(2nd?) Best game in DM's genre?

[zeech]

In this genre, I've played DM, CSB, DM2, EOBeholder 1 & 2, a bit of Captive and Hired Guns, Might and Magic World of Xeen, and half of Grimrock 2. I don't count it as "same genre", but I'll mention Ultima Underworld 1 and 2 as well.


When it comes to pseudo-3d, step based, party based, action (preferred but not mandatory) RPGs, (ie. DM clones), what's the best game, in your opinion? If it's DM/CSB, then what's the 2nd best?


Nothing quite captures the magic of DM, for me. I love the magic system, how each weapon has 3 actions, the mystery of the named items that don't tell you what they do, the very deliberate and planned level design, the training system, omniclassing, and how the small amount of physics (basically throwing items and closing doors on things) really make the world feel real and physical. I don't like puzzles much, but I appreciate the small amount of simple ones in DM (for this reason I'm not as fond of CSB.)


Grimrock 2's class system seems very interesting, but given that you're stuck with your choice for the whole game it's not that fun for me, since you can't tinker around without replaying a lot. Probably if I had to pick a 2nd best I'd choose MM World of Xeen, but I played that when I was young so maybe rose coloured glasses.


There are a number of clones old and new that I never played. Bloodwych, for example. Are there any that approach or even surpass DM? I don't really mean fan maps for the various DM engines, but feel free to mention them if you really want

[terkio]

Some more old games, that I enjoyed a lot.

Bloodwitch was excellent, forgiving the very poor graphics. A good magic system, good champions leveling system.
Knightmare was excellent, forgiving the poor graphics. Overall good with clever puzzles.
Stonekeeper was pretty good. Good scenario.

[Ameena]

Yeah, definitely DM/CSB/DM2 are up there. Also enjoyed Stonekeep. And it's not step-based, but Might and Magic VI is bloody excellent as well (also played VII and VIII which were also good, but still prefer VI the best).

[terkio]

I enjoyed M&M, but gave up at X. I found X very different with a terrible 3D engine, unplayable, a ripp off.

[Paul Stevens]

I enjoyed Eye-Of-the-Beholder-2 a lot.

Did anyone like Crusaders of the Dark Savant? I think it was
a great game but it was simply too much for me. I tried and failed.

[Saumun]

Really liked The Bards Tale and it’s first sequel (Though the fighting is turn based). Concur with Terkio that Bloodwych was excellent. Also the EoB series.

Despite your last line, it would be a real shame for anyone to miss out on Tower of Champions (v4.0) for RTC, which is outstanding. I also need to get into Conflux for CSBwin at some point.

[zeech]

Thanks for all the replies. Does anyone like their listed games more than DM/CSB? Or is everyone talking about equal-first / second best sorts of things?

Also, random thought that's not worth making a thread for:
Unlike the fantasy-themed GUIs of most RPGs, DM has an art design that looks a lot like recent GUI design (Android Material design etc). I thought that was funny.

[terkio]

DM/CSB first, definitely. Since DM, at that time, I tried all games of the same kind. The Eob serie, of course. Betrayal of Chrondor was one I was enable to complete. Stuck at a place with gorgons that petrified my party whatever I tried and no place to find a way. An old game I loved "Dragon flight" but could not complete, stuck because a bug or an impossible riddle. Another one not that old "Pool of Radiance", stuck because of a crash, so there was no way to get a must item. I had more games impossible to complete because buggered, got pissed messing with patches and this became more and more up to plain rip offs.
So I am back to DM, the best forever, with custom games.

[Saumun]

DM/CSB at the top for me, also. CSB in particular is a masterpiece of design. I don’t dislike DM2, but there are fan dungeons that I would place above it. ToC strikes me as what DM2 could have been.

[zeech]

Really liked The Bards Tale and it’s first sequel (Though the fighting is turn based). Concur with Terkio that Bloodwych was excellent. Also the EoB series.

Despite your last line, it would be a real shame for anyone to miss out on Tower of Champions (v4.0) for RTC, which is outstanding. I also need to get into Conflux for CSBwin at some point.

Hmm, the link for TOC 4.0 is broken in the forum thread, and the page on the encyclopaedia is out of date:
http://dmweb.free.fr/?q=node/1451

Anyone in contact with anyone to get these reuploaded and updated?

[Gambit37]

I really enjoyed Captive. Great design with cool gadgets to plugin into your droids. But because it was seed generated, there was no endgame and it got repetitive. Loved EOB 1 and 2 also. Black Crypt took things to a better graphical level, but the gameplay had less depth than DM I thought.

I loved Grimrock as a modern reboot, it had a great balance of old school design and modern bells and whistles. Grimrock 2 refined the mechanics a little, but I found it overlong.

I've not played any of the other modern DM type games that came out after Grimrock. They kinda all look the same.

[Saumun]

Zeech... I might still have it. I’m out now, but will have a look when I get home in 3-4 hours. If I have it, I’ll make a link.
v3.3 is still great, but v4.0 has better fights and is more challenging. Also has some updated graphics.

[Saumun]

Got it. Sending you a pm.

[Chaos-Shaman]

Most of those RPG's I did get a chance to play. DM still was the one that gave me the itch to play every night, with my friends all having a beer watching it and listening to it in surround sound. I'll never forget it.
What I am surprised about is how nobody mentioned Crystal Dragon, which was an awesome game, a cross between all platforms. Well designed and definitely challenging.
The best RPG to date that has twists and originality that I would give this to is the DM2 based, very creative designer of Underworld Dreams, ADAMSKI. Although I got stuck a lot and had to ask for help, it really got my blood moving. So to answer the question of what is second best, it would be Crystal Dragon. Most complicated timing dungeon would go to Saumun, UNDERVERSE, crazy big. Sins of the father, SOTF was weird and interesting, enjoyed the weirdness of that dungeon.

[zeech]

I couldn't find anything about Crystal Dragon, only a console game called Dragon Crystal. Is that the one you mean?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_Crystal

[Chaos-Shaman]

I couldn't find anything about Crystal Dragon, only a console game called Dragon Crystal. Is that the one you mean?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_Crystal

It may well be the game, although I played it on PC using an emulator I think, here it is here, it's an Amiga game, doesn't look the same. This a fantastic game, well worth the time, cool features.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGKBKigxXZ0 Check it out

[PaulH]

EOB2 was very good, but Black Crypt is the one that stands out. Great graphics for the time.

Bane of the Cosmic Forge (Wizardry 6) is probably my favourite - gameplay was phased with battles, but great story and loads of items. I have replayed it many times, and still haven't found all the weapons!

[Chaos-Shaman]

Yes, Black Crypt was a great game indeed, great sound and graphics, something to do with sprites or half sprites, it didn't have that cool mapping feature Crystal Dragon has, where if you have the orb you can teleport anywhere on the map, Crystal Dragon was simple in many ways, but it crossed the platforms well. Needed more monsters, better graphics and more than one wallset, it was more like the original DM. I played a few Wizardry, didn't have the feel like DM though but they were challenging.
I have to mention CSBwin... Conflux III was interesting, it was the map and shear difficulty that made it challenging. At the time I thought it was very difficult, I remember falling through a pit and killing all the bad guys that were shooting fireballs and defeated them as a fighter, but there were parts in it that were missed, might visit that one again someday. I am not sure it was updated since then. I didn't like games like Captive much, just kept repeating. Abandoned Places was annoying and had a lot of potential but never materialized. Lands of Lore and some others I checked. I love dungeon crawlers.

[terkio]

I was not impressed by Black Crypt, may be I played a demo version or confuse with another game.
Is this the game with two headed ogres and lots of animated armor knights ?
Is there a full version available ?

[Chaos-Shaman]

I was not impressed by Black Crypt, may be I played a demo version or confuse with another game.
Is this the game with two headed ogres and lots of animated armor knights ?
Is there a full version available ?

Yeah, I think you got it right. Black Crypt was beautiful, it was too much like Dungeon Hack for me, not enough puzzles, didn't seem to have a story. Nothing fancy about it. A game has to have a lot more than just graphics. A game that had poor graphics was Knightmare, but it was hard and different, a worthy game for any RPG player.

[terkio]

The end boss in Knightmare was very hard to kill. It took me days. Who knows wether there was a trick to kill him faster
If I remember right, you had to kill the end boss to get the crown. Then you carried the crown at some place and that was it: End of the game, you had saved the world and got back freedom.

[Chaos-Shaman]

The end boss in Knightmare was very hard to kill. It took me days. Who knows wether there was a trick to kill him faster
If I remember right, you had to kill the end boss to get the crown. Then you carried the crown at some place and that was it: End of the game, you had saved the world and got back freedom.

Nice to know another who suffered playing that nutty rpg. I did like it, just cause it was different, maybe it was the train, or the invisible black stuff, was a long time ago, that game pissed me off a lot, it is worthy of that recognition,

Terkio, I was looking at one of your files on addition you sent back in 2014. I have an idea that would help solve an issue with RTC on swapping fast monsters (purpose is to keep health value only). Clone-- Using action counter set, counter increment decrement, counter temp, counter temporary, relay greater than inc dec, relay less than or greater than. I think there is a easy way to keep the monster health value while retaining the damage done to a cloned monster. love your help on it. There are other ways using too many counters that simply in my opinion take too much resources, perhaps a little push here, streamline thinking.

[PaulH]

I liked the puzzles in Black Crypt, but were more physical than mentally challenging. It was slick to play, a load of interesting objects to discover and use and is probably why I have fond memories of it.

I never completed Knightmare! I got to a section I couldn't pass, where monster spawning just went crazy. This was 25 years ago, I may have to get the Amiga emulator back out!

I remember Crystal Dragon being quite similar (I think it was the same people that created it).

I forgot to mention Wizardry 7 or Crusaders of the Dark Savant - huge, huge story, but was perhaps a little bloated in the end. Non linear too (in parts), with several paths.

[terkio]

PaulH » 9-Apr-18 19:27
I never completed Knightmare! I got to a section I couldn't pass, where monster spawning just went crazy. This was 25 years ago, I may have to get the Amiga emulator back out!

The way back from the castle is awfully saturated with ghosts that spawned during the long time you spent to finish the castle.
A ghost is not much to kill but the ghosts are too many, you cannot survive going throught them.
Before entering the ghost infected place, you can kill them where they cannot hurt you much. At this place you must kill and kill ghosts for hours to decrease their amount. At first it looks hopeless because of their respawning, however you can kill faster than they respawn. After a long time the ghost pressure is low enough to make it through them.
That is the only way, I found to pass the area full of ghosts.

[Chaos-Shaman]

I remember Crystal Dragon being quite similar (I think it was the same people that created it).

I didn't know that but I can see the similarities. Black Crypt is far more beautiful in appearance.

I forgot to mention Wizardry 7 or Crusaders of the Dark Savant - huge, huge story, but was perhaps a little bloated in the end. Non linear too (in parts), with several paths.

Played them both, they were not my favorites, didn't have much atmosphere.

[Magica]

After Dungeon Master, it is Ishar and Might and Magic for me.

No other games came anything close to those ones, I almost gave up playing games anymore after them.

[Chaos-Shaman]

After Dungeon Master, it is Ishar and Might and Magic for me.

No other games came anything close to those ones, I almost gave up playing games anymore after them.

I feel the same. I gave up games when they became multiplayer. Not interested in games that don't properly end.

[Ameena]

I like the Might and Magic games too...well, the ones I've played (VI-VIII). VI was my favourite, good fun, big game, loads of stuff to do...and a variety of little bugs to exploit to become super OP >:). Also enjoy the Elder Scrolls series, favouring Morrowind above all (again, it's huge, it has loads to do, and there are ways to exploit the mechanics to be super powerful ).
Another one I played much more recently was Dragon's Dogma...had seen a friend playing the original version on the Playstation and thought it looked cool, then saw the full (expanded) version for pretty cheap in a Steam sale a few weeks/months later and decided to get it. Ended up spending most of the latter part of last year playing it. Good game .

[Chaos-Shaman]

I played those M&M. They were fun, a lot of killing and I am not sure the stop of play and not being live kinda took away the emergency of survival. Flying was cool, getting over those mountains. Elder scrolls, never finished one, too big, too much repeat. My daughter bought me Morrowind for the PS, never played it, at that time I was enjoying learning graphics and sound manipulation and consoles I'd rather not use.
Dragons Dogma? never heard of it.

[terkio]

Ishar.
It was easy to hack champion's inventory for as much coins an potions as you want.
Dungeons and outdoors, villages and taverns.