Comment by bmurphy1976 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bmurphy1976 | Hacker News Reader

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It's still possible. I have 3 kids a full time job and a 1 hour driving commute each way. Despite this in the past 6 years I've still managed to play through Ultima VI, Baldur's Gate 1&2 Planescape Torment, 1/2 of Icewind Dale (finally burnt out on infinity engine), Tides of Numenera, Pillars of Eternity, Torment, Fallout 3, Fallout 4, God of War, Horizon Zero Dawn, Zelda a Link to the Past, Zelda Wind Waker, Hyper Light Drifter and am 95% of my way through Divinity Original Sin and I've probably forgotten some!

I squeeze in an hour or two here and there (usually at night after everybody else has gone to sleep). It can take a couple months to finish a game at this pace, but you get through them.

I like the big open-ended RPGs. I feel like I can get in and complete a couple short quests or a tricky combat situation in the short time I have allotted. It makes me feel like I'm always making progress, even if it's slow going. Compared to action games where I feel like the hour I have to play is barely enough time to warm up and play effectively.

I highly recommend you give the Exile series from Spiderweb Software a chance if you haven't. It's a bit dated graphically, but it's engine has been kept up and there's some new Avadon series as well. It's hands down some of the best storytelling and I've easily played hundreds of hours. I've definitely played from night to morning without realizing it more than a few times.

I remember ordering from a catalog and getting the fat envelope of 3.5 inch disks. Those games were amazing.

Many of them are on Steam now. And the creator Jeff Vogel is an interesting Twitter follow.

Jeff Vogel from Spiderweb Software have an awesome retrospective on his games and company at GDC 2018:

"Failing to Fill: The Spiderweb Software Way" https://youtu.be/stxVBJem3Rs

I really liked the older games as well (a long, long time ago). I still remember the "shareware canyon" that was impassible without buying the game in full. Fond memories!

The most recent game I managed that with was Skyrim (years after launch, I think this was maybe 1-2 years ago) but with most other such games (and also Skyrim after a few cumulative hours) I just felt like I was wasting my time.

Oh man I played that one as well, forgot to add it to my list. I probably got about 50% through the main quest and got bored. I really enjoyed Fallout 3 and 4 (despite the complaints) but Skyrim never felt as good to me.

I felt the reverse, that Skyrim was amazing, but Fallout 3 and 4 didn't hold my attention despite being similar. Fallout 3's soundtrack was excellent, though. I was disappointed that 4 didn't have quite the same appeal.

Baldur's gate also comes as smartphone apps, it's not super convenient but works, finish an RPG on the loo! :)

Totally. I played them on a big iPad. Perfect device for BG 1&2!

Tangent: 'Relentless, Twinsen's Adventure' aka 'Little Big Adventure' is officially available on Android. It's actually kind of fun and playable on the small screen.

No Ultima VII? The pinnacle of that series, and still impressive in its scope, IMO.

I agree, Ultima 7 is in my top 3 all time games! I had one or two aborted attempts at replaying it in the past decade, but life intervened. The last time I played through the whole game was well before this era (maybe 15 years ago?).

Looks like the Exult, the Ultima 7 modernization/remake, is still being developed:

https://github.com/exult/exult

Last time I played U7 through so many years ago it was via Exult. I wonder how far its progressed over the last decade? hmm.

I hate to have to correct fellow HNers in a public forum but you two have left me with no other choice: Ultima V is clearly the best of the Ultima games.

Ultimate Online was what got me into programming. I used to play on Novus Opiate share and when it died I found out about the emulators so I ended up teaching myself how to program to make things for UO and ended up helping build a shard with like ~300 players. It only lasted like 2 years and then the guy didn’t wanna host it anymore and it died. I miss those days :( when games were fun...

I wish I could do that. I probably could if I didn’t had an MMO sucking a portion of my soul. But I confess I can do these things because my work is basically sprint and rest kind of job.

What did you think about Tides of Numenara? I know there are many reviews out there, but your taste in games seems amazingly close to mine, including finding Skyrim boring, so I'd love to hear your opinion. I've had the game sitting on my computer for a while but haven't started it yet.

I was disappointed in that one. The concept was great and the world was interesting, but I found the characters to be bland and poorly developed.

The Bloom was a monotonous slog. I wish you spent less time in the Bloom and more time in other parts of the game (or new areas).

The combat was mediocre at best (nothing like Wasteland 2 or Divinity which are great).

Finally, the bugs were terrible. I only finished the game a couple months ago, so it's had plenty of time for them to get fixed. I still ran into one game breaking bug where I had troll the forums to find out how to hand edit a game script to cause an event to trigger so that I could continue the main quest. That sucked, especially since I didn't do anything unusual. The flag just didn't get set and I was too far along in the game to go back to a previous save.

It's the only game I've kickstarted. I did that because I knew there was no other way a game like this was going to be made at the time. I wanted it to exist. I'm still glad I did and glad I played through it, but it could have been much better. I'd put it at the lower end of my list: worth playing if you really like these kinds of games, otherwise pass.

Thanks a lot. I guess I won't play it anytime soon—too many other great games to play in too little time. I may very well play through the "enhanced" original though... It's my favorite game of all time but I somehow only played it once more than 10 years ago.

The original is definitely the better game.

Check out Witcher 3!

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