Gold Box Fatigue...The Struggle Is Real

[Milos Gulan]

Me too, or at least play them before then those famous ones. I haven't played Gold Box games yet but I am hoping that I will if DC version comes out . About playing games more then once, sure if they are good and have a good dose of replayability.

[ProphetSword]

Me too, or at least play them before then those famous ones. I haven't played Gold Box games yet but I am hoping that I will if DC version comes out . About playing games more then once, sure if they are good and have a good dose of replayability.

No need to wait for the DC versions, which will likely lack a lot of the charm of the originals.  You should play the originals instead.  Don't wait.  Play them now, before all the copies erase themselves.

[Milos Gulan]

You may be right, but what I like about DC versions probably will be that I will be able to change it and maybe add something to it. Well I might play both versions if able, though to be honest I just want to play some shorter modules with good graphics and interesting story actualy right now I want to make one.

[KTG]

I rarely replay games, but goldbox games are an exception.  I've played most of them a second time through.  I've stopped short of completing POD.  I'm sure I will someday, but I've found myself having to take breaks multiple times.  Like 3+ month long breaks. For me, the 'rewards factor' just isn't there now.  Its not that great for a level 33rd guy to get to level 34, or too get yet another great magic weapon.  Still, I think POD is an outstanding game, probably the 2nd best of that series (POR will always be my favorite).  Rarely is high level play done as well as POD.  So I plan on going back to it when the mood is there again.  So that's my suggestion, take a break and come back when you get the itch to play some goldbox goodness again.

[Ray]

There are two ways you can handle it:

1) Play something else to give yourself a break and then play Pools of Darkness.
2) Jump into Pools of Darkness, as it is a million times better than SotSB and one of the best Gold Box games (in my opinion).

Thanks, Ben--I think I'm taking the first option right now.  I've got my characters saved and waiting for the day that I can get back into that world.  Hearing your praise for Pools of Darkness--and the praise of others here over the last couple days--has really increased my hopes for enjoying myself when I get back to it. 

Also, I totally agree that the story is actually pretty interesting.  It's just the design of it all that wore me down.

[Ray]

As for Secret of the Silver Blades, the problem is that it completely breaks the suspension of disbelief. PoR and CoAB, and even Pools, are more believable since there is a finite amount of enemies in any given place, while in Secret you have a bleeping mine  filled with enough monsters and high level clerics and mages to conquer Toril many times over. And in addition of the bazillion fights in the whole game, only a handful are mildly memorable (Marcus' house, the Lizard King, Dark Circle HQ and end battle), while PoR is a veritable memory lane of CRPG battles.

I could not possibly agree with you more.  Particularly the high-level clerics.  I'm pretty sure Bane drained every published setting of its clergy, and quite a few alternate universes we've never read about, just to populate those mine corridors.  And then you get to the dungeon, and the ice crevasse, and the castle...and you realize that you've depopulated entire realities worth of cockatrices, basilisks, margoyles, and banite priests...It's just insane...

And since all my characters were at least two levels beyond what they needed for maximum level by the time I reached the end of the game, it's not even like you need all those random combats for the experience points they give you!

[Ray]

Heh, I'm usually tired of a game as soon as I've finished it for the first time (or earlier), and I hardly ever feel the urge to replay games even several years later. Plus, I haven't completed (or felt the urge to complete) a single Goldbox game that wasn't made with the UA engine (so excluding your two remakes, which I did play through). In, short, I'm astonished beyond belief that you've played through some of these games 20-50 times - an extremely surreal number to me. I can't even pretend to relate. (But SotSB sounds like a real pain from what you describe, with all those meaningless random encounters and terrible grinding. I'd rather replay the Realm games instead, if anything.  )

To be fair, PoR was a different era.  No internet, no other D&D RPGs, only two other games on my shelf to choose from...I think it was Dragon Wars and Maniac Mansion.

So, I'd finish Pool of Radiance and then think to myself, "I wonder what it would be like if I had a party made up of...[fill in variety of the day]."  And then I'd start all over again.  Part of it, too, was my fascination with Valhingen Graveyard.  When I was a kid, I would have chosen something involving the undead (a book, a movie, a game, anything) over just about anything except air.  And only then because you can't enjoy the undead if you can't breathe...So, by the time I was killing that vampire, I was already headed towards Valjevo Castle to kill the Boss, because I needed to do that before the story could start over again with new characters...   

[Null Null]

I think part of the genius of POR is the auto-scaling random encounters.

It makes less min-maxed parties viable. You can run an all-demihuman party, six fighters, or almost any bizarre combo you like.

It also has the largest variety of ways to complete each quest--I think I summarized it in a Codex post, but most dungeons have various ways to be completed. In some cases, like the lizardman castle or the nomad camp, you can take completely different sides.

[Ray]

I think part of the genius of POR is the auto-scaling random encounters.

It makes less min-maxed parties viable. You can run an all-demihuman party, six fighters, or almost any bizarre combo you like.

It also has the largest variety of ways to complete each quest--I think I summarized it in a Codex post, but most dungeons have various ways to be completed. In some cases, like the lizardman castle or the nomad camp, you can take completely different sides.

Great point, Null Null!  The adventures in Curse of the Azure Bonds lose most of that sense of choice, and I think what made Secret of the Silver Blades feel so grueling to me was that, not only did I no longer have that sense of flexibility, but much of the game felt like one, long, protracted running battle.  Thinking back to Pool of Radiance, you're right about having so many options.  The Cadorna Textile House (and the thieves' guild, creating a viable third option to that scenario) comes to mind in addition to the ones you mentioned.

I'm curious how Pools of Darkness measures up on that scale.  From what I remember of my brief tour through it years ago, it was very "sandboxy," though I don't recall having many options regarding how to resolve each scenario...

[Olivier Leroux]

To be fair, PoR was a different era.  No internet, no other D&D RPGs, only two other games on my shelf to choose from...I think it was Dragon Wars and Maniac Mansion.

Come to think of it, even though I always claim I don't like replaying games, back then I actually replayed The Secret of Monkey Island several times, and that's not even a RPG with party choices, but always the same linear point-and-click adventure  - even Maniac Mansion had more replay value, but I still enjoyed replaying SoMI, since it was my favorite game at that time and one of the few great ones I had at my disposal. So yeah, point taken.  (Then again, you could beat it on a single afternoon.  )

[ProphetSword]

Come to think of it, even though I always claim I don't like replaying games, back then I actually replayed The Secret of Monkey Island several times, and that's not even a RPG with party choices, but always the same linear point-and-click adventure  - even Maniac Mansion had more replay value, but I still enjoyed replaying SoMI, since it was my favorite game at that time and one of the few great ones I had at my disposal. So yeah, point taken.  (Then again, you could beat it on a single afternoon.  )

"How appropriate!  You fight like a cow!"

[Uatu]

When I played my original copy of Champions of Krynn, it took 30-60 minutes to load the game and each battle in glorious CGA graphics (I had some Dragonlance books to read in the meanwhile).  Perhaps as a result, I don't think I figured out that you should try to get good stats when you level up - so the game kept getting harder and harder until at the end I couldn't finish it!  (I did later revisit the game via DosBox to finally beat it.)

Secret of the Silver Blades was all about the huge maze and the high PC levels, I guess.  It was easier in terms of your being able to maximize party stats at the beginning (since in AD&D later levels are static bonuses to HP anyway, so you don't have to do the re-rolling thing).  Yeah, it was mostly about hacking and slashing - the only memorable things were the girl in the ice cube, and the final boss (although his size was really dinky).  I thought the otyughs and neo-otyughs were kind of funny monsters to fight...

[Dinonykos]

Come to think of it, even though I always claim I don't like replaying games, back then I actually replayed The Secret of Monkey Island several times, and that's not even a RPG with party choices, but always the same linear point-and-click adventure  - even Maniac Mansion had more replay value, but I still enjoyed replaying SoMI, since it was my favorite game at that time and one of the few great ones I had at my disposal. So yeah, point taken.  (Then again, you could beat it on a single afternoon.  )

"How appropriate!  You fight like a cow!"

When I experimented with alternative combat handling for my DC designs, I thought about exactly this approach in SoMI! Such a great idea, and a good approach to avoid violence! If I was a native speaker, I would do something like this. (Sorry for going off-topic, but this caught my eye...)

[Null Null]

The Dying Earth tabletop RPG had social combat, where you employ various conversational gambits your opponent then tries to block.