Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[EuchreJack]

Regarding Mount & Blade: Warband, with mods...

Well, if you want to get into the nitty gritty, its possible once you create a kingdom to release your companions as vassals.  These companions that you have customized the stats and equipment.  Then, if your kingdom should fall, then those same companions remain as lords of the land, and will eventually go off and serve someone else.  While other lords only like certain of your companions being made into lords, if your not really interested in being a king/queen, then its not a major issue.

I could list off a bunch of titles, but honestly there's one you need to play before any others I might suggest, and that's Kenshi. It's one of those games that's extremely difficult to describe accurately without taking five pages and telling a bunch of stories, but Sseth's review of it is probably one of the better attempts.

Basically: hardcore rust-punk/post-apoc open-world top-down RPG that can be anything from single-character through squad-tactics up to triple digit character count RTS. It's a game where the best default start has your characters enslaved and the worst has you stranded in the desert with a single character missing a limb.

I sort of have to agree with this, only because each and every character you recruit can have their appearance customized, their stats and skills increase by what you do with them, and you can set up in town or shutter try to actually set up a base.  Nevermind, forget I said anything about starting a base, please forgive me Kenshi gods!*

*To explain, setting up a base in Kenshi is basically like declaring war on everyone.  Its not, but it feels that way.  Once you set up even a solitary shack, everyone tries to beat you up all the time.  Some areas are better than others, but if you just want to build, craft, and research in peace, building a base is the wrong move.

Oh, and if you dismiss a character in Kenshi, they continue to exist in the world.  They join a faction called the Tech Hunters, and basically just wander around until they get killed.

Regarding lots of games really: If you learn how to mod, then you can really see your custom characters come to life in many games.  Kenshi is just one example, since its a lot easier to mod than Mount & Blade, although messing with the import/export features is still fun and easy with Mount and Blade.  Total Extreme Wresting also comes to mind.

[delphonso]

Some more I thought of:

Wasteland 2 had good customization. Battle for Wesnoth.
And...Don't forget the Sims.

Kenshi is a good game, but I'm completely done with it. It has pretty limited replay-value, but it has some, for sure. Mods help this, but the core structure can be too slow for some people. I still recommend it to anyone if they haven't played it yet.

[sambojin]

Dungeons and Dragons Tactics kind of does this (at about the same level as OpenXcom, interaction is limited to "kill stuff in different ways"). You make up a party of six characters and go about the business of defeating levels using the woefully stripped down 3.5 combat system. Still, characters feel different from one another. And you can choose one of ten (count 'em!) different heads for your horribly rendered murder hobos.

Xpiratez mod for OpenXcom is probably the best from an Xcom standpoint. Way more character options and "types" available, and your gals do end up with a bit of "personality" from their various equipments and combat roles. Sniper or Assault or Grenade lobber or bow gal or magician. Or all of the above? Your choice.

Pathos: The Nethack Codex is a nice example of a Nethack-like with these options, simply because you can start with multiple characters and pets. Have fun with the food clock, but it's cool to have a shotgun toting halfling bard with a parrot tagging along for the ride as you both starve to death or get YASD'd by something out-of-depth. Plenty of races/classes to try, and party combos to try out, and they do have a fairly large impact on playstyle and characterization of such. And you can play it on mobile!

[nenjin]

Legend of Grimrock 1 and 2. (Or if you want to go old school to the game its based on, Dungeon Master 1 and 2.)

Mordheim: City of the Damned. (Games Workshop IP that's basically fantasy / melee-dominant XCOM.)

Space Hulk Ascension.

[Biowraith]

Age of Wonders: Planetfall lets you rename, equip, and select levelup skills for heroes and define custom classes (including the name) for basic units. No real interaction outside combat, though.

Also, in Age of Wonders 3 any custom leaders you create are included in the pool the game draws from when picking AI opponents on random maps, similar to Stellaris.  Wasn't a feature for Planetfall for some reason (edit: they just patched it in today :p).  But yeah, interactions between them (and you) are limited to combat and basic treaties.

[Flying Dice]

Kenshi is a good game, but I'm completely done with it. It has pretty limited replay-value, but it has some, for sure. Mods help this, but the core structure can be too slow for some people. I still recommend it to anyone if they haven't played it yet.

I think that depends pretty heavily on what sort of player you are. If you like to have lots of heavily structured content (whether that's in the form of go-here do-this quests or X-Com-style sequences of self-contained missions), you probably will get bored of it pretty quickly. Same deal if your preference is for overt storytelling.

Kenshi's good if you're the sort of player that prefers open-ended player-driven content in the vein of DF, Starsector, Rimworld, &c. (i.e. you get a world populated with characters, factions, and locations all doing their own thing and your story develops organically based on things that your characters do and experience), or implicit storytelling like you see in games like Dark Souls, where it's mostly done through the environment and random tidbits of hidden lore and dialogue that you may or may not encounter.

Honestly though I think that DF is the best point of comparison for a couple reasons. If you get bored pretty quickly in DF (either adventure or fortress mode), you'll probably have the same experience in Kenshi. If you get sucked into week-long binges doing random shit in DF, you'll probably have the same experience in Kenshi.

That said, there are certain things that you'll find get repeated in almost every playthrough no matter how hard you try. Just like spontaneously becoming a stealth archer in TES games, you'll find yourself kidnapping and peeling the Lord Phoenix pretty much regardless of what your initial intentions were.

[nenjin]

My issues with Kenshi are the bugginess, inconsistency and balance. I like slow playing games just fine, but having to re-import your game constantly due to all unfinished content, it makes me just want to wait for Kenshi 2 and hope they have more money this time around to actually finish all the things they started. Having guys invade your base and then just stand there doing nothing kills my desire to play the game, every time.

[Blaze]

Off the top of my head, ignoring things that have already been mentioned.

Exile/Avernum series, you have a team of 6/4 characters in a top-down turn-based rpg. Blades of Exile/Avernum are free and there are plenty of downloadable scenarios to go through. Exile will need some help since it can't run on modern systems

Mordor: Depths of the Dejenol, which sadly no longer works on modern systems, but it has a spiritual successor called Demise: Rise of Ku'tan. A first-person turn based dungeon crawler where you create your own characters to form a party. Like Etrian Odyssey or Legend of Grimrock.

7.62mm High Calibre/Hard Life, like Jagged alliance, but 3D.

Bounty Train, Battletech, Bomber Crew, Mortal Glory, just to name a couple more.

[Sanctume]

Thinking way back,

One of the first is a space themed game called Star Command by by Strategic Simulations Inc (SSI).
--

it started with Pools of Radiance (PoD) by SSI also (i think it's referred to a gold box series).
It's Dungeons & Dragons rules, so creating characters with the usual stats, race, gender, and abilities/spells. 
It was a party of up to 6.  So it quickly became a min/max type of selecting each character's roles. 

The game world is not open, but contained and limited within the module.  In PoD, a city and it's surroundings ruins and server, and of course the bad guys. 
The module is built for level 1s so it was fairly easy to balance. 

The next module was Curse of Azure Bonds which allowed using your characters in PoD with the level they attained, but not necessarily the items. 
There was a 3rd module also, but I already forgot.  PoD is part of the "Forgotten Realms" world building--so Ice Wind Dale is part of it, and many other familiar fantasy cities such as Waterdeep. 

The game view is isometric 3rd person view: like the camera from the top at an angle. 

--
There was a one-off using the same game engine, but new art assets, and used a different but similar game rules, but space sci-fi settings of Buck Rodgers. 
I think, the 3rd series in the gold box series came with a free paper back book of Buck Rodgers.  I read it and got me to buy the pc game for it. 

--
There are also the DragonLance series in the world of Krynn that have similar character party gameplay. 

--
There were also series of games that has a fake 3-d first person view like in Bard's Tale 1,2, and 3.  As well as Wizardy from 1 to 7. 
Eye of the Beholder 1 to 3 also.  Ultima series also.  These were all fantasy themed.

Wasteland 1 is similar to Bard's Tale, but more cyberpink / tech sci-fi themed.
--

[n9103]

Since Gold Box was mentioned, a Sci-Fi parallel would be the Buck Rodgers series, and for fantasy in space, Spelljammer:Pirates of Realmspace

[ventuswings]

I appreciate it whenever RPG makes it easy to add custom portraits. Games I can immediately remember are Legend of Grimrock 2, Tyranny, and Fell Seal.

[MaximumZero]

PTW, I am a huge sucker for putting myself and my friends in horrible ‼FUN‼ situations.

[Ai Shizuka]

Battle Brothers.
You can re-name all your mercenaries and customize hair/beard/body type in barber shops. You can also build them in many different ways via stats and perks.