Recommend me some Sci-fi RPGs

[magnaangemon01]

Star Ocean for the PS2 was awesome. Until I got to the desert. That thirst mechanic got the better of me every time.

But he wants games on the PC, not consoles.

 

[Matseb2611]

I don't mind some anime. I am certainly fine with the style in most FF games (between IV and X certainly), but generally I am not a big fan of anything too cutesy and stuff.

Though you guys feel free to recommend sci-fi RPGs to each other too, if you wish. I don't mind, since these recommendations could be useful for other people reading this thread.

 

[Clord]

Sword Art Online game for Vita would also technically be sci-fi due it has this whole "virtual reality" thing going on in its story. It's basically a game that pretends to be VRMMORPG.

 

[Traveling Bard]

Septerra Core is an older pc rpg but it's available on gog.com and I found it fun.

Anachronox is quirky and fun. Only downside for me was taking pictures since you are an investigator. Definitely a good game to pick up though, just know that the fights are pretty tough even for a veteran rpg player...

Mass effect games if you like to mix your rpg with shooter.

Heard good things about Shadowrun though I've never played it.

That's all I've got off the top of my head...

edit: For console, Star Ocean 2.

 

[magnaangemon01]

I could never get into Septerra Core. With no hp for the monsters, it was like playing a guessing game.

I like Shadowrun as a tabletop RPG, but the video games bore me so far. They're too slow and too technical. Plus, they're strategy-based and I hate strategy games. I can never beat them.

 

[Matseb2611]

Thanks for the suggestions.

I've recently gotten Anachronox, but it hasn't given me good first impressions so far. There isn't much of a story hook, and the start is a bit slow. I even had to look in the walkthrough for the very first quest, and then the game crashed on me during a battle when I attended some gym to get combat training. I might try it again later, but so far it's been kind of disappointing.

 

[magnaangemon01]

A lot of people have said that Anachronox is a good game. I don't see it myself either. It's too slow. I like games that are a little fast paced, with a good story, and awesome gameplay.

 

[Marrend]

There were a number of sci-fi games made during RMN's McBacon Jam #1 event. Though, the only one I would actually recommend is Ruin Fronteir.

 

[cabfe]

A lot of people have said that Anachronox is a good game. I don't see it myself either. It's too slow. I like games that are a little fast paced, with a good story, and awesome gameplay.

Agreed. I've tried it but gave up out of boredom.

Too many artificial back&forth travels, too big environments with no purpose other than stretching the play time.

By curiosity, I watched a Let's Play of the end and

Spoiler

the final fight was so... hard? I mean, your whole team is fighting the boss and no one is allowed to die under penalty of gameover. That's hard enough, but when you realize that this fight goes on for like 30-40 minutes real time! Even the Youtuber had a sweat when the boss launched an AoE attack just before dying. That's not my definition of a fun boss fight.

 

[Matseb2611]

Oh wow really. Why do so many older games have such punishing (and unfair) difficulty?

^ rhetorical question, btw.

I had many of the same issues with System Shock 2. Backtracking, unfair difficulty in places, constantly spawning enemies if you tripped an alarm (which was easy to happen), too many useless items, not enough useful items, and the whole game just being an enormous dungeon crawler.

@ Marrend: I've played Ruin Frontier. Not a bad game, though I couldn't care much for the characters or the setting to be honest. If they make another one in the series, I might play it just to see what it's like.

 

[Touchfuzzy]

KotOR I was a solid game. KotOR II though... KotORII was SPECIAL. Like, it was phenomenal. It does something that is almost never done in the Star Wars mythos: It has a nuanced view of good and evil. Now, not in the karma system. It suffers from some of the same issues as every game with a karma system in that you generally choose between being nice and being a huge ******* for no reason.

But when you start looking at the overall themes of the game. The villains. the main villain especially... is just brilliant. I can understand why they do the things they do. And they aren't... entirely wrong. And the Jedi? The Jedi in the game are dicks. This isn't Good Jedi vs Evil Sith. This is addicted SIth vs idealistic naive Jedi. The two major Sith that are introduced early, they don't do the things they do to be evil, they do those things because they have no other real choice. They are driven into those acts by their relationship with the force. And the Jedi? They are near useless. Too disconnected from the real world, from the suffering being caused, to obsessed by their training to do the perfect thing to actually do anything.

The whole game explores the relationship between good and evil and the concept of Predestination. Are Sion and Nihlus evil because they are evil, or are they compelled to be evil by their relationship to the Force?

I sincerely think, even unfinished, KotOII is one of the best narratives to ever exist in a game.

 

[Clord]

George Lucas didn't mean dark side and good side to be subjective. Basically if one is Sith, they are evil no matter what and even a dick Jedi is good no matter what.


Expanded Universe stuff then went to direction that just because someone is a Sith, doesn't make him instantly evil individual. Especially in Tharwn Trilogy there is a Dark Jedi.

 

[Touchfuzzy]

George Lucas didn't mean dark side and good side to be subjective. Basically if one is Sith, they are evil no matter what and even a dick Jedi is good no matter what.

That is the thing though. Sion and Nihlus definitely are forces of Evil. But when they are compelled to do evil things because of their relationship to the force (Sion only lives through hanging on to his anger, Nihlus is incessantly driven to consume), are they themselves actually evil? Just by surviving they HAVE to continue to do evil. Their relationship to the Force requires it.

It all comes down to what the true villain in KotORII wanted:

Spoiler

Kreia wanted the Force to cease to be. Because regular people... they got to choose. Everything they do is a choice. They have no destiny. They don't have some intrinsic force of the universe pulling them.. they get to be them. They get to not be a tool of the Force

 

[hiromu656]

Others brought it up, but Shadowrun Returns is a pretty good game. It has deep customization and a lot of content, also community-made campaigns so there's a ton of game to play. I would have recommended the Xenosaga series, but I guess you're looking for PC.

 

[Matseb2611]

Yeah, since I don't have consoles, PC suggestions would be ideal, but feel free to suggest console ones for other people reading this.

I've mentioned Shadowrun Returns in the opening post. Thought it was all right (certainly loved the combat system), but got bored of it closer to the end since I wasn't a fan how it had too much telling and not enough showing. Many people say its expansion, Dragonfall, is better, but I wonder by how much better.

 

[Nirwanda]

I have very little to add, but still feel like throwing my two cents about the games mentioned:

Kotor 1: I can't be objective with this game as it was my first (good) wrpg, but there's a ton to love, even if the game starts out slow and the plot is classic Star Wars cheesy.

About your specialization complaint, let me say that that you have nothing to worry about: you can develop your PC any way you want as you'll get more than one specialist character covering every skillset you could need (most of them before finishing the first planet). There ARE a few missable things if you choose one specialty over the other, but that's kind of the point of a game that lets you develop your character however you want, right?

Kotor 2: Wow, Touchfuzzy really nailed it better than I ever could. Kotor 2 was an extremely rushed job as it had to be launched at the same time as one of the Star Wars prequels, IIRC. The game has many problems* and yet, its' stellar writing, complex and deep characters and interesting take on the SW universe make it a memorable experience.

Seriously, even if you don't want to play it take a look at a let's play of it, you'll be doing yourself a favor.

*And I DO mean many: it's unfinished(and filled with partially cut content), unpolished, buggy, unbalanced (there's a ton of overpowered items and skills) and poorly paced (particularly the first and last chapters)...though most of these things have been solved thanks to fan-patching.

Septerra Core: I could never get into this game (though I got very close to the end of it), I found it's battles incredibly dull, despite having a somewhat unique spells and attack systems, the characters left me equally indifferent. Also, there were a several points in the story that required either dumb luck, a walkthrough or classic adventure game style pixel hunt in order to find out how to proceed.

Anachronox: In many ways, this game is very similar to Septerra Core, the battles are also very slow and more than once you're kind of lost on what to do. Still, it's definitely more streamlined in both aspects than SC, it's cham, wit and great ambiance also contributed to win me over. I don't know if it's your style, but the game has a great sense of humor, that might not be as apparent at first sight.

Have you tried playing the original (Snes and Genesis) Shadowrun games? They're quite interesting, though flawed games. BTW, from what I've read it seems that Dragon Fall is actually a huge improvement over its predecessor that adressed most of the complaints fans had with the original game. Though that's just hearsay, since it doesn't run on my computer. T_T

I don't know, if it counts, but Wizardry 7 and 8 follow a scifi space war story with a very 90's-ish cartoon style, though the bulk of the game is played in a medieval-esque world. Mind you, there ARE spaceships, robots, holograms and other genre staples even early on, but most of the game looks and feels pretty medieval. Not to mention that the game is old school as hell.

Though it isn't sci-fi, Arcanum: of Steaworks and Magicka Obscura (I used the full name because there's another game called Arcanum), offers a steampunk styled d&d world, with the awesome open-endedness and great writing of all the Troika games




 
Well, maybe it was more than two cents.

 

[Matseb2611]

Thanks for the suggestions Nirwanda. That Arcanum game looks interesting enough. I certainly don't mind steampunk settings (though I much prefer futuristic sci-fi and cyberpunk).

In regard to KOTOR, yeah, I know that party members can cover some specialisations. I remember the twilek girl could disable mines and stuff, but thing is, that still doesn't give me the choice to play how I want. If I want to go charging head first into battle, I kind of expect the game to let me do that providing that's how I've been building my main character, and I don't wish for the game to force me to hack computers and stuff. I also couldn't connect with any of the characters (mind you, I was 7-8 hours in), so that didn't help to keep my attention. Not sure why. I do like Star Wars of course, but I don't consider myself a hardcore fan. (wish there was a game based on Darth Bane)

In regard to Wizardry games and older Shadowrun titles, no, haven't tried any of those. I am a bit skeptical about very old school games since they often end up being incredibly hard (in an unfair way). Though I am open to try them if that's not the case.

 

[Nirwanda]

I sort of understand your point, though I'm not sure how you could like Bloodlines in that case, after all, that's a game that forces you to hack, lockpick and stealth your way through obstacles sometimes.

If you don't like old school punishment, Wizardry is definitely not for you. The old Shadowrun games are a little more dodgy, because they're of the old school of difficulty, but only early on when you're short on equipment/skills. Also, while both have some really great elements, they're very rough around the edges: the genesis one requires some grinding, while the snes one runs on adventure game logic and has a clunky interface. So it's really your call wheter you're feeling forgiving abot the game's flaws.

 

[Matseb2611]

With Bloodlines I got the basic hacking (as I always do in Deus Ex too) just so I could have that option on the table, but I played as the Brujah, which meant that I could get my hands dirty fighting upfront, and most times I got that. There were a few annoying levels admittedly, yeah. Most times with hacking and stuff, I didn't feel that the game forced me to utilise that option. Just that using it often gave me an advantage (though the alternative was still a viable option). I wasn't too fond of the stealth missions, but gladly there wasn't as much of that than if I would've played as a Nosferatu (which have to be sneaking through the sewers the entire time so not to be seen by people).

Edit: Just to give you an example from KOTOR. I remember I had to attack some base, and in one of the rooms there were a lot of guards, too many for me and my team to handle. The game had an option for me to hack the turrets to take out some of the guards, but nobody had the skill high enough to do it with the available amount of data spikes (or whatever they were called), so I couldn't do it anyway, unless I loaded an earlier save and invested in hacking. I guess that game is just not my cup of tea. As I mentioned earlier, it threw in too much at once, and I didn't want to spend days reading about every single talent and attribute and calculating the payoff from levelling each one.

 

[Scythuz]

Regarding Arcanum (though it really isn't sci-fi): it's a hard and somewhat unfair game with a very engrossing atmosphere and intriguing characters.  Be very careful what class you pick on it though, it's a pretty unbalanced game and some classes really aren't meant for first time players.