Recommendations for more games like this

[ashi]

I love first person grid-based RPGs. I buy almost all that get released for the sake of support, so I've gone through quite a few of them. Some are great, some are good, some are... not so good.

Here's my list of recommendations for those who have developed a taste for gridders, but don't know where to go next. This is by no means a comprehensive list. It includes games I've either played myself, or have been praised a lot by others. I have not included games that are either legally unavailable, or so old that they would be extremely hard to get into for someone who doesn't have that much experience with gridders.



PSP (Vita compatible)

-Elminage: Original. The reviews were very poor because the localization was terrible. The problems were fixed in a later patch, so feel free to ignore the review scores. E:O is actually a terrific Wizardry clone.

-Class of Heroes 2. This game suffered from the bad reputation of the first game in the series, but everyone seems to agree the second game is heaps better than the first one, and quite a good Wizardry-like.


Vita

-Demon Gaze. It's not out yet, but it's very popular in Japan, and importers like it a lot.


DS/3DS

-Etrian Odyssey series. The general consensus is that you can skip the first game. The series is mainly known for the very high difficulty level, but the newer ones are more newbie-friendly.

-Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey. I can't say much about this one since I haven't played it, except that it's gotten good reviews and it has a futuristic setting.

-Orcs & Elves. Unlike all the games above, this is not a Wizardry-like. It's much more streamlined, and it doesn't have random encounters (you can see the monsters in the dungeon). A very short, but fun little snack.


iPhone/iPod

-Doom 2 RPG. Made by the same guys as the previous game on the list, so it's very similar. Surprisingly very good.

-Undercroft. Fairly similar to the two games above. Very good, and completely FREE!


PC

-The Legend of Grimrock. Not a Wizardry-like but a Dungeon Master-like, which means it has less emphasis on character building and more on puzzles. Real-time combat. If you like these things, this game is highly recommended.

-Lands of Lore: The Throne of Chaos. Like the game above, it's a Dungeon Master clone. An oldie, but still pretty and very easy to get into. Perfect for newbies as well. You can buy this from www.gog.com.

-Might and Magic 3-5. Turn-based combat, no random encounters, open sandbox world. The puzzles come in the form of riddles, not environmental puzzles like in Dungeon Master clones. The emphasis is on exploration. These are very old games, but they have aged surprisingly well and are some of the finest gridders available. Definitely recommended. You can buy the Might and Magic 6-pack, which includes these games, from www.gog.com.

-Might & Magic X: Legacy. This one just came out, and the general consensus seems to be that it's excellent.

[raixel]

SMT: Strange Journey is one of my all time favorite DS games. I love the series. It can get really philisophical about the nature of good and evil and humanity.

In the series, Yehova is seen as an unrelenting force of obedience, law, and structure. Not necissarily a good being. In the NES and SNES games you either kill him or Lucifer (a capricious force of chaos and creation who wants to turn the world into sheer anarchy), as the final bad guy. They werent released in America for obvious reasons, (can you imagine a plot of that nature released by Nintendo in the 80s?!) but you can get the translated versions online as roms.

In one of the DS turn based strategy SMT games, if you side with the angels, Yehova turns reality into an unthinking place of law with no free will, and all mankind becomes unthinking robots. But really, the other side isnt much better as they are trying to remake the world in the image of Hell.

Those two turn based ones and the Persona series are different than the main SMT series, of which Strange Journey is a part.

The basic plot of all the games is theres "demons" (more like spirits) from real world mythology. Everything from Judeo-Christian demons and angels, to Hindu and Buddhist mythos, to Yokai and Native American spirits. You can talk to them, fight them, and get them to join you or give you things. Once they join you, they go into a record book (that has a cool berief paragrapph about the being place in real world myth) and you can summon them for battle and "fuse" them to make different demons. Battles are turn based, and heavily reliant on demons elemental strength and weaknesses. Kinda like Pokemon, I guess. But way way cooler with a more mature theme.

In SJ, they are inhabiting weird black hole thing slowly consuming the earth from antartica, and you are part of an international team of scientists and soldiers going there to investigate. In it, are levels representing the vices of mankind, such as filth (trash dump), consumption (a giant shopping mall), lust (a bordello), war (ruined burning city) ect.

And then things go horribly wrong... Oh, and it has just *awesome* music too.

[DCT]

the Wizardry series(1-8)
Eye of the beholder 1-2 avoid 3 at all costs
Crystals of Arborea
Ishar: Legend of the Fortress, Ishar 2: Messengers of Doom and Ishar 3: The Seven Gates of Infinity
Anvil of Dawn
Stonekeep

[Phelsarus'Beel]

Might wanna ad Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor Soulhacker for the 3DS on the list

I also have some of the above mentioned games (Etrian Oddesey and Legend of Grimrock) and the last year and this one has in general been a good one for RPGs (even if they are as Basic as Mario & Luigi Dream Team (that is still awesome and fun to play))

[ultrarunaway]

Pinned because there's a lot of good suggestions here.
Thanks for the reminder to play Elminage, I've been meaning to look at it.

[Max58201]

Wizardry - Tales of the Forsaken Land is my favorite game period....love it soooo much

[Vitamin Ex]

Nobody mentioned Fighting Fantasy

[galumn]

I couldn't believe nobody mentioned The Dark Spire[www.atlus.com] (for NDS). I picked up Paper Sorcerer because of how similar it is (from screenshots) to The Dark Spire.

[Crash Dummie]

Y'all should get The Dark Spire for the the Nintendo DS. The gameplay and art style are very similar those of Paper Sorcerer. It's pure old school goodness.

[raixel]

Originally posted by Thor the Thundergod (On Vacation:

Might wanna ad Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor Soulhacker for the 3DS on the list

I also have some of the above mentioned games (Etrian Oddesey and Legend of Grimrock) and the last year and this one has in general been a good one for RPGs (even if they are as Basic as Mario & Luigi Dream Team (that is still awesome and fun to play))

How is Devil Survivor Soulhacker diferent from the original DS Devil Survivor (I have 1 and 2 for the DS)? I saw the Devil Survivor 1 re-make (called overloaded, i think) that came out when the 3DS came out, but it wasnt different enough to warrent getting a 3ds for. But if theyve actually started making unique SMT games for 3DS, Im all over that.

[Wraith_Magus]

Wizardry 8 is a much better game than most of the earlier Wizardries. I found early Wizardries to be grind-heavy, but 8 is a game that actually has a lot of more strategic features in it, and has Elder Scrolls-like train-through-use of skills (but not stats). You control a whole party in first person, where the monsters move around (albiet turn-based) like it was an FPS, so the layout of the terrain matters a lot. You have flanks you need to defend, and you're always outnumbered, so keeping your back to a wall is crucial to keep your squishy wizzies from being squished (and from keeping your melee units from being out of range, since there's a row of wizzies in between them and the monsters). Still, especially late into the game, it tends to just devolve down into "I attack 20 times this turn... 1... 2... 3... 4... 5...""Oh yeah, well, I attack 16 times!... 1... 2... 3..." and you go off to get a sandwich while a turn gradually plays itself out.

Wizardry: Labyrinth of Lost Souls (PS3 online store exclusive) is a Japanese-made Wizardry that is a total retro throwback, except for the graphics which, while art styles are subjective, I find quite gorgeous for their watercolor enemies. The gameplay, however, is not terribly interesting. Basically only the weapons have any meaning for changing your combat potential, and you have to grind like a lunatic to get the good ones, because they're all like 1% drops from enemies you only see 3% of the time. Magic besides heals are practically useless, so you usually just spam "attack" all day every day.

Labyrinth of Touhou is not really a Wizardry-like game. Aside from the overhead map exploration (which makes it more like Dragon Quest...) it features a very unusual (and innovative) combat system. Taking advantage of the tons and tons of characters in the Touhou universe, you build a team of 12 characters (from about 50 or so by the end...) with 4 characters in the front row at a time. Characters in the back row regain HP and MP over time, and are immune from damage, but you can't revive characters without going back to base. Characters have little variety of abilities, and are generally focused upon doing just one thing really well. (You basically have one character just for poisoning the enemy and two for thowing down haste spells - one has a whole-party haste, the other has a single-target, but is a larger boost.) Fights, especially boss fights, require extreme planning to defeat, to the point of swapping out party composition and equipment just to fight that one boss. (No point in a debuff character against a debuff-immune boss. You need different status or elemental resistance/immunity equipment to survive some fights.) You basically win by taking advantage of the action bar that fills up over time (like Final Fantasy) where you can see when the boss turn is coming, and swapping in heavily-buffed tanks to soak damage right before the enemy attacks, then swapping in healers to recover your tanks, swapping in buffers to restrengthen buffs, debuffers to weaken enemy armor and drop those freakin' sky-high attack stats, then nukers to get a little damage in before swapping the tanks in again to soak the next round of damage. Without buffs, bosses basically OHK your whole party every turn they get. It's definitely a game for those who want something where they have to play strategically. Touhou as a series is for fairly hardcore players of a niche genre, and this is a "maniac" game released as an indie project. It has an optional boss for level 80 characters on the first floor of the dungeon just to prove it doesn't f*** around. It is made to be hard with the strategy guide open while you play it, and it's basically impossible, short of inhuman patience with trial-and-error, without it.

Dark Spire is good only for being on the DS as something to mildly distract you while doing or waiting upon something else. As a game, it's very repetitive. Until the final few levels, you pretty much just throw a fighter with godly AC into the front row, and everything fails to hit him/her while you chip away at their HP. At the final levels, it turns into a total SoD-fest, where you win or lose battles based upon whose AoE insta-death spells land first.

[freddiet82]

There is a game called Starcrawlers it is a procedurely generated sci-fi first person dungeon crawler and it needs to be greenlit if you guys want to vote for that.

[GoatWalker]

Originally posted by raixel:

Originally posted by Thor the Thundergod (On Vacation:

Might wanna ad Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor Soulhacker for the 3DS on the list

I also have some of the above mentioned games (Etrian Oddesey and Legend of Grimrock) and the last year and this one has in general been a good one for RPGs (even if they are as Basic as Mario & Luigi Dream Team (that is still awesome and fun to play))

How is Devil Survivor Soulhacker diferent from the original DS Devil Survivor (I have 1 and 2 for the DS)? I saw the Devil Survivor 1 re-make (called overloaded, i think) that came out when the 3DS came out, but it wasnt different enough to warrent getting a 3ds for. But if theyve actually started making unique SMT games for 3DS, Im all over that.

Soul Hackers is not a Devil Survivor game. It's a Devil Summoner game along with the Raidou Kuzunoha series of games.

Anyway, Devil Summoner Soul Hackers is a dungeon crawler like the older SMT games and Strange Journey. First person perspective, demon negotiation and other stuffs. If you do want to get a 3DS for Soul Hackers, go for it. There is also SMT IV which was released last year.

[raixel]

THATS what I get for not paying ♥♥♥♥ for attention to anything but the PC game market for 2 years. *makes a mental note to go buy a 3DS*. Thanks for letting me know.

[HauntedHarpy]

I'd add Shining In The Darkness, although it's a really old game. It's A LOT like this in terms of game mechanics. I didn't like it all that much, but mostly because it's so old and terrible looking. Its sequels, the Shining Force games, are a different genre (turn-based strategic RPG), but they were some of my favourite games growing up. I think all of them were originally for various Sega systems, but I know they're on Amazon and I think the Shining Force games are on Steam now, too. Not sure about Shining In The Darkness.

[Wraith_Magus]

Originally posted by raixel:

THATS what I get for not paying ♥♥♥♥ for attention to anything but the PC game market for 2 years. *makes a mental note to go buy a 3DS*. Thanks for letting me know.

The Japanese are quite fond of Wizardry-style games (and bought the license to Wizardry when Sir-Tech went under), and the Nintendo DS and its successors have been great for Strategy and RPG games in the veins of 1980s PC games.

I'd just say that they're a little too nostalgic for the past, and tend to make games which have good graphics, but are otherwise total grind-fests with fairly simple mechanics. They are, at least, much better balanced than the older games, but I wish they'd expand outwards or innovate a little more.

Even Paper Sorcerer, with as relatively simple as its gameplay is, does at least tend to make its flavor of MP work differently, and have a more interesting set of "classes" and status effects than the actual classics.