Recommendations needed

Hey duders,

With the gaming dry season upon us and with me having some time on my hands I need something to play. Anyone have some good recommendations for a PC RPG? I'm looking for something along the lines of Dragon Age: Origins. I'm running a 3 year old laptop so nothing cutting edge.

Thanks guys and gals

The Witcher.

Shadowrun Returns (tablets can run this so no worries), Vampire The Masquerade Bloodlines (not like DAO, but much better), Knights of the Old Republic 1\2, Legend of Grimrock

and definitely this

Dragon Age Origins is a throwback to late 90's DnD-based CRPG's, so Baldur's Gate 2 should probably be your next stop.

I don't know if The Witcher will run all that well on a 4 year old laptop. I did play about five or ten hours of that game on my laptop from 2010, but at the lowest possible settings and it still chugged sometimes.

DO THE RIGHT THING! Buy Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 off GOG.com. Mash them all together in the Baldur's Gate Trilogy mod. Boom! Upwards of 200 hours gone.

@bambamcz: You know, I did play KOTOR 1&2 back when they where released, but maybe it's time for a new play-through.

I was going to say The Witcher 2, but I don't know how well that'll run.

Or just run through the whole Mass Effect trilogy for more Bioware.

You could try The Witcher, but I doubt it'd run well. Modding up Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 into a giant game of RPG goodness could easily hold your attention for months (depending on how much you play!) @coinmatze hit it head on.

Are we talking about a 3 year old laptop that was pretty powerful upon release or are we talking about something that struggled to run DAO? If it's the former then I'll agree that The Witcher is a good choice. If you want something far less polished but in my opinion quite similar in a lot of ways, I'd suggest Risen. It's a Polish CRPG like The Witcher. Not as good in pretty much every way, but if you aren't a stickler for heavy amounts of polish then it would be a good choice. One thing I liked about it and DAO was that enemies never respawn so there is a very specific amount of experience in the game. Grinding is literally impossible. If you explore every area once and do every quest you'll have all the experience possible. Risen also is more of an open world than DAO. Nothing near as expansive as an Elder Scrolls game, but not level based like DAO.

There is a Risen 2 but I can never get it to run correctly on my PC. I don't know if it is just horribly optimized or if there is a specific incompatibility with my graphics card, but even at 800x600 with all settings set to the low I can't get more than 25 fps on average. Another Polish CRPG series is the Gothic series, with the latest entry that I know of being called Arcania. I haven't played it so I can't comment on its overall quality but many people really enjoy the series. Again, like many Polish games you are trading a level of polish for a more ambitious game.

If your computer could not run DAO well then these games are not really an option. You might get away with the first Mass Effect but the second two are going to give you problems. If you want other Bioware games then KOTOR is an option and while Jade Empire is probably the company's weakest game it is still quite good and has some very interesting moral choices that effect the outcome of the game much more drastically than in Bioware games since. The first Fable game I believe is on PC and is enjoyable enough. I would recommend having a controller handy for that though. And if you want to go much further back you can look at the Baldur's Gate series or some of Black Isle's games like Icewind Dale or Planescape: Torment. Those games hold up in a lot of ways but not so much in others. The Baldur's Gate series has actually seen an HD edition come out recently if you want to try that.

Finally if you want a CRPG of a different sort Legend of Grimrock is a first person, tile based RPG. There is not really a story to it nor a variety of areas. It's literally just a big dungeon crawl. Might and Magic X was just released. I haven't tried it yet but my understanding is that it keeps the tile based movement from LOG and adds a story and varied environments so maybe if you need those things in an RPG then check that out?

@raven10: The first three Gothics and Risen are by Piranha Bytes, a German developer.

@coinmatze: Whoops. My mistake. I knew Deep Silver was involved in the publishing so I assumed Piranha Bytes was a Polish joint. Guess it was JoWood who published it initially. German, Austrian, and Polish publishers and developers rise, fall, and merge so often I sometimes lose track of it all. Like Nordic Games appeared out of nowhere and started publishing games by Farm 51 who I guess used to be part of People Can Fly and one of those two own the Painkiller license. Hard to keep track of it all. So sorry, my error.

@raven10: My laptop could handle DA: Origins without any issue.

Thanks for the suggestions all, I'm going to give Baulder's Gate a shot and then maybe play KOTOR again for old times sake.

The Witcher 2 is an unusual game, it's a bit different from most RPGs I've played but it's a gorgeous world and an interesting story. Ran like shit on my old laptop though. Gotta say Baldurs Gate 1+2. You'll struggle to find many games of that time period that still stand up as well today.