dtgreene: The choice is a bit overwhelming, so I have a few criteria to help filter them.
So, hard requirements:
* Game needs to be turn-based.
* Game needs to have low system requirements.
* Game needs to run in WINE.
* Saving needs to be done under my own terms; I should be able to manually save and the game should never delete that save unless I tell it to. (This excludes roguelike-style permadeath mechanics.)
So, aside from that, here are my preferences:
* Female characters being an option (or requirement), and should not be disadvantaged relative to male characters.
* Enemies should respawn or otherwise be repeatable.
* Good healing magic. (Specifically, healing during combat must be viable, healing outside of combat shouldn't be much of a chore, and for party based games, there should to be a spell that heals the entire party. Unconventional healing abilities are a plus, particularly if they're useful.)
* Interesting options for character customization, but without missable stats, and if there are skill points, there needs to be a way to respec or replace the character with a new one.
* I prefer SaGa or Elder Scrolls style character growth to the traditional level/xp system.
With these criteria, what games would you recommend from today's releases?
As someone who battled with Elminage Gothic under Wine to the point that it's now playable in the latest version, I can easily recommend Elminage Gothic as it meets the following criteria:
* Game needs to be turn-based.
* Game needs to have low system requirements.
* Game needs to run in WINE.
* Saving needs to be done under my own terms; I should be able to manually save and the game should never delete that save unless I tell it to. (This excludes roguelike-style permadeath mechanics.)
* Female characters being an option (or requirement), and should not be disadvantaged relative to male characters.
* Enemies should respawn or otherwise be repeatable.
* Good healing magic. (Specifically, healing during combat must be viable, healing outside of combat shouldn't be much of a chore, and for party based games, there should to be a spell that heals the entire party. Unconventional healing abilities are a plus, particularly if they're useful.)
It does follow a traditional XP requirement as in "beat up monsters, get XP".
The dungeons have random encounters and as far as I can recall (it's been a while since I played the game) you can simply go through the dungeon before reaching the boss, leave it, come back and fight more monsters.
The healing magic follows the usual JRPG style magic IIRC.
I have played Elminage Gothic already (over 100 hours IIRC; I got as far as Ibag Tower 6F or 7F, but the difficulty got a bit much even for me at this point); I am looking at the new games and what would work well here.
With that said, here are a few things about Elminage Gothic that are worth noting:
* Female characters are disadvantaged relative to male characters, as some high-end equipment (including way too many of the top-tier weapons) are male-only for no obvious reason. (If I decide to replay this game, I will mod this out, replacing all gender restrictions with an "innocent-only" restriction, which seems more fair and feels like it makes more sense as a balancing factor.)
* The game actually does have some unconventional healing methods; Song of Healing heals the party for free, and heals more if multiple songs are used in the same or consecutive rounds (don't have to be other Songs of Healing!). Another is to have a summoner capture a Ghost Herbalist, which then has a limited number of healing items that it will use at the end of the round, and when the items run out, you can summon another (especially if you have two of them, as you can't resummon the monster that's already out, but can summon a different one in its place).
* There's also a class that can heal with items without using a turn, but it looks like the class is a pain to keep stocked and doesn't seem worth it.
(Note that Ibag Tower is late post-game, so you can still beat the game and play through all of the interesting dungeons before you even reach this point.)
dtgreene: With these criteria, what games would you recommend from today's releases?
toxicTom: I only know
The Quest (from Android) and it satisfies your "hard requirements".
About your preferences:
[...]
- Good healing magic: Depends
Could you elaborate on this?
Maxvorstadt: Can someone please tell me what " Non Power of Two texture support" is? Never heard of that and I`m not sure if this feature is supported by my graphics chip.
In older hardware, the dimensions of a texture must be powers of two (so 512x512 would work, but 480x480 would not). This is no longer the case in newer hardware; in particular, my Intel HD 4000 integrated GPU doesn't have this requirement.
If your computer is not ancient, it probably supports such textures.
(On Linux, you can run glxinfo and ess if the "GL_ARB_texture_non_power_of_two" extension is present.)
