I always loved retro-style games, long before I learned that they’re considered retro. I’m not sure what makes them so fun but they completely dominate my gaming nowadays.
Naturally, I became curious about the games that had inspired my favorite titles. I tried many of them, and eventually came to a conclusion: most of the time, retro games are nothing but a historical curiosity.
Ultima 4 has fairly unique concept but falls flat with its roleplaying feeling forced, its bland gameplay and its setting with no originality whatsoever.
Compare this to Moonring. Gameplay rivals many modern roguelikes (the classic definition, so Brogue, not Isaac), great setting that sucks you in immediately, and so so many mysteries.
Ambermoon pretends to be an open world RPG but is actually a linear RPG-lite with combat feeling more like a puzzle (and a wrong solution punishes you by 15 mins of you and your opponents missing each other every turn).
That’s not to say that retro games aren’t important - the modern indies are standing on the shoulders of giants. Yet I can’t say that retro games worth the trouble of getting into them, compared to the polished modern indie titles.
I mean…yea?
Game development and design has evolved tremendously over the decades since those retro games were made. Systems are also just physically capable of so much more.
This inevitably means that a lot of the small design mistakes of those old titles have long since been rectified because we understand now that those aspects weren’t part of what made those games fun — they were just the limitations and scope of knowledge of that era.
This isn’t to say those games are bad, I still play the old classics on my Switch when I have access to them, same with the classic catalogue on PS+, but definitely a lot of them just have modern parallels that do the same thing so much better that it isn’t even worth going back to play them.