Great Games That Inspired Absolutely Nobody

[Humbaba]

Often a game is good and spawns a million imitators and eventually a genre or subgenre. Not always however. There are cases of games that reviewed and sold well and were innovative but no one copied their innovation. It was like that for IE style crpgs up until relatively recently. Let's discuss why that is.

First that comes to mind is Wizardry 8. Objectively the best Wizardry game, it was a turn based blobber-FPS hybrid. It was well received but no one cared that much apparently, because there are no Wiz8-likes. Not even in current year with a thriving indie scene does any dev care to make a new Wiz8. No one cares to emulate the wizzes anyway aside from jrpgs. Shame really, I prefer the role system to more conventional DnD style class systems tbh.

Anudda one would be Myth. Cult classic but nobody's making a similar unit focussed RTS. Remakes are out of the question because apparently no one truly knows who owns the rights to the Myth IP. I suppose gamers are more into autistic keyboard mashing and micro managing sims rather than slow and methodical strategy.

JA2 just got a sequel but that one draws more from Nucom rather than it's predecessor. Is crouching and physics based shooting to difficult to program these days? Have gamers become to dumb? Why did Siretch go bankrupt anyway?


-Humbaba

[Lich]

Didn't read OP; Diablo 1, excepting Diablo 2.

[GhostCow]

Mount and Blade combat. Why hasn't anyone cloned this into a game that isn't ****?

[asf]

Not reading this yellow crap

[Gunnar]

Not reading this yellow crap

But he needs it to be yellow so everyone can know how special and unique and precious he is

[wndrbr]

Last edited by rusty_shackleford on July 30th, 2023, 21:47, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: removed the gay color

[asf]

Reasons things like myth and m&b have no decent clones is because these games (or some features thereof) are quite well made and hard to replicate properly. M&B is a funny case, the combat engine was pretty much completed in early 2000s, and it is still pretty good. Since then the ******** turks have managed to fail miserably in every other aspect of the game, then making a giant piece of crap called bannerlord. It is obvious early success was a fluke and they have no idea how to design anything else in games.

Myth is something else, while the tactical engine is fun and brutal, the game has many other decent features like great ambiance, one of the best writing in games and reasonably good art. Having a game doing well in all these parts seems nearly impossible these days, with all the ******* in the industry. Copying only the tactical engine from myth is a certain path to mediocrity.

[Acrux]

Last edited by rusty_shackleford on July 30th, 2023, 21:47, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: removed the gay color

Agree. @rusty_shackleford needs to stop protecting @Humbaba's retardation.

[Tweed]

Not reading this yellow crap

What yellow crap?

[Val the Moofia Boss]

In Shadow of the Colossus (2005), you could freeform climb across the body of a humongous creature. You would then climb to the creature's vitals and stab it, ie plunging your sword into a wing mucle on a flying creature or stabbing it's brain. Fantasy games today still have you nonsensically slashing at a dragon's ankles.

Guild Wars 2: Path of Fire (2017) which introduced a unique mount system where each mount had different powers (ie, jumping up cliffs, blinking forward, hovering over liquids, roller beetles that can race, etc), and even implemented momentum based flying that didn't trivialize the world and blows riding in every other game out of the water. Pretty much every release since then still has you riding a mundane horse around or flying on a dragon with zero restrictions.

Thief's (1998) sound detection system. Staying in the shadows and out of sight is easy. It is not being heard that is the hard part. You created more or less noise depending on what surfaces you were on. You couldn't even slow-walk across a marble floor without your loud footsteps echoing and drawing attention, so you either had to lure the NPCs away, shoot moss arrows on the floor that would dampen your noise and hop scotch between them to the other side, find another way around, or sprint and try to outrun the guards. Dishonored was touted as a successor to Thief but lacked the critical sound detection system that made the game so hard.

Mount & Blade's directional swings and blocking, as aforementioned by @GhostCow. However, because movement is usually independent of weapon swings, it often devolves into zoning in and out of range and hoping your weapon hits first, rather than any actual back and forth parrying. Is also an RTS/RPG hybrid where you could order your troops around on a battlefield as you controlled your character.

Sakura Wars (1996). Is a visual novel/SRPG hybrid. It used timed dialogue choices to make you more immersed and make the visual novel gameplay an engaging rather than a passive experience. The player has a short window of opportunity to choose a dialogue option. If the timer runs out, the player character remains silent, and the person they are conversing with will react as such. Sometimes, if you remain silent a few times in a row, they will think you're giving them the silent treatment and get mad at you. Sometimes remaining silent is the right answer. Depends on the character you are talking to and the situation. These dialogue options can be spontaneous and affect gameplay a little bit. One timed dialogue that pops up during a battle forces you to recall the color of a ribbon a girl was wearing earlier in the morning; failure to do so makes her demoralized and lowers her stats during the battle. Starting with the third game, you could angle the anlog stick to determine the intensity of your dialogue option. For instance, the player can angle their response to be loud enough to be overheard outside the room, or only heard by the character they are speaking to. Characters might get mad if you start yelling in their face, or if you are speaking too low; depends on the situation and character you are talking to.

[rusty_shackleford]

Guild Wars. I wish this was an actual RPG instead of being designed for PvP. Has one of the better interactive worlds in any game. Great companion system.

Guild Wars 2: Path of Fire (2017) which introduced a unique mount system where each mount had different powers (ie, jumping up cliffs, blinking forward, hovering over liquids, roller beetles that can race, etc), and even implemented momentum based flying that didn't trivialize the world and blows riding in every other game out of the water. Pretty much every release since then still has you riding a mundane horse around or flying on a dragon with zero restrictions.

EQ2 mostly did this first. They had a lot of good ideas that were later picked up in other games. e.g., FF14's crafting system is just EQ2's crafting system.

[General Reign]

Any games like this that I am missing?

[Emphyrio]

Majesty

[Acrux]

In Shadow of the Colossus (2005), you could freeform climb across the body of a humongous creature. You would then climb to the creature's vitals and stab it, ie plunging your sword into a wing mucle on a flying creature or stabbing it's brain. Fantasy games today still have you nonsensically slashing at a dragon's ankles.

I think it's a shame no one has followed up on this, and I wish it had been released for PC. It's a great concept for an RPG. Dragon's Dogma has a little bit of this by jumping on some enemies.

Majesty

Several games say they are inspired by Majesty, but none of them do it well.

[Humbaba]

Majesty

Majesty isn't that good and too RNG and AI dependent.



-Humbaba

[GhostCow]

Spore just randomly came to mind. Strange that no one made the sim that Spore was originally supposed to be

[Emphyrio]

Majesty

Majesty isn't that good and too RNG and AI dependent.



-Humbaba

only on the maps that limit the number of heroes you can have. If you play it right you'll have so many heroes rng won't matter. Don't waste money on wizards.

[The_Mask]

Don't waste money on wizards.

Unless someone is hitting the Wizard's Tower on exactly the opposite side where the Wizard must spawn, and a Paladin is on its way to engage the monster. Especially, if it's a Medusa.

[Acrux]

Don't waste money on wizards.

Build a ring of 6 inns around a guardhouse. Between that and the 2nd marketplace, you'll never worry about money again.

[asf]

Spore just randomly came to mind. Strange that no one made the sim that Spore was originally supposed to be

Maybe because spore is a piece of ****

[Val the Moofia Boss]

I really liked being able to make my own creatures in Spore. You could save your creation as a .PNG and post it to the forums and download other people's .PNGs and drop them into your Spore folder to get their creatures. Spent a lot of times on the forums looking at other people's creations and the stuff they made in the adventure editor. Would be cool if you could pick a different artstyle rather than the rounded, cartoony aesthetic.

[asf]

******

[wndrbr]

In Shadow of the Colossus (2005), you could freeform climb across the body of a humongous creature. You would then climb to the creature's vitals and stab it, ie plunging your sword into a wing mucle on a flying creature or stabbing it's brain. Fantasy games today still have you nonsensically slashing at a dragon's ankles.

there's still a decent amount of games that feature huge monster with location-specific damage and climbing mechanics, i.e. monhun, dragons dogma, castlevania lords of shadow, etc. Not to mention a ton of SotC-inspired indie clones.

[Acrux]

Not to mention a ton of SotC-inspired indie clones.

I'm genuinely curious what those are.

[wndrbr]

Not to mention a ton of SotC-inspired indie clones.

I'm genuinely curious what those are.

my cursory search has revealed only one such game - Praey for the Gods.

I probably had the wrong impression because a lot of indie devs like to throw the words "inspired by Shadow of the Colossus" around, while in reality they wanted to say "Inspired by Team Ico games".

[Humbaba]

Maybe because spore is a piece of ****

Spore's creature creator is technically impressive especially for the time, as is the space stage which is were most of the budget must have went because everything else but the creature stage sucks. Shame is though, that all the weird **** you can do with your creatures is purely aesthetic aside from the hands and feet etc. you put on them. You could make a stick with arms and legs and it functions identically to a more elaborate looking creature.

Speaking of creatures, Black and White didn't inspire anybody either.



-Humbaba

[Element]

Maybe the original Tomb Raider. It had that blocky level design that was a byproduct of targeting Sega Saturn, afaik, but it was a pretty stellar action platformer. But progress was so fast that nobody ever bothered replicating that style of gameplay: methodical platforming where you line up every jump, measure out the steps for each run up, etc.

[GhostCow]

But progress was so fast that nobody ever bothered replicating that style of gameplay: methodical platforming where you line up every jump, measure out the steps for each run up, etc.

Thank God.

[agentorange]

Hitman. The only game to try the framework is Death to Spies. Basically, isolated missions with a pre-mission loadout and a series of complex objectives. It doesn't have to be third person and doesn't even necessarily have to be stealth based or involve killing.

After writing this I realized that the closest analog to Hitman is Thief. Self-contained levels, pre-mission loadout, stealth based but not a stealth puzzle game, complex objectives, just replace killing a certain someone with stealing a certain something. Probably why they are two of my favorites series.

[Dangerous_JB]

Maybe the original Tomb Raider. It had that blocky level design that was a byproduct of targeting Sega Saturn, afaik, but it was a pretty stellar action platformer. But progress was so fast that nobody ever bothered replicating that style of gameplay: methodical platforming where you line up every jump, measure out the steps for each run up, etc.

Prince of Persia 3D comes to mind as having obvious Tomb Raider influence. Elder Scrolls: Redguard as well. Can't think of anything else though off the top of my head.