Hi everyone,

I took everyones great suggestions and looked at all the games recommended for beginners. OMG...there are so many awesome games out there I could be here forever and never finish half the ones that caught my eye. Anyway I've narrowed the list down to a few that I think I would enjoy. Just wanted to know if anyone had some final thoughts before I go ahead and dig in.

King's Quest: A Knight to Remember
Final Fantasy VII
Quest For Glory
Skyrim
Anachronox
Heroine's Quest

So many, many more I liked but definitely need to get my feet wet first.

Final Fantasy VII was the first FF that I'd played and what sparked my interest in the genre. It has great characters, story, and gameplay. I'm envious that you'll get to play it for the first time. Just beware of spoilers. Because it is so old and popular, people like to talk about the major plot points of this game.

Quest for Glory is a really good one too but I personally believe it's best played if you have all 5 Quest games since you can import your character to each game and maintain a sense of ownership with the character you created.

FF7 can become a bit grindy depending on your style of play. It's a good game for an introduction to the series or JRPGs though.

For Quest for Glory, there is also a VGA remake that was done by AGDI for Trial by Fire (the second game). It is very well done, and is compatible with the import/export character feature of the series. It adds a few things here and there on some of the side quests. It's one of the more unique games, as I haven't really played another game that was a point-click, but also an RPG that has different possible solutions depending on what your character's skills are. This is my favorite RPG series.

Skyrim can be buggy at times, as Bethesda is famous for them. I've put in about 1000 hours into the game, and still have barely scratched the main quest line because of modding the game. I find the Bethesda games easy, so I look for ways to change them, and then end up finding a whole bunch of things I want in the game. Don't fall into the modding trap like I did if you want to finish the game soon.

That list will keep you busy for a while though. Enjoy!

Fortunately they're sold as a pack here :)
As for importing, sense of ownership maybe, but more relevant is just having the better character early in games. Make a thief in the first and you'll be able to get all stats (can't do that for any other class, as they have 0 in more than 3), then max them through practice each game, and start each game after that with roughly double the stats of a new character.

As people noted, in the previous thread, these aren't really RPGs. (Okay, Skyrim is.)

No big deal: just play what you want; but these are more adventure games where you play a pre-drawn character, which is one of the definitions of an RPG, but not the typical understanding most gamers have. They think RPG means "I get to create my own avatar".

A continuum of gaming from the predesigned character to the choose-your-own character paradigms would begin with:
A [Wadjet Eye] game like Technobabylon is a good cyberpunk adventure game, but logical enough to be a graphic novel. (I found it easier than Primordia.)
And then progress to:
Arcanum has a bunch of pre-drawn characters you can play and a terrific corpus of lore (technology versus magic) that would be a good stepping-stone into RPGs from adventures.


Once (and assuming) you make the leap to RPGs, there are quite a few that have rudimentary mechanics.
I can't give an opinion for the various games mentioned here that I haven't played (like Driftmoon), but I would caution jumping into Balder's Gate. The latter is obviously a brilliant game but it can be very confusing to learn; i.e., what is important to know and what can be learnt later can be overwhelming.

I second games like Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, which is less complex than most other RPGs.

Also Shadowrun games are all pretty hard to mess up a character build. Remember that min-maxing is the most useful tactic, wherein you maximize the strengths (for each character in the group) which inevitably leaves them with weaknesses. (These weaknesses you must compensate with other characters' strengths.)

Starcrawlers seems pretty decent, too, with a lot of modern mechanics and pretty graphics.

Welcome community and happy gaming.
:)