Good! I believe in giving the good old "college try", where one purchases a game and spends a reasonable amount of time getting "into it".

One thing I like and dislike about games these days is spending more than 15 minutes trying to "style" a character for a single-player game. I mean really, is that Orc trying to bash in your brains really care about where you part your hair or are they just looking at a bulls-eye.

I like it when I find a hidden 'gem' of a game I got on GOG.

It was what originally convinced me to get a PS2, it was unbelievably worth it. Such an enchanting story book world.

It doesn't seem like it gets mentioned very often but the designer of Crono Trigger and Dragon Ball Z, I think it's a fairly big deal personally.

In some games, I can't make characters look good, I did a reasonable job in Dragon Age Origins but in Mass Effect I got tired of messing with it and set everything to the right, and was done with it. I said in another thread that that was kind of why I liked Xenoblade and the Last Story a lot. No customization, just some well rounded and well written characters. Not that customization is bad. I also am not crazy about customizing a party, I did like designing myself and my pawn in Dragon's Dogma, I also liked how I could customize my party by choosing from a great deal of pawns but not have to actually mess with their skill sets or anything.

I love coming across gems, as it were. Gems, to me, are games I more or less did not anticipate being as good as they were. Recently I did that with Binary Domain where I bought it on a whim and just plowed through it without intending to. Fallout 2 ended up surprising me with how much I ended up liking it and it occupied most of my time when I initially joined here.

I had to do a websearch for Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of a Cursed King...
I never heard of it - I have been too focused on PC games - anime ported from Playstation & Xbox should have some surprises for me...
Aha! This reminds me of the early Final Fantasy quests... in this is a band of travelers on an adventure and struggle against evil.
Do I have it wrong?
What did you like about the game?

Are you a fan of older rpgs on dated systems? I have owned everything from an Atari 2600 to PS3 (getting a PS4 and an Xbox One in a few days for my birthday) I can list at least 30 must play RPGs that you can research =D

Yes, I am retired and recall playing on dated computers - ha! my 1st game was played on a mainframe computer playing star trek, and a cave hunting bat game with text based graphics...
Calling myself a "fan" would be too strong, I have more of nostalgia as in wanting to recapture imaginative stories, adventures and innovation. Yes, I enjoyed 80s thru early 90s games, and I admit eye-candy graphics and stereo music are great, a immersive story is better. (turn based play is good at making you focus on your game-task) the entrepreneurship of one or a few programmers creating a fun game is almost extinct...
Currently I do not play a lot of games (the kids are gone and the ole game consoles as well), but at times I look to enjoy a non-combat game - amazingly I play more wheel of fortune, hearts, solitaire, Mahjong, minesweeper, and chess games than all other games for a bit of distraction.

The game that brought me here to GOG was Starflight.
I hope to find another gem.

There are a quite a few games without combat on gog.com. I can really recommend Botanicula, Machinarium and Ether One though I don't know if they would be for you.

My current "Gem" from your definition would be Trine. I just wanted to see what it's like (for "backlog sort order") a few days ago and now I'm near the end. I just can't stop playing...

Another one would be Gothic. I already have beat this one twice - years ago. I recently installed it again, because my kids love to watch me playing fantasy RPGs and I don't want them to watch me playing The Witcher 2... I needed the "System mod" to get it to run properly, but I'm really surprised how well it holds up even today. Great fun.

Blogstory, have you heard of this game? No Man's Sky...I cant wait, hope its as good as it sounds!

Favorite RPGs:

1.) Ultima Series except for 9 but including Ultima Underworld
Reason: The focus on morality and the consequences of your actions as The Avatar symbol of good for Brittania

2.) Baldur's Gate 2: Shadows of Amn
Everything a true RPG should be from a development and gameplay standpoint to exploration and tactics

3.) Planescape Torment - Best RPG story EVER

4.) Chrono Trigger - Second best RPG story EVER

5.) Mass Effect Series
Amazing space adventure - although linear you still couldn't wait to see what was going to happen next. I felt like I had played 2 or 3 games after finishing just one ME game because of the subplots

6.) Wizardy - possibly responsible for half of all sales of grid paper in the late 80s and 90s LOL

7.) Dragon Quest/Warrior Series - Great stories and gameplay that redefined the genre - the predecessor to Final Fantasy

8.) Final Fantasy Series - everything about the series is great even the super cheesy character names

9.) Might and Magic 3 - 7

10.) Skyrim - Freshening up the usual clichés with the Dovakhin (spelling? too lazy to check) the visuals and sense of living world

Honorable Mentions: Zelda 1,2 and Zelda SNES, Ys Series (I will never forget firing up my brand new TurboGrafx-16 and sliding my Ys Book 1 cartridge in the slot and watching, stunned, at the visuals of the game then a great story followed), Lufia Series, Quest for Glory series, King's Quest, Crystalis (Action RPG like Zelda), Secret of Mana, Lunar Eternal Blue, Phantasy Star (Alis Landale - a female main character in 1987?! Yessir), Shadowrun SNES, Dragon Age, Breath of Fire Series, Bard's Tale, D&D Gold Box Games (google'm!), Phantasy Star 2 (first 16 bit RPG releaed in US - I bought Sega Master System just for this game!)!

That's all the RPG games that left a mark on me for fun factor!


Oh and blog, the latest games I have been hooked on Alien Isolation and Minecraft (I think I am slowing down too - I will be 43 tomorrow =D)

I actually must admit to liking Akira Toriyama's work in the DQ series.

In battle system, the only DQ game I ever played anything of was when it was still called Dragon Warrior, what does it resemble? That always scared me away a bit, for some reason it looked kinda slow to me.

Chrono Trigger had to be a labor of love! It was created by Final Fantasy creator Hironobu Sakaguchi, creator of Dragon Quest Yuji Horii, and obviously, DBZ manga artist Akira Toriyama (who also helped develop Dragon Quest with Horii) and the soundtrack was by Masato Kato and Nobuo Uematsu! Square called them the Dream Team of design.

Wish we could see more creative collaborations of that magnitude! Imagine the stories they could tell!

Thank you for the suggestions, I will look into those titles.
I truly would like a - what I call - Galaxy exploration, trade merchant game.
Sadly they are rare, most non-combat games are puzzles, or mission solving mysteries games that I am not very interested in.
Moments ago I searched youtube let's play and viewed 1 segment of Botanicula by the mighty potato and from what I saw, the game is very imaginative and family fun, perhaps I will suggest it for the grand-kids. I am thinking the game is many levels of mission-puzzle challenges?

No, I have not heard of No Man's Sky, I don't play many games, so not surprising I have not heard of that game.
You list many popular games, I played many of the sierra games (quests, and leisure Larrys...) I may play them again for nostalgia.

Life. Best damn RPG ever invented. Just keep in mind that your real world carry weight capacity will be rather limited.

And your DEX stats will be far lower than you realize.

Botanicula is kids friendly, yes. Or for the child at heart ;-)
Hmm. Galaxy exploration with Starflight as a measure... Tough. You probably know the Elite franchise already... I've put hundreds of hours into Frontier - Elite 2 (sim, not RPG). Unfortunately I don't know many games that would compete. If you like sims, economy and depth, the X series could be something for you.