Avernum: Escape From the Pit

This is a good game for a certain kind of RPG fan. Let's get the negatives out of the way first. There's barely any music, the sound effects are very basic, the graphics are very basic & the storytelling is done mostly through simple text blocks, and the character builds are kind of simple and yet imbalanced. But beyond that, this is a very open-ended turn-based RPG with an excellent setting & lore, with a good variety of quests, enemies, characters, locations and so on. Most dungeons do feel different despite the limited storytelling capabilities of the game and there's a good amount of tactical challenge to sink your teeth into, especially on higher difficulties. I think itemisation is another fun part of this game, there are a lot of gear slots and aside from throwing weapons, there's good variety in magic items and consumables to use. On a more vent-ish note, I 100%'d this on Torment difficulty and I do think the game is much better on lower difficulties. It could be so insanely difficult at times on Torment in a not very fun way, often RNG-heavy with status effects that could just lose a fight for you if they procced, and it requires use of strong builds & cheese tactics to …

Played Exile back as a kid and always loved Spiderweb and Fantasoft games. This one is an oldie but a good one if you like old school not necessarily DnD RPGs.

I sat and played this game for 12 hours straight, can't believe it was un-played in my Steam Library for over a decade. A striped back CRPG with a great premise, interesting story and surprisingly complex progression.

Great old-school CRPG. The gameplay is easy to learn and it's easy to jump right in.

So I've played the og Avernum by the time I was 9yo or something... And I do remember vividly how unforgiving the world was, but I honestly had no memory of how miserable as well. Avernum takes place in a set of caves and underground ambiances (hence "the pit") that is very successful in transposing the feeling of desolation - overworld should be darker without the excuse of glowing things imo, but it's alright nonetheless -, true poverty and how unbalanced real power can be when everything else is lacking. Spells for one represents real power in Avernum, not in a lorewise aspect but considering how broken it is as a consequence in this scenario: quality equips are scarce and mostly with melee or ranged oriented traits; resistances are slooooooowly scalable both as part of character growth and equipment building but their hard cap is kinda low; mana is overwhelmingly abundant; knowledge is just a matter of coin. The way devs nerfed spellcasters? As intended, of course: making armor a nuisance, as you find in so many other tabletop RPG setups following root DnD rules. But as freedom is respected so much in Avernum (which makes the game so enjoyable over and over after all these yea…

Another great adventure game from SpiderWeb.