Games for my Birthday - Random Blurted Suggestions are Welcome

[TheMinxTail]

So it's my 18th birthday on July 7th, and as a special gift I've already got myself a badass new computer for £300 including shipping. As for my other gifts, I usually get a small budget to grab games and such with. However, this year in particular, rather than focus on using all my money on a small number of high priced and modern games, I've been taking more retro adventures into the depths of gaming as of late. I want some suggestions for classic games I can probably get cheap. And hey, maybe it'll trigger some discussion on classic games, and that's always good, right? Well here's my shopping list below so far. I guess I have an interest in filling out an RPG library usually, since I believe it's a genre tahat (despite a lot of mishaps) when it's done right, it's done really right. However, since I just got a new computer specifically to play video games because my piece of crap current one mysteriously broke down to the extent of not playing anything more recent than Neverwinter Nights, I'd really favour PC gaming suggestions. I have a few budget titles like a re-release of Demon Stone, Spellforce, and a copy of Fable for the PC, but the most current one I own is The Witcher.

Oh, and if you want to say why one of my choices isn't that great, feel free, but no excessive fanboyism. Yoda commands you! (Why Yoda? I dunno, I've just had a hankering for the old trilogy lately)

Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga 1+2 (PS2)
God of War (PS2)
Silent Hill 2 (any)
Killer7 (any)
Soul Nomad and the World Eaters (PS2)
Persona 3 (PSP) - [it only comes out in english at all the day before my birthday, so I won't have imported it across the Atlantic in time, but it seems intresting. I have a friend who'll lend me FES if I ask]
Final Fantasy IX (Playstation Network)
Video Capture Device + Webcam (so I can rip off Spoony, that'd be awesome)

Thanks

[Optimystik]

Classic RPGs for cheap? Morrowind and Jade Empire/Kotor will fit the bill nicely.

They are more modern, but you should be able to get Oblivion and Dragon Age fairly cheaply as well.There's also lots of DLC and fan-content for the PC versions to keep you occupied for months.

The Mass Effect games are great RPGs too.

[Sneak]

Giants: Citizen Kabuto!

And Loom. And the Monkey Island games. And VTM Bloodlines. And the Fallout games (excluding Fallout 3). And the Baldur's Gate games (excluding Dark Alliance).

[Tirian]

For PS2 games, Okami, Katamari Damacy, and Beyond Good and Evil are easy suggestions and I'll just beat the crowd by getting them out of the way. I'd also stick XIII on that list. If you like God of War, then the Prince of Persia trilogy is also worth mentioning.

It's harder to find good old PC games for cheap, but Valve is really an awesome resource there. Morrowind is a great choice. Again, just to core dump games I love that always come up on these lists, Heroes of Might and Magic III, Alpha Centauri, The Sims (1 or 2 are both great, don't know about 3 personally), and a wide variety of LucasArts graphic adventure games (particularly Monkey Island 3 and 4, Grim Fandango, and Day of the Tentacle).

[Eloi]

Get Persona 4 for the PS2. Its one of the best games I've ever played, or at least in that genre. I think its better than Persona 3, the third one just didn't connect with me like the fourth one, but you might be different.
And that's my two cents (penneth?) worth.

[Kiren]

I never played them, but I here good things about fallout 1 and 2, of course fallout 3 is epic, and available for about 20 bucks by now, fallout new vegas comes out later this year.

[Knaight]

On PC Rpgs try the Geneforge series. Its pretty awesome.

[Sneak]

On PC Rpgs try the Geneforge series. Its pretty awesome.

And if you like that, check out the Exile and/or Avernum series.

[Knaight]

Avernum in particular, awesome as they are.

[factotum]

Head over to Good Old Games (www.gog.com) and browse their catalogue. Just off the top of my head I can immediately recommend Freespace 2 (you'll need a joystick to play that one, though) and Outcast. The latter had amazing graphics for its day, and the storyline is top-notch.

[Serpentine]

Portal! It's one of the few games this guy (http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/10-The-Orange-Box) has actually liked! And there's another one coming out! And it looks like a serious head...screw!

[TheMinxTail]

Classic RPGs for cheap? Morrowind and Jade Empire/Kotor will fit the bill nicely.

They are more modern, but you should be able to get Oblivion and Dragon Age fairly cheaply as well.There's also lots of DLC and fan-content for the PC versions to keep you occupied for months.

The Mass Effect games are great RPGs too.

I actually own all of those, except Jade Empire and Kotor. Hmm... Thanks for teh suggestion.

[TheMinxTail]

Get Persona 4 for the PS2. Its one of the best games I've ever played, or at least in that genre. I think its better than Persona 3, the third one just didn't connect with me like the fourth one, but you might be different.
And that's my two cents (penneth?) worth.

I already have Persona 4. Played it once, and I never want to again for a very long time for one simple reason. THAT GAME IS ****ING AWESOME! It's the best game I have ever played, I think. I won't go into Persona 3 expecting it to be better, but I have a few friends bugging me to try it.

[TheMinxTail]

Portal! It's one of the few games this guy (http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/10-The-Orange-Box) has actually liked! And there's another one coming out! And it looks like a serious head...screw!

Ah, lovable old Yahtzee. Yeah, I own the Orange Box - and Portal Still Alive for the XBLA. Good idea though/

[TheMinxTail]

Giants: Citizen Kabuto!

And Loom. And the Monkey Island games. And VTM Bloodlines. And the Fallout games (excluding Fallout 3). And the Baldur's Gate games (excluding Dark Alliance).

I actually bought Dark Alliance when I happened across it a few months back. I'd never actually even heard of the Baldur's Gate series, I jsut recognised the logo - and I am of course a DnD player. As for the rest of teh series, which one in particular would you recommend?

[Ashery]

{Scrubbed}

Darklands is a sandbox game set in a low fantasy version of Germany at the turn of the fifteenth century. There's a high degree of historical accuracy as even the fantasy elements are based around beliefs held at the time. "Magic" exists to the extent that one can pray to saints they have knowledge of for various benefits (Raising certain skills, curing plague victims, to name just a couple) and brew potions that have a variety of effects (Healing, dissolving locks, etc).

The main downside is that you'll have to keep track of your quests on your own as there is no quest journal. It's not as bad as it seems, though, as the quests (At least so far as I've seen) are straightforward.

[Serpentine]

Dear MinxTail,
The Edit button is your friend.
Sincerely,
Serpentine.

Anyway, there goes my idea...

[Quincunx]

What sort of gaming-esque rig did you get for 300 quid? Know several people who'd like to know.

[Sneak]

I actually bought Dark Alliance when I happened across it a few months back. I'd never actually even heard of the Baldur's Gate series, I jsut recognised the logo - and I am of course a DnD player. As for the rest of teh series, which one in particular would you recommend?

Dark Alliance isn't bad, it's just not really an RPG or at all related to the rest of the series.

Baldur's Gate 2 is pretty great. You might want to quickly look up the story of BG1 online somewhere beforehand, but I think it shouldn't be hard to jump straight into the second one.

(For the others, Fallout 2 is the best and I'd recommend Monkey Island 1.)

[Cyrano]

Head over to Good Old Games (www.gog.com) and browse their catalogue. Just off the top of my head I can immediately recommend Freespace 2 (you'll need a joystick to play that one, though) and Outcast. The latter had amazing graphics for its day, and the storyline is top-notch.

Actually it's perfectly possible to play Freespace 2 on a keyboard, or even keyboard and mouse - although the latter is a supremely bad idea. It's easier to use a joystick, because that's just more intuitive for 3D space sims, but some time spent with the keyboard, and maybe rearranging the controls to suit your fancy, and you'll be able to enjoy one of MY absolute favorites - nowadays, it may not be the prettiest, but damn if it isn't fun.

That site also apparently has Arcanum, fabulous old RPG that will, apparently, be immensely improved once you download a patch - although I admit I beat it without coming into contact with any glaring stability faults in particular, that's apparently not the case with the vast majority of the internet community.

Gog also has the Fallouts, 1 and 2. I'd suggest 2 more, with a patch.

All of these are 6 bucks. If you're deadset on RPGs avoid Freespace, of course, but as far as pewpewpewlaserspaceflight goes, Freespace is pretty incredible. I haven't really made any original suggestions, though. Sorry. Oh, and get System Shock. More shooter with FPS elements, and the graphics may be blocky as all get-out, but so so so so so worth it, good GOD so worth it.

OH, doing more browsing on Gog. (Thanks for posting that btw, factotum.) Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee. It's a 2d platformer. It was some of the most fun I have ever had and one of the only things I missed when my original PS broke. Sort of a blend of puzzle-action platformer. You've got no guns or weapons of any kind and your objective is to find your enslaved friends and then lead them across dangerous bits of territory towards magical-portal-induced freedom via a few simple commands. You get the ability to, when sufficiently out of harm's way, possess those hostile squid-things with machine guns that are trying to kill you, and get them to do some dirty work for you. There's some other stuff along the way. It's fantastic.

[Brewdude]

+1 to
Fallout 1 and 2 (2 is better, but do 1 first)
Grim Fandango (LucasArt's Best Adventure Game)
Citizen Kabuto
More suggestions:
System Shock 2
Thief
Lets not forget StarCraft and Warcraft 3.
Anything by BullFrog or Bungie before they went pure xbox: Magic Carpet in particular
Dungeon Keeper 2

[cha0s4a11]

Disgaea 1 & 2 are good for the PSP if you are into Tactical RPGs.

As for classics, I believe that PSN has Final Fantasy 7, 8, and Tactics available for download for $10 each.

[Zevox]

RPGs and you have access to a backwards-compatible PS3 (I'm guessing based on the PSN & PS2 mentions on that list)?

Dragon Quest 8, if you like traditional-style JRPGs. Nothing too exceptional in terms of the story, but it's well-told even if not original, and if you like good old style turn-based RPG combat, it has some of the best.

The Xenosaga trilogy. The story gets awfully convoluted once you get past the first game, but it has some good characters, a few good story arcs, and an interesting variant of turn-based RPG combat (a different one for each game!). Including some very fun mech combat in Episode 3 (and decent mech combat in 2; just avoid them in 1 though).

Disgaea: Hour of Darkness (or Afternoon of Darkness on the PSP), if you like tactical RPGs. Excellent gameplay, great cast of characters, good story, lots of humor.

I'll also second KotOR and Jade Empire.

Zevox

[warty goblin]

It's harder to find good old PC games for cheap, but Valve is really an awesome resource there. Morrowind is a great choice. Again, just to core dump games I love that always come up on these lists, Heroes of Might and Magic III, Alpha Centauri, The Sims (1 or 2 are both great, don't know about 3 personally), and a wide variety of LucasArts graphic adventure games (particularly Monkey Island 3 and 4, Grim Fandango, and Day of the Tentacle).
Actually its really easy, and getting easier. Steam has some, Impulse others, and Gamersgate more than either, but the real king of the retro heap is, not surprisingly, Good Old Games. gog.com contains so much old (and not so old) awesomeness that it has literally recalibrated the way I look at game prices, to the point where anything above $20 seems to be actually excessively expensive, since at that point I think "I could buy this, or I could get two or three games from there, at least one of which is likely to be better than this game". And besides that, they are honestly the best digital distribution service around - a nice, light and optional client for downloads, zero DRM (not even Steam style, where you have to keep the client running), and a devilishly attractive website.

Specifically I'd recommend Sacred Gold, a game that I find to be a lot of fun if you have any liking of Diablo type games. I honestly don't particularly like the genre, but Sacred still floats my boat thanks to an open world, slightly non-traditional approach to leveling and skills, and just the right amount of European insanity. Sacrifice, although not precisely an RPG, is well worth playing, and graphically looks far better than any ten year old game has any right to.