Debating over which of the two to lose my life to first.

As far as I can determine, Dungeon Keeper has more solid gameplay but Startopia has aged much better.

Can anyone give me some pointers as to which is the better game for someone to get into, who's never played either before?

I'd never play DK over Startopia to be honest - but that's mostly for personal reasons. DK2 always crashes randomly, and I've never been able to get into DK1 due to the horrible interface (and the pixels - oh god the pixels)



Also - Startopia is a lot easier on the eyes once patched. You can even get it to work flawlessly on newer systems, and get rid of the widescreen stretching.

Mansen wrote:
DK2 always crashes randomly,

I've heard this can be remedies by using compatibility mode for Windows XP.

Mansen wrote:
...and I've never been able to get into DK1 due to the horrible interface (and the pixels - oh god the pixels)

What's so bad about the interface?

And yeah, the pixel-ness hasn't aged very well, I feel.

Mansen wrote:
Also - Startopia is a lot easier on the eyes once patched. You can even get it to work flawlessly on newer systems, and get rid of the widescreen stretching.

Well my plan is to get it through GOG so I assume all the patches will come with the package?

1. No - XP compatability mode won't fix the random crashing. I've played it for years "on and off" and I have never found a proper fix for the crashing aside from running the game on an old 98E installation.



2. Matter of opinion I guess.



3. Nope - The Startopia fix is relatively new (and GOG don't apply 3rd party fixes as a rule of thumb - though GOG might have included the last known graphics card list from one of the developers that makes it playable on modern machines.)



For the widescreen fix - http://www.wsgf.org/forum/9538/startopia

(If you have anything other than a 4:3 resolution I believe)

IMHO DK1 is a much deeper game than DK2. Try also KeeperFX :

http://keeper.lubie.org/html/dk_keeperfx.php

http://keeperklan.com/forums/52-KeeperFX