Your best PC game memories

It is a beautiful day out here; it looks like spring outside. I was just recalling when I used to sit in on days like today (about 10 years ago) and play rpgs... and it was such a wonderful feeling too. Its nice to watch the day pass by and to feel it slip away while you are questing away somewhere else.

What about you guys; do you share similar nostalgia for your old rpg collection?

 

Naturally. The latest "classic" RPG was Arcanum, I would say, though I vastly enjoyed Deus Ex (and, to a lesser extent, Oblivion).

Personally, I wish that more games would take the isometric view, as Fallout, Planescape: Torments, and others did. In particular, I would like to see them made with sprites again. You can just achieve a level of detail with sprites that 3D engines don't allow (without making your computer huff like a pregnant woman, anyway). Case in point, the messily bloody death effects in Fallout 2.

 

Ultima - The False Prophet was my favorite. For several years I thought that was the ultimate RPG due to its open-exploration game-play. I had never encountered that before.

From time to time, I'll still dust it off and play another round.

 

Chrono Trigger.
I got it the year it came out, and I've played through it at least once a year for the past 11 years. It took me about two years of staggered play to beat it the first time...Then there was Final Fantasy 3 (which was 6 everywhere else), and I've still not beaten the game. The story is complicated enough to make sure you're completely lost if you stop playing for about three weeks, but I still keep coming back!
I also play Final Fantasy Tactics because it's awesome. It has a job system that lets you play as a monk, and god help anything that stands in your way. Ninjas can be scary too.
I play Arcanum, too, but I only discovered that four years ago, so it's not a nostalgic experience...yet. The same goes for Fallout.

 

I have to admit that I have not played to many RPG on the computer..
I am more of a Strategy player, I prefer Total Wars.

But I do like RPGs and is currently playing through Icewind Dale II.

 

I'd say Final Fantasy, from the first to the 7th. Then they started to lose the atmosphere, even if the 8th and 9th weren't so bad. Talking of computer games, I loved Fallout. And of course, Arcanum (unburied it few time ago, while having a break from WoW, and found this forum )

 

... I dig FF 8... Along with 7 and 9.

 

the first time i talked with virgil, and when i finally reached shrouded hills, that was awesome (i didn't know there was a way-point button)

also, FF8 was really awesome, (the only FF i ever played, yea i know)

playing through the warcraft 3 and frozen throne campaigns in one week, then spending a second week playing footmen frenzy online (the lich is awesome)

also, the strategy games made up a lot of my pc time, age of empires, command and conquer generals, age of mythology etc...

and oh god, half life 1, that was fucking epic, i vividly remember reaching the lambda lab place where all the scientists were hiding, and when i got to Xen, that was fucking awwweesssooommmmeeee and then playing blue shift, opposing force, and the mod Half-Life: Redemption that was the most epic 3 months of my life playing all those games in a row.

my 2 years of WoW, i can't forget that, and my Undead Rogue will always have a place in my heart, and my brief stay at EQ was pretty good.

portal was amazing, though i finished it in one day. zelda - twilight princess though i only got to the 4th dungeon before dumping my wii, will always have a place in my heart, the only thing i enjoyed on the crap system, and assasins creed i haven't finished it yet, but it's fucking awesome.

Unreal Tournament 2004, and UT3, awesome online games. that russian flying sim that i forgot the name i think its IL-42 or something like that.

yea i know most of these aren't RPG's but all of them are awesome.

 

Dragon Warrior, Zelda 1&2, and Star Tropics were the ones that started it for me. Though my mother was the kind that believed that if it was a nice day, kids should play outside. It was a loosely enforced rule, but over the summer my brother and I could only play video games inside if it was night time or raining. So we'd literally pray for rain all day so we could spend the whole time inside playing Nintendo.

Then one day I thought of a loophole in my mother's rule. She said we could only play inside if it was raining. So my brother, next door neighbor, and myself set up a tent out in our back yard and ran an extension cord to the house. We must've spent an entire week, day and night, out in that tent gaming every day away. I miss the good 'ol 8-bit days.

By the time SNES came out I was a teenager and my mother knew she couldn't keep me from doing whatever I wanted to do anymore so the old Summer Rule was long since defunct. Our friends would come over and we'd play Final Fantasy 2 day in and day out. They just don't make'em like they used to.

When we got a Playstation it was nothing but Symphony of the Night, FF7, and Resident Evil all day, every day.

Then when we finally splurged and got a PC, it all Diablo and Heroes of Might and Magic all day and all night.

 

My brother one came up and spent a week with me over here during summer. It was during a heat wave, and both of us being exhausted, installed Heroes 3 and played a 9 hour lan game. Not that it was a good lan game... it takes so long to change and update your forts that you hardly can accomplish any combat!

My parents once took us to an art fair 5 years ago in August. Then we came home and booted up Diablo 2 and ran Hell all night long.

Another good one was when my mom went across the US to visit her parents. My dad was in charge so my brother and I played about 13 hours of eq on a 14.4 baud modem all day. We ordered a pizza with everything on it ($44 bucks) and basically killed orcs up in highhold. That was 1999.

Another favorite spot of mine was Deadlands. In eq it takes literally days to level sometimes. In a good DL group, during sunset, you could gain 1/4 of a level at a time.

Wow had some moments... shortly after its realease it was just pouring out. My gf broke up with me and I must have played until 6 am over in the dorms during winter break.

Oh and... one of the best experiences in Arcanum... wandering around... must have been late afternoon in Fall when suddenly I cross this rabbit... so I attacked it... and it was the stillwater giant! That scared the living crap out of me.

I once played Arcanum all night going to and from the pizzaeria next door with Mug Roobeer and peporoni slices. I did the dwarven mines that night and poor Magnus got his ass kicked by traps over and over again.

One last one for right now: WC3 multiplayer. I was up until 4am every morning on 4v4 building up massive armies and huge tower defenses across maps. Those games went on for hours. Afterwards you'd just sit and chat with folks and make connections for arranged team (though often it was unsuccessful).

Who can forget TFC matches.

 

When I was really young, I somehow got my hands on the Dungeon Keeper Gold edition. At first I didn't understand jack, because I didn't know english, but I slowly learned from experiance how to dig tiles and build rooms. At the end of my second try (day, as well) I had an army of 40 level 10 imps, ready to kick some creature ass. I dug out the whole map and killed everything. Then, just as I was winning, I recieved my first creature (hadn't claimed any portals until then).

The following days were probably the best game-play days in my life. Those, and the days when I first explored Arcanum.

 

forgot to mention - playing diablo non-stop for days, then after finishing single player, going online and playing non-stop for more days...

 

Diablo - Watching my younger brother hack a lvl 99 online character for shits and giggles and then PKing everyone he met. Then laughing my ass off as my dad watches eveyone call him (my brother) a fucking asshole for killing them. And the conversation afterward:

Dad: What are you doing?
Brother: Playing Diablo
Dad: Why are they swearing at you like that?
Brother: Because I killed them all.
Dad: Oh geez.

 

hahahahahahah

 

Goddamn ditto. That annoyed the piss out of me once I figured out how the map screen was really supposed to work.

I highly prefer RPGs over any other genre, but should need to dip into other areas, the Thief series was, without a doubt, my favorite FPS, with the Half Life series coming in second. As for RTS, I simply ADORE Starcraft for its ingenious story, but don't care for the gameplay. In a sense, it heightens the experience, since I'm plodding through "levels" I don't enjoy, simply to see what happens next.

I thought that Final Fantasy 7 had a neat story and an interesting world, but I never finished it, and anime character designs annoy me to all hell.

 

This, and

This I 100% agree with. Chrono trigger is to this day my favorite console RPG in terms of story, battle mechanics, and re-playability. Final Fantasy Tactics for PS1, jesus christ. I spent so much time min/maxing the fuck out of that game that my party beat the final boss in two turns and most other battles in one or two, depending on how spread out everyone was.

However, one of my best memories was playing Fallout 1 when it came out and finally finding that GODDAMN water chip. I really really enjoyed the fallout series and I would finance the creation of another isometric sprite game just like it if I had the resources to do so.

 

Did you like Vandal Hearts? That's a FF Tactics-ish game. VH was the game that got me into strategy games. It was also the first Playstation game I ever finished. Then SotN.

Never played Vandal Hearts 2 though...

 

Ahh! Symphony of the Night! I bust out that game every year or so and beat it all over again. Such a great, awesome game. Never played Vandal hearts, I'll have to look into it though, thanks. I played the Tactics sequel/prequel on my Game Boy as well as every Advance Wars game ever made, so I enjoy strategy games.

I hate to sound like an old man, but 2D/sprite/isometric games are 80% of the categories of my favorite all time games. I think ideas and execution had to make up for the less than impressive graphics back then. Now all you have is a shiny, 3-D rendered piece of crap game with no redeeming value. There are exceptions, of course, but man, I love me some old school games.