Recommend a game with depth please

cosgrove80

I hope to have a fair bit of spare time from October to Christmas. Rather than do anything productive I've decided to play a few games.

I was hoping someone could recommend a game with a bit of depth to play for a while. I've decided to get Fable but was thinking of getting another.

Having fond memories of Vandal Hearts on the PS1 I was thinking of maybe Disgaea of Phantom Brave or maybe Morrowind on the PC.

It dosen't have to be an RPG but at the moment I don't want an RTS game like Rome Total War or Age of Empires.

Is there anything else you'd recommend? Have a PC and PS2.

Thanks

RuggieBear

silent hunter...plenty of depth

Zapp Brannigan

Morrowind defintely, very engrossing RPG. Which I also happen to be selling...so if you're interested head to my thread in FS Discs.

BlitzKrieg

i dont know how much extra depth the new add on gives fable, but the original had horrendous lack of depth (pretty much done everything after 3 nights)

When you say Depth do you mean longevity or do you mean plot?

Cause Fable pretty much lacked in both.

Retr0gamer

Found mirrowind an absolute chore to play. I'd recommend the Nippon Ich i games, La Pucelle Tactics, Disgaea or Phantom Brave. Disgaea is the best of them. All three games are massive and will take ages to be. There are also an amazing amount of optional quests. They will keep you going for ages and the combat is more meaty than the hack, hack, hack, heal gameplay of mirrowind.

tman

RuggieBear wrote:

silent hunter...plenty of depth

beat me to it

Father_Ted

Found Mafia to be very engrossing, it has a great storyline which keeps you going to the end. RPG's from the BioWare stable such as Baldurs Gate series and Planescape Torment will also eat up the hours, all have good storylines and great character development. Another option would be WOW or Guild Wars. If you like Hack and Slash, Dungeon Siege will keep you going for weeks.
Playing GTA San Andreas on the PC at the moment, its huge world and varied missions have kept me busy for a while.

Zillah

Morrowind lacks all depth. It was a wonderful game, great fun to play, but in terms of character and story and genuine depth, no.


If you don't mind playing a game that is a little old then you must play "Planescape Torment."

Best, deepest most involving rpg I have ever come across. There is tons and tons of story, side stories and an absurd amount of character development. It starts off really slowly, but once you get into its incredibly rewarding.

A couple of examples (and maybe minor spoilers):

You can learn a new type of magic by devling into one of your party member's history.
You can potentially talk a big boss to death...

Its great really.

Zapp Brannigan

Zillah wrote:

Morrowind lacks all depth. It was a wonderful game, great fun to play, but in terms of character and story and genuine depth, no.


If you don't mind playing a game that is a little old then you must play "Planescape Torment."

Best, deepest most involving rpg I have ever come across. There is tons and tons of story, side stories and an absurd amount of character development. It starts off really slowly, but once you get into its incredibly rewarding.

A couple of examples (and maybe minor spoilers):

You can learn a new type of magic by devling into one of your party member's history.
You can potentially talk a big boss to death...

Its great really.

Plansescape is hard to find though, wish I could get my hands on it. When I played it last I was young and foolish so I dismissed it.

Karl Hungus

You can get a copy of Planescape: Torment on ebay easily enough. It's well worth tracking down, because as Zillah said, it's one of the best deepest and most involving RPGs out there.

I'd also tend to agree about Morrowind lacking in terms of character and story, but it's an absolutely amazing game that is just so very easy to get engrossed in. I played it for months on end, so I really, really recommend it.

If you find a copy of Gothic 2, I also heartily recommend it. Gothic 3 should be out soon enough.

mp3guy

Slurms wrote:

Morrowind defintely, very engrossing RPG.

One of THE most overrated RPGs ever. Terrible, not at all deep. You need something like Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy 6 and 7, they'll keep you going for AGES.

Brerrabbit

I'd go with the original Deus Ex for PC. Should get it as cheap as chips too. Very engrossing stuff.

Cianos

If your over 18 you should learn how to play winning online poker. Very challenging, enjoyable and you can make a load of money from it too

projectmayhem

metal gear solid games
half life 2

AoE II is pretty addictive.

Karl Hungus

projectmayhem wrote:

half life 2

Eh, why? I honestly though HL2 was pretty poor, it was so on rails it felt like an old arcade shooter where you kept advancing automatically and just pointed you gun a shoot. Hardly a game with depth now is it?

Another game I'd recommend, but seems kind of a love it or hate it type of game, is Vampire The Masquerade - Bloodlines. Quite addictive and engrossing altogether, with quite a bit of freedom. Not the best RPG ever, but still quite good.

The Free Man

in all honesty the mods that are out for morrowind really add a lot of depth, even bethesda have taken some of the mods ideas and used them in oblivion.

Laguna

I became engrossed with Half Life 2. Admittedley, it is linear (as most games are) but I thought the story, the gameplay and WOW factor are all there in large amounts. (Plus the huge factor of Counter Strike: Source for online play - you'll never get bored of it... well I haven't)

Not a fan of Morrowind, dated visuals, too vague and not enough structure not to mention the game world is populated by instantly forgettable characters who have no other purpose except to serve you (i.e. not a game you could lose yourself in) played it, completed it, forgot it..

Knights of the old republic was good on the Xbox, even for non Star Wars fans, decent story (better than the movies) and good RPG-lite elements, whereas Jad Empire was the same game respun and lost a lot of what appealed to me about KOTOR.

Although the most engrossing game I ever played was Final Fantasy VII, games just haven't been able to grip me like that since..

Zapp Brannigan

Can't believe I didn't reccomend this in my first post...

Fallout 2. Unbelievably good RPG.

direbadger

Do you have a ps2? This is an old-ish game and from the title of the thread I think you might find it short, but for a beautiful looking game with an interesting storyline and characters you care about (I did anyway) Beyond Good and Evil is the way to go. I think this is a perfect little game. It's the only game I ever played that inspired me to write a fan letter. I didn't send it of course...
I get the feeling from the answers you're getting that this isn't the type of thing you're looking for but I can definitely say that in my view Beyond Good and Evil is a lot better than most of the grossly overrated FF saga. *runs away from fanboys*

amp

Deus Ex

Zillah

Yes I forgot Deus Ex. Excellent game.

There is of course the Baldur's Gate series.

BG1 is very dated and IMO (others disagree) not very good. BG2 picks up the story and makes one of the best rpgs of all time. There is no game I have put more hours into, save maybe Shogun Total War. BG2: Throne of Bhaal adds another chunk of the story and concludes the story started in BG1.

All in all, if you want to pass many many hours in great game play Baldur's Gate is the way to go. If you enjoy Planescape then BG is a good companion to it. Its a little less deep, a bit more hacknslash*, and a very very good rpg.

(*Compared to planescape of course...)

stagolee

Father_Ted wrote:

Found Mafia to be very engrossing, it has a great storyline which keeps you going to the end.

funny enogh im just playing through mafia again and thoughrouly enjoying it. it has its bugs and its flaws but it has buckets of atmosphere, i love that old jazz music i think its django reinheardt a lot of it.

_CreeD_

Morrowind (No depth?....you just didn't play it that way...which is fine and one of the games strengths - you didnt have to read all the lore-books, or do even a fraction of the quests to get through... you played and involved yourself as much beyond the main story arc as you wanted, but there was an entire Island beyond that dwarfed the pure arc...hence uber-depth...whether you liked where the quests took you or not it had immense depth - the subjective quality of that depth to you is not the real question here IMHO).

Zillah

_CreeD_ wrote:

Morrowind (No depth?....you just didn't play it that way...which is fine and one of the games strengths - you didnt have to read all the lore-books, or do even a fraction of the quests to get through... you played and involved yourself as much beyond the main story arc as you wanted, but there was an entire Island beyond that dwarfed the pure arc...hence uber-depth...whether you liked where the quests took you or not it had immense depth - the subjective quality of that depth to you is not the real question here IMHO).

Neither you nor any of the character's showed anything more than a hint of personality. The entire universe quite clearly existed to serve you. There was no conversation. It was done through a HTML-style link clicking system. Opponents charged mindlessly at you.

It was entertaining, but don't confuse scope with depth. It being on a huge island does not mean it has depth.

Ping Chow Chi

Suikoden

That should be all the answer that you need :x



tut tut at you not recomending this retro

Retr0gamer

How can i forget. Suikoden 1-3 especially 2 have an incredible amount of depth and suikoden 2 probably has the best story of any video game. There are 108 characters ato recruit and I clocked up about 90 hours on Suikoden 2 trying to get them all. I wouldn't bother with suikoden 4, it's nowhere near as good as the rest of the series and really is just an average RPG because of it's flaws. The only problem with Suikoden 1 and 2 is that they are extremely rare. Suikoden 2 could set you back almost 200 euros on Ebay.

i_am_dogboy

I gotta agree with slurms, fallout 2 is fantastic, here's a great article from gamedev about fallout. I'd also have to recommend planescape torment and homeworld, homeworld isn't as open ended as the other 2 but has an incredibly engrossing story.

cosgrove80

Thanks for all the replies. Quite a few recommendations there.

I suppose I should try and explain what I meant by depth. I guess character and storyline are what I meant really.

Half-Life 2 was mentioned and although it is linear in terms of game play and perhaps plot too, it still had “character”. You believed you were in City 17. You wanted the resistance to win.
Fable, somebody mentioned, only takes a few days to get through. I’m ok with that as long as, for those 3 days, you are that character, in that world and you believe in it.

I don’t believe a game has to last 100+ hours to have “depth”. As someone pointed out there is a difference between scope and depth. Spending two weeks levelling up characters (although I'm not ruling it out), might qualify a game as having depth but it doesn’t necessarily result in a rewarding experience.
Likewise a game doesn’t have to be deep to be rewarding. Takedowns in Burnout or levelling a cityscape in the new Hulk game can be extremely rewarding. Grim Fandango and Ico can’t be considered deep games but they had depth.

A game with a fully realised world and characters is what I’m looking for really. If the “universe” for a game is strong enough it doesn’t matter if the game world is rendered with dynamic shadows and particles or is simply a grid of squares.

As I’m hoping to have time to play something I don’t mind putting in the effort with the game so I get to the point where I empathise with the characters.
It might sound geeky but I want to care what happens. I would like to feel the disappointment when one of the characters dies. I want to see it through to the end because I’ve invested time and effort into the game.

Maybe it’s an age thing but I haven’t felt any real connection to a game world for a while. In FFVII once you stepped off the train, you were in that world and you didn’t want to leave. You chose characters because you liked them rather than their abilities (well I did anyway). As I said maybe as you get older you find it harder to let yourself be drawn into something on a TV screen.

Sorry for the mini rant. Back on topic though, out of the games mentioned Suikoden was one I was trying to remember. Planescape Torment could be what I’m after too.

So my list, so far, is:

Planescape Torment
Suikoden
Fallout 2 (I really liked Shadowrun on the Snes and it seems similar)
Chrono Trigger (never got round to playing it)
Vagrant Story
Beyond Good and Evil
Deus Ex
Baldur's Gate 2
and a Nippon Ichi game for good measure.

any more suggestions are welcome

koneko

I'm glad you mentioned Vampire Masquerade: Bloodlines, Karl.
Just make sure to get the patch if you're going to play that. It has a few serious bugs, but it's one of my favourite games of last year (and it's really really cheap to buy).

Zillah

cosgrove80 wrote:

Maybe it’s an age thing but I haven’t felt any real connection to a game world for a while. In FFVII once you stepped off the train, you were in that world and you didn’t want to leave. You chose characters because you liked them rather than their abilities (well I did anyway). As I said maybe as you get older you find it harder to let yourself be drawn into something on a TV screen.

No illusion. I felt the same thing. At first I thought I was just growing out of computer games (21) but the occasional gem of a game reminded me of what a good game was.

Games are becoming like pop music. They're appealing to the lowest common denominator in an attempt to sell games and nothing more.


I'd also reccomend the new morrowind. The older one we were talking about earlier was The Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind. The new one, coming out later this year (hopefully) is The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion. Its looks absolutely stunning (graphics and gameplay) but you'll need a monster of a PC to run it.