Hand holding...

[Aegrus]

Get the Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition when it release for the pc. Absolutely no handholding whatsoever. There was so little handholding, people complained that it was too hard to figure out what to do in the game. There are a couple messages on the floor in the area where you start that can tell you the controls, but even those are optional, and they only give you the bare minimum. The game is very difficult, open world (Skyrim is like a bubble, Dark Souls is like a spiderweb), and there are no load times after the main menu. Very immersive, very atmospheric. Some of the best graphics on a console game as well. After going from Dark Souls on the ps3 to pc Skyrim, (vanilla ultra settings), I was disappointed by Skyrim's graphics.

[IndorilTheGreat]

How about Evochron Mercenary? That game has one of the steepest learning curves I've seen in a long time (hooray for Newtonian based physics! :geek: ).

 

That, and it's a free-roam space game; a rare find in itself these days.

[Vagrant0]

And I'm not all that picky about how games look or what the theme is. Just look at my avatar :D. I'll look into Mabinogi.

On second thought, it looks like the combat system was revamped significantly with one of the more recent patches, so I cannot actually comment on the actual depth of the system or how it works in its current state.

 

Still might be worth looking into though.

 

Was this within the past year?

From the wiki, looks like it happened back in June 2012.

 

The system changed from having to charge up most skills before you can use them, to them being instantly charged, but having cooldowns. On the frontend, it doesn't change much since you still have to anticipate what an opponent will do and respond to it. The cooldowns for most skills don't really look like they would matter much since the previous system took a few seconds for a skill to be charged and ready, and using the same skill twice usually meant that the second usage took several seconds longer to charge. On the backend, it potentially changes everything since most of combat was about getting into a rhythm and being able to anticipate change or read behaviors. Even though the change seems to only impact players, it might mean needing different tactics and such. Windmill on the otherhand looks infinitely more useful now.

 

I may even go back to it to poke around a little since some of the skill requirements were changed to be less grindy.

[Aegrus]

Oh, sorry. I missed the part where you said you already know about Dark Souls.

[Delikatessen]

How about Evochron Mercenary? That game has one of the steepest learning curves I've seen in a long time (hooray for Newtonian based physics! :geek: ).

 

That, and it's a free-roam space game; a rare find in itself these days.

I've played it, didn't find it as entertaining as X3. X3: Terran Conflict (or more precisely, it's expansion Albion Prelude) was the entire reason I started the thread. There was one tutorial which was entirely optional, and everything else was left up to you.

[Mahtawa]

I Wanna Be The Guy series.

You can die on world map, you can die instantly after cutscene ends etc..

 

If you hate 8/16-bit graphics then.. You might pass this.

 

E: fixed wording because of keyboard!

Edited August 7, 2012 by Mahtawa

[DaedalusMachina]

Dragon's Dogma has a bit of introductory stuff, and if you run around like an idiot, you are basically guaranteed to get killed. Have to manually switch off the tutorials, I think. Didn't stock enough restoratives? Dead. Ran around outside until it got dark? Dead. Didn't build your team right? Dead.

 

Unfortunately, this lasts until you get into the swing of the game, and it does get easier from there.

[hector530]

Dragon's Dogma has a bit of introductory stuff, and if you run around like an idiot, you are basically guaranteed to get killed. Have to manually switch off the tutorials, I think. Didn't stock enough restoratives? Dead. Ran around outside until it got dark? Dead. Didn't build your team right? Dead.

 

Unfortunately, this lasts until you get into the swing of the game, and it does get easier from there.

 

seeing as how this was posted on "PC gaming" section you should prply mention Dragon's Dogma is console only..... and its gonna stay that way

[Lutine]

And I'm not all that picky about how games look or what the theme is. Just look at my avatar :D. I'll look into Mabinogi.

On second thought, it looks like the combat system was revamped significantly with one of the more recent patches, so I cannot actually comment on the actual depth of the system or how it works in its current state.

 

Still might be worth looking into though.

 

Was this within the past year?

From the wiki, looks like it happened back in June 2012.

 

The system changed from having to charge up most skills before you can use them, to them being instantly charged, but having cooldowns. On the frontend, it doesn't change much since you still have to anticipate what an opponent will do and respond to it. The cooldowns for most skills don't really look like they would matter much since the previous system took a few seconds for a skill to be charged and ready, and using the same skill twice usually meant that the second usage took several seconds longer to charge. On the backend, it potentially changes everything since most of combat was about getting into a rhythm and being able to anticipate change or read behaviors. Even though the change seems to only impact players, it might mean needing different tactics and such. Windmill on the otherhand looks infinitely more useful now.

 

I may even go back to it to poke around a little since some of the skill requirements were changed to be less grindy.

 

Hmm, I might go back to it myself and take a look around. If it's less grindy, all the better.

[Vagrant0]

Hmm, I might go back to it myself and take a look around. If it's less grindy, all the better.

Slightly less grindy. But mostly because of the destiny bonuses that give 2x credit to certain skills and the exp bonuses from gathering with the merchant destiny. I still have to chew through a ridiculous amount of ore fragments to finish up my Refine, but atleast I'm getting a good amount of experience from it.

 

The combat change really seems to make the most difference in another regard... connection. Before you needed a pretty much perfect connection and to change the nagle settings in order to be able to start charging a skill fast enough for it to lock right before getting hit. Now, most skills lock instantly, so connection becomes less of a limiting factor. Combined with Windmill no longer sucking up 10% your life, the new fighting skills, and higher strength mobs, combat feels marginally less routine. But, if you were at less than a 400 total, you're pretty much in noob territory again.

 

The downside is that the servers feel much less populated than before, and some of the older elements feel even more ignored, which can be a good thing or a bad one depending on perspective.