Welcome to Older Games, please read this first Options

[Alexander]

Hello all,

and welcome to the older games section, this is a place where we can talk about everything related to older games. The games before Oblivion that is, whatever you want to talk about it, whether it's a question about a quest in one of the games, or just discussing the plot - go right ahead.

The normal forum rules still apply though

[Sinder Velvin]

Older Games List And Release Years And Genres

The Elder Scrolls 1: Arena (1993) (RPG)
The Elder Scrolls 2: Daggerfall (1996) (RPG)
The Elder Scrolls Legends: Battlespire (1997) (Action/RPG)
The Elder Scrolls Adventures: Redguard (1998) (Action/Adventure)
The Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind (2002) (RPG)
The Elder Scrolls 3: Tribunal (2002) (RPG)
The Elder Scrolls 3: BloodMoon (2003) (RPG)
The Elder Scrolls Travels: Dawnstar (2003) (Action/RPG)
The Elder Scrolls Travels: Stormhold (2003) (Action/RPG)
The Elder Scrolls Travels: Shadowkey (2004) (RPG)

Summary of The Elder Scrolls 2: Daggerfall By Me

Short Background Info

The Elder Scrolls 2: Daggerfall was released in 1996. It takes place in the Third Era, in the Illiac Bay region (which consists of large parts of High Rock and Hammerfell).

Storyline

The storyline of The Elder Scrolls 2: Daggerfall is way too complicated. It involves tons of conspiracies and stuff like that and it has 6 different possible endings. It is also not very obvious when you're following the Main Quest, just like in The Elder Scrolls 3: Tribunal.

Complexity

This is the most complex The Elder Scrolls game out there. The landmass in which you can travel is twice the size of Great Britain. There are hundreds of towns, temples and dungeons. Luckily, you don't need to walk everywhere, as you can fast travel to another side of the map quite easily. One drawback, though: almost everything is randomly generated. If you prefer games in which everything is placed by hand, you won't like Daggerfall. If, however, you want to buy a game that you can play forever, Daggerfall is an excellent choice. The number of quests in the game is unlimited. Unfortunately, the quests are randomized too, but what did you expect? Err... By the way, you can buy your own house. The list from which you can choose is huge. You get to choose the city where you want your house, you get to choose the size of the house. You can also buy your own boat, your own horse and a cart to carry your things with.

Difficulty

The game can be quite hard for someone playing it for the first time. The sheer number of things that you can do is quite confusing, and you can get lost quite easily. There are also tons of pesky bugs...

Quality

Daggerfall is an excellent game, if you can get past the bugs. To tell you the truth, when the game first came out, it was unplayable. Unplayable. Guards would attack you when you were resting in your own house, 8 quests out of 10 couldn't be completed, etcetera. There have been many patches with many fixes, but there are still bugs out there.

Character Generation

There are 8 races in the game: Bretons, Redguards, Nords, High Elves, Dark Elves, Wood Elves, Argonians and Khajiiti. There is nudity in this game, both for men and for women...

Monsters

The number of monsters is quite large, which is always a good thing. You can actually stop certain monsters from attacking you if you learn their language (there are language skills for this; you won't actually be able to talk to the monsters, just to stop them from attacking you).

Books And Dialogue

There are enough books in the game to keep you satisfied. The NPC dialogue is a bit dull and they don't have much to say besides giving you directions.

Graphics

Hmm... About the graphics? Well, creatures, items and people are sprites, but houses and dungeons are modelled in 3D. The graphics weren't all too bad for that time, and I still like them, but for today's standards they aren't too great.

Technical Problems

Daggerfall can be made to work in Windows XP, though it's a bit difficult.

Summary of The Elder Scrolls Legens: Battlespire By Me

Short Background Info

The Battlespire is the college of Imperial battlemages. Imagine it as being an elite Mages Guild. It is found on a plane between Nirn and Oblivion.

The game itself, The Elder Scrolls Legends: Battlespire, takes place in the Battlespire and in several planes of Oblivion.

Storyline

The story has it that Mehrunes Dagon invaded the Battlespire to use it as a bridgehead to invade Tamriel. You, of course, have to stop him.

Complexity

The game is pretty much an Action/RPG. You can increase your skills, get new spells, new items, gain levels, etcetera, but you can't travel to cities (makes sense), you don't carry any gold (no merchants in the game, so no gold), you can't rest (which is why the game is hard) and the game is divided in levels. Yes, you heard it right: levels. This game is the most linear Elder Scrolls game (except for The Elder Scrolls Travels: Dawnstar and The Elder Scrolls Travels: Stormhold) and it is also the shortest (except for The Elder Scrolls Travels).

Difficulty

Some people say that Battlespire is the hardest The Elder Scrolls game. I find it to be quite easy, though a bit harder than the other very easy The Elder Scrolls games. Then again, my definition of difficulty is somewhat different from yours...

Quality

Some people say that Battlespire is the worst The Elder Scrolls game. I say that either The Elder Scrolls Travels: Dawnstar or The Elder Scrolls Travels: Stormhold are the worst (but what can you expect from mobile phone games?). I really like Battlespire, but that's because I look at it like an Action/RPG game, while some people expected it to be a classic The Elder Scrolls RPG game.

Character Generation

Anyway, there are 6 races in the game (Breton, Redguard, Nord, High Elf, Dark Elf, Wood Elf). There is also nudity in the game (the best The Elder Scrolls nudity, I might add), but there is no male nudity: just female nudity (sorry). There aren't as many skills as in Daggerfall or Morrowind, but I think that there's enough of them. Like in Daggerfall, you can choose for your character to have advantages and disadvantages (though the number of advantages and disadvantages is smaller than in Daggerfall).

Monsters

There aren't a lot of monster types. But they're my favorite The Elder Scrolls monsters, because they are more difficult to defeat than other The Elder Scrolls monsters, because they are mostly Daedra (and I love fighting Daedra) and because you can talk to them. Yes, that's right. You can try to talk to any monster that you encounter. Some will accept your invitation, while some will not. There will actually be some that will invite you to talk to them, and some will just start the conversation right away.

Books And Dialogue

Don't think that you don't get to find books, scrolls, letters and the such. There's plenty of those. And there are non-aggresive NPCs too (though very few of them).

Graphics

The graphics? Good enough for me. Why? Let me explain. Arena had 2D graphics, Daggerfall had 2D/3D graphics, Battlespire has 2D/3D graphics, Redguard has 3D graphics, Morrowind has 3D graphics. While in Arena you could rotate 360 degrees, you were unable to look up or down, and thus the game is considered 2D. In Daggerfall you could look up and down, and the cities, houses and dungeons that you went to were 3D, but the characters, monsters and items were sprites, so they were 2D. The game had huge problems with clipping (you would often fall through the floor and into the void; and you could also get stuck in doors, walls, monsters, etcetera). Battlespire also had 2D characters and monsters, but the weapons were 3D, and they rotated around in the inventory. The dungeons were also much better graphically, and the fact that they were not randomly generated (they were randomly generated in Arena and Daggerfall) also helped. So, Battlespire had better graphics than Daggerfall, and that's good enough for me. However, there were still clipping problems... By the way, Redguard is almost 100% 3D, but not quite: sprites were still used in special effects.

Multiplayer

Battlespire has multiplayer. I've played it in multiplayer with two people so far, and I can say that I've enjoyed myself. It can be played cooperatively (you play the game's normal levels together with your friend, but you can't talk to monsters or NPCs) or you can fight your friends in deathmatch and capture the flag. The way that you are dressed does not affect the way that you appear on your friend's screen (there are two sprites: a male warrior one, and a female warrior one; see, even if you're a mage and have no armor, you will still look like a male warrior).

Techinical Problems

And sorry, Battlespire is the only The Elder Scrolls game that can't be played on Windows XP under any circumstances. Why? Because Windows XP doesn't have VESA drivers that Battlespire uses. So until a new version of Dosbox is released, Battlespire can't be played on Windows XP. I'm sorry.

Summary of The Elder Scrolls Adventures: Redguard By Me

Short Background Info

The Elder Scrolls Adventures: Redguard was released in 1998. It is the only The Elder Scrolls game which takes place in the Second Era of Tamriel and it is also the only game in the series in which you don't generate your character; you have to play as Cyrus the Redguard.

Storyline

The story? The storyline of The Elder Scrolls Adventures: Redguard is my favorite The Elder Scrolls storyline. It starts out with Cyrus looking for his sister and it evolves to something bigger... Something much bigger. To tell you the truth, I don't want to spoil the story for you. But I'll give you a small list of touristic attractions: Dwemer ruins, a working Dwemer observatory (which you can use to look at the different constellations), a Dragon's lair (which you have to fight), Goblin caves, a Necromancer's tower, a very nice city with a palace and even Oblivion.

Complexity

The game is an Action/Adventure game. You get to duel with opponents (best melee combat in an The Elder Scrolls game, with combos and blocks)and to solve dozens of puzzles (of various types, from dialogue puzzles to lego-like puzzles), all of this combined with a bit of jumping (from rope to rope or from ledge to ledge, depending on the situation) and a lot of dialogue. You don't gain levels, can't increase your skills and can't choose what to wear, but you have an inventory with books, potions, maps, quest items, etcetera. There are various merchants around, and you have gold (you can have a maximum of 500 gold at any given time), but you can't rest. The game is less linear than Battlespire, since, while there are a number of quests that you have to do to finish the game, you can do them in mostly any order (except for some that have prerequisites). Also, you can travel around and explore the island as much as you want. It's longer than Battlespire, but still short.

Time doesn't pass in the game. If you want time to pass, you need to complete quests. Sorry.

Difficulty

Is the game hard? That depends. If you like Action games, dueling in Redguard won't be too hard. If you like Adventure games, solving the puzzles won't be too hard. If you're not a fan of either genres, you might find the game to be too hard, and you might not like it in the first place. I, as a fan of both genres, loved the game and found it to be very easy.

Quality

Some people didn't like Redguard because they were RPG fans. The game, however, is great. The combat is very good, the puzzles are intelligent and logical, the dialogue is excellent (Todd Howard, Kurt Kuhlmann and Michael Kirkbride were the game's designers) and everything else is nice. But if you expect it to be an RPG, you will be sorely disappointed.

Character Generation

As I said above, you can't generate your character; you have to play as Cyrus.

Monsters

There aren't a lot of monsters types in this game either, and you fight soldiers mostly, but the monsters that are in the game are very nice, and a Morrowind fan will certainly like them. Remember those Centurion Spheres in Morrowind? You fight them here as well. Remember those Steam Centurions? You fight a huge one in Redguard. Remember the Goblins in Tribunal? They're here as well, together with Trolls and a big bad Goblin King. The best part is that you get to fight a Dragon (and expect a few Daedra as well). Oh, by the way, guards taunt you in combat (and comment your fighting style, and talk to other guards about how to kill you).

Books And Dialogue

There are books in this game, but they're always opened at a certain page that contains information that will be useful to you on your quest. There are a lot of items in the game that you can pick up and rotate around in 3D (you can look at them from all angles). NPCs have great dialogue.

Graphics

Graphics? 3D ones. Very nice ones. For a game made back in 1998, the graphics are exceptional. One thing, though. Back in 1998, when Redguard was released, games used 3DFX hardware acceleration instead of Direct3D like nowadays. So, while you can play Redguard in Software mode, if you want to see it in all of its glory (in 3DFX mode) you're going to have to buy an old Voodoo card or find a 3DFX emulator (not hard to find, but a bit harder to make them work properly). The game has cutscenes made with the game's engine and prerendered cutscenes as well.

Technical Problems

Redguard can be made to work in Windows XP, though it's a bit difficult.