ratfink wrote on 2026-10-10, 09:39:

At the moment I am on Diablo (single player), tried to start it a year or two ago having never actually played the original before but found time this last few weeks. Never realised how much was in the first game.

With the 30th anniversary of it's release just around the corner, I may revisit the first Diablo as well! I may finally try Hellfire, as I've never actually played it. It's non-canon, so I didn't bother I guess...

ratfink wrote on 2026-10-10, 09:39:

If only someone could make the graphics look better on a non-CRT screen!

Maybe try Shaderglass? It's got dozens of CRT overlays, some even simulating PC monitors.

EDIT: Oh, forgot to add: I've been playing FIFA 2000 as of late. It was the last new FIFA game I played! I didn't like it when it first dropped and, to be honest, I still think it's a step back compared to FIFA 99, both graphically and in terms of game controls. I'm hell-bent on finishing an entire season now though!

Could never get into Diablo 1... dunno why... Think because it s mainly one dungeon and most of the game looks the same... However , Diablo 2 is one of my favourite games.

I also recommend the original Morrowind , that is a very good game as well.

Blackthorne
Cool game so far. It's basically Prince of Persia with a shotgun, in an edgy 90s comic book setting. It looks and sounds great (fantastic SC-55 soundtrack), but what I like most about this game is how many moves your character has. In addition to the standard PoP/Flashback movements of running, jumping, drawing your weapon, and grabbing ledges, you can also crouch and roll, shoot behind you without looking (the coolest move by far), and press against the background to avoid gunfire.

Like PoP, it's more of a puzzle game than an action game, though the action is fine. I was able to get through the first few levels and reach the second area of the game without too much trouble so far.

Treasures of the Savage Frontier
Damn, the Gold Box games are so addictive. After completing GtoSF I transferred my party and thought I'd play something else... but then why not just play through the intro and save my game? Then, why not explore the first area? Two hours later, I found it difficult to put the game down. The graphics are much nicer (VGA vs EGA) and it's fun to revisit the same areas from the previous game and see how they look now. The biggest improvement, so far, is the quality of the encounters. GtoSF suffered from copy-pasted encounters all over each map, but this game has a lot more unique encounters. Good stuff so far.

newtmonkey wrote on 2026-10-16, 15:06:

Blackthorne
Cool game so far. It's basically Prince of Persia with a shotgun, in an edgy 90s comic book setting. It looks and sounds great (fantastic SC-55 soundtrack), but what's I like most about this game is how many moves your character has. In addition to the standard PoP/Flashback movements of running, jumping, drawing your weapon, and grabbing ledges, you can also crouch and roll, shoot behind you without looking (the coolest move by far), and press against the background to avoid gunfire.

Like PoP, it's more of a puzzle game than an action game, though the action is fine. I was able to get through the first few levels and reach the second area of the game without too much trouble so far.

Awesome. Let us know how you progress through this. I'm always curious to see how people who play classics for the first time respond to them. Blackthorne was certainly a positive experience for me. I played through it 2-3 times, maybe 4-5 if you count the different console ports.

Treasures of the Savage Frontier
I think I'm pretty far into this game now. It's still an improvement over the mediocre Gateway to the Savage Frontier, but it's also getting pretty tedious. You basically go from town to town confronting a massive conspiracy between three evil groups by killing the same group of enemies over and over and over. The developers knew that you would have access to pretty powerful spells at this point, and they tried to design the encounters around that, but it's more annoying than challenging. If you roll poorly on your initiative check, all the enemy spellcasters get to go first and wipe out half of your party. If you win the initiative, you have basically won the encounter.

The game takes place in the same world as the previous one (in fact, it even reuses the maps), so maybe playing this immediately after finishing Gateway was a bad idea 🤣.

Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge
I will preface this by saying that I actually like some adventure games. I played through Loom, The Secret of Monkey Island, Leisure Suit Larry, and Space Quest a few years back, and I actually had a blast playing through them all, and even got through them without any hints (except for one part of LSL).

Excited to find a "new" genre of games to get into, I quickly became frustrated in my attempts to play Sam & Max Hit the Road , Day of the Tentacle, and The Legend of Kyrandia: Book Two - Hand of Fate (what a title 🤣) because I simply could not understand what I supposed to be doing. I felt like I was just collecting random items in every single room, just because I was playing an adventure game and that was what I was supposed to do. I'd often find myself in a situation where I obviously had to do something with all the random trash I'd collected, but it wasn't clear what I was actually meant to do, or what anything had to do with what my goal was supposed to be.

I figured that MI2 would be more approachable, having completed the first game, but I got stuck toward the end of the first area. The game actually does a great job of setting up your goal: get off the first island, which requires getting rid of the town bully, which requires making a voodoo doll, which requires four ingredients from him. Three of the ingredients make total sense if you're paying attention and explore each area. The last one, his clothing, is moon logic. You need to collect swamp water in a bucket (why??? because it's there), and you have to be up with your college pranks and know to put that swamp water bucket on his door, so that he'll open the door, get drenched and change, so you can get his clothes (it's a bit more complicated than that).

The problem is twofold. First, it requires you to just randomly collect swamp water in your bucket, even though this makes no sense, simply because swamp water is interactable in one area, and you have a bucket. Second, it requires you to think that the only way to get a thread of clothing from someone, is to play a prank on them with that bucket... even though you have total access to his room at all times. I mean, what about just having his sock in a drawer or something? What about having a single alternative solution, for the people who unfamiliar with the good old bucket on the door prank?

This is my problem with adventure games. It's not the deaths from the Sierra games (just save often), and it's not even the walking dead situations (although those are awful)... it's the rigid structure that requires you to be on the exact same wavelength as the writers/designers, or the game comes to a complete halt. Maybe for a lot of people, putting that bucket on the door makes perfect sense. But if it doesn't, your only recourse (outside of looking the solution up) is just to start using every item in your inventory on every spot, just to see if you missed something.

newtmonkey wrote on 2026-10-18, 16:02:

This is my problem with adventure games. It's not the deaths from the Sierra games (just save often), and it's not even the walking dead situations (although those are awful)... it's the rigid structure that requires you to be on the exact same wavelength as the writers/designers, or the game comes to a complete halt. Maybe for a lot of people, putting that bucket on the door makes perfect sense. But if it doesn't, your only recourse (outside of looking the solution up) is just to start using every item in your inventory on every spot, just to see if you missed something.

That's my general feeling as well. Some games are better than others in this regard, but I think that in every adventure game I've played, there has been at least one location where I found myself thus stuck.

Yeah, I only got so far with a few games for this reason. I sometimes wonder whether there's a sort of language to this kind of thing that you learn kind of like muscle memory. Like in a more visual/action game once you've played a while you can start to "see" what to do in new situations you find yourself in. But I think you just have to learn to enjoy a lot trial and error and that sense of relief/eureka you get when you finally realise you need to scare the cockerel with the corkscrew and then the blue mouse will cough up the magic key you have to balance on your head etc. I find text games similarly challenging - how am I supposed to know the limited vocabulary programmed in (and why should I care)? But each to their own!

Adventure games were a product of computer limitations. They were never very good, they were just the best solution for the resources and abilities. I've always felt this way even back in the day.

The same way JRPGs were just inferior western rpgs due to the limitation of the target platform.

Counter strike: source, Italy map..
"Into the flood again / Same old trip it was back then / So I made a big mistake / Try to see it once my way"

Treasures of the Savage Frontier
I'm getting very close to the end, I suspect. The structure of the game is actually very cool. You have to uncover a massive conspiracy, which you do by tracking down coded messages (one for each town, won from random battles) and three crystals used to decode the messages. Once you've decoded the message for a town, you can then go in and eliminate the threat. There are also some fun random events that can occur throughout the game that send you to optional areas.

The structure gives the game the open-world feel that has been lacking the series since Secret of the Silver Blades. It's too bad that the encounter design really takes a nosedive once you've reached the halfway point. Your party becomes ridiculously powerful by that point, so every single fixed encounter is against multiple pockets of enemies with spellcasters all over the place, preventing you from easily disrupting their spells. This could be an interesting challenge in a game with better encounter design, but here you either win initiative and win, or lose initiative and sit there helplessly as every single enemy spellcaster casts lightning bolt and fireball on your party, wiping out half of your characters before you can do anything. Of course, if you know the encounter is coming (or reload after losing), you can haste your party beforehand, which is basically an instant win button.

Maniac Mansion
This is the enhanced EGA version (sometimes referred to as "v2"). I've played this game a lot over the years (including the NES port), but was never able to complete it. I love the concept. It's cool how you get to choose your party like in an RPG, and how each character has his or her own unique skill. It's also cool how puzzles have multiple solutions... though this is usually as simple as "use Razor's skill on this item, or Jeff's skill on that item. As a far of cheesy horror and sci-fi movies, I also love the setting and atmosphere. The graphics are also very charming and attractive.

The structure of the game is pretty cool. You are basically free to explore this kooky mansion and are given very little guidance outside of the fun "billboard" poster that came with the game. So far, I really like it. I'm sure there's gonna be some crazy moon logic stuff later on, but the game sort of makes sense so far.

I'm sure there's gonna be some crazy moon logic stuff later on

actually, there is not a lot of "moon logic" here but some puzzles will be challanging for future generations (TAPE recordings ???)
Once you have beaten it - try Timbleweed Park - its equally awesome

Treasures of the Savage Frontier

Finished!

I ended up pleasantly surprised with this one. It's an improvement over Gateway to the Savage Frontier in every way, and still remains a challenge even though it takes place in that "lower-mid-level" range of the Gold Box games where your melee characters feel nearly invulnerable and your spellcasters all have multiple copies of very powerful spells memorized.

The biggest improvement is in how the game is structured, as it's a return to the nonlinear open-world questing of Pool of Radiance and (to a lesser extent) Curse of the Azure Bonds. Although the beginning and ending sections are linear, the majority of the game involves dismantling a massive conspiracy by taking out its agents in each of the main cities, and this can mostly be done in any order. There is also plenty of optional content worth seeking out, and even some random events that slightly change the structure of the quest.

It's also paced extremely well. Unlike Gateway (and many of the Gold Box games), I didn't begin to hit the level maximum for my characters until nearly the end of the game. You're always finding nice upgrades to your equipment, too.

However, the game does become somewhat tedious and even frustrating during the last few hours of the game. Unable to deal with how powerful your party becomes, the game starts to throw the same encounter at you, consisting of two to three pockets of enemy spellcasters that seem to always win initiative over you, immediately fireballing or holding half your party before you can do anything... even though I had spent the time during character creation to ensure that everyone had 17 or 18 Dexterity.

The final area of the game is a ridiculous challenge that takes this encounter design and turns the difficulty up to the point of frustration. You get pockets of three to four powerful spellcasters, who almost always win initiative. If that's not enough, reinforcements get called in every two to three rounds if you aren't able to win the encounter quick enough. The final two battles are this and more, since winning simply throws you into a boss encounter with no chance to heal, rest, or memorize spells.

However, to the game's credit (or perhaps to mine), I was able to beat the game with fairly rolled characters on the default difficulty without too much trouble. It took two tries to beat the first boss encounter, and I was able to beat the second boss encounter on my first attempt (though only barely, with just my two magic users left standing).

In spite of the frustrating endgame, I had a great time with this. My ranking of Gold Box games so far:

1. Pool of Radiance
2. Champions of Krynn
3. Treasures of the Savage Frontier
4. Curse of the Azure Bonds
5. Gateway to the Savage Frontier
6. Secret of the Silver Blades