I agree with most of what you said. Avernum is nigh on Unplayable early on due to some rather terrible control decisions(I hear it's better on the Ipad version, but I don't have a tablet so meh) Also the story had issues, and several plot points got the old 'It's Magic' tag to them to avoid long winded explanations, something Geneforge beautifully averts, going into great detail on how everything works, though not always up front about it. Sometimes you have to talk to everyone for information, however, it is there.

And I think the lack of freedom is only one thing that makes 4 and 5 weaker than their counterparts. The other things include some rather weird design decisions(4 presents the first unwinnable battles in the series, not counting optional Master Hoge at 3's very start, while 5 just had random seeming difficulty, especially compared to the earlier games stepped and structured version), in addition you do have the whole problem of fence sitting. You could do it in games 1-3, but you tended to find which morals you liked best, and run with them. Games 5 and especially 4 almost require that you keep splitting your decisions so you can keep going with the game.

I will also say, Game 5's endings are the weakest, which is sad considering Jeff brought back the multiple endings of 1 and 2, but then nerfed them all so not a single one was the 'happy' ending, resulting in them all feeling underwhelming.

What were your issues with the story in Avernum? I mean aside from explaining away things with "it's magic." Genuinely curious, because I really liked the writing in those games (at least in 1-3).

Incidentally, I actually liked the way mages were presented in Avernum. In many fantasy games, there's not much thought put into how magic would actually affect society, but in Avernum the mages have clear roles that make sense, often working on the equivalent of secret military research. The magic itself is indeed "just magic", but the world acknowledges its existence.

Of the "newer" Avernum games, I've only played 4, not 5 or 6. I didn't like 4 as much, not because it didn't feel as open, but because the content wasn't as interesting. There was a massive world to explore but not quite enough interesting things in it to make exploring it fun. I found I missed the "world map" from the original trilogy since it sped up and abstracted a lot of that exploration, letting me focus on interesting encounters rather than just trudging around.

Namely(And as a note, I only played 1 all the way through), I never felt like I was special. Why could no one else do these things? Why always me? Seriously, I met dozens...er a few people anyway, who should have been just as skilled as my party, some of which had more investment in the local world as I had only just arrived, and yet everyone relied on me. And yes, I know plenty of RPGs have this sort of plot in them, but I usually can ignore that as it's not as often that it's brought to the foreground. Heck, Geneforge, up till four and then five does it again, does a great job of explaining why you're special, and why only you can do what you do.

That's a fair point. I guess I've played enough RPGs that it didn't seem too odd to me though. Also I thought I remembered some references to other teams of adventurers in Avernum, most of whom met a nasty end. So I guess the implication was that my party just happened to be more successful than their predecessors at the whole adventuring thing. But you're right that there were certainly more qualified individuals in Avernum than my party, especially when we were just starting out.

Anyway, as I'm sure everyone can tell, I'm an Avernum fan. Played them before I played Geneforge, and they're what introduced me to Jeff Vogel's great writing. Despite their clunky interfaces and older design, I still think they're worth a look.

I'm not saying they aren't, I think even bad games are usually worth a look, if only for the kitch factor. Well except Arc the Lad 5: Racism is Magic. That game was crud. Anyway, I'm sure the series got better as the plots got more complex, and the characters got more robust, though I don't see myself sitting down to them for a while. The interface annoyed me too often, and juggling inventories got really bad sometimes(I miss Geneforge just for that one man army thing it had going on, no looking against 4-5 character to see if anyone can use this stuff, just see if my one guy can use it, if not, trash it)

Incoming wall of text!

TL;DR version: Personally, I like 3 and 4, with 5 probably being my least favorite.

2 and 3 are probably the ones that are the most 'personal' In their stories. In 2 you have your mentor who you travel with/work with for the first portion of the game-which was rather effective IMO for setting up an emotional investment when things go south. I think that a lot of that is wasted because when things finally do hit the fan, and you confront the one responsible...you are likely far too underleveled to have a chance . As a player who got their pro-shaper loyalties riled up by the event in question, I felt incredibly disappointed in how there was essentially no real pure-shaper narrative route to take. Even with the shaper loyalist camp rather nearby, there just isn't a pro-shaper questline/faction to join, so you pretty much get railroaded into joining one of the factions that screwed you over/deceived you.

3 Is pretty personal in that it's the only one in the game that you can have a companion with you through the entire game (and two for most of it) and sets up the direness of the situation pretty much immediately with the attack on the school, showing off the main antagonist and your allies for much of the game. It could be rather linear at times, and I don't think I have ever met someone who appreciated the boat travel mechanic, but I think the stakes were pretty well laid out and dire in this game right from the start, and it conveyed the feeling of shifting lines of battle rather well IMO. The party banter was appreciated (and something that didn't pop up again until the Avadon games), if a bit inconsequential in the long run (and Greta says some really dumb things in some of the conversations) Out of all the games, I'd say I probably say that I felt the most attachment to the geneforge 3 protagonist, probably because so many of the characters pivotal to the plot are ones that the protagonist has a rather personal relationship with (alawan, Greta, Litalia, Hodge, etc) which isn't true to the same extent In the other games. A great candidate for a remake that deals with some of it's issues IMO.

4 is my favorite. Despite starting as a Rebel for a change instead of a Shaper, 'playing against the grain'-working for the 'opposing' faction never made me feel like I was acting against character, unlike in Geneforge II+III. It was nice to see some returning faces like Greta and Alawan etc, and the game really conveyed the feeling of an evolving conflict as your progressed through the game. despite being a person who used a geneforge by default, your use/non-use of cannisters has a huge impact in the game, particularly in the epilogue. Likewise, many actions you take influence the ending in rather substantial ways, and despite there being only two (plus one hidden) factions the endings were quite diverse, and you really felt the impact of your decisions. If I had to make any complaints about this great game, it would be that I wish Litalia had a bigger role in it-she seems like almost a non-entity in this game. Also, I liked the way Vogel kept the alignment of the Geneforge III protagonist nebulous through most of the game-it was a shame that it got thrown out in the last hour or so of the game.

5 was a bit of a disappointment IMO. A return to the static battle lines paradigm of the earlier games, going back to the first game in that using canisters has zero effect on the endgame. ( I know, I did a no-canister run-it affects perhaps 2 conversations), the ability to choose between Shaper and Rebel classes-which has no effect on the story, an amnesia subplot that gets dropped and never really satisfactorily resolved, and has you playing as a deformed enslaved mutant for most of the game-which is really jarring if you plan to do a shaper run-and IMO this games narrative *really* acts like it doesn't want you to play as a Shaper-there are only two Shaper factions...and encountered later In the game...and one of them seems to be Nazi inspired, complete with death camps, while the Rebels get the only factions that could possibly be described as 'moderate'. The endings are the same for a given faction pretty much no matter what you do up until joining a faction, the only real thing I noticed that had an impact was if you killed a character or not in the final battle, whose repercussions don't make much sense IMO. Rather disappointing I think, despite the graphical upgrade.

The first one is the only one I haven't beaten.