Decline 250 shitty RPGs over 15 shitty years: 1996-2010

[PorkyThePaladin]

Lilura, a Diablo as a rogue like? Let me introduce you to vulture, I.e. graphical nethack. About a thousand times deeper and more fun than Diablo. Just stay away from online hints.

 

[rado907]

The period 1998-2002 had one great game after another. A true golden age of gaming.

Just a little sampling:
Codex top RPGS: PST (1999), Fallout 1&2 (1997, 1998), BG2 (2000), Arcanum (2001), Vampires Masquarade (2004), Morrowind (2002), New Vegas (2010), Gothic 2 (2002), Wizardry 8 (2001). That's 8/10, and some of the games play as well today as they did 15 years ago.
Most played Steam games other than the brand new PUBG: CSGO, a remake of good old CS (1999); and DotA2, a remake of the mod of WC3 (2002).
Most played RTS on Steam: Good old AoE2 (1999). The definitive RTS Starcraft (1998).
Best-rated ARPG ever: Diablo 2 (2000).
The classic sim games: Caesar, Pharaoh, Zeus (1998-2000), SimCity 3000 (1999), SimCity 4 (2003), Rollercoaster Tycoon (1999).
Shooters: Half-life (1998), Unreal (1998), Quake 2 (1997), Max Payne (2001), Max Payne 2 (2003), Battlefield 1942 (2002), MOHAA (2002) which CoD ripped off, TF1 (1999).
The two acclaimed and influential space sims Freespace 2 (1999) and Freelancer (2003).
The first installment of what became the golden standards of WW2 flight sims - IL2 (2001).
The best-rated Football Manager game, CM01-02.
The first GTA (1997) and the first third-person GTA (2001) and the classic GTAVC (2002).
Plus a host of other major and minor classics like Divine Divinity (2002), Sacrifice (2000), HOMM3 (1999), Commandos 1&2 (1998-2000), Desperados & Robin Hood (2001, 2002), Nox (2000), Silver (1999), Icewind Dale (2000), Deus Ex (2000), SS2 (1999), JA2 (1999), ToEE (2003), and so on.

Man... what a time to be alive that was.

 

[luj1]

2002 for me.

 

[Great Deceiver]

Pity it doesn't include the early 90s...

in that list, the best year for me was 1998 - Baldur's Gate and Might & Magic VI are games I still replay regularly after having finished multiple times, 21 years later.

Btw, you seem to completely ignore M&M games in your little text blurbs for every year. Why? M&M VI was huge on release.

 

[Lilura]

The period 1998-2002 had one great game after another. A true golden age of gaming.

You forgot Thief Dark Project and Thief II Metal Age. Also, Clive Barker's Undying.

 

[Fowyr]

1997. Fallout, RoA3 and Exile 3 without all these Diablo-clones.

Still, 15 good years should start around 1987, not 1996.

If Strife is precursor to Deus Ex, Cybermage is precursor as well.

And despite being described as a "survival simulator", I'd jot down Deus as worthy too ??? Then again "complicated FPS" would probably be a more apt description. Haven't played it in years but don't remember any character progression.

It's not RPG. I played Deus for twenty minutes. but finished Robinson's Requiem and it's hard as nails and pretty fun. Fool with your knife - accidental field amputation.

 

[Deuce Traveler]

1998 for me, but only on average. Baldur's Gate, Fallout 2, Quest for Glory V, Might and Magic VI, Nethergate, and Dink Smallwood are all excellent to solid games. 1999 is damn strong, too with Planescape Torment (my fav), Jagged Alliance 2, and System Shock 2. But Ultima IX brings the year down a bit, and Might and Magic VII is one of the weaker titles of an otherwise superb series.

I can see why 2000 has so many votes with Baldur's Gate II and Deus Ex. But I found many of the other games of that year to be just ok (Diablo II) or a buggy mess (Vampire Redemption). Also, the Avernums can't hold up against the Exile games. I did like Nox, Icewind Dale, and Might and Magic VIII well enough.

Looking at some of those darker years makes me appreciate Jeff Vogel even more.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

Eras of CRPGs
Incline: 1975-1986
Golden Age: 1987-1994
Decline: 1995-2002
Wasteland: 2003-2011
Semi-Incline: 2012-Present

 

[octavius]

Eras of CRPGs
Incline: 1975-1986
Golden Age: 1987-1994
Decline: 1995-2002
Wasteland: 2003-2011
Semi-Incline: 2012-Present

I'd say:
Incline: 1981-1986
Golden Age: 1987-1993
Dark Ages: 1994-1996
Renaissance: 1997-2002
Wasteland: 2003-2011
Semi-Incline: 2012-Present

 

[Lilura]

Decline: 1995-2002

You have bad taste.

It's not RPG. I played Deus for twenty minutes.

Did you just say Deus Ex is not an RPG?

 

[wyes gull]

Did you just say Deus Ex is not an RPG?

Ain't talkin' bout dub. Deus =/= Deus Ex (=/= dEUS).

 

[Zer0wing]

2017 since it includes games released in the list but also has ELEX.
Seriously though, cutting periods into years is not a great idea since most influential games ever, not only RPGs, were released on a verge of millennium, specifically 1997-2001 when PCs become capable enough to demonstrate good enough visuals and developers actually can handle the hardware. And PS2 back then wasn't much popular to compete with PC, been busy with Dreamcast and GC.

The popular "incline" era of 2012-2017 is just a another echo of that era.

I think Xbox Morrowind put an end to such era.

 

[Lilura]

Seriously though, cutting periods into years is not a great idea since most influential games ever, not only RPGs, were released on a verge of millennium, specifically 1997-2001 when PCs become capable enough to demonstrate good enough visuals and developers actually can handle the hardware. And PS2 back then wasn't much popular to compete with PC, been busy with Dreamcast and GC.

Poll is PC-only and not pitting API era against pre-API era. But yes, 2012-present is just a weak echo of 1996-2002.

 

[Fowyr]

You have bad taste.

In essence, he is right. Best era of CRPGs ended before 1995.

Did you just say Deus Ex is not an RPG?

Deus is Robinson's Requiem 2 and definitely not an RPG.

 

[Lilura]

In essence, he is right. Best era of CRPGs ended before 1995.

Only for grandpas.

 

[luj1]

Is the voting finished Lilura? Seems like 2000 won by a large margin.

 

[Gregz]

Spoiler

It could just be wishful thinking on my part, but I'd like to think that if Diablo was released as per its initial pitch of turn-based roguelike instead of realtime roguelite, it would have been untouchably great. Also, for those wise old owls that know about copper and hardware scrolling, it is obvious that this game would have looked even better on the Amiga.

Fallout's influence has also been incalculable; for example, there would be no Arcanum, no Planescape: Torment, no Mask of the Betrayer, and no New Vegas or Alpha Protocol without it.

Deus Ex is an almost perfect game; it's why Y|yukichigai referred to his Shifter mod as 'removing what little of the "suck" there is in Deus Ex'. So yeah, when you have a hardcore modder trawl through a game's code and find almost nothing wrong with it, that right there is proof.

Tarant has its own subway system, diplomatic negotiations, gang warfare, orc uprising, thieves' underground, telegraph office, university court, shipyards and sprawling sewer system. It hosts 60 addresses, 15 sidequests, multiple pathways for exploration and quests (dependent on character build), loads of quality stat-based dialogue, and its own newspaper that publishes headlines based on how the player solved quests.

ToEE is also one of the most beautiful isometric RPGs. Take Hommlet for example: streams are animated to give the impression they're gently flowing, trees wave in the wind and leaves fall from them, chimneys plume smoke, the waterwheel rotates gently at the mill, the blacksmith strikes hammer to anvil, and lanterns flicker by night.

Not just famous for its reactivity and peerless dialogue, Bloodlines is also infamous for its bugs and annoying graphical glitches. There are two options available to the player that address such complaints and both of them demand equal footing: the Unofficial Patch by Wesp5 and the True Patch Gold Edition by Tessera. The former is controversial among purists in that its Basic patch goes beyond bug fixing and into the realm of "unnecessary changes". Thus, they favor the latter. Unfortunately, UP has been officially bundled with the GoG version and thus will need to be uninstalled before applying TPGE.

To the disgust of all, Oblivion introduces extreme level scaling, leveled loot and a UI gimped for console controllers. It even manages to disappoint Elder Scrolls fans, who aren't hard to please. But the aggressive marketing campaign conducted by Bethesda leading up to Oblivion's release drowns out criticism and ensures its financial and critical success.

Oblivion With Guns - the most pernicious RPG in history along with Oblivion - is released. Pure poison to the genre, it drives veteran Fallout fans into unbridled buttmadness. It wasn't enough for Bethesda to shit on their own franchise, you see: for chump change, they had to acquire the Fallout franchise from a bankrupt Interplay and soil that, too.

Well written, and I agree with most points, except I think Diablo works great as an Action RPG. Diablo II was also fantastic. Probably the best itemization of any RPG. Those games are just great fun as they are, and I wouldn't change anything. Their legacy is the problem. All of the subsequent "Diablo Clones" brought a huge decline with them, but that doesn't mean Diablo itself was a bad game, far from it.

It was difficult choosing a year in your poll, and I'm not sure there is much meaning to be pulled from it. A lot of those games get pushed into one year or another because of publisher issues, delays, release schedules and things other than technological or philosophical changes in game development. Clearly the late 90s - early 00s are the most monocled. The biggest outliers being Mount & Blade: Warband and KoTC.

 

[Lilura]

Poll will be left up for as long as Google polls work ("forever").

I'll probably image-capture the poll at 500, 1000, 2500 etc.

Thanks for voting! People who have mentioned games I forgot to add have been credited at post's end.

 

[IncendiaryDevice]

Poll will be left up for as long as Google polls work ("forever").

I'll probably image-capture the poll at 500, 1000, 2500 etc.

Thanks for voting! People who have mentioned games I forgot to add have been credited at post's end.

You're making 2005 look better than it was...

Gothic II: Night of the Raven (German: Die Nacht des Raben) is the expansion pack of the role-playing video game Gothic II. The expansion focuses on further enlarging the story already presented in the original Gothic IIgame, by adding a world called Jharkendar attributes, items, and weapons.

Upon its first release in 2003[1] the game was available in the German language only,[2] the English version only being released in 2005, as part of the Gothic II Gold package.[3]

 

[fantadomat]

Ok i did go for 2000 because i constantly replay Deus Ex,BG2 and Thief 2. Oh and i noticed that 2006 have a lot of guilty pleasure type of games in it.

 

[mondblut]

The best year for jews (5 consecutive years: 1939-1943)

About the same.

 

[Black Angel]

2015

AoD+Underrail > all other RPGs put together

FTFY

On a more serious note, I'm holding from giving a vote because I haven't played many of those RPGs. I was thinking of playing cRPGs in a chronological order like some of the most Codexers, but I got burned so easily because once I got hooked on a game, I'll play it everyday on my spare time and thinking about it when I'm not. Cheers Lilura for setting the poll to go on 'forever'

 

[Gregz]

I'd like to be able to see what people voted so far though

Why don't the percentages add up to 100%?

Edit: Oh nevermind, multiple answers allowed.

 

[hivemind]

I was thinking of playing cRPGs in a chronological order like some of the most Codexers,

since when does that smiley stand for autistic

 

[Black Angel]

I thought autistic smiley is this