Video Gamers Podcast - [Flashback Friday] Revel in the RPG’s - Video Games Podcast

Episode Date: November 17, 2023

Take a trip to the past with this video game flashback episode. RPG’s land like few other genre’s can. We break down the video game genre as a whole, why they resonate so well, what makes some stand out above others and more. We break this topic down like no other gaming podcast can, give you our thoughts, what works, and what doesn’t in another packed gaming episode from your favorite video games podcast!  Thanks to our LEGENDARY Supporters: Redletter, Gaius214, Nate and Kiitaclyzm Connect with the show: Support us on Patreon: patreon.com/videogamerspod Join our Gaming Discord: https://discord.gg/Dsx2rgEEbz Follow us on Instagram: instagram.com//videogamerspod Follow us on Twitter: twitter.com/videogamerspod Subscribe to us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCU12YOMnAQwqFZEdfXv9c3Q   Visit us on the web: https://videogamerspod.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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fridays are the path to the light side. Fun leads to enjoyment. Enjoyment leads to laughter. Laughter leads to happiness. Get into it now, we will. Hey everyone, and welcome to the Multiplayer Gaming Podcast. Today, we are here for a bonus round episode where we break down a certain subject related to gaming, and we decided for this episode that we're going to cover role-playing games, or RPGs as the kids call them.

Man, what a huge topic. There are so many different kinds of RPGs to talk about, so many games to discuss. And as we start out on our quest to conquer such a large topic, we need some introductions. I am your support class, the one here to help keep things moving, your host, Paul, or known in some circles as Father Paul, like my priest in World of Warcraft. I'm not calling you Father Paul. No, no, I would not ask you to. Never in real life. And then we have the rogue, the one who loves to melee and DPS and to be in the thick of the action.

The flanker extraordinaire. I thought you might like that title. Thank you. The one and only Josh. That's true, although I kind of really equate myself more to the Leroy Jenkins of the world. Yes, I can see that. You know, the guy

that just charges in, winds up wiping his entire raid party. While I'm crunching the numbers. Yeah, exactly. I do, I'll say this, I have found a love of tanking lately. In my last five years, maybe, everybody loves the DPS role, but I found that I actually legit enjoy tanking in games where you need to tank. So maybe I'm maturing in my old age, Paul.

Could be. Could be. Who knows? All right. so jumping into RPGs here, so much to talk about. But first and foremost, Josh, are you a fan of the RPG genre? I love RPGs. If I am not gaming with you guys, there is nothing, I mean nothing like just getting completely absorbed in a great RPG. I mean, you have heard me just go on and on about how much The Witcher 3 is my favorite game of all time. I picked on you for not playing it. We've talked about it a ton. I'm sure I'll talk about it some tonight. God of War, I mean, I get that that's like an action RPG, but that's another one of my favorite games.

We're going to try to stay away from the Mass Effect series, which are great. The Dragon Age series, which are great. It's one of those things where if you can get absorbed in an RPG that is good, there's very few video game experiences like that. Yeah, the immersion of RPGs transcends that of any other genre, which is one of the reasons why I think it's such a great series of games. Yeah. So I love RPGs also, although what's kind of funny is that RPG is such a broad term. There are some entire subclasses of RPGs I don't really care for at all. And then there's others that are among my favorites.

So I thought that it was really funny that you and I were on the same page of just throwing Mass Effect and Dragon Age to the side. We talk about those games way too much. I am more than willing to admit I bring up Mass Effect far too often on the show. So we'll put those on the side for now and we'll just take a look at some other kinds of RPGs. But I am glad that we both at least love the genre. I think it would be a far less enjoyable episode if we didn't like them. So from a philosophical question, because I think this is important when we're talking about RPGs. How do you define an RPG?

Because I think this is very difficult to do. That's the question. when we're talking about RPGs, how do you define an RPG? Cause I think this is very difficult to do. That's the question. Back in the day, an RPG was like turn-based, like a final fantasy was a, that was an RPG, right? Like your JRPGs,

your Japanese RPGs with your turn-based combat and your characters, your party of like three or four people, like back in the day, that was it. And everything fit into that mold for or four people. Back in the day, that was it. And everything fit into that mold for the most part. Now, I mean, how many subclasses of RPGs are there? There's like 15? Probably.

I don't even know. It's tough because they've split in so many different directions, which is good in one way. For me, an RPG is a game that exhibits a progression. Honestly, to me, that is probably the easiest way, the most simplistic way to put it, is for me, if there's not progression in your character, in the strength of your character, in the equipment that you have, and a story to go along with it, then it's not really an RPG. You know, I mean, there's a lot more to it than that, but if I had to boil it down to what do I

think like the essence of it is, like you have to have like a journey to go on with a character where they progress and get stronger throughout that journey. Okay, so that's really close to how I would define it also. When I think of RPG, just from a pure dictionary standpoint, you would say it's where you are standing in the place of a player and you are experiencing things with them as your avatar. But I feel like that could be the definition for almost any video game these days. So I'm thinking it has to be in an immersive

world, and there has to be some kind of progression, whether it's through a talent tree or gaining XP and then learning new abilities. It has to have some kind of leveling like that. And I feel like it has to tell some kind of story through quests. I feel like at its core, that's a lot of what you have to have in an RPG. Your character has to be out on some kind of mission, and ideally with side missions and branching stories. Although even that's not necessarily required, but to me, that's what makes up an RPG. So before we jump in here, are the Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption games RPGs? Dude, this...

Because I feel like you could make an argument either way. When I was... I mean, I just talked about God of War, right? Like, a lot of people would say, oh, well, that's like an action game or something like that. And it's like, that's tough. Grand Theft Auto... I mean, technically... And it's like, that's tough. Grand Theft Auto. I mean, technique.

I don't like you for that question, man. Like, it's tough. I know it's hard, right? Part of me is like, yes, like I just explained it's a character with progression in a story. And guess what? That fits both of those games. But then I kind of like my brain goes like it's just yelling at me going, they're not RPGs. Those aren't RPGs! I feel like those are tough to answer because they're very immersive.

They do have that kind of progression. The GTA games have flat-out stats, and you can look in and see what is your strength, and how many kills do you have, and things of that nature. So I didn't know if we were going to include the GTA and Red Dead games. I guess we'll just have to wait and see what we want to talk about later. But I wasn't entirely sure that would make the cut. Well, you asked me, are they? Are they RPGs?

I think... I mean, I think they are. I think they're probably not. Really? I was just about to say, I think they are. I think they're probably not. Really? I was just about to say, I think they are, but I don't think they fit the mold of what people would consider an RPG to be. When you say, hey, RPG, I don't think people think of those games, but by definition, they're probably RPGs? Yeah, I feel like if you had a Venn diagram of action, adventure, and RPG, it's right in the middle of all three. Like, it really is. So, you know what? Let's just say it's eligible. All right. So, we can talk about those in a few minutes if we want to. So, we are both

huge fans of RPGs. We kind of laid out what an RPG is. What is it about RPGs that keeps drawing you back to them? There's nothing like starting this character that goes out into the world and is fighting little bunny rabbits and almost dying. And then you get a bunny rabbit fang. And then it's like, oh, now I can make a bunny rabbit dagger, and then I can take that, and then I can go kill this badger. And before you know it, you're wielding just glowing mythical swords of doom and destruction and fighting dragons and demons and stuff like that. To me, that's what really draws me in. So I feel like you have to have a really good loot and inventory system to make a good RPG. Story obviously comes into play. And the better the story, the more memorable the RPG is.

But for me, I think it's that sense of progression and seeing your character get stronger and getting excited about a new spell, right? Or a new ability that he might have unlocked or something like that. I think that's what really draws me to it. Yeah, it's almost like a rags-to-riches kind of story that you get to participate in. Yeah. Yeah, I'm with you. I love seeing progression in characters. For me, It's almost like a rags to riches kind of story that you get to participate in. Yeah. Yeah. I'm with you. I love seeing progression in characters.

For me, it's definitely the story. And my particular brand of RPG are ones where there are consequences of decisions that you make. You can have RPGs where that's not really the case. If you're going to talk about like the Pokemon series or something where there's not really world affecting decisions where you do get that in other series. And I really enjoy that. And I think that really leads to replayability. I love going through games playing as the good guy and then going back and playing as the rebel. I really love that RPGs lend to that kind of replayability. And I also love that they tend to last much longer than other games. If I played through the campaign of a first-person shooter, those tend to last maybe six to eight hours for a lot of modern first-person shooters.

If that, yeah. A good RPG, you can sink 100 hours into no problem. And then maybe you play again as another class. And for me, I don't like having to switch games really often. I know that you don't mind that so much. I like laser focusing on one game and I want it to last a long time.'ve always joked that I have like video game ADD where it's hard for me to play a game for very long. And I have tried hundreds of RPGs out there. I mean, I love them. It's one of my favorite genres, but then at the same time, I've like out of a hundred RPGs,

I finished like maybe like three or four of those. Like, you know what I mean? There becomes a point, for me at least, where I have to make myself start playing the main story and ignoring side quests because if I don't, I know that somewhere 30, 40 hours in, I'm going to just fall off and never pick it up again and then not know what happened. With the exception of some of the... That's how I know it's a really, really good one, if I play it all the way through. I don't know what it is. And it's

Josh's weird rating system in my own brain. But it's like, if I actually beat an RPG, that's the highest compliment that I can actually give an RPG is I played it until the very end. That's funny. So it's almost like if we were out to dinner, you want to order two appetizers, a meal, two desserts, and you just want a couple bites of each. Dude, that is 100% give me variety. I mean, buffets are kind of junky just because of the quality of the food, but if I could order a bite off of each thing on the menu, I would do that every single time in a heartbeat. That's funny. You just want

the taster menu. Yeah, see, I'm the exact opposite. Just give me the porterhouse. If a steak is a steak, I don't care about anything else on the outside. Just give me that 32-ounce porterhouse. I'll eat the whole thing. It might take a while, but I'll do it. So last question before we jump into individual games. As we think about RPG genres, are there any in particular that you like or dislike? I used to be a fan, a big fan of the Japanese RPGs. I have found lately that I cannot get into those anymore. I mean, honestly, like Final Fantasy VII, right? The original one. One of the greatest RPGs ever made. I have extremely fond memories of that game. I think... And I mean, I even played and beat the remake, right? So it's one of those... So that was great too. I don't know how familiar you are with the

Dragon Quest series. So there was Dragon Quest XII or something. I did not play any of these in the series, but it was getting really good reviews. And I was like, dude, I haven't played a JRPG in forever. So I bought it, I played it. I loved it for the first eight hours, and then I just never touched it again. It wasn't that I didn't like it. It's just that, that it started to get like repetitive to me. The combat was taking too long. I was getting aggravated. Like every time I had to go into a fight, cause I'm like, I don't want to fight right now. Like, I don't want to do that. I just want to get from point A to point B kind of thing. Um, so I don't really like the JRPGs anymore. I'll tell you what I do like, man, is I love the action RPGs now.

You took two great genres and you meshed them together and you turned them into something just fantastic, man. So I'd have to say that's probably one of my favorite sub-genres of the RPG. I'm a fan of tactical combat. We've talked about this. The Divinity Original Sin series, which I'll probably talk about later, is very tactical. But then at the same time, even that game makes me whine sometimes because I'm like, I don't want to do a 45 minute fight right now. You know what I mean? Give me buttons to smash and,

you know, monsters to hack through and that kind of stuff. And I found that I'm gravitating towards that more and more than I am like the really long drawn out fights. I hear you. So one thing that's a little interesting, I did not do any serious research into RPGs, but I did read the Wikipedia page. And it was really funny when they talked about

the Western versus Eastern RPG and why they are the way they are. And the reason is that the PC took off in America, where they could focus a little more on the faster processing and more action-oriented games, whereas in Japan, they were mostly developing these for the NES. And of course, the NES has very limited processing power, which resulted in the turn-based combat style games. And that's just pervaded through to today, where you even see the divide becoming more and more prevalent

as Western games are becoming more and more prevalent as western games are becoming more and more action focused which is why maybe we're not too sure if the gta games fit because we see those games trending more to action because that's just what us americans want right right that's actually that makes a lot of sense i've never thought about it i just always thought like jrpgs they liked liked the turn-based combat. Let's be honest. It feels great to discover a new party member.

Some of the games we'll talk about, it's like you got your guy, but then it's like, so-and-so has joined your party. And that's exciting, man. And you don't really see that in the action RPGs because it's just you doing the fighting for the most part. But I don't know. There's good things and bad things on both, I guess.

Yeah, absolutely. The turn-based RPGs or the tactical RPGs tend to not really be my thing, because they do feel like more work. And it's a little bit more tedious. And I am not a fan of completely mindless action. But if I had to choose one or the other, I play video games for escapism. And so I would rather it not be work like I'm playing video games because I'm done working. And it can even be very therapeutic to just slice my way through hundreds of orcs in a Lord of the Rings game or something like that. So I tend to focus much more on the action RPGs, the open world RPGs, sandbox RPGs.

And I think you and I both tend to like those on the whole quite a bit. Yeah. So yeah, let's go into a little bit more depth about some specific games. So laying aside the series that shall not be named, let's go ahead and focus on some other ones that we haven't talked about as much. And I'll let you go first. Go ahead and pick a game. Which one do you want to talk about? All right. So I'm going to... I mean, look, I get it. Fallout know, Fallout, you know, the Elder Scrolls series. Like, I mean, these are phenomenal. You know, we have to talk about Skyrim at some point, you know, tonight. But I really wanted to kind of talk about some of the RPGs that really stand out in my memory.

Because either they caught me off guard and they were very little known like RPGs. But man, were they amazing or, you know, maybe they're older. I mean, let's be honest, I'm the oldest one out of the bunch, you know?

And so, you know, I've got, you know, some of these older RPGs that maybe it was just any text based life. What's that? Any text based RPGs? No,

not in this list, but I did. I did. I loved text based adventure games, man. All right. So I don't know if you've ever played... I'm just going to list this whole series because I'll be honest with you. I don't remember which one stands out to me. But did you ever play any of the Might and Magic series? No, I did not. Okay. So now Heroes of Might and Magic is kind of the way that the genre went with the top-down map, and you build up an army,

and they almost kind of turn into this weird hybrid RTS type thing. But the original Might and Magic series were some of the... At the time, they were groundbreaking because they were first person, and it was very Dungeons & Dragons oriented in how they played. So you would start off the game and you would make a party of four characters. And you'd need your archetype. So you'd need a healer and a rogue and a tank and whatever else you wanted to do. And then you would just start adventuring. And they were first-person perspectives.

So it was like you'd move one square at a time, you know, like the old school classic like dungeon crawlers. But there were stories and the characters would kind of interact with each other. And, you know, you would find new towns and there would be vendors. And man, this was back in the day when if you found a vendor, you know, he might have a sword or something that would like really the feel of the game at that point. Because if you could have the gold for it, that was an instant power boost or something like that. So that whole series of Might and Magic, I played every single one.

Now, they started to kind of taper off. I think it was Might and Magic 6 or 7 played every single one. Now they started to kind of taper off. I think it was Might and Magic 6 or 7 that got a little weird. But when you talk about an epic scale, first person RPG, they felt the combat was faster paced. It was turn-based, but they started doing it where you had only a certain amount of time to make an action, or the monsters would just keep attacking you. Oh, right, right, right. You know what I mean? Like that kind of thing.

So initiative. Put that pressure on with the clock. Right, yeah. You'd have initiative and stuff like that. I absolutely loved those games. They were groundbreaking at the time. The progression was great. The inventory, the gear.

It checked all of the boxes for me. It's one of those ones where I know i couldn't go back and play them now because they would feel very very dated but i right that time in in like that rpg world they were groundbreaking man they were awesome this is an ad from better help online therapy we always hear about the red flags to avoid in relationships, but it's just as important to focus on the green flags. If you're not quite sure what they look like,

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Do you remember the Neo Geo, the $600 console back in the 80s, which would be like, this was like a $3,000 console today? Do you remember that? I didn't know anybody. Oh, yeah. I do remember going to GameStop and seeing the Neo Geo behind the counter, and they always had the display. And you were like, dude, is that a Neo?

The cartridges were $200 a piece for the Neo Geo. Whoa. I don't know who this was marketed towards. The very rich. Yeah. Because the one friend that I had who had a 3DO marketed towards. The very rich. Yeah. Because the one friend that I had who had a 3DO, their family was very well off. They had a batting cage built into their backyard, and they were very well off.

But they had a 3DO. But I don't think they owned any of the Might and Magic games, so I never played those. The Neo Geo, I loved in the arcades. Right. Because it had more buttons. It had six buttons with your right hand with the joystick. And I remember they focused a little bit more on those, more of like the Asian style games that maybe weren't as popular here. And I always thought that was a fun change of pace. Yeah.

Try some different games. All right. So Might and Magic. Yeah. There's going to be like four people that are listening right now that are going to be like, Yes! I forgot about Might and Magic! Everybody else is going to be like, What? So, I was trying to remember the earliest experiences I had with RPGs. Because when I was younger, I only mostly played video games at friends' houses or at the arcade.

And you don't have a whole lot of RPGs there. And when I built my very first PC, my graphics card came with The Elder Scrolls III Morrowind. Oh, Morrowind was great, dude. I loved Morrowind. That was the first RPG that I played on PC, and I remember the game looking gorgeous. I remember it being the best-looking game I'd ever seen in my life. But what was really funny is that I was only used to playing games developed by Nintendo, or maybe some first-person shooters like Halo or whatever. And I remember hopping into Morrowind, and as a joke, I thought I would fire an arrow at one of the city guards. And they all came charging at me.

Oh, you got wrecked. Killed me. And I was not welcome to come back to that city. So it was like I was banished from it. And that was when it clicked to me like, oh, crap. The things that I do in this game actually matter. And now I can't even go back into this city. And that, for me, was really eye-opening where I realized just how immersive RPGs can be.

This is like the best movie, but you can also actually be living as the character. And that to me was the coolest thing in the world, even though it was a terrible decision. And I of course went back to an old save and then kept playing without attacking the city guard. But that's the only thing i remember about morrowind but that that for me was one of my earlier experiences i think morrowind was the first elder scrolls game that i played or it's at least the first one that i remember playing i don't remember what the because morrowind is number three and the third yeah i don't remember what number two is daggerorrowind is number three. The third, yeah. I don't remember what number two is. Daggerfall?

I definitely did not play one or two, and I do not know what they're called. If I got that right, I'll be amazed. I'll have to look it up later. But yeah, Morrowind is the one I remember. And then it's, what, Oblivion and then Skyrim, right? Yep. And Morrowind is what got me loving the Elder Scrolls series. So then when Oblivion came out, I was all about that.

And then when Skyrim came out, man, that was groundbreaking. I mean, we got to talk about it, right? Like Skyrim is great to this day. Now, part of that's through the modding community, because you can make it 4K resolution and amazing. And the Dovahkiin and the Dragon Shouts and stuff like that. Man, that game is so good. Is it good?

It's insane. Do you not like Skyrim? Here, let me shoot you a screenshot here of my Steam library, Josh. Paul! Do you want to tell the people what you're looking at oh my goodness paul i can't i paul tell the people like i expect this from todd i know right okay paul sent me just so guys are listening. Paul sent me a screenshot. He owns Skyrim on Steam. His playtime is four minutes.

Four minutes. Paul, how can you play a game for four minutes? Last played December 2nd, 2014. I know people love Skyrim. Here's the thing. I enjoyed Morrowind. I did not play it a whole lot. I probably played it maybe six or seven hours.

I grew tired of it. I played Oblivion. I thought Oblivion was fun. I did beat it. I remember in Oblivion, I got really mad because at some point, I accidentally turned myself into a vampire. I think I got bitten by a vampire, think I got like bitten by a vampire And I didn't realize the implication And next thing I knew I was taking damage

Anytime I was outside in the sun And I was like this sucks I don't want to be a vampire Yeah but you got super strong man You could turn into a bat or something too Like there was benefits Okay so here's the thing Like I was very sheltered in my youth

So I did not really even see any PG-13 movies until I was a little older. And then once I hit my adult years, I really just went hog wild and watched every rated R movie I had missed. So it took me a little while to become a little more desensitized to this stuff. And I remember as a vampire, I had to go around and feed off other people. So I'd have to like break into my house or want to do yeah and i was like i don't like this so i so i ended up going back to an old save because i was like i'm not gonna play this game as a vampire and then when skyrim came out i know how much everyone loves it i know that i i see the memes. I see all the places people play Skyrim and what they run

it off of. To me, I just want games that are a little bit more structured. And the Elder Scrolls games to me were always just a little bit too open world. I don't want to have to figure out what to do next. I just want the game to give me a dot on the map and say, go there and go kill it. And that's more my thing that i understand because i like i said i mentioned at the beginning of the show i will just get so lost in a game doing all kinds of random quests that i never actually beat the game and then i just burn out on it and then it's like i don't know what happens in this game skyrim i mean dude skyrim is legendary that game is so good. I got my daughter to play

it. She only played it. She played it longer than you, but she only played it for like a day. And then watching her play it, I was jonesing for Skyrim. I was like, oh man, I forgot how good this game is. And then she was just like, yeah, she never picked it up again. But man, four minutes, Paul? That's not even through the intro like you booted it up you made it to like the intro and then you were like nope the opening cut scene is so long where you're in the back of the horse driven carriage right you're handcuffed yeah i remember playing those four minutes josh but just never had a desire to go back. I mean, yeah. So, yeah. I recognize the games.

I know people love them. I see videos. I love watching videos of other people play them. It's just not exactly my cup of tea. So, all right. Well, there you go. I think we both kind of brought up a couple games there. But go ahead.

I'll let you pick the next one. Okay. All right. I have to nerd out on this a little bit because, I mean, MMOs, right? I mean, MMORPG, right? I mean, as a fan, I was a huge fan of RPGs. I still, to this day, remember a buddy of mine saying, hey, you need to play this game with me. This is really before online gaming really took off, right? And he was like, hey, I found this RPG. We can play it together. And I went, oh, that sounds cool. What's it called? And he was like, dude, it's called EverQuest. And I went, I've never heard of

this before. And he was like, I've been playing it a ton, man. We can play together. It's this world. The world never stops. It just keeps going, even if you're not online. And I was like, this is mind-blowing to me. I had never experienced an MMO. And I went, I bought the game, I booted it up. I remember talking to him. Now, back then, you didn't even have Discord. So I'm pretty sure we were just phone calling each other at that point. And then I remember him being like, yeah, okay, you got to be a wood elf because that's where I started. And okay, I'm by the tree. And I'm like, we're wood elves, what tree are you talking about? But I remember loading into this game and seeing things running around. And when the realization hit me that those were other people in the world playing the game, it absolutely blew my mind.

You know what I mean? Because it's like I've seen monsters running around in a world and it's either you run from them or you go attack them if you're leveling up or whatever. But to actually see like 20 people doing things and running up to me and then like stopping and waving or whatever it just like it was like going to mars man like i don't know like i mean world of warcraft was like your first mmo right yeah and it was exactly the same experience it was so mind-blowing to play with that many people at once because before this if you were lucky maybe you get a couple friends to come to your house and you might have like eight people playing on two TVs,

playing Halo. And that's a big LAN party, right? You got eight friends over. That's a huge LAN party. Yeah. So the idea of having hundreds of people in the world at once was crazy. Yeah.

I could talk about EverQuest forever, man. Honestly, to my detriment, I played that game an insane amount of time. You hear stories about people getting completely wrapped up in MMOs. That was me. I was the absolute best character on my server. I was top tier rating in the top guild. I mean, I probably played that game like six to eight hours a day for like three years straight. Legitimately, that's how much I was into that game. But when I think about like, is there a game out there that is just ingrained in my brain, right? Like that I have these fond memories of? And some bad memories, right? Like doing corpse runs at 4 o'clock in the morning.

That's EverQuest for me. And it was just, in the sense of an RPG, when we talk about that progression, it's the ultimate in progression. The progression never ends. That's kind of the point of an MMO, right? There's story in an MMO. Like I get it, you know, but it's not like Red Dead story or God of War story or Mass Effect story or something like that. But it just, that progression never ends. The combat, which I love, you know, is never ending and it's always getting harder and there's new raids and stuff like that.

The interaction with people. Um, it's, it's just one of those things where I'm really sad that the MMO genre kind of died out. I'm really hoping it kind of comes back with like ashes of creation and maybe new world. I don't have the time to ever invest like that again,

but it would still be fun to see if we can get a little bit of that, like go back and go back in the past. And is there is, will there ever be that sense of wonder again? So for me, it was very similar to everything that you're describing with EverQuest, just with World of Warcraft. And I bought WoW on the day that it came out. I think it was back in 2004. And the servers got hit so heavily that the game was so buggy, so much lag. I remember playing as a dwarf paladin, and when you would lean down to loot, there was an animation where your character would bend down, and then it would pull up the inventory of what you could loot off of whatever you killed. And I would say one in

every 12 times you would do that, your character would just be stuck in the down motion and they would start sliding on the ground when you would move, but you couldn't do any action. So you'd have to log out, log back in. There were long queues. The game would constantly crash. And I remember it taking a couple of weeks to stabilize. But even with all that, I spent seven or eight hours a day with my friends playing World of Warcraft because it was so mind-blowing. And to this day, I mean, I'm talking 17 years ago, and I still remember my guild name, Khans. I remember other players in the guild that I have not spoken to in over a decade. Gritz, Morith, Stabbing Freak. These are people that I remember. They're like long lost friends. And I know you and I have talked about it, but I think the early days of

MMORPGs might've been the peak for me gaming wise for enjoyment and experience and the memories. I don't know that it'll ever quite reach that high for me. Is that kind of how you feel also? Or do you feel differently? Dude, it's 100%. Honestly, that's why when I come across a game like Witcher 3, for instance, it gives me that... God of War on the PlayStation 4, I'm a huge fan of that game. Like there are every now and then there comes a game where it really scratches or touches like, like that feeling that I had back then. Do you know what I'm saying? Like, and it's like, because like you said, I don't know that like the pinnacle of gaming, maybe it was, again, it could just be age. It could be how groundbreaking it was. You know what I mean? And it's like, I love gaming. We, I mean, we're talking about it right now. And I game every single day. And I mean, I love it.

But there's very few gaming moments that make me feel like those games did, like the MMO did. But when it happens, it's amazing. And that's why I say Witcher 3 was one of those games for me. That's why I talk about it all the time. God of War was one of those games for me. That's why I talk about it like all the time. Like God of War was one of those games for me. Like Red Dead 2 was great, but it didn't quite scratch that same itch. You know what I mean? Like nothing against Red Dead 2, but it was phenomenal, but it wasn't, it was like real close, but it just didn't quite get there. I don't know what does it, you know what mean and it's like I love that surprise of like finding an amazing game like Rocket League right like Rocket League is not an RPG I get it

but Rocket League was one of those surprise games where it's like hey there's some hype like even Valheim which we've been playing right like initially like it's not to that level but I love the surprise of finding a game where you were like dude dude, this is a great game. You know, and it's just, it's hard to stumble across it.

Yeah, it's hard to get that feeling, man. But I'm with you. I don't know that that will ever get trumped. Yeah. One of the things I really loved about MMOs was discovering things together with other people. It was always a shared experience. And in World of Warcraft, you would go into an instance for the first time and no one in the party had ever run it before.

And this isn't even like late game content, maybe like Scarlet Monastery for the first time. And no one really knows what's coming up. And you would play it and you would die and wipe and everyone would have to run back. And it might take a couple hours to finish that instance, but it was worth it because you were learning it together and figuring it out. And then as soon as they started releasing all of these websites that just had the coordinates and the set strategies for every boss,

and then people were downloading add-ons, and they were tracking damage. And if your damage was low, you'd get kicked out of the group. I feel like those elements really killed the genre. I thought it was great when it was focused on exploration and learning together. I feel like a lot of people turned it into a min-max kind of situation. It's sad, man. And I think that's why it's hard for MMOs to survive today, because everyone just wants to solve it. I think you're right. When I was playing EverQuest,

Raid Secrets, there were no instants. Nothing in EverQuest was instants. So if a dragon popped up and you were at the endgame, it was a race between guilds. There was some serious bad blood, because it would be who could engage first. And if you had two guilds that showed up at the same time, I remember just dropping everything, dude, to go run. Get a druid to teleport you or a wizard that could teleport you. You got there as quick as you possibly could so that you could engage this thing before another guild showed up. And even then, it was unspoken rule that if it was engaged, other guilds would back off, right? But every now and then they would start attacking in EverQuest. Whoever did the most

damage got the kill, right? So it was like, you could kill steal is what they called it. And so, I mean, dude, I remember like raging at other people in this game because they stole our kill and then they looted it. Or somebody was there and they would ninja loot because it was like the corpse was open to anybody that could click on it. Yeah. Well, that's funny because Warcraft had exactly those same issues. And then they ended up releasing a bunch of mechanisms that would prevent that from happening. So they changed loot options, where if it was any special gear, you'd have to roll, or you could make a master looter where they would assign what gear went where. But World of Warcraft did have open world

bosses, and still does. And that would happen also where you would have a bunch of alliance trying to gather enough people to fight the world boss, but then you would have the horde also gathering and you would end up having these massive PVP wars while trying to fight the world boss. And nothing beats those kinds of experiences because you just don't get that if it's like single player content. Yeah. All right. So talk a little bit about MMOs there. I want to bring up a game that i doubt you've even heard of but it's called lost odyssey is there any chance you've heard i have heard of this game

i i know that title i'm gonna have to look up something because i feel like i might have even played this our buddy andrew would kill me if i didn't at least bring it up. So Lost Odyssey was a four-disc game on Xbox 360. And for this period of time in life, I was working swing shifts, and I had my entire mornings off and available where my wife was working, my kids were in school, and I just played tons of games in the morning with my friend Andrew. And Blockbuster had their Game Pass, which I paid for. And Andrew and I would play basically every single game. And Lost Odyssey was a JRPG that we started going through.

And we did not finish, but we probably sank like 85 hours into that game. And that was the epitome of grinding and not being able to go from point A to point B. And we did not finish, but we probably sank like 85 hours into that game. And that was the epitome of grinding and not being able to go from point A to point B. Oh, I was going to say, is this the grind? Ambushed by enemies. Yeah, where you have to kill 3,000 goblins so that you can level up so that you can actually kill something else. All kinds of garbage like that. But what really stands out to me is that there was a 30-minute quest, if you will, where you had to carry out a funeral for, I don't remember if it was a friend or a family member that died. And you're just stuck walking really slow with the torch. And you have to light all these funeral pyres and lighting other torches.

And I just remember going out of my mind yelling at Andrew, how are we still in this funeral? Why is this in a game? Who wants to run around and have to organize this funeral for 30 minutes? And we ended up getting to the final disc. I think we were in the very end game, and I just could not handle it anymore. I do not quit games early. One of my favorite quotes is from the movie The Departed when Matt Damon says, I'm Irish.

If this isn't going to work, you have to break it off because I'll live with a problem until the day I die. And I have that kind of loyalty to games. I will finish any game I start. I do not quit them. But I quit Lost Odyssey. And shame on me. I knew I didn't like Japanese RPGs, and I played that

one anyway. Your four minutes in Skyrim is disagreeing with you, Paul. Yes. I don't even know if I officially started Skyrim. I was gonna say that doesn't count. I loaded it once. Yeah, I don't know if that quite counts. But yeah. All right, what else you got? What other RPGs? I mean, I'm not, you know, like I said I'm not going to touch on Witcher 3. I've already talked about that. Did you ever play a game? Okay, so this is one because this stands out to me because my wife and I played this game together from start to finish, which was awesome, because she's not much of a gamer. But it was back on the 64. It was called Quest 64. Did you ever play that? No, I don't remember ever hearing about this. Yeah, so it's a little-known game, but

it was a good RPG, and it was turn-based combat, but it had stuff that we both really liked, because it had good exploration, which she really loves, like, finding hidden things. Like, she'll play Mario just to look to find, like, invisible blocks in, like, that little part of the

wall that you didn't know that you could go behind. That kind of stuff. She loves that. And this game had a ton of these little ghost things that you had to try to collect because then you could get a new spell. You could trade those in to get a spell. So she would constantly

be like, go check that bush! Go check that bush! And I'd be like, no, there's not going to be anything in that bush. And she'd be like, go check it! And then there would be a ghost in there. And she'd be like, I told you so! And then I was like, hey check that bush! Go check that bush! And I'd be like, no, there's not going to be anything in that bush. And she'd be like, go check it! And then there would be a ghost in there. And she'd be like, I told you so! And then I was like, hey, good job! Dude, this game looks so much like Mario 64, it's not even funny. The colors are

the same. It was basically the same engine as Mario 64, but they turned it into an RPG. And you had spells and equipment and weapons and stuff like that. It was great, man. Like I said, very little known game. I don't know that a whole lot of people knew about Quest 64, but it really touched on all of the stuff. I mean, it was a Nintendo game. They did a good job with it. But I remember playing that with her because it was like, there's no other

game that we played like start to finish with the exception of the Zelda games, which, you know, those qualify as RPGs. Sure. But, you know, this was more of the true RPG and it was just really cool to have her as interested in it as I was. And it was a good RPG. Was it groundbreaking? No, but it checked all of the right boxes.

It was thoroughly like a 7 out of 10. Nothing groundbreaking, but just kind of solid all around. How funny. Yeah, it says on Wikipedia it was the first RPG for the Nintendo 64. So yeah, how funny all right well that's a good segue because you played quest 64 with your wife i'm gonna go to an rpg that i played with my wife which is castlevania symphony of the night which for my money is the greatest 2d game ever made. It's a Metroidvania genre RPG, and that game is very famous amongst people who played it. It has a huge cult following. I don't know anyone who said, yeah, I tried it, and I hate

that game. If you've played it, you probably love it. I remember you and our buddy Andrew just talking about it nonstop in Discord. And it was like, everything you guys were saying was right up my alley to where it was like, oh, that sounds great. And you were like, oh yeah, you got to go do this and then do that to get this sword, but it's great, and this and that. And I was like, oh man, that's wonderful. And I don't know if you remember, but about maybe five shows ago, I told you guys like, oh, I'm going to go ahead. I'm going to try Symphony of the Night. And I went online. I checked Steam.

And I didn't see it on Steam. So I said, oh, man, is it on Epic? And then it was like, man, where the heck is this game? So then I Google, and it's PS4 only. And I was like, no! Like, why?

And then I felt like an idiot because I didn't realize it was a PS4 exclusive PlayStation and then I got really sad because it's like you know like before whereas like didn't really you know have a ton of interest in playing this game as soon as you tell me I can't play it because I don't have a PS4 anymore like now I'm like man I probably miss it out on the best game ever how funny well I have owned several copies I probably missed it out on the best game ever. How funny. Well, I have owned several copies of it because it was on PlayStation 1, and I owned it on that. I remember for a short while, you could buy it through the Xbox 360 online store, and I bought it on there as well. And Castlevania was a great game for a whole lot of reasons. First of all, the main character's name is Alucard, which I remember learning that that's Dracula spelled backward, which I thought was so funny.

What movie was that? What movie? Was that Little Monsters or something? Or what was the movie? Oh, do they have something like that in there? Yeah, they were like Alucard. And then somebody finally, like one of the kids, it was like a Corey Hayne movie or something where they're like, Alucard, that's Dracula!

Well, there you go. They used that in Symphony of the Night also. And one of the neat things about the game is that it was full of secrets. So there were false walls where if you attacked it, it would open a secret passage. Or if you knew to angle your sword down into an angle and hit this part, then a turkey would pop out and you could add that to your inventory. And then over the course of the game, you would learn new powers, which would unlock new parts of the game. And so you would hit the button to pull up the map. And this map was enormous. It was

a huge castle. And it was full of all these secrets. And you could just spend hundreds of hours unlocking everything that was in this game. And it had several endings. So you could go fight a certain guy that you thought was actually the final boss, and you could kill him, and you would get a final cutscene. But what you actually had to do was go the final boss, and you could kill him, and you would get a final cutscene. But what you actually had to do was go find special glasses, which would let you see the spirit that was possessing that guy, and then you would know to fight the spirit and not the real guy, and then the game would keep continuing. And then eventually, as soon as you think you're getting near beating the game, they flip the castle over they reset the map with new mobs and new enemies and now you have to go through the entire castle again but now it's

upside down so they actually designed the game that you can beat it forward ways up and upside down and that was mind-blowing at the time Because you never saw anything like that in other games. I'm sad, man. I tried. I tried to play it, and then I felt like an idiot. Yeah, I haven't tried playing it on mobile. I know it's on mobile. Maybe if you hook up a controller or something, it might be worthwhile. But that, to me, was the pinnacle of 2D games. So you can't play Symphony of the Night night but you should just pick up bloodstained on steam because that's the spiritual successor it's exactly the same format you get great huge boss fights i thought symphony of the night was the remix or was it bloodstained that's the remake of it bloodstained is the new one maybe that's what i was thinking about

yeah go go buy bloodstained on Steam. That's the one that is newer. It just came out a couple years ago. That's the one I was thinking of. Okay, okay. Yeah, Bloodstained. Okay, that's the one that you guys were playing. But I mean, is it as good as Symphony of the Night?

No, but it's only a half step below. All right. It's exactly the same kind of game. Same mechanics. below all right it it's exactly the same kind of game same same mechanics um we got time for one or two more huh sure my list is so long i was gonna say i could talk about these forever man there's so many good yeah i'll have to just shotgun through a few here once we get toward the end um some of my fate i'm gonna really show my age here some of my favorite games and again this is going to be three people that are listening that are going to know about these,

but I was a huge fan of Dungeons & Dragons. I know you really weren't allowed to get into that when you were younger, but me and my friends used to meet up and have sleepovers and play D&D for 10 hours straight. And I'm a huge fan of fantasy novels too. I read every night when I go to bed. Fantasy has always been the types of books that I read. I love the Dragonlance series. This is probably not meaning anything to you, but Dragonlance is the kind of premiere fantasy series that are based on Dungeons & Dragons and stuff like that. And back in the 80s, I think it was like the late 80s, maybe early 90s, they made role-playing games based on those series. So there was a game called Pools of Radiance, right? Or Curse of the Azure Bonds. And in those games,

graphics were absolutely terrible, but at the time, they were groundbreaking, right? Sure. And they were first-person perspective, which had never been done before. So that was really cool. And again, it was that push forward on your arrow, walk one square forward, right? So it was almost like grid-based, but in first-person perspective. And I just remember playing as these characters and coming across characters that I had read about in the books that were in Dungeons & Dragons, like Queen Techissus and things like that. And it spanned probably five different actual games.

I don't remember. I just remember Pools of Radiance stands out in my mind. But if you played them in order, you went from basically being like the farmers with pitchforks that are trying to defend against a kobold attacking your farm, to you're taking on the queen of darkness and supplanting a demigod at the end of this series. You know what I mean? And it was just incredible, man. The combat was turn-based combat, but it followed Dungeons & Dragons rule sets. It was just phenomenal. You could backstab as a rogue,

so you'd position your rogue behind the character or the dragon that you were fighting, and he would just backstab the snot out of that dragon for huge damage. Right. And you were just like, Oh man, you could, your wizard would cast a fireball and it would,

it would, you know, blow up, but you could damage your own teammates, like your own party members with it. So you had like, there were times where I'd sacrifice like a party member because I was going to lose the fight.

If that fireball didn't hit like these six guys and And sorry, Mr. Rogue, that you were there. You're dead now, but we won the fight. You know what I mean? That kind of stuff. They're called the SSI Gold Box. If you pull up a photo of it, you're going to be like, wow, Josh, you're really old. Because even back then, you can just tell, man. And what's really funny.

Yeah, you're not kidding. Yeah. What's really funny is on GOG, kind of like Steam. I don't know if you've heard of GOG. But they released these games. They re-released them. And I geeked out. And I bought them instantly.

You could buy the whole series for like $2, right? You can still pick it up. And I was just nerding out and I booted them up. I played them for about 10 minutes and I went, yeah, I can't do this, man. Like these games are old.

Like they do not hold up. But... Oh, that's so funny. I love these old games because it's like file size 169 kilobytes. It's amazing how much they could pack into some of those games back then. Dude, these were on the five and a quarter floppy disks, and it was probably on three

of them at the time. But yeah, those games have a special place in my heart, too. I've played them multiple times each. I love them. I think that's why I like the somewhat tactical combat, and I really like first person, uh, like perspective. That's why I mentioned like the might and magic games and stuff like that. Like I've noticed they kind of follow that.

Um, you know, there's, there's like some recent games called like legend of grim rock, right. Or Bard's tale that still follow that same thing. Like Bard's tale four is great for people that like that genre. but yeah,

it, it just something about that clicks with me. I don't know what it is, but I love it. Gotcha. Well, I can bring up an obscure game to kind of match yours. I remember playing a very goofy game called Gladius, and it was by LucasArts. Gladius? I don't think I've heard of that.

Yeah. It came out like two years after Gladiator, which was obviously made because of the success of the movie. Someone was like, we gotta make a Gladiator game, let's make it an RPG. And I remember playing Gladius, and I'm sure it was not the first game to do this, but it's the first one that i ever saw where you had an advantage if you were on the high ground oh and i thought that was really neat so you would take your gladiator and if you were up on a platform you could swipe down on someone and

you were more likely to get a crit and i remember liking gladius more than other turn-based rpgs because it did give you almost like a golf meter so your sword swing you would have to time it and press a at the right time and if it was perfect then you would do more damage if it was outside it would do less and so at least the combat was a little bit more interactive and i did enjoy that aspect of it and And I remember it also having four-player co-op, which was very infrequent back then at that time, back in like 2003 or whatever. So yeah, Gladius is one that I remember. I do not know this game. Yeah, I'm sure very few people played it. So we're not going to go into any details here,

but a couple other RPGs that I had on my list, the Fable series. Yeah, great series. Fantastic. Star Wars, KOTOR 1 and 2. KOTOR was great. Why are they not remaking that? They should. I mean, yeah.

They're remaking Mass Effect. Why not remake KOTOR? X-Men Legends, Kingdom Hearts, Super Mario RPG, Paper Mario, Deus Ex. Dude, Deus Ex is on my list The initial Deus Ex is still one of the best games ever made The sequels to that

Were still really good But they couldn't capture what the original one had Yeah Diablo, which we've talked about recently So I don't think either of us was going to bring it up again The Dark Souls games I love Dark Souls You're not into that, are you? Yeah. Diablo, which we've talked about recently, so I don't think either of us was going to bring it up again. The Dark Souls games. I love Dark Souls. You're not into that, are you?

Not terribly. I've made it clear I don't really like melee-based combat. Yeah, that's true. I should have known that. I love it. I prefer playing archers or mages or guns. I like a little bit of distance. Risk of Rain 2, which we covered on the show. That's such a good game. I actually had the itch to play that the other day. Yeah, we

didn't really mention any roguelike games, but Risk of Rain 2 is one of them, for sure. And also, Lord of the Rings Middle-Earth, the Shadow of Mordor series. Those were great. Shadow of Mordor series, I might have to re-download that, too, because I've

been having the itch for some action games I talked about Curse of the Dead Gods just on our last episode and I don't know man, I've got the itch for a good action-y RPG game and I own both of those and the graphics on those games are ridiculous too plus it's Lord of the Rings oh yeah, and I really loved how they mixed stealth with the action.

So I always liked kind of ninja-ing my way in to find my target and then pounce on them. And then fighting your way out. Interrogate them to find where the captain is and then fight your way out. Yeah, those games are great. Stealth one way, action the other. Yeah, the Division games, Borderlands, Cyberpunk 2077, for better or worse okay you know how we were talking about like the heyday of like the peak of gaming like the mmos and like how we just felt with those like i was i was convinced that like cyberpunk was gonna give me like that little dose of that

feeling like witcher did right like because like i said witcher is one of the few games that like really got me to that like man, man, this game's incredible. And I think that's why... Cyberpunk is a fine game. It's a good game, but it didn't give me any of that feeling whatsoever. And I think that's why I was so disappointed with it. I mean, I get that it's my own fault. I built it up in my own head.

But it was just like, it didn't give me even a taste of what I was hoping for. And I think that's why it's like, man, that game fell short for me. Right. Well, that's all that we have here for today. So hopefully you guys enjoyed hearing a little bit about RPGs. I know Josh and I are huge fans and this does make me feel nostalgic where maybe I do want to go back and replay something like Chrono Trigger or like something super old that I haven't thought about in forever. But we would ask that you guys

rate our podcast five stars. Please subscribe if you haven't. If you want to help support the show, you can head on over to multiplayersquad.com and that's where you can sign up for one of our tiers. It starts at $5 a month, and that helps us keep the podcast running so we can release

two episodes every week. You can also check us out on social media at MultiplayerPod, YouTube at MultiplayerPodcast, and then we will be back with our regular This Week in Gaming episode on Thursday. And then the following Monday, we are going to be deep diving into Cuphead.

All right. Well, thanks for listening, everyone. And we will see you guys on Thursday.