PixlBit

Gametap was that shit. I got introduced to so many PC classics that way, like Baldur's Gate 2.

This was my shit back in the Genesis days. One of those games that gets etched on your subconscious.While 2 and 3 play better, they never quite hooked me like the first.

I thought the thing about Scrap Yard Zone theme being based on Every Little Step was a apocryphal.

But this goes to show why I thought the music in Sonic 2 was a step down. They just sounded like video game music, with a harsh digital tone (imo), while the songs in Sonic 1 sound like "actual" songs. Warmer, familiar. This sound would make a return in Sonic 3, although to a lesser degree to my ears.

And the graphics have held up very well. Can't say they look worse to me now than when the game came out.

SYZ is my favorite, in the entire series, and still one of my favorite and most memorable game tracks. Starlight and Scrap Brain are so good too.

Haven't played Kenshi. Watched some videos. Looks cool as shit. Compelling world. Mechanics look like stuff we've seen before, so it's the setting that is the the selling point, to me.

I passed on both Pillars and Outer Worlds because of their themes/settings didn't attract me, but also I read a lot of criticisms of their systems, though now I don't remember exactly what the criticisms were lol.

Obsidian has had a bumpy road in the market, to say the least.

New Vegas is practically a miracle for the time it came out. That was a generation where we saw nearly every successor to a classic PC game or series get..."streamlined".  Including Fallout. Then NV comes out and is as just as intricate and rich as Fallout 1 and 2, and any other CRPG for that matter.

I've only seen Fallout 4 played with a survival mod, a genre I'm into. Made it look kind of fun. Other than that, never had interest. But do people not understand what the word 'perk' means? A perk is supposed to be something extra, not the foundation of your entire character development system! Todd Howard wants to make open world action games. He should be working at Ubisoft.

ZAMN is a game I've always remembered. Please don't tell me they replaced the sprites with asset store level 3D models, like so many remasters, rereleases, remakes, and recent sequels!

Tabletop RPGs are only limited by the ruleset, the minds of the players, and the mind of the GM. Video games replicate the first one pretty well, but the other two are limited by practical content limits and cpu intelligence. Human gamemaster level dynamic AI just isn't there yet, or it's not available to game developers at a practical expense.

What you're specifically commenting on is, I guess, character expression. While being a Figher, Mage, or Street Samurai ARE part of your role/identity (your trade/career is part of who you are)) it's the artists, animators, mo-cap actors, writers,and voice actors that  get to decide the personal touches. They get to decide how your avatar speaks and what he/she speaks, how they stand, how they move, how they gesticulate, how they look or can look.  In that light, zero video games allow you to actually role-play, unless there is some VR game with a fully reactive world I don't know about.

 Games like Tyranny are the exceptions, and more of then than not come from the singular lineage of Black Isle/Troika/Obsidian, or in the independent space, those influenced by them. I'm convinced most other developers making video RPGs have little if any experience with the source material: pen and paper RPGs; they just see what other video games have done and emulate. So they have no roadmap for the what and why of the genre, where to go, or what the possibilities are.

 Possibly another roadblock is the normalization of limitations in the most popular RPGs. Why deliver more than what a large number of players have come to expect from the most popular games, whether that's Final Fantasy, Mass Effect, The Witcher, or Persona?  Objectivley speaking, these games are far more..concise than RPGs normally aimed at the 'hardcore' CRPG audience.  They may succeed superbly in their own right, but people who only play these types of games may just assume they do all that can be done.  How much of a dent can/did exceptions like the fairly mainstream New Vegas (Obsidian again) make?

 Anyway, this is a topic I think about often and like to discuss. Anytime you want to chew the fat about it, I'm down :)

PS1. Vagrant Story, Parasite Eve, King's Field, Lunatic Dawn 3 broke away from the moldy mold of Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy. A major leap in the evolution of the genre, such that hasn't been seen again.

Was fascinated by this game back in the day. Not from playing it, but seeing picture of it in various Colecovision promo materials and Sears catalog lol. The things that got my attention as a kid...

I never asked for the game though. I pretty much received whatever seemed good to my family, or what a shop clerk recommended.

Cross Code is super responsive. But the good NES and SNES games also had super responsive and precise controls, maybe the most precise that have ever been. And it couldn't be any other way. We didn't have dashing or I-rolling or ledge grabbing then to give us a larger margin for error. You either moved and positioned yourself precisely, or you lost.  So the old controllers had to be responsive, and they were. Try playing NES or SNES games on an Xbox or PS controller, and watch as you get hit by shit you never got hit by before (multiply this if you're playing on an emulator and LCD screen).

Of course I think control quality on average is better now, as things rarely hit the bottom dredges of 8-bit games.

It's cool that consoles are getting more PC style games now, and vice versa.  Seen too many stupid flame wars based on misconcpetions of games the participants never played.