Party Based Rpgs Other than WW

[Jaeger]

The Spirit Engine 2
It's extremely linear in design, as you literally just move left or right, with little divergence. The game starts with the player choosing a party of 3 characters. There are 9 characters total, each representing a personality type and class. One of each personality type (antihero, idealist, and logical). Some character combinations yield unique dialogue. Combat looks simple at first, although it seems like the difficulty ramps a little later. Levels are gained quickly so don't have to grind a whole lot to gain a level. At each level, you get 1 point to spend on upgrading skills. Each victory in battle will give you point to respec your characters. There is a level/experience cap with each chapter to prevent over-leveling. It also happens to be freeware. I played a little bit of the first Spirit Engine, but it was inferior in many ways.

Dragon's Dogma:
It's an action-oriented game, with more emphasis on combat and exploration. You are allowed to switch classes throughout the game. You have a "main pawn" who will forever follow and assist the player, but you can recruit 2 additional pawns to your party. Pawns are AI-controlled, but they are surprisingly helpful with the right loadout.The story and NPC interaction is very weak though.

Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter
It's definitely an acquired taste; it's generally disliked even by most BOF fans. It's dungeon crawler, so don't expect much NPC interaction. Combat is turned based, with each party member using AP to perform actions (like Fallout 1/2) during their turn, which can be chained together into a combo. Attempting to beat the game during your first play through is rough since enemies are relatively strong, and resources are limited. Even healing to full health is a luxury, you have to be careful with every encounter.

Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne
With over a 100 demons to recruit, fuse, or evolve, Nocturne offers a lot of options when it comes to party composition. The battle system is turn-based much like your typical RPG except for the inclusion of the Press Turn system, which essentially awards an extra turn for exploiting weaknesses and landing a critical hit. Conversely, hitting a enemy that is resistant to certain attacks or missing means losing a turn. All demons having varying resistances, thus the player is encouraged to change the party often to adapt against new foes.

I'm going to try out Darklands.

[jack1974]

Darklands is very old (as you can see from the art), I remember playing it on my 486DX2 when was 18-19 years old, but is one of the best RPG games I've ever played (also very original setting). There are many CYOA scenes, and real-time (with pause) battles. I'd love to make such a game one day

[P_Tigras]

I don't think anyone has explicitly mentioned the original Neverwinter Nights yet. It's a classic. *sheds a tear for poor Aribeth*

[Franka]

I don't think anyone has explicitly mentioned the original Neverwinter Nights yet. It's a classic. *sheds a tear for poor Aribeth*

That would be because I hated the single player campaign passionately.

[Lonestar51]

Why did you hate it? For me NWN was one of the few good RPG. The first expansion was also really good (esp. Deekin), the second did not really catch me (D&D rules beyond level 20 are just silly, and the story was beyond "meh").

Though it was not really "party-based", I mostly run through it solo. Except with Deekin, of course.

[Franka]

You know what, I probably don't actually hate it. I'm just completely indifferent to it. I don't remember a single thing from the campaign that shipped with NWN. Not one. That is exceedingly rare for something developed by Bioware, and tells me the writing must not have been very good.

[jack1974]

It's the same for me though for a different reason: that game shipped with the Aurora Tools, and I was always more interested in MAKING RPGs than playing them, so I spent all the time trying to do mods for the game (I was 20-22 years old at those times so the results were quite horrible).

[P_Tigras]

If only the toolset for Dragon Age was as robust and well-supported as the toolset for Neverwinter Nights was. Neverwinter had an incredible modding community, and that, more than the original campaign, or the expansions, made it such a great game. Its Aurora toolset was awesome.

[deathknight1728]

Darklands is very old (as you can see from the art), I remember playing it on my 486DX2 when was 18-19 years old, but is one of the best RPG games I've ever played (also very original setting). There are many CYOA scenes, and real-time (with pause) battles. I'd love to make such a game one day

Im sure Darklands is better than the 2 games Im about to mention. Im not a graphics must have but Ive read a lot of good things about that game.

My biggest gripe with rpgs is when they make a good game exceedingly long to the point where your playing 2 games-1 game that is awesome, and 1 that is just never gonna get finished.

Avernum Escape from the Pit was a really fun game but I find that just completing one of the endgame quests was too much 60-80 hours. I work a full time job

I wanted to try wizardry 8 but I heard that that was even moreso long to the point where the main quest is like 80-100 hours long. Do these developers think we have time that grows on trees? Has anyone found a decent proof of Wizardry's main quest? I'd like to play the game but don't want to go for it if its longer than 50 hours for the main quest, jeez..

[Franka]

I wanted to try wizardry 8 but I heard that that was even moreso long to the point where the main quest is like 80-100 hours long. Do these developers think we have time that grows on trees? Has anyone found a decent proof of Wizardry's main quest? I'd like to play the game but don't want to go for it if its longer than 50 hours for the main quest, jeez..

Well, whenever I play Wizardry 8, I play Wizardry 6 and 7 first and transfer my characters between the games. So that's probably 150 hours or so, now that I've mapped W6+7. It was significantly longer the first time.