Not the way it's perceived as now. The RPG genre on the PC at that time was moving towards Diablo and online games, like UO. Fallout 1 and 2 didn't have that impact BG did. Fallout Tactics could be called a bomb (It was retconned too) and the BoS game for Xbox/PS2, well, that cratered. Fallout had a sort of reputation as being an enthusiast's game. It lacked the production values that its contemporaries had, which meant it never had the same level of mainstream success the Infinity Engine games did.
I did not give Baldur's Gate a fair chance back in the day, but having made it through the game recently, I wish I did. I gave Nox, a rather run-of-the-mill Diablo clone more of a chance because I was mostly familiar with JRPGs and had not been formerly introduced to tabletop D&D and did not understand the mechanics of the game or how to properly play it. I would not consider myself a CRPG convert because I still like JRPGs, but now I like both unlike back in middle/high school.
Nox, yeah, I had that. I didn't finish it because it felt so janky. I remember the movement being floaty and having a LOT of trap mechanics. As for JRPGs, I always loved them. It's just a different flavor. You can like Vanilla, and you can like chocolate. JRPGs are, to me, "relaxation RPGs" since they tend to be less complex and more forgiving. Like SMT5 a couple christmases ago. I would unwind after work that christmas of 2021 by playing that. Got the best ending and put over 100hrs into it.
I just found your first fireside chat and left a large comment there, so I won't repeat things here. I'm also an old gamer who has been into CRPGs since Ultima III came out. Ultima was my favorite series, and I'm one of those who found Ultima VII to be the best. I can understand some people not liking it, particularly combat-focused RPG fans, since combat isn't the emphasis of that game. It is a rather primitive sort of real time with pause, a system that Baldur's Gate did a lot better. I'm more into story and exploration, and I see combat as a nuisance if it takes up too much time and energy, so Ultima VII is ideal for me. Baldur's Gate gets this right too, while allowing the player to have more control of the situation. It has the right balance for a game in a setting that is infested with monsters. I remember the 1990s RPG drought. When Ultima VIII came out, and I saw that it was full of bugs and platforming, it took the luster off the Ultima series, and there was nothing else out there that provided what I wanted. Many of the other existing RPG series were too focused on slow, tactical turn-based combat for my taste, and they didn't offer enough of the exploration and narrative to make the combat tedium worth it. I didn't want to install Windows to play the current games since nothing looked good, so I got out of current gaming for a while and just kept playing old games on my DOS machine and my Atari 800. By around the late 2000s, I got Windows on a secondary computer (Linux was on my main computer by then) and started looking back at the games that had come out in the previous ten years, and to my surprise, the RPG genre had fully revitalized. I got into Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter Nights, Arcanum, Elder Scrolls, and Fallout. I agree about Baldur's Gate - it is largely responsible for the revitalization of CRPGs, and to this day, it is still a good game. I've played the enhanced edition recently and enjoyed it just fine. It gives me a lot of what I liked out of Ultima VII - an interesting story and setting, plenty of NPCs to interact with, fun places to explore, and a quick and streamlined combat system that doesn't get in the way of all these other things. It has been a great influence on many subsequent games. I have Baldurs Gate 3, but I've only tinkered and haven't taken it really seriously yet. I'll give it some real attention after release. It is looking very good, but I am afraid that it might turn out to be an extremely lengthy slog, and combat has the potential to slow it to a painful crawl. I don't mind an occasional tactical combat puzzle, but if there are too many lengthy, complex fights, the game will bog down and I will get tired of it. Easy mode will likely help to mitigate this. I want to get through the fights quickly so that I can experience the setting and the story. I would prefer a combat system more like the original Baldur's Gate, but the system in Baldur's Gate 3, so far, seems intuitive and hasn't bored me to tears yet.
Dude, awesome post! I do often see that combat v.s. exploration/story thing a lot. It's one of the msot divisive things in the CRPG hobby. I've been raked over the coal plenty of times in the past because I am more the "Combat" guy. I remember on RPGdot.com back around '03 getting blasted from the forums and called "George Bush" because of my combat leanings. Granted, I do like a good story, but for me it's mostly about the combat. That's what keeps my attention and focus. I think BG3 is going the same route BG1 did, which is focusing on combat, and intertwining some story between the sword swings to keep it fresh. I think it works in the long run, though it may turn off the planescape/ultima style CRPGers.
Awesome history lesson! Did you ever play Dark Sun: Shattered lands? Its almost a 1993 version of a proto Baldurs Gate. Both games blew me away when they first came out.
Yeah bit sadly not until around 97. After I started making good money I bought a crap ton of older games I never got. Dark sun crashed a lot for me. I love what I played though. I have them on GOG and need to go back and finish the first one
![[FULL] RETROSPECTIVE : Final Fantasy Tactics](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/RUBmYqs1jZ0/mqdefault.jpg)
love your rpgs history videos👍 i didn't realize fallout wasn't a big hit
Not the way it's perceived as now. The RPG genre on the PC at that time was moving towards Diablo and online games, like UO. Fallout 1 and 2 didn't have that impact BG did. Fallout Tactics could be called a bomb (It was retconned too) and the BoS game for Xbox/PS2, well, that cratered. Fallout had a sort of reputation as being an enthusiast's game. It lacked the production values that its contemporaries had, which meant it never had the same level of mainstream success the Infinity Engine games did.
I did not give Baldur's Gate a fair chance back in the day, but having made it through the game recently, I wish I did. I gave Nox, a rather run-of-the-mill Diablo clone more of a chance because I was mostly familiar with JRPGs and had not been formerly introduced to tabletop D&D and did not understand the mechanics of the game or how to properly play it. I would not consider myself a CRPG convert because I still like JRPGs, but now I like both unlike back in middle/high school.
Nox, yeah, I had that. I didn't finish it because it felt so janky. I remember the movement being floaty and having a LOT of trap mechanics. As for JRPGs, I always loved them. It's just a different flavor. You can like Vanilla, and you can like chocolate. JRPGs are, to me, "relaxation RPGs" since they tend to be less complex and more forgiving. Like SMT5 a couple christmases ago. I would unwind after work that christmas of 2021 by playing that. Got the best ending and put over 100hrs into it.
I just found your first fireside chat and left a large comment there, so I won't repeat things here. I'm also an old gamer who has been into CRPGs since Ultima III came out. Ultima was my favorite series, and I'm one of those who found Ultima VII to be the best. I can understand some people not liking it, particularly combat-focused RPG fans, since combat isn't the emphasis of that game. It is a rather primitive sort of real time with pause, a system that Baldur's Gate did a lot better. I'm more into story and exploration, and I see combat as a nuisance if it takes up too much time and energy, so Ultima VII is ideal for me. Baldur's Gate gets this right too, while allowing the player to have more control of the situation. It has the right balance for a game in a setting that is infested with monsters.
I remember the 1990s RPG drought. When Ultima VIII came out, and I saw that it was full of bugs and platforming, it took the luster off the Ultima series, and there was nothing else out there that provided what I wanted. Many of the other existing RPG series were too focused on slow, tactical turn-based combat for my taste, and they didn't offer enough of the exploration and narrative to make the combat tedium worth it. I didn't want to install Windows to play the current games since nothing looked good, so I got out of current gaming for a while and just kept playing old games on my DOS machine and my Atari 800. By around the late 2000s, I got Windows on a secondary computer (Linux was on my main computer by then) and started looking back at the games that had come out in the previous ten years, and to my surprise, the RPG genre had fully revitalized. I got into Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter Nights, Arcanum, Elder Scrolls, and Fallout. I agree about Baldur's Gate - it is largely responsible for the revitalization of CRPGs, and to this day, it is still a good game. I've played the enhanced edition recently and enjoyed it just fine. It gives me a lot of what I liked out of Ultima VII - an interesting story and setting, plenty of NPCs to interact with, fun places to explore, and a quick and streamlined combat system that doesn't get in the way of all these other things. It has been a great influence on many subsequent games.
I have Baldurs Gate 3, but I've only tinkered and haven't taken it really seriously yet. I'll give it some real attention after release. It is looking very good, but I am afraid that it might turn out to be an extremely lengthy slog, and combat has the potential to slow it to a painful crawl. I don't mind an occasional tactical combat puzzle, but if there are too many lengthy, complex fights, the game will bog down and I will get tired of it. Easy mode will likely help to mitigate this. I want to get through the fights quickly so that I can experience the setting and the story. I would prefer a combat system more like the original Baldur's Gate, but the system in Baldur's Gate 3, so far, seems intuitive and hasn't bored me to tears yet.
Dude, awesome post! I do often see that combat v.s. exploration/story thing a lot. It's one of the msot divisive things in the CRPG hobby. I've been raked over the coal plenty of times in the past because I am more the "Combat" guy. I remember on RPGdot.com back around '03 getting blasted from the forums and called "George Bush" because of my combat leanings. Granted, I do like a good story, but for me it's mostly about the combat. That's what keeps my attention and focus. I think BG3 is going the same route BG1 did, which is focusing on combat, and intertwining some story between the sword swings to keep it fresh. I think it works in the long run, though it may turn off the planescape/ultima style CRPGers.
Awesome history lesson! Did you ever play Dark Sun: Shattered lands? Its almost a 1993 version of a proto Baldurs Gate. Both games blew me away when they first came out.
Yeah bit sadly not until around 97. After I started making good money I bought a crap ton of older games I never got. Dark sun crashed a lot for me. I love what I played though. I have them on GOG and need to go back and finish the first one