BogusMeatFactory wrote:I don't recommend the likes of Baldur's Gate or Arcanum as a stepping stone into the Computer RPG realm as they have steep learning curves and a lot of trial and error make even a bit of headway into the story. They are phenomenal games, but they require a lot of time, patience and planning to get through.
I think the real thing that hurts Baldur's Gate in terms of the noob experience is just how unforgiving the AD&D rules are. Baldur's Gate ends up being a giant tutorial for Baldur's Gate II, as II is when you reach that point where you don't feel like every combat is going to kill you and your characters have enough spell slots and spell levels to have interesting tactical choices. But the original you just have to treat like every combat is going to kill you (and in the first couple levels every combat probably will) and you'll do fine. Actually going through and doing the quests is not really an issue, unlike Arcanum. And it's even better if you're either doing the Baldur's Gate Trilogy mod (running Baldur's Gate on the BG2 engine since it adds some nice usability features) or using the Enhanced Edition (which I believe has the same usability features).
Personally I think Fallout is only a bit easier to get into than Baldur's Gate. Baldur's Gate does a better job of giving you a plot line to follow and you know you need to hit location A, then B, then C, with an option to explore all over the place if you want. Fallout is much more open ended and you don't really discover the main plot until midway through. Of course, if you prefer that then go for it. I also think Fallout wants you to do more research into its system to plan your character out, whereas the D&D system both forces halfway decent stats on you to play the various classes and since its random rolls people quickly realize they want to roll until they have a bunch of big numbers.
Shadowrun Returns is great, though. The combat is straight out of XCOM (in a great way) and you get a nicely balanced party in Dragonfall so you can focus on rolling a character you like, rather than needing to powergame things.