Early Firearms in Crpgs & tacticools - Recommendations & Compendium thread

[vazha]

What the title says, basically. I happen to be a big fan of handgonnes, muskets and their like in my fantasy / medieval-inspired games, and having played quite a few of those already, hoped you guys could recommend me some that I might have missed?

Here s a list of those I already played and 2 cents worth of hot takes from yours truly.

1. Arcanum: classic. 'Nuff said.

2. Pillars of Eternity 1-2: Look I hate intelligent barbarians and other retardo crap as much as the next guy, but firearms were neatly done I found. Thinking about replaying Deadfire with a arquebus-toting sharpshooter. Feel free to give build advise.

3. Sacred 1-2: had a hand cannon-wielding dwarf. Havent touched this since teenage years, but good memories.

4. Corsairs series: mostly you get to use pistols, though in later series you could also have a musket as I recall. Mostly as sidearms though. Fantastic games, pure slavjank, worth playing.

5. Risen series: Abandoned Risen 2 several times, but will get back to it someday. Is full-ranged build viable?

6. Farewell To Dragons: Slavjank meets steampunk. Not too bad, but becomes an utter slog towards the end.

7. Silverfall: good art, good atmosphere, can play as a goblin with a blunderbuss or a musket, but the horrendous diablo combat and respawning enemies kill all the fun.

8. Vendetta: Raven's Cry - See the Sea Dogs (Corsairs) series. Its essentially a (much improved) spiritual successor. Great game.

9. TOME: Love the game, have sunk countless hours into it, but absolutely hated how they did firearms. Unfun.

10. Fate series: have played only the first one, havent heard good things about the latter two

11. Assasssin's Creed: not a fan.

12. Torchlight series: not bad at all for a rpg-lite.

13. Greedfall: Spiders games are my guilty pleasure. Played it, enjoyed it, not ashamed!

Rpg & Tacticool hybrids:

1. Battle Brothers: Absolutely love the game, including what they did with handgonnes. Still hope they ll get back to doing more dlcs for it and we'll get to see pistols and muskets

2. Expeditions: Conquistadors - Their best game. Not a masterpiece by any means, but thoroughly enjoyable.

3. Black Legend - I honestly think Codex sleeps on this one. Very happy I played it first and then looked it up on the 'Dex. Game is not without its problems and shortcomings, but boasts excellent atmosphere, setting, art (great weapon variety), an unballanced but FUN combat. If you ever wanted to play a grimdark fantasy Alatriste adventure (I know I did), then this is it.


Thats it from me folks - cant remember more atm. Feel free to chip in and recommend!.

 

[Kruyurk]

There are firearms in Legend of Grimrock 2.

 

[Butter]

Wizardry 7 (and its retarded younger brother Wizardry 8)

 

[Baron Tahn]

Darklands!

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

Battle for Westnoth and Fantasy General have some units that use early firearms.

 

[Infinitron]

I wouldn't consider the late 19th century rifles and revolvers in Arcanum to be "early firearms".

 

[OneManArmyGames]

Since you're counting anything prior to the 20th century as "early", gunslinger builds with the new dash move can be pretty fun in Grim Dawn.

Also Mount & Blade: With Fire & Sword.

 

[lukaszek]

outward

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

Does anyone remember if Cataclysm DDA or Bright Nights has muskets or other early firearms?

 

[Morpheus Kitami]

Depending on your definition of early firearms...

Blood & Gold
Sea Dogs/Pirates of the Caribbean
Space 1889 (IIRC)

Of note is Mount & Blade and other entries in the series. All entries have firearms IIRC, but in some versions you need to enable them. Mods, on the other hand, often have them, including some very nice western themed ones.

 

[stephensmall]

Does anyone remember if Cataclysm DDA or Bright Nights has muskets or other early firearms?

Base game comes prepackaged with a classic firearms mod that you can turn on during worldgen

 

[Nortar]

Do you count early-access games? There's one called BEAST in all caps for extra edginess.

It's set in Carpathians around 1600, there are firearms and the main character is armed with the rare and prestigious gun-axe.

A few screenshots of the gunaxe in action

 

[vazha]

Do you count early-access games? There's one called BEAST in all caps for extra edginess.

It's set in Carpathians around 1600, there are firearms and the main character is armed with the rare and prestigious gun-axe.

A few screenshots of the gunaxe in action

Yes this one of the games that I am most looking forward to. High time for an Ottoman Empire-inspired game.

And of course I know of M&B and Wizardries, have sunk countless hours in both.

How is Outward? Or to be more precise, how Soulsy are they?

And Infinitron of course you are right. I was mostly going by aesthetics tbh.

One other game I also forgot to mention is Mordheim - some neat gun builds are available there. I see that the Vermintides also feature some neat blunderbussy shenanigans, but my hand & eye coordination is nowhere good enough for actiony games anymore I am afraid.

And while I am at it, here is one more game with guns - Liberte. Great premise for a setting and not too ugly to look at, but terrible gameplay, even if you are a fan of deckbuilders. Something tells me it was initially meant to be a mobile game. What a wasted potential.

Keep the suggestions flowing in please! Currently having a blast with gun-focused party in Deadfire (turn based makes the firearms so so much better!). Got a dual pistol whipping monk/fighter, Mirke & Xoti with dual blunderbusses, Maia with Red Hand and Pallegina with Dragons Dowry. Fun and really powerful too, even wirh all the xp reduction and upscaling.

 

[lukaszek]

How is Outward? Or to be more precise, how Soulsy are they?

its not soulsy. firearm itself takes form of offhand pistol. Can be a magic channeled shot. Its not there to nuke or do much pew pew, main utility is to apply statuses. For example i was pairing it with dagger and had a combo where I would do a special shot, then backstab. Quite wonky as both are offhand weapons, thus requiring a switch and controls are not amazing.

Anyway I liked it

 

[Serus]

Darklands!

Yes. Very early firearms too. First generation i'd say.

 

[mondblut]

Does anyone remember if Cataclysm DDA or Bright Nights has muskets or other early firearms?

Yeah. There is a location full of zombie larpers armed with flintlocks. Even a 3-inch cannon.

 

[deuxhero]

Kingdom Come 2 has a handgonne in the trailer. The in-game codex for KC1 outright wonders why the game doesn't have guns.

Fallout 76 has a black powder pistol and rifle, and in typical 76/Bethesda fashion they fucked it up by using a caplock instead of a flintlock. A new production flintlock in the post-apocalypse makes perfect sense: Black powder, flint and lead are easy to produce anywhere (unlike smokeless which needs steady production of wood pulp or cotton, multiple acids, and hydraulic presses to make in reasonable quantity), salvaged piping would be good enough for black powder pressures, and spring steel is also plentiful for salvage. A caplock on the other hand, is dependent on primers. If you can make primers, you might as well go for a cartridge firearm.

Of note is Mount & Blade and other entries in the series. All entries have firearms IIRC, but in some versions you need to enable them. Mods, on the other hand, often have them, including some very nice western themed ones.

OG and Warband have a barebones implementation and (by default) hidden skill for the sake of modding base. Bannerlord doesn't have a model or dedicated skill, but its crossbows are programmed with fields that serve no point on any actual crossbow (like capacity, which would only ever be used on a few Chinese oddities) but were clearly included for the sake of firearms mods.

 

[Lonely Vazdru]

Thunderscape had muskets and steampunk firearms.

 

[Baron Tahn]

Ooh. That's got nice luks for my money. Is it any good? Thunderscape I mean. What's it like?

 

[Lonely Vazdru]

Ooh. That's got nice luks for my money. Is it any good? Thunderscape I mean. What's it like?

Since I'm a lazy fuck, I'll just copy/paste old posts of mine :

I love this game but I would hesitate to recommend it as it's ugly (except for paper dolls), repetitive and features too much, too easy combat. And the final levels are a nightmare to navigate and finish, even using a walkthrough. Without using one, good luck to anyone trying.

But as I said, I love it just the same : it features a very cool classless system, phased-based combat (which was, and still is, not that common), steampunk setting, great music and awesome paper dolls.

It has its flaws like useless social skills and even more useless money, but it mostly suffers from huge levels coupled with constant respawning enemies and useless automap

Some, like myself, focus on the good (dungeon crawl, party creation, classless system, good looking paper dolls/character sheets, exploration rewards, phased based combat, puzzles, steampunkish setting) and see it as well worth trying.
Some focus on the bad (horrible textures even for its age, too damn hard puzzles, horrible navigation making you lost half the time, stupid AI making combat easy too soon, some useless skills requiring metaknowledge to avoid) and advise to stay away from it.
And all see the ugly (those ungodly hard platform parts, the almost unreadable automap of doom, the puzzles you need a walkthrough to solve and are yet damn hard to execute properly) that makes it plain it's not a classic.

So... I don't know, it's like with "Pool of Radiance : Ruins of Myth Drannor", some like it, most don't.

EDIT : somme screenshots

https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads/screenshot-thread.72409/page-644#post-4323402

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

3. Sacred 1-2: had a hand cannon-wielding dwarf. Havent touched this since teenage years, but good memories.

The Dwarf in Sacred was my favorite class in the entire series. Handcannon in your hands, big cannon on your back. It's mechanics are somewhat similar to the Seraphim in the fact that you're going to be doing a lot all the time, frantically, particularly in crowds.

Also, if you go really old school, there's Questron and Questron 2. The sequel is available on GoG, which is the DOS version.

 

[adddeed]

Vaporum has early style firearms.

 

[HappyDaddyWow!]

Mount and Blade: With Fire and Sword. It's basically just warband but set in mid 1600s eastern europe.

 

[Iucounu]

I've heard good things about Witch Hunt, but maybe it doesn't qualify as CRPG or Tacticool (what's that?):

 

[Beans00]

Thunderscape(blobber) had muskets.