LogFAQs > #921542801

13. Beat a WRPG

Geneforge

What It Is: If LiSA and Monster Rancher created the Powerpuff Girls together on a tiny island filled with warring factions of house elves.

- Spiderweb Software is a company I've been playing games from since the 90s with Exile and Avernum series. I attempted to beat Geneforge some time last year and got about halfway through before I gave up because I wasn't having any fun and wasn't really making any progress. At least thrice I tried my hand at it again, running into frustating traps, powerful foes, and felt completely overmatched by the three routes I knew of to get to the other half of the map.

Turns out that I didn't really need to bust my ass so hard running against a brick wall. After a year absent, I decided to do some minor exploring and backtracking and found two or three other paths I didn't discover by ignoring a few exits from certain towns and zones and adding them to my map. They were zones designed for my character ten levels ago (and I'm at L17 out of 20 or so). I won't say the game became a cakewalk from there because the hardest and most difficult zones were still to come, but just being able to explore new places and finish long-forgotten quests was enough to keep me engaged and powering forward with enough momentum to reach the end (as well as not hoarding every single item I could or trying to save my disposable summons every time).

It's a very good game, and under different circumstances, probably better than the Exile/Avernum series in terms of plot, dialogue, choices, lore, and perhaps combat. Exile is very swords&sorcery traditional with a wide variety of spells and D&D style combat while Geneforge definitely is influenced by the monster hunting strengths of the late 90s/early 00s, but with a much better story than any other one I'd played.

You're a novice Shaper (apprentice spellcaster-adjacent) shipwrecked onto an abandoned island where you begin to encounter slave creatures acting of their own free will without the influence of other Shapers that are long gone. Your main goal is to find a way off the island, but you're pulled into several wars of belief and thought: the Awakened who just want freedom to live how they want; the Obeyers who yearn to be told what to do and follow their masters again; and the Takers who rage against those that abandoned them and want chaos and vengeance. There are people and minds hidden about the world that influence what goes on, plenty of quests and lore, and a pretty good job world building with multiple endings.

If you like old school isometric RPGs, it's quite good and better than I expected.
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