RPG's with slower leveling
Hello fellow rpg fans!
I am curious if anyone knows of any single player or mmo rpg that has slower character progression compared to most games. Let me explain what I mean by that.
In most RPG games I've played the main protagonist progresses from a weakling to powerhouse (Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter Nights, World of Warcraft etc. being prime examples).
There were a couple games I played where the character progression felt much slower and your endgame character ended up being obviously more capable than your starting one but not ridiculously so. (Fallout 1 and Morrowind if roleplayed come to mind)
Are there any other good single or multiplayer RPG games where you start as a somewhat competent character and then progress slowly throughout the adventure only to emerge as a competent one? By that I mean stuff like increasing your stats by 10-50% over the course of the game, not 2000% as many games do. Also not having your health go up too much, the games where you are still vulnerable at the end feel way more satisfying to me.
Thanks in advance!
I am curious if anyone knows of any single player or mmo rpg that has slower character progression compared to most games. Let me explain what I mean by that.
In most RPG games I've played the main protagonist progresses from a weakling to powerhouse (Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter Nights, World of Warcraft etc. being prime examples).
There were a couple games I played where the character progression felt much slower and your endgame character ended up being obviously more capable than your starting one but not ridiculously so. (Fallout 1 and Morrowind if roleplayed come to mind)
Are there any other good single or multiplayer RPG games where you start as a somewhat competent character and then progress slowly throughout the adventure only to emerge as a competent one? By that I mean stuff like increasing your stats by 10-50% over the course of the game, not 2000% as many games do. Also not having your health go up too much, the games where you are still vulnerable at the end feel way more satisfying to me.
Thanks in advance!
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Comments
Are the persistent worlds any different?
Icewind Dale 2 has fast leveling early on, but then it slows down dramatically.
And as for Dnd5th...are there any games that utilize this system?
Yes! Darklands! A genius game that's completely different from everything else. And, since you mentioned Morrowind, I can't omit to mention what came before - the great and terrible Buggerfall, I mean Daggerfall. I was scared away from it early on not just by the mind-bending bugs, like the classic "AAAAAAH I've fallen through the world," but by the terrifying dungeons. I was just freaked out by the monsters, to be honest. Somehow they were more terrible than anything in the Elder Scrolls since, even though they were 2D sprites in 3D rooms, and a lot of them made no sound, too. Maybe that's why they were so damn spooky. But that game has the biggest game world ever created. It was there that I got my strongest impression of a vast imaginary space.
Moving still back... Betrayal in Antara was probably not a good game, had I known any different then, and they say it's a step down from Betrayal in Krondor, but I only played the second one. It had a memorable magic construction system that recently appeared in a crude form in Tyranny, but Antara's was musical, and it had puzzle chests...
Still, very-very linear, this one. I can't go back any more than that, except to Zelda: a Link to the Past for Super Nintendo. That game is still in all halls of fame, but it's a console game... I'll gladly go a little forward, stopping by another genre. Have you played Thief: the Dark Project? It's a "first-person sneaker," as they used to say, but it's got one of the most convincing and atmospheric game worlds, and you can choose how to go through the levels - killing or not, steal more or less... And Garrett is a poor fighter. He can barely take on a soldier or two. Here is the masterpiece intro movie (for watching in fullscreen, lights off):
https://youtu.be/GySn6_aclAM
That game's 3D has aged terribly, but I heard that it looks awesome in 3D glasses.
Back to the future and away from fantasy, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic was all right and didn't immediately feel easy. Some people swear by that game, but I never cared for Star Wars... It certainly was non-linear and with many quest solutions and choices. Just never came together for me. And finally I must mention Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines. Which was set in modern Los Angeles, but was out-and-out one of the best RPGs... the first half, anyway. The fledgling was anything but a superhero in the early chapters. The game was easier to absorb if you were familiar with the tabletop White Wolf RPGs in the World of Darkness, and I was, though not with VtM. But I got drawn in. Each of the White Wolf RPGs dealt with its own existential principle, and VtM had its own problematic that I appreciated only some years later. But it's a sweet and heady drink even for a newbie, that game...
Speaking of which, its combat mechanics are really good... simple, but it works well. Four lines of attack/defence, lmb=attack, rmb=block, mouse chooses direction, and you have to parry in the right direction (or set it to "easy mode" ). It's also the only game I've seen do horse combat properly, although horse archery is still ridiculously easy.
Thief is also a good game, but again, it's not an RPG.
But yes, as jjstraka34 said, the idea is to disempower the character in a way. I don't mind getting many levels, as long as those levels give you small upgrades. If a level 100 character is 150% more powerful than a level 1, then that's fantastic and exactly what I am looking for!
I have an anecdote from playing Dark Souls that will illustrate this. There is a certain farming spot in the game where you fight giant leeches in a swamp. I usually reach this area once I'm level 30-40, and I pretty much never have any trouble fighting the leeches. However, in one playthrough I went there with a character who was about level 80. She got killed by the leeches because I was too reckless.
Killing things gave almost no XP, so farming was impossible, and all quests were level-restricted and on a 24 hour timer, so you could only do them after 24 hours of real time had passed. Once you got past level 3, you couldn't do the easy "fetch and carry" quests anymore... so getting to level 3 was quick and easy, but it slowed down after that. Death penalties were also harsh.... like, seriously harsh, and often resulted in level loss. Many players chose perma-death rather than face another months of working back up to level 6.
As a result, the whole world had a much more brutal, real, believable feeling to it. You weren't some super-badass hero who is so far above the rest of the world that one wonders why he isn't basically Emperor, you were an ordinary person like many other ordinary people, and if you didn't bring enough help, or work together effectively, you were dust. It encouraged RP, interaction, etc... because if your character didn't have friends, you were going nowhere. It was awesome.