How many hours would it take to beat the whole pack? Normal playthrough doing most sidequests but not trying to 100% each game?

Hardly similar game mechanics. Just play a Geneforge game for ten minutes and compare, let's say, the movement or the combat system to Avernum's.
I find Geneforge's combat to be messier overall, with characters traversing whole screens in one turn. Makes tactical thinking a bit tricky.

You may count around 40-50 hours per game. I don't know if 1-3 were shorter than 4-6 though. On dude on steam forums wrote that maxing out one game from 4-6 took him 150 hours but usually it doesn't take that long... :P

Ok, I'm sorry for being misinformative. But that gives even more reasons to buy Avernum saga :P

You've been missing out my friend! I got into it with A5 and I've been hooked ever since. EFTP is pretty good, and A6 was a satisfying conclusion to the series, but A4 and A5 really hit the sweet spot for me in terms of action, plot, pacing and writing. I don't know if I'd compare it to the almighty PS:T but I'd personally put it up there with my Bioware/Black Isle favorites like Icewind Dale and Baldur's Gate.

For the sheer volume of gameplay and content, this is an insane value at $7.99, especially considering how much Vogel charges for his games from his own site (see this post on his blog for why he does this).

I myself am somewhat on the fence with this, as I'd be buying this for A1-3 and Blades, but I'm enough of a supporter of Jeff and what he does that I'm not opposed to rebuying the games I already have.

In a nutshell, Geneforge is much, much different in tone than Avernum. In GF, the world is extremely morally ambiguous. Both the Rebels and the Shapers are equally in the right, and equally in the wrong, at least in terms of their philosophy towards Lifecrafting, Creations, and the war. In the end, no one has the moral high ground and everyone is equally culpable for some atrocity or another. This left me very uneasy, as I had to make some very uncomfortable choices in terms of what I was going to do, who I was going to join, and why.

After reading through the Spiderweb forums, I realized that the optimal way to play was to actually play both sides, lying about achieving objectives or just outright killing people who was I supposed to save, and saving people I was supposed to kill – thus getting the rewards, items, and bonuses from both sides. I can't put my finger on it, but that really bothered me.

The gameplay is player-centric; you play one character and one character only. You don't really have a party, so much as you can make a "party" through Shaping different creatures with differing abilities. But they're not so much companions, as they are minions that you can send out to wreak havoc against your enemies. Just the same, playing GF felt very lonely to me.

In contrast, Avernum is a lot more morally straight-forward; there are fairly clear good guys, fairly clear bad guys (though this gets a little more complicated in A5, and a lot more muddy in A6) and you play a party of people together. Both game series are really fantastic (and I bought GF4-5, and The Complete Saga from Indie Royale), but in the end, I've always found the world and gameplay of Avernum more satisfying to me than Geneforge.

gone!

So pleased I held off on buying them from Spiderweb at $75.00 (When they had their yearly sale).

Especially good since I was never sure if they were DRM free or not.

I have not played these, but it looks like a re-colored, slightly tweaked Genoforge, yes??

Actually, it wouldn't surprise me if it took a dedicated player 100+ hours to find every single last thing in A4-6. Hell, I'm on my second full playthrough of A5 (after sinking weeks into that game) and I'm *still* finding new stuff and areas that I hadn't seen before.

Steam versions aside, the way it worked for GF1-4 and A1-5 (when you bought them direct from Spiderweb) was that you'd download the full version as a demo, which had a unique code of numbers; when you bought the game, you'd give them the game's code, and they'd email you back a matching code of numbers you'd enter to unlock the full game. It was an annoyance if you ever wanted to transfer the game to another machine, or reinstalled it, but it was easily circumventable if you knew what files to shuttle around. For GF5, A6, Avadon, and A:EFTP, Vogel made it a little less annoying by making you enter a one time registration code that they'd email you upon payment.

It's not "DRM" in the sense of what modern games use; it's what many shareware games on the Mac and Windows have used for years before shareware games became trendy as "indie games", but it was a point of contention for some on the GOG forums who staunchly opposed it.

They share the same engine, and even the same art assets. Jeff makes an interesting defence of this practice on his blog.

Thanks for the answer, then Steam doesn't have all Spiderweb games because I guessed Escape from the Pit replaced Avernum 1-3, guess I will buy the saga here (I have Geneforge saga and Avadon in Steam, together with Escape from the Pit)

Wakes up, checks GOG and see Avernum 1-6

Makes this face
http://i.imgur.com/C0Bka.gif

Starts to head to the buy button

Great release.

Wow, thanks! I'm still being amazed by this community, over and over again. Downloading right now :-) (playing later!)

Hey, GOG guys, here is one thing to think about - it would be great to be able to "cut" these bundles into several pictures once I have those on my shelf. You see, I'm really tight on my gaming time these days and I LOVE to arrange my games on the shelf so that the ones I've completed go first. How many hours will I need to complete this "Avernum Complete"? something like 600? Too much for me, I would like to strike em down one by one and move to "completed" zone of my shelf.

Don't have the desire to buy bundles (unless they are EXTREMELY special, like Blackwell) until than. Yours truly

The complete Avernum Saga for only 8 bucks?
Instabuy, at that price it's almost theft.