the Underworlds, Lands of Lore, Might & Magic 3-5, Anvil of Dawn, and Stonekeep. I've played and beaten them all in the past 4 years and thoroughly enjoyed each one. Speaking of which, Stonekeep had a good real-time combat system.

Some other DOS RPGs still on my playlist are Darklands, Betrayal at Krondor, Daggerfall, and the Ravenloft series. I will get to all of them at some point.

Shagittarius wrote on 2020-01-24, 19:11:

I think a part of the failure of the dark suns games were due to the bleakness of the setting and too singular a focus on setting and story. In addition to that engine being clunky and demanding at the time too. At least i don't remember it running very well at the time.

Dark Sun and EOB were the only DOS RPGs I DNF since I started playing/replaying old DOS games about 4 years ago. I agree with you on Dark Sun. The story didn't pull me in, the setting didn't make things interesting, and it was just boring for me. I was playing on a 486 with MT-32 and I just wasn't feeling it. There's something about the setting that reminded me of Fallout (another game I DNF for UI reasons) that just wasn't interesting to me. I guess I'm more of a high fantasy kind of guy...

kolderman wrote on 2020-01-24, 18:52:

appiah4 wrote on 2020-01-24, 18:16:

I love me some gold box SSI RPGs but have you tried replaying them anytime soon? I actually replayed and finished Azure Bonds and Silver Blades but could not finish Pools of Darkness - threw the towel in at the Moander's Body level. The sheer amount of random encounters, combat grinding and rules whackiness have aged pretty terribly.

Only the Eye of the Beholder games from that era actually stood the test of time, and those are quasi-real time..

One nice thing about them is it's the only way to play a game in Krynn and meet npcs from the books. We need a Baldur's Gate for the Krynn world. If anyone's listening....

I would LOVE an RPG based on the Krynn world! Not necessarily with the Baldur's Gate engine, but maybe a modernized SSI engine (turn-based). I still often use Dragonlance character names in my RPGs. 😀

Hmm. I did finish the first Dark Sun but I agree about the setting not proving too interesting. There's also just not that much story to go around, other than save the town by visiting destinations A, B and C. At one point in the game you meet this lizard character who tells you about his home island far away in the dune sea, or something, and for a moment it seemed like the game was going to do something with that, but no, it was only flavour text 😒

In contrast to all of you guys, I really like the BG combat system (although Dark Sun is also pretty good, quite similar to BG, actually) and, I think, if you enable all the auto-pause option, it basically plays like a turn-based system.

For people looking for a pretty good turn-based, DNDish implementation, Knights of the Chalice might be worth a look!

So I just had to go back to a previous save and replay about 2 hrs of Wizardry 7. There's an NPC named Blienmeis in the Rattkin Ruins that you're supposed to steal a ring from in order to progress the plot, but I didn't realize in the process of stealing the ring, he steals random items from you. I realized I lost an important item, which lead me to experimenting with what he steals and who he steals from. I then had to manipulate each party member's inventory items to ensure he stole items that I wouldn't care about. It seems he steals a certain value of items. So, he might steel numerous low value items, or a single high value item. I finally got through it with minimal loss and am now back where I was. 😒

clueless1 wrote on 2020-01-26, 14:29:

So I just had to go back to a previous save and replay about 2 hrs of Wizardry 7. There's an NPC named Blienmeis in the Rattkin Ruins that you're supposed to steal a ring from in order to progress the plot, but I didn't realize in the process of stealing the ring, he steals random items from you. I realized I lost an important item, which lead me to experimenting with what he steals and who he steals from. I then had to manipulate each party member's inventory items to ensure he stole items that I wouldn't care about. It seems he steals a certain value of items. So, he might steel numerous low value items, or a single high value item. I finally got through it with minimal loss and am now back where I was. 😒

and that is when I start swearing at a game, throwing furniture and uninstall it. 🤣

@liqmat - the stupidest part was a little later on, you get to try to kill Blienmeis (he's a tough cookie and often runs away during combat), because if you kill him, he drops a one-of-a-kind best weapon for a faerie ninja (Cane of Corpus). Well, I finally killed him, got the Cane of Corpus, but he didn't drop that important item he stole from me! Bastard...must've sold or stashed it before our combat. If he'd dropped my item (Helazoid Banner), I wouldn't have had to reload and replay.

I've picked up where I left off with an old save of Risen 3 - a game I really disliked on release, but which I've come to really enjoy over the years. It's probably the most polished Piranha Bytes game I've played, including their latest effort (ELEX). There are a stack of mechanics that I don't understand / care about and a lot of expensive skills that seem pointless, but the core mechanic is fun and the world is brilliant. Like all PB games exploration is where it's at, and the main companion in this game is fantastic - I can't stand NPC companions as a rule but my mate Bones doesn't get in the way, really helps in a fight, heals me when I have a boo boo, and comes out with all sorts of interesting or entertaining stuff. "I'm going to make a hat out of your skin!" is one of his favorite expressions as we rush into battle - classic.

Here we are exploring a beach:

I'm taking time to enjoy more of the RPG mod for Starsiege: Tribes.

I'll just leave this screenshot with absolutely no context.

Still playing Championship Manager 99/00, just managed to beat my rival and still leading the Brazilian league and my Mercosul Cup group as well. My british style tactic is quite deadly while attacking, plenty of chances but given the quality of my strikers we lose a lot of chances (might have to review their positioning) but while on defence I use a very high defensive line & offside trap, the main weakness are the crosses to the area from the sides. If I manage to fix this (back in time, 20 years ago I had this fixed with a similar tactic but much more efficient than this one, however I do not have a single backup file of this tactic anywhere) this will be an unbeatable team when I play the next season on FIFA Club World Championship.

Eveonline. On & off for 12 years. Marauder l5 just completed.

Was playing CM99/00 again when I reached the finals for Mercosul Cup. Game crashes on me before I could play this match - I forgot it was a common bug in this version. I remember having fixed this before but the files aren't available anymore. So I decided to uninstall and go for the next version - CM 00/01. ( I know CM 01/02 is the best one, but I want to play with certain players in my squad for my favorite team).