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I figured I'd take a break from doing nothing to amuse you with my hilarious lack of writing skillz.
Dark Souls
Dark Souls is a rare gem in that it manages to be good at everything. Most RPGs merely excel in some distinct areas, such as character building, writing or other discrete aspects. Rarely does a game come along that executes everything it attempts, and does so with remarkable grace. Dark Souls is a study in melancholy and depression, plunging us into a world that is bleak and hopeless without the usual overly emotional or even pathos-laden trappings that often accompany these themes. This game is dark and straight to the point. It knows exactly what it wants to express and every detail of the game - every line of text, every voice actor, every combat animation, every placed enemy, every area, every weapon - work towards realizing the idea it wanted to convey. In Dark Souls all categories that make a game find themselves refined to a sharp point. I understand you might have reservations about trying an RPG (the genre status which is subject to much debate) that was first released on a console. However, if you've ever thought I've shown any semi-reliable taste at all you will simply have to take my word for it: Dark Souls ranks among the finest games ever created and is a much-needed reminder that not all modern games compromise integrity for the sake of broadening market appeal. If you ever needed a reminder that video games are not yet dead, this is it.
PS:T
Ah, wretched Planescape: Torment, always Planescape: Torment. This game is so hard to sell. I've many times attempted to get people to play it, only for them to get bored before leaving the mortuary or the bar outside it. If they do keep playing despite that they are met with terribly shallow encounter design and an RPG system that seems more a strange cross between Choose Your Own Adventure books and an Adventure game, based around puzzles and conversations. Even calling it an RPG is almost a matter of some debate. So why then does this game hold such a high place to so many of us? The biggest reason is that this game has shown us that story-based games can work. Often likened to a playable novel, PS:T tells the engrossing tale of a man in search of his past - or pasts. Starting from the tired cliche of amnesia PS:T quickly draws those who will accept it for what it is, warts and all, into an engrossing tale of redemption, love and treachery, covering succinctly many of man's desires and shortcomings. While nobody is going to suggest this is the same level as classic literature this is the game that showed us that video game writing can be above average, can indeed conjure up fantastic worlds and allow us to visit them. Not one NPC in PS:T does not have an interesting story, not one description of text or snippet of party banter an enticing tidbit that teaches us about the odd, foreign world that the tale occurs in. PS:T invites us to a strange journey and those who accept the invitation will, if they have the patience to read the game's copious walls of text, find themselves drawn to into an experience that they are not likely to ever forget.
Arcanum
Arcanum is a vast, sprawling, buggy mess, with wonky combat, questionable mechanics and a sense of game balance that would make the Dark Souls developers commit seppuku.
It's also incredibly sad. This game attempts much and fails in more categories than I care to explain. And yet it has flashes of brilliance that make it more memorable to me than even Fallout. For one, the character creation is delightfully complicated. Arcanum can be played in a stunning variety of builds. You might find yourself drifting towards Speech-tagged gunslinger in Fallout on repeated play-throughs, but the staggering amount of skills, abilities, backgrounds, races, recipes, and so on and so on, which more often than not have an effect on dialogue, truly allow for diverse and varied approaches. You want to be an assassin? By all means. A thief? Sure. Have others fight your battles? Unlike Fallout, this is a lot more possible in this game. Add to all that the possibility to branch into magic or technology -- or neither, or both -- and you are met with a veritable playground of choices from the moment you create your character. It helps that the world you then explore is lovingly detailed, steeped in deep melancholy, and realized wonderfully through newspapers, rumors, vibrant, varied towns, each with their unique flavor.
I really hope you like string quartets.
Wizardry 8
Instead of writing a review I'll just recount my favorite Wizardry 8 story. I was replaying the game, this time vowing to finish it with a party that I imported from Wizardry 7, which, into 7, was imported from 6. During 6 I got an item that had a lot of meaning in that game, given the limitations of the time. There was a chance to surrender this item for a huge reward in 7, but you could keep it and it'd import into 8. In 8, you meet a character related to the person who gave you this item. If you, and there are no hints in the entire game to suggest you do this, give this character the ring from 6 you get a massive XP reward, some unique dialogue and a completed quest. And that moment is the reason this is one of my top 5 RPGs. You do not see this attention to detail anymore.