To this day, no game scratches my RPG itch like Might & Magic 6, 7, and to a somewhat lesser degree 8.

I've played Elder Scrolls games, had fun in Witcher 3, Baldur's Gate 2, Pillars of Eternity, Dragon Age, etc. They're all good games, even terrific games, but they're all good for reasons that are entirely beside what makes Might and Magic so incredibly satisfying for me.

In part, I think it has to do with the way M&M makes you *care* about character progression. It's system is straightforward enough for you to fully understand and plan with, yet detailed enough to make a build interesting. It's rewarding to see your party's build unfold and come into it's potential as you go.

I'd really love to find some other RPG that fulfills the same niche as Might and Magic. It doesn't have to be in 1st person with a party, but I'd love to find something with a truly satisfying system of progression.

Even Morrowind (which I do love), never achieved this. Without any tradeoffs for your choices, you pick skills either on the basis of which ones will make your character the most powerful overall, or which one indulges your mental image of who he/she is. Weapon skills are all the same, which means your preference is a purely cosmetic one. Unarmed and unarmored skills are objectively worse than a weapon/armor skill, but of course, you do have the option of going *against* a better build and taking them anyway if you want to feel like a Kung Fu master. Not that there ever was much "strategy" involved in simply picking an objectively superior skill over an inferior one anyway.

Many of the isometric-view, tactical RPGs have overly complex progression systems. Later ones have unconventional "creative" approaches with things like "perks" which pile up in complexity to a point where it becomes very hard to see just exactly how your Thief/Paladin/Ranger/whoever is supposed to be built. Most importantly, I don't know how any of an aspiring characters abilities are actually supposed to cover for a void left by other characters' deficiencies. It's all too complex.

In addition to the skill problem I have with isometric games, the tactical combat does become a bit taxing over time. Don't get me wrong, the tactical battles in those games are super fun, but when they happen so often that every single five meters or so further down a road gives you, "Oh look, another troll. Once again let's stop everything, and tell the wizard to do his usual opening spell while moving the fighter forward and..." it gets draining after a while.

Another thing: Stories are good, but I want an RPG with a story, not a story with an RPG. I don't like this delusion that an RPG is somehow supposed to be mostly about enjoying the writers' movie, with some character advancement tucked around the edges as window dressing (I'm looking at you, Bioware).

Oh, and no cutesy anime bullshit.

If you read through all of that, then I'd like to apologize for my cruelty, but also maybe ask if you know of any games that would fit the bill in terms of what I'm looking for. Thanks already for your time!

Have you tried WIzardry 8? Actually, what I've found in Morrowind is that if you try to go for the objectively best strategy, you'll break the game so hard that it ceases to be fun long term. Certainly, the optimal (non-glitch) strategy is just to make potions to boost your attributes (especially Luck, which affects the strength of your potions among other things) up to at least the quadruple digits for extended periods of time, and while that can be fun for playing around, it's not so good if you want a reasonable challenge. Why does this matter? Why would you reject a game just because of this if it would fit all your other criteria with very good reviews?

I also suggest the WIzardry series.

I'm going to have to give Wiz 8 a go at some point. The chunky polygons and DOS-era looking UI (makes MM6/7/8 look really pretty by comparison) had been giving me some reservations, but I should just get over it.

You bring up another good point about Morrowind. Yet another reason why "build strategy" goes out the window in that game.

Now, about that cutesy anime bullshit...

Immersion matters. I have to *care* about the world I'm in to be a part of the adventure. Try to imagine watching the Lord of the Rings movies, but with an Aragorn who looks (and sounds) like a child with spikey hair, giant cartoon eyes, and an oversized sword. Why ruin it like that? The audience would wrinkle their noses and walk out of the theater in disgust, and rightly so. I'm the same way with RPGs. I need to actually have some capacity to connect with the game's world, so it had better not look as if that entire world had come about merely for the amusement of some two-year old.

I avoid cartoony across the board. Kindoms of Amalur is a straight "no". Even Divinity: Original Sin 2 looks too cartoony for me to be able to enjoy.

Yes, this is all a completely different concern than what I mentioned in my original post, and has nothing to do with the gameplay issue I was talking about. It is another thing I care about, though, so it needed to be said.

How does the placement of party members work Wizardry 8's combat when you turn around? Are your party's front, flanks, and rear all locked into whatever place they were when the fight first began, or can you rotate your formation during the battle?

You can rotate your party's formation by using the walk or run command. The downside of doing this is that all enemies will act before your party that round (though there are times that this is what you want), but you can then turn your party around, and if you don't actually move nobody will actually lose their turn.

Also, you can change your party's formation without using any turns, though I believe the formation change won't take effect until the end of the round. (Also, note that in-combat formation changes only last until the end of battle.)

I could hug you. I WOULD hug you. Everything you said I agree with, completely and profoundly.

Now you may not agree with this part, and I'm not saying you said this, but UGGHH, to me there's nothing worse than a JRPG. There is nothing worse. Good job ruining RPGs, Japan. There certainly exists a small number of genuinely-decent anime films, but I hate anime crap in my games so, so much. It's such a turn-off to have everything so cutesy and unrealistic. Immerse me, cover me in your realistic world, oh you perfect first-person Western RPG.

I realize that there are a great many people - a sizable percentage of them women to be sure, especially judging from the many female gamers I know - who are looking for something completely different from games in general, and for them JRPGs rule. I get it. There's a place for those games with those people. But there is no place for them with people like myself.

Aside from that, you really outlined well some of what makes the Might and Magic series special. There are other reasons, but well, well, super well done hitting many of the crucial aspects.

The part about the story delusion, my god. I've been searching for an answer for probably 15+ years for why I've always had a problem with that idea, but you saying that there, that's brilliant. That's it exactly. Thank you, YES. That's it. It is a delusion! That's the problem with that idea!

I vividly remember reading a long article in the mid-2000s that compared story-based RPGs to more "lazy", free-roaming RPGs like the M&M series. The author's take was that it is the Holy Grail of all RPGs to be like the Ultima series, to be about enjoying the brilliant writers' movie, to paraphrase you. (That's fantastically insightful of you.)

I couldn't really argue with that author at the time, being barely 20 years old and not having enough gaming or life experience to really say with conviction "No! There is something wrong with that sentiment!" xD LOL But as I've gotten older, I've realized in an emotional but not-at-all yet elucidated way - until right now, reading what you wrote there - that people with that POV are the Michael Scotts of the world: they are supremely delusional.

As a proud writer myself, someone who now has some experience working on screenplays and films in LA for some years in my 20s, and as someone with unfinished novels and story ideas coming out my ears, I can say with some certainty that even Charles Dickens was no miracle-worker. It's HARD to write a great work that is truly worth, as Francis Bacon once described, being "chewed and digested" by an intelligent reader. The idea that Lord British is out there programming a game while writing Great Expectations is, frankly, a Mr. Fantastic-level stretch.

And the truth is, I've now played those games, and I can finally come upon the clarity and conviction that, no, no, their stories do not make me swoon in the way that watching Dances With Wolves becomes a touchstone of emotional power in my life, or in the way that reading Alexander Dumas' story of those Three Musketeers becomes an unforgettable, ever-present reference in my memory, and a vital presence in my mind of the heart of adventure, difficult choices, honor, and friendship.

For those story-based RPGs, rather, I remember my part in the game, the gameplay itself, my interactions with the characters, my emotions, my great times playing the game - all this far more than I was ever impacted by such a game's repletely-clichéd story.

It is interesting to note that when the laid-back, ever-so Californian Jon Van Caneghem sat down to create the original Might and Magic, the truth is that his goal was merely to program a fun game, and to sell it. To make a career out of making video games. He had zero intention of creating a great story; he didn't take his games seriously. He truly WAS lazy with his stories. He threw them together haphazardly, with humor and the ordinary, daily seat-of-his chair wit of the moment. He just wanted to finish his games and put them out there.

We can feel that, see it everywhere, while playing his games. There is an irreverence and carelessness to them that runs through their stories and characters like a babbling, winding stream. But what he did take seriously was everything else. He wanted them polished. He wanted them good. To a certain extent, despite being fantasy games, he wanted them to feel realistic. And he always wanted to push the limits of what could be done in a game. Ultimately, he wanted them to be finished works that would make him proud. He's the kind of guy who can't stand to put out a low-quality product, and that showed, too. That's there in those games, too, far more so than the otherwise broad, simple strokes of the stories themselves.

It's funny, then, that it is that irreverence and unserious attitude that makes the games that much better than everything else out there. You are never disrespected as a gamer. You are always the center of the experience. Everything is for you to enjoy, nothing left for the developer or the brilliant writer behind the curtain. It is because he didn't take the story seriously that the story is loose enough for the gamer to play such a thoroughly-woven part in it. It is because the focus is on the gameplay and the levels and everything else that we can get so much out of the stories that are there.

Caneghem understood in a deep, intrinsic way what was important to making a great game, and he focused on those aspects. Meanwhile, nearly everyone else just wanted to be in show business, making movies and telling their stories. Gaming isn't completely compatible with the latter. To respect the gamer, you must allow them to tell your story, and to make all the choices there are to be made.

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As far as something else to play, I can only recommend Deus Ex as a rival to the 80s-90s Might and Magic games in terms of quality and immersion. Though it is ironic that my recommendation is given partially because it genuinely has the best story of any game I've ever played. xD But then of course, the real brilliance of Deus Ex is that YOU get to play the storyteller as much and as well as any game has ever done it.

Honestly, I have to disagree with your opinion of this. JRPGs, while not obviously "better" than WRPGs, are not obviously worse.

In particular, there are some things I feel JRPGs have done better than WRPGs:
* Combat is typically much cleaner in JRPGs, in that you can more easily keep track of everything that's going on. Also, many WRPGs seem to hide vital information like damage amounts from the player (MM3-5 are guilty of this, for example), unlike JRPGs where you can typically see your party's numerical health all the time and can see all exact damage amounts,
* JRPGs remained turn based longer than WRPGs, and making the game not turn based really makes the game less of an RPG to me. (I could point out that a game like Oblivion fails to register as an RPG at all to me, but that can also be said of a game like Ys.)
* When WRPGs were adopting skill point systems, an approach with some fundamental issues, JRPGs were still experimenting with different mechanics; just look at Final Fantasy games from 5 through 10 for examples of different mechanics. (Note that 5 is my favorite FF games, I did not like 7, and be aware that 8 is very strange mechanically and shouldn't be your first entry into the series.) Not all these systems were perfect, but they did at least avoid the flaws of the skill point system that's been overused.

I could also point out that there are some games that don't strictly conform to hte JRPG/WRPG divide like the SaGa series, which is worth looking into if you want an RPG with different growth mechanics than what you're probably used to. There are also JRPGs that aren't story focused, and I'm pretty sure some WRPGs that are.

(As a side note: While you mention RPGs that don't take story seriously, there are also some that don't take game balance seriously, like Final Fantasy 7 and 8 and (if it counts as an RPG) Morrowind.) Unless you steal Murray's treasure in MM2; what happens after that is disrespectful to the player. (If you want to see what happens safely, get the treasure, rest, and check your stats *after* resting, but make sure you don't go back to the inn to save.)

sigh Yeah I was aware that you're a fan of JRPGs. And I was not trying to get into a discussion about them, just noting how I felt. I just think JRPGs are abominations, and I don't see the value in the things you're talking about there. For example, I don't think being real-time makes an RPG less like an RPG at all, not remotely one bit at all.

Ultimately, you like and appreciate JRPGs, I do not. As I said before, I get that, and I'm totally OK with it. We want different things. That's OK. ^_^

As far as the M&M 2 reference, yeah I mean, that was part of the culture back then, in creating games. Designers did stuff like that, it was kinda awesome. I wouldn't call that disrespecting the gamer, it was sort of expected. And I have always thought that Might and Magic 2 is one of the best games in the series. I absolutely loved it. That first iteration of "Murray's Resort Isle" is something I'll always remember - that was so brilliant. xD LOL

My argument here is that making a game real-time is one step toward making the game an action game, and action games are not RPGs. But it's not fun for a player who's been burned by it and saved, and as a result is no longer having fun with the game.

(Yes, it's possible to recover to the point where the game becomes playable, but it is a rather unpleasant surprise.)

If you are a game designer and want to troll the player, follow Syobon Action's example, not Might and Magic 2's. (Even World of Xeen's game over traps are better because you can save anywhere and the effects of such traps are immediately obvious.)

Edit: Aside from that one thing, Might and Magic 2 is a great game; I actually enjoyed it more than its successors when I played it.

hehehee ^_^

Yeah, I get where you're coming from on all that. I always laughed at those very rare moments in those early games, but it definitely could be frustrating. I always felt I deserved it though. xD hahaha And it was always rather funny when playing with a friend. But yeah, probably wouldn't want to do that sort of thing in a game today. ^_^

And I also get where you're coming from with action games not being RPGs. Action games like Diablo really screwed with that distinction, and games continue to ignore the essentials of what makes an RPG, while still suggesting they are RPGs. But non-RPG action games are not RPGs, and real-time RPGs are RPGs, so being turn-based or not doesn't affect the larger genre. I understand your sentiment though. It's been a controversial matter for 30 years now, ever since Ultima Underworld! xD

I mention the Ys series as one that has been mis-categorized as an RPG series, and one can clearly see that in boss fights. In an RPG, boss fights are about things like deciding when to heal and when to attack, with resource management frequently being a major issue (your healer running out of MP could be a problem, but so could that healer being dead and unable to heal for that reason). Take a typical Ys game, and the boss fights there are all about dodging the enemy attacks and deciding when to go ahead and try attacking the boss; very different, and it's how you'd fight a boss in an action game, so the Ys games are really action games rather than RPGs. (I note that Ys boss fights are not about when to heal and when to cast stat-boosting spells; you dodge instead of heal there.)

In any case, one reasonable way to make the distinction is as follows:
* In an action game, the result of an action depends on the *player's* abilities.
* In an RPG, the result of an action depends on the *character's* abilities.

(Note that this definition does, indeed, place Oblivion as an action game; your combat skills only affect things like damage dealt and received, not whether your attack hits in the first place.)

Also, when I am looking for an RPG to play, I am looking for a turn-based game; I am not looking for an action game with RPG elements. (In fact, I don't like how many games, including much of my beloved SaGa series, has enemies moving in real-time outside of battle, turning the game into an action game when you are trying to avoid (or seek out) combat; the "random encounter" system common in JRPGs (and sen in some older WRPGs, like MM1 and MM2) is better than that.)

With that said, I don't *only* play RPGs; in fact, I have been playing Celeste lately, which is clearly an action game and not an RPG.

I think as a general guideline and as a philosophical idea, that's primarily true, and a good way of outlining the action-related differences in those two genres. But that is not otherwise a reasonable way to define what makes or does not make an RPG. That's far too simple and rigid. Any RPG can integrate player-skill elements and still be an RPG. And most action games have power-ups, weapons, and other features that increase the character's abilities independent of the player.

The debate about whether Deus Ex is an RPG or not has been over for decades now. It full-on is, yet its combat and movement system is that of a First-Person Shooter. When it was put out, it was termed to be a hybrid. Now it's the prototype for many modern RPGs. A designer's choice to set a first-person RPG in a dynamic real-time 3D world simply does not change the fact that it is just as much a role-playing game as any other, with abilities and skills that dramatically change what the player can do, and how the player is able to progress through the game.

If you don't want to play that kind of RPG, that's totally fine. I generally avoid turn-based RPGs, myself. I find them relatively slow and boring, and I enjoy the added element of my gaming skill-level deciding the outcome of actions. It's frankly absurd to argue that a simulated, turn-based system, designed to imagine what might happen in a given scenario, is a superior or more realistic way of determining the outcomes of actions.

But for a game, either is a fully valid way of playing out a character's actions. They're just two different kinds of RPGs, nothing more or less.

This is a point I disagree on: A game *can't* incorporate player skill and still be an RPG. To do so would make the game inaccessible to some RPG players (including, for example, some elderly and disabled gamers), and would therefore result in such games not suitable for those looking for an RPG.

The thing with power-ups in action games is that they don't affect things like the chance of a player hitting or dodging attacks; such mechanics are sill collision based rather than dice based. For example, the fire flower in Super Mario Bros. does not affect the player character's ability to dodge attacks, jump over pits, or successfully aim a jump to land on an enemy; it just gives the player an ability (in this case, shooting fireballs) that has to be aimed.
Again, I disagree; I see the games you prefer not being RPGs, but rather being action games that just happen to have incorporated aspects from the RPG genre.

Also, turn based RPGs can be fast paced; it's just that so many of them have either long animations or a tactical battlefield (or both, in cases like Disgaea 1), which slow down the game. Classic Dragon Quest games (7 and earlier), for example, are fast-paced despite being turn based. (DQ8 slowed things down with added animations.)

A game whose combat and movement is that of an FPS is an FPS, not an RPG, as the combat and movement of a game are genre-defining factors; other things, like like the game's growth system (or lack thereof) are not. Hence, from what you describe, Deus Ex is 100% an FPS and is in no way an RPG.

o_0 You don't understand what a computer role-playing game is. That much is clear. Your limits are ridiculous and not based in reality. This debate happened 20 years ago. It was essentially settled. You're unwilling to include all RPGs under the umbrella of that genre, but that's just taking your preference and applying it inappropriately.