Adventure Gamers - Forums

It’s a grey zone by definition. It depends a bit on what criteria you apply for a game to fit the cross-over category.

F.i I always thought that QFG was more RPG than Adventure (due to the nature of point based skill levels), but others on this site have defended it’s adventure game roots.

It’s all fair game, as long as you set the criteria first, so eligable games are at least not pure adventure game or RPG.

How do you want to define RPGs/Adventures exactly? Many modern RPGs have better stories, characters and exploration than most adventure games.

If you want to stick close to the QfG formula, so let’s say stats + inventory puzzles, then there aren’t a lot of games that I know of:

Heroine’s Quest
Quest for Infamy
Daughter of Serpents

And that’s all I can think of.

If you don’t require inventory puzzles, then the list can get much longer, but you need to give more details as to what you want: Clever puzzles (but not inventory based)? Strong characters? In-depth world-building? Story with lots of choices? Very little combat? etc.

Id say inkle’s Sorcery! absolutely counts in this catagory. Granted it is interactive fiction. It is closely bound to adventure exploration and rpgs. In that same vein Sunless sea is another game where the adventuring and exploration takes center stage with some lite rpg management stuff.
Also worth taking a moment to remind people: mage’s initiation is in the last stages of development and we will likely not have to wait long to have a new QFG-like.

Anachronox
Waxworks
Veil of Darkness

There aren’t many games I’ve played that I’d consider Adventure/RPG

My criteria for an RPG is that the game uses stats where you level up, improve weapons, or otherwise improve your character’s ability to fight and/or get past obstacles. Combat can be turn-based or action-based but most gameplay, including exploration, requires combat in some form and combat is what you’re doing most of the time.

The criteria I’d use for Adventure/RPG is that other than RPG-like stats, the gameplay is mostly adventure type—collecting and using inventory, achieving goals by interacting with characters in a non-combat way—and the gameplay has to be more than 80% “adventure game style” with long stretches of pure adventure gameplay, because other genres have always used elements of what’s considered adventure gameplay (quests, conversations, story, puzzles). The most obvious difference between doing quests in an adventure game vs an RPG is that in an RPG you usually receive “experience” or some other stat from completing the quest, while in the adventure game, completing the quest gives you information or an inventory object that allows progress in the game. In an Adventure/RPG it could be either or both. And then of course adventure games don’t focus on combat or developing stats, where in an Adventure/RPG there will be some amount of combat.

The most obvious examples of Adventure/RPG are Quest for Glory and the games that imitated it:

Quest for Glory
Heroine’s Quest
Quest for Infamy

And then there is The Fifth Disciple.

The Fifth Disciple is mainly a 3rd person adventure game, but with sections where you play a turn-based combat minigame. During the minigame there is an option for a grid to be placed on the ground, making it into a sort of board game you play against the computer. You gain abilities from winning the combat minigame that help with winning future combat minigames. So if you can’t win a particular combat in a particular location, that means you need to win the combat in one or more other places in the game first—after you’ve built up enough capability. For some reason I can’t find an AG review, but an old Quandaryland review from 2004 is archived at
http://www.metzomagic.com/showArticle.php?index=771
Hardly anyone seems to have heard of this game. I had to order it from overseas (with exorbitant postage) but at the time I enjoyed the game and thought it was worth the price.

Then there are games that are more like Action/Adventure/RPG that have a lot more action and/or stealth than Adventure/RPG.

zane - 29 December 2017 01:43 PM

Also worth taking a moment to remind people: mage’s initiation is in the last stages of development and we will likely not have to wait long to have a new QFG-like.

Mage’s Initiation (Q1-Q2 2018) may or may not be out a little before Hero-U (Q2-Q3 2018), which is probably going to be a bit QFG-like as well.

Maybe Hero-U is so obvious that people don’t even need to be reminded of that.

One that I have mentioned before is Neuromancer. However it’s not a game I would recommend given its age and dated mechanics.

Much more interesting is Microprose’s Bloodnet, a mix of cyberpunk and vampires. It’s available on GOG.

You could also try some of Legend’s later games, such as Shannara and Superhero League of Hoboken.

I guess we could also mention the mmorpg Runescape.

While you spend much time getting your stats up in boring and repetitive training sessions, there are also 218 quests. Some are very combat-oriented, while some are very traditional fetch quests and dialogue-based ones.

It can also be argued whether some parts of the game are deliberate homages to adventure games, such as “Ape Atoll” which is a place in the game.

Also, one quest in the game is called “Heroes’ Quest”.

Gabe - 30 December 2017 06:33 AM

For you only the best Advie.

10.Pillars of Eternity
9.Fallout: New Vegas
8.Vampire: Bloodlines
7.Skyrim
6.Mass Effect Trilogy
5.Dragon Age: Origins
4.The Witcher 2 EE
3.Deus Ex HR DC
2.Planescape: Torment EE
1.The Witcher 3

None of these are actually RPG/Adventure hybrids.