Avernum is out for Windows and iPad and it's a blast

[Corpekata]

Geneforge you create a character and one of the primary means of combat is summoning things to aid you. It's actually one of the core tenets of the story (Your faction is a world dominating group that casually creates creatures for all sorts of things). So your party is a variety of monsters and whatnot with varying abilities. Provided you don't get them killed or unsummon them they can act as your party members, even leveling up. There are other ways to play the game that are more solo based, but first timers will want to go with the summoner route.

[TillEulenspiegel]

Exile III of course. It's the best Exile game by some margin. The first three Avernum games are remakes of the three Exile games and are inferior in almost ever way, even graphically (2D tile graphics look far better).

Seconded. The first two Exiles have some advantages, but I just can't get into them again. I loved Exile III when it was released, and it's still easy to pick up and enjoy. The combat, the party building, the magic, the items, the explorable world packed with interesting stuff - all top notch, some of the best of its genre.

Also the fireball spell for squishing masses of goblins early on. Delightful.

[archonsod]

I lack your level of antipathy to games of that sort (I just consider them something of a separate, overpopulated genre), but it depends a bit on the details. Is it still party based, with pre-made NPC's, or are we talking pure solo?

As Corpekata said the game is kinda based around you summoning your own party. There's a nice mechanic regarding how you can customise your creatures and how many you can sustain at once which is tied in to your character's stats, so you've got a fair bit of leeway between solo character to leading a small army depending on how you build the character.

I'd actually recommend Avadon as a starting point. It's specifically designed with an eye to drawing in new players so you get a slightly easier time in the first few hours. It's party based, albeit you only design your main character and can choose from a roster of NPCs to fill out the party for each mission (and somewhat similar to Bioware, they have their own personalities, sidequests et al). It's pretty heavily story focused with a fairly closed world, but the writing is actually superb throughout. On the downside it's somewhat shorter than the rest of Spiderweb's output ('only' 30 hours or so) but in compensation it's also somewhat cheaper. If you find you enjoy it then you can jump on one of the other two series; Geneforge is more story focused while Avernum / Exile is more about exploration but the underlying system is pretty similar between the two.

[Vexing Vision]

Exile III of course. It's the best Exile game by some margin. The first three Avernum games are remakes of the three Exile games and are inferior in almost ever way, even graphically (2D tile graphics look far better). The last few Avernum games were made in an updated engine that borrowed code from Geneforge. The combat was somewhat improved from the earlier Avernum games. You might like them.

Exile 3 was the very first shareware game I ever bought. I completely and fully agree with Wizardry - however, to me, the game hasn't aged well, and Avernum 3 has a much clearer UI and usability. Inventory-management in Exile was always a bit of a pain, and that alone makes Avernum 3 worthwhile.

I remain a massive fan of Geneforge 5 due to the fact that you can join (and betray) five very, very different factions and actually have significant consequences to your actions. That was lovely to see.

I thoroughly enjoyed Avernum 5, and Avernum 6 features some of the best boss-battles seen in any turn-based game ever - but Avernum 6 lives from you knowing what's going on in Avernum, so it requires you to have at least a passing knowledge of the previous few games to fully enjoy.

Avadon is nice. I never finished it, because the character progression was too boring for me. But it's nice.

[Wizardry]

Exile 3 was the very first shareware game I ever bought. I completely and fully agree with Wizardry - however, to me, the game hasn't aged well, and Avernum 3 has a much clearer UI and usability. Inventory-management in Exile was always a bit of a pain, and that alone makes Avernum 3 worthwhile.

If I'd advise people to play games based on the friendliness of their UI then I'd be left to promote the shittiest games in the genre. Literally all of the best CRPGs have shitty UIs. Luckily it doesn't matter much because CRPGs are turn-based games where shitty UIs matter far less.

[archonsod]

Avernum 6 lives from you knowing what's going on in Avernum, so it requires you to have at least a passing knowledge of the previous few games to fully enjoy.

The same is true of Geneforge. Really for both series you get a lot more out of it if you're familiar with events of the previous games, hence why I'd pick Avadon to start with since it's standalone at the moment.

[vinraith]

I'd actually recommend Avadon as a starting point. It's specifically designed with an eye to drawing in new players so you get a slightly easier time in the first few hours. It's party based, albeit you only design your main character and can choose from a roster of NPCs to fill out the party for each mission (and somewhat similar to Bioware, they have their own personalities, sidequests et al). It's pretty heavily story focused with a fairly closed world, but the writing is actually superb throughout. On the downside it's somewhat shorter than the rest of Spiderweb's output ('only' 30 hours or so) but in compensation it's also somewhat cheaper. If you find you enjoy it then you can jump on one of the other two series; Geneforge is more story focused while Avernum / Exile is more about exploration but the underlying system is pretty similar between the two.

That sounds suspiciously like a Bioware S&C game without Bioware production values, which is definitely not what I'm looking for.

[icupnimpn2]

That sounds suspiciously like a Bioware S&C game without Bioware production values, which is definitely not what I'm looking for.

Well, look. I admire how much you shop around before settling on a game. But with Spiderweb you don't have to rely on others' opinions. So long as playing a demo doesn't somehow ruin your excitement for a purchase, Spiderweb has some of the longest demos in the business. The Avadon demo is something like a 3rd of the whole game and you can keep your game save if you do buy. These are available for basically all of their games.

When Spiderweb says "Huge, free demo" they mean it.

The first Spiderweb game I bought was Geneforge V, at that time it was the deepest discount I'd seen for one of Vogel's games, purchased through GamersGate. Before then I'd stayed away because of the prices on his website and because I wasn't sure if I'd like the games enough to shell out $25 or whatever. But I was being a tool, since I could have just downloaded a demo. I think that all of those years spent as a kid where I couldn't afford a game but could afford a magazine with a demo disk have made me demo-averse. I just want to hoard.

But before buying Geneforge V I downloaded a demo of one of the Avernum games and found it quirky and enjoyable enough to make the purchase on GamersGate. Then I played Geneforge V and was surprised by how weird it is.

Give these games a go. The interfaces are a bit gitchy gootchy and take away from the experience, but the writing and the play are enjoyable.

And if the demos aren't enough, I'd consider sparing you buyer's remorse entirely by giving you a spare Avadon key that's just hanging out in a spreadsheet at the moment. But I'd like to know if you really want it first by having you play the demo.

[Revisor]

Aaand this just in - Huge, huge post on Stat min-maxing for the compulsive among us. :)

With the only difference that the community has agreed that Melee is always better than Lethal Blow and Dual Wielding.

[Revisor]

Official RPS love here
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012...-from-the-pit/

I've restarted the game based on the above linked min-maxing and I'm now steamrolling through Avernum with my fighter/mage/mage/priest combination.

This time no Cave lore, no First aid and no Arcane lore (until lvl 12 when it's 3x Sage lore).