RPG Codex GOTY 2019: Results & Cool Graphs
RPG Codex GOTY 2019: Results & Cool Graphs
Community - posted by felipepepe on Tue 21 January 2020, 00:33:22
Tags: GOTY 2019Comrades, welcome to the RPG Codex 2019 GOTY Award!
This year we had 949 voters, who rated 62 releases from 2019. This is almost half of the 114 RPGs of 2018, as it was definitely a slower year. Hope you managed to clean your backlog, because 2020 looks overwhelming.
Once again we had three categories: Game of the Year, Best Expansion/DLC and Best PC Port/Remaster.
Game of the Year
I always enjoy doing this graph because I think it makes it very easy to see how things went:
We mostly knew Disco Elysium was gonna reign alone, but I want to point out the sheer scale of its fandom (and haters). Almost 60% of voters gave it 4/4 - aka "I AM A HUGE COMMUNIST", while almost 25% gave it 1/4 - aka "I AM VERY BUTTHURT, THIS IS NOT AN RPG!". I've been doing these polls for 6 years now, and this is a first. Not only did it have very few 2/4 and 3/4 votes, but we never had so many downvotes on a big title before. Even an earlier "controversial not-RPG" like Dark Souls 3 only had 8% of the lowest scores. The Witcher 3, which some here despise, had 5%.
Of course, I have to point out that the voting system allows people to vote as many times as they want and, while I do clean up obvious troll votes, clearly people were a lot more butthurt this year. If we get another butthurt war in 2020 I might need to change the voting system. Or just embrace dumb drama as part of the annual tradition.
But I don't do this just to see the #1. Moving on with the list, we have a Metroidvânia, a Card-based roguelike, a turn-based Blobber and... uh... a text-based Legionary simulator? 2019 was definitely a year for more niche tastes:
Obsidian and Spiders tried to follow in the crowd-pleasing footsteps of Bethesda & Bioware with The Outer Worlds and Greedfall, but weren't very successful in the eyes of the Codex. The Outer Worlds was our second most-played game, but the reception was clearly lukewarm. Greedfall wasn't as popular, but got more positive reviews. Next to it is Stygian: Reign of the Old Ones, which got heavy backlash for its ending (or lack of one), but clearly people enjoyed something about it, as a lot of people played it and it still got a respectable #13.
The game with the highest % of positive votes was Titan Outpost, from antediluvian Codexer MT. It got only 54 votes, but more than 90% of those were positive. If you came looking for a hidden gem, this might be it.
On the other hand, at the very bottom we have Warhammer: Chaosbane, Paranoia: Happiness Is Mandatory and Rune II, proving that having a good license is not enough to make a good game.
Remakes/PC Ports
This year we didn't have any clear favorites in ports/remakes. Romancing Saga 3 won, finally bringing to the west a game that some have been waiting for since 1995, but it was a close vote:
BTW, I have to point out that I fucked up and didn't include SaGa: Scarlet Grace, which is a 2016 JRPG that originally came out for consoles, got ported to Japanese PCs in 2018 but only got an English PC release in 2019. Sorry Abu Antar. This kind of staged PC release is hard to track and will definitely become an issue with all the Chinese-only games that are slowly getting English releases, like Gujian 3, Banner of the Maid and Sands of Salazar.
DLCs/Expansions
Surprisingly, this was the most disputed part of the vote. The big releases of the previous years duked out, with Underrail, Battle Brothers, Pathfinder, Grim Dawn and Kingdom Come all putting out very well-received expansions:
I also fucked up here and didn't include West of Loathing: Reckonin' at Gun Manor, a DLC that came out in February 2019. West of Loathing was #8 in our 2017 GOTY poll, so check that out if you enjoyed it.
Finally, reports indicate that someone, somewhere, somehow is still making Two Worlds II DLCs.
---------------
This concludes our 2019 poll results. Here's to 2020, with Cyberpunk, Elden Ring, Baldur's Gate 3, Knight of the Chalice 2, Bloodlines 2, Wasteland 3, Mount & Blade II, Dragon Ball Z, Colony Ship, Yakuza 7, Disco Elysium DLC and drama about Final Fantasy VII.
As always, if you want to see the full results & votes - out of curiosity or to complain about the methodology - you can just follow this link: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/15QwbGyy4eIEiLr9u0wKwSdLb_-dvLQRtxJPGsnOT3q4/edit?usp=sharing
This year we had 949 voters, who rated 62 releases from 2019. This is almost half of the 114 RPGs of 2018, as it was definitely a slower year. Hope you managed to clean your backlog, because 2020 looks overwhelming.
Once again we had three categories: Game of the Year, Best Expansion/DLC and Best PC Port/Remaster.
Game of the Year
I always enjoy doing this graph because I think it makes it very easy to see how things went:
We mostly knew Disco Elysium was gonna reign alone, but I want to point out the sheer scale of its fandom (and haters). Almost 60% of voters gave it 4/4 - aka "I AM A HUGE COMMUNIST", while almost 25% gave it 1/4 - aka "I AM VERY BUTTHURT, THIS IS NOT AN RPG!". I've been doing these polls for 6 years now, and this is a first. Not only did it have very few 2/4 and 3/4 votes, but we never had so many downvotes on a big title before. Even an earlier "controversial not-RPG" like Dark Souls 3 only had 8% of the lowest scores. The Witcher 3, which some here despise, had 5%.
Of course, I have to point out that the voting system allows people to vote as many times as they want and, while I do clean up obvious troll votes, clearly people were a lot more butthurt this year. If we get another butthurt war in 2020 I might need to change the voting system. Or just embrace dumb drama as part of the annual tradition.
But I don't do this just to see the #1. Moving on with the list, we have a Metroidvânia, a Card-based roguelike, a turn-based Blobber and... uh... a text-based Legionary simulator? 2019 was definitely a year for more niche tastes:
Obsidian and Spiders tried to follow in the crowd-pleasing footsteps of Bethesda & Bioware with The Outer Worlds and Greedfall, but weren't very successful in the eyes of the Codex. The Outer Worlds was our second most-played game, but the reception was clearly lukewarm. Greedfall wasn't as popular, but got more positive reviews. Next to it is Stygian: Reign of the Old Ones, which got heavy backlash for its ending (or lack of one), but clearly people enjoyed something about it, as a lot of people played it and it still got a respectable #13.
The game with the highest % of positive votes was Titan Outpost, from antediluvian Codexer MT. It got only 54 votes, but more than 90% of those were positive. If you came looking for a hidden gem, this might be it.
On the other hand, at the very bottom we have Warhammer: Chaosbane, Paranoia: Happiness Is Mandatory and Rune II, proving that having a good license is not enough to make a good game.
Remakes/PC Ports
This year we didn't have any clear favorites in ports/remakes. Romancing Saga 3 won, finally bringing to the west a game that some have been waiting for since 1995, but it was a close vote:
BTW, I have to point out that I fucked up and didn't include SaGa: Scarlet Grace, which is a 2016 JRPG that originally came out for consoles, got ported to Japanese PCs in 2018 but only got an English PC release in 2019. Sorry Abu Antar. This kind of staged PC release is hard to track and will definitely become an issue with all the Chinese-only games that are slowly getting English releases, like Gujian 3, Banner of the Maid and Sands of Salazar.
DLCs/Expansions
Surprisingly, this was the most disputed part of the vote. The big releases of the previous years duked out, with Underrail, Battle Brothers, Pathfinder, Grim Dawn and Kingdom Come all putting out very well-received expansions:
I also fucked up here and didn't include West of Loathing: Reckonin' at Gun Manor, a DLC that came out in February 2019. West of Loathing was #8 in our 2017 GOTY poll, so check that out if you enjoyed it.
Finally, reports indicate that someone, somewhere, somehow is still making Two Worlds II DLCs.
---------------
This concludes our 2019 poll results. Here's to 2020, with Cyberpunk, Elden Ring, Baldur's Gate 3, Knight of the Chalice 2, Bloodlines 2, Wasteland 3, Mount & Blade II, Dragon Ball Z, Colony Ship, Yakuza 7, Disco Elysium DLC and drama about Final Fantasy VII.
As always, if you want to see the full results & votes - out of curiosity or to complain about the methodology - you can just follow this link: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/15QwbGyy4eIEiLr9u0wKwSdLb_-dvLQRtxJPGsnOT3q4/edit?usp=sharing
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