Play it Again, Chet

Oh, how I long to be in this screen again.

One of the reasons I started this project was to end my slavish devotion to a small handful of RPGs that I tended to replay over and over. Between the dates of their initial releases and the fall of 2009, I played Might & Magic VI, Might & Magic VII, Baldur's Gate, Baldur's Gate II, Morrowind, and Icewind Dale at least once per year. Oblivion, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, Icewind Dale II, Neverwinter Nights, and Jade Empire didn't show up quite as often on my replay list, but I played each of them at least three times.

The particularly absurd thing about my addiction was that each replay was generally followed by a sincere assertion that, having just won the game for the multipleth time, to ever spend any time on it again would be such a huge waste of time as to defy comprehension. Thus, I would delete it from my hard drive and throw away the disks. A year later, I'd get the itch again, and thus have to buy the game again. I won Baldur's Gate 10 times and probably purchased it 7 times.

Anyway, in this specific goal, my little project has been a resounding success: with the exception of a brief return to Oblivion in 2010, I haven't played any of these games for almost four years. I accomplished exactly what I intended: to put enough space between me and my favorite games so that when I finally returned to them, years later, they would feel fresh, and I wouldn't necessarily remember the solution to every quest, or the outcome to every dialogue option. It is, on the other hand, a little depressing that given my current pace, I won't play Baldur's Gate again for nearly a decade.

I'm approaching 100 games on this blog, meaning I've played more different games in the last three and a half years than I played in the 25 years leading up to the project. Now that it's been a couple years for many of them, I was curious to take a look at the list and see which of them I would add to my "replay rotation" if I was just playing what I felt like playing instead of marching through a chronological list. I looked over every game on my "Game Rankings" list and thought about whether I would truly desire to have another go at it.

The results were mostly unsurprising; they were almost all highly-ranked in the final score. This is what I came up with:

1. Rogue. When I finally won this game, I thought it was such an accomplishment that I shared the winning screen on Reddit and got the inspiration to start this blog. At the time, I'm sure I vowed never to play it again. Today, mired in a neverending battle against NetHack, I long for the relative simplicity of Rogue, and I think it would be fun to give it another try.

2. Wizardry I-III. There's something about my peculiar CRPG addiction that will always love wireframe hallways, mapping square-by-square, and the palpable sense of doom that accompanies every step. If I played again, I'd relax my rules and allow occasional backups of my saved games. I'd like to actually win II and III.

3. Might & Magic I: I still like it a little better than the sequel. It's as challenging as Wizardry but in different ways, and I still love the variety of encounters that I experienced. I'd like to play it again with some extreme party variation, like all mages or all archers. Its sequel oddly holds less interest for me in the replay department, but perhaps only because I played it more recently.

4. Phantasie. To be honest, I barely remember the game at this point, but I do remember enjoying the process of slowly revealing the automap, the combats, the special encounters in each dungeon, and the neat equipment and experience distribution systems.

5. Pool of Radiance and Curse of the Azure Bonds. I have a feeling that the entire Gold Box series would appear in my regular replay rotation. I could play them again right now. Just as with Might & Magic, now that I'm familiar enough with the plots again, I'd love to try the series with a challenging party combination, like no mages or all mages or something.

6. Dungeon Master. My recent playing of Chaos Strikes Back made me long for the original game. I'm always up for detailed level-mapping, moderately-challenging puzzles, and the game's rapid skill-based advancement. It was particularly surprising how much I'd like to replay this one since I don't remember loving it on my first pass.

7. The Dark Heart of Uukrul. It's been too recent for me to want to replay it right now, but I'd love to have another chance at it in a few years, once I've forgotten all the puzzles.

There was a subset of games that I have an odd compulsion to replay solely as speedruns. I suspect I could win Hero's Quest in less than an hour if I put my mind to it, and I have this idea that one could win Drakkhen in about the same amount of time--provided one started the game and left it running unattended for a few days, letting the characters fight random battles.

I also encountered a host of games that I wanted to replay not because I really enjoyed them, but simply because they deserved more of a chance than I originally gave them: Autoduel, Wizard's Crown, Swords of Glass, and Le Maitre des Ames.

I was surprised by the lack of any urge to play a handful of games that I loved the first time around, including the two Starflights, Ultimas IV and V, Wasteland, Hero's Quest, and The Magic Candle. My theory is that the fun of these games depends so much on finding clues and slowly revealing the plots that I don't really want to play them again until I've forgotten enough that it's like a new experience. I'll see how I feel about them in a few years.

Some of the games on my original replay list, like Morrowind and Baldur's Gate are also plot-heavy, but they offer addictive experiences aside from their plots, including a steady progression in character development and equipment. My replay sessions would invariably be prompted by the remembrance of some addictive game aspect: finding a chest containing an upgraded shield and mace in Might & Magic, running and jumping across plains and mountains in Morrowind, or role-playing the various NPC dialogues and stronghold quests in Baldur's Gate II.

Alas, time is too short to replay any of these games, no matter how strong the urge, so you will not see any "second time around" postings any time soon. But if not for this blog, I'd probably be elbows-deep in Rogue again right now.

What CRPGs do you find yourself playing over and over--and why?

***

A quick status update is necessary, since I haven't posted since April 16. Work got crushingly busy in the second half of April, and I still haven't quite emerged from the pile. I don't know what the rest of the week is going to look like, but I need to get back into Knights of Legend before I forget so much about the game I have to start over. Thanks for everyone's patience.