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RPG Codex's Best cRPGs - DISCUSS THREAD / NOW ACCEPTING REVIEWS

Gregz

Arcane
Joined
Jul 31, 2011
Messages
8,511
Location
The Desert Wasteland
Write about games you really have something to say, that you wish someone had pointed you towards it before. The list will go at least until #60, so don't be afraid of writing about more obscure gems; we hardly need 221 reviews of Fallout and Torment. ;)

On this point, can we write about games we didn't vote for? There are many games I love that aren't on my list.

Also, could we see a refreshed top 60 so we know we aren't wasting our time writing about an obscure title that may not make the cut? (I would like to do a few obscure ones).
 

felipepepe

Codex's Heretic
Patron
Joined
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Messages
17,274
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Terra da Garoa
On this point, can we write about games we didn't vote for? There are many games I love that aren't on my list.

Also, could we see a refreshed top 60 so we know we aren't wasting our time writing about an obscure title that may not make the cut? (I would like to do a few obscure ones).
Yeah, you can write for whatever you want. But I'm not found of revealing the list, there are still 12 days to go, a lot can change on the low numbers, and people could also try to offset the voting once they know the list.
 

Xor

Arcane
Joined
Jan 21, 2008
Messages
9,345
Codex 2014 PC RPG Website of the Year, 2015 Codex 2016 - The Age of Grimoire Divinity: Original Sin Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Divinity: Original Sin 2
Don't release the games 10 at a time, just put the entire goddamn list up when it's finished.

Bloodlines
Bloodlines has the best ambiance of any RPG I've ever played. From the dark alleys of downtown L.A. to the glittering streets of Hollywood by night to the horrors found in vampire dens, Bloodlines manages to capture the soul of Vampire the Masquerade. While it does have some flaws - the action-based combat, a rushed final act, and Troika's hallmark, lengthy unskippable dungeons full of enemies - what elements it does well it does very well. The clever writing, memorable characters, and second to none ambiance easily make this game worth a playthrough.

Mask of the Betrayer
Neverwinter Nights 2's original campaign isn't exactly remembered fondly by the RPG community. How would Obsidian follow that up? How about making a game with some of the best writing since Torment. Mask of the Betrayer weaves several story threads together beautifully to form a grand tragedy that focuses around your character. The companions are leaps and bounds better than the previous campaign, there's great variety in the visuals, quest design and dialog are greatly improved. Pretty much the only things holding this game back are the engine, which still has problems, and the length - it's an expansion, so don't expect a 40 hour epic. Still, it's a great followup to the mediocre NWN2 OC, and easily worth a playthrough.

Deus Ex
Deus Ex marries RPG elements with first-person gameplay better than many modern action RPGs. While it doesn't have stats and very few dialog choices, Deus Ex makes up for that by allowing the player to approach problems from just about any angle they can think of. Levels are open with multiple paths towards objectives, your actions influence future missions, and limited inventory space forces players to make conscious decisions about what kinds of weapons they use. The action elements of Deus Ex are well executed as well - gunplay is fast and lethal, there are a variety of weapon choices with different ammo types including melee weapons, and enemies can be killed, knocked unconscious, or avoided altogether. Combined with the best visuals 2000 could give us and a great soundtrack, Deus Ex stands the test of time as the gold standard of action RPGs.

I might do more later.
 

felipepepe

Codex's Heretic
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Joined
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Messages
17,274
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Terra da Garoa
Don't release the games 10 at a time, just put the entire goddamn list up when it's finished.
Yeah, I'll do that. that's also why I want to have the reviews by the time the voting ends. No Ealry Access stunts or Day-1 DLCs, on Glorious Codexia you always get the full package. :)

And thanks for the reviews, they are exactly what I was after.
 

Jasede

Arcane
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Joined
Jan 4, 2005
Messages
24,793
Insert Title Here RPG Wokedex Codex Year of the Donut I'm very into cock and ball torture
felipepepe

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.
 

Spaceman Spiff

Educated
Joined
May 3, 2013
Messages
33
Ambermoon.
What could have been a generic Ultima clone turned out to be an Amiga classic and to me, the best example of an overall enjoyable RPG experience. While certainly not without flaws like the unfortunately simplistic combat system, it shows that this was a work of passion and effort. From the huge, varied open world with its interesting scenarios and quests including "Betrayal at Krondor"-like riddles, to the amazingly detailed graphics and a memorable soundtrack this is an entertaining RPG in almost every way. Want to explore another island? Screw boats and horses, you can use brooms/flying saucers/giant eagles to get around.
Nowadays the most irritating parts are probably the clunky controls in the (free-scrolling) 3D sections, or the somewhat repetitive combat encounters but if you've got some time to set up your virtual Amiga, I would definitely recommend you to try this one.

Albion.
Abandoning the open-world exploration of its predecessor for the most part but keeping everything else intact, Albion is the perfect mix of a linear, story-focused jRPG style and western cRPG gameplay.
Companions got more backstory and involvement in the plot, the dialogues/story are intelligent and very well written while the difficulty curve and combat mechanics are (still) unbalanced as shit. Then again, it has hundreds of interactive objects and items, quests with multiple solutions, optional dungeons and simply the most gorgeous 2D visuals in any RPG to date. And a fantastic soundtrack.
It certainly isn't the most complex RPG with its limited character building options but the adventure aspects and imaginative Sci-Fi/Fantasy setting more than make up for it.
Have I meantioned how beautiful this game is?
 

tuluse

Arcane
Joined
Jul 20, 2008
Messages
11,400
Serpent in the Staglands Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Shadorwun: Hong Kong
Fallout
It is difficult to write about Fallout to fellow codexers. All the things it did well are memetic catchphrases at this point. It should be self-evident why one would want to play it. Yet, in the 17 years since it's release, it has almost become old hat. Well sure it had c&c, but they weren't that deep. Who cares about ending slides, I want consequences while I'm playing? What's the point of multiple quest solutions if just about every character can accomplish them? These are the cries of bored gamers who want something to finally surpass the original master. Unfortunately, nothing has accomplished it. Fallout remains the best not because of specific details or implementations, but because of the overall effect of the entire experience. It offers multiple solutions to every single quest, with choices based both on character skills and player decisions. It presents a world at once familiar and alien, opens it up to the player to explore as they like. It also makes exploring the world enjoyable. Everything from the dilapidated huts, to giant scorpions, to futuristic military bases, to exploding groins look and sound good. All the elements also fit together, maintaining a thematic consistency its sequels and pretenders couldn't match.
 

undecaf

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Jun 4, 2010
Messages
3,517
Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2
I'm not much of a reviewer so this might come off more like a halfassed advertisement than a review but I think it paints the overall picture well enough.

Fallout 2


I had the misfortune (or fortune, which ever way it may be seen) of playing the Fallout series in the wrong order back in the day - starting with the second game, which then stuck on me more than the first - so as my entry to the series, I'll say a few words about Fallout 2. As a sequel to one of the most revered cRPG's of all time, Fallout 2 doesn't go off it's way to reinvent the wheel, but offers pretty much just an expanded version of it's predecessor with a new storyline and cast of mostly excellent characters. Like Fallout, Fallout 2 is largely a sum of it's parts and due to the interplay of those parts, it offers still nigh unrivaled feel, and gameplay with just the right amount of abstraction: simple as it may be on the surface, it does it's job well and leaves delightful amount of food for imagination to fill in certain gaps without being completely reliant on it. While the game suffers from excess amount of over the top and fourth wall breaking humor (which some could say serve as a contrast to the otherwise extremely bleak world), and doesn't quite reach the literary level, tone or consistency of it's predecessor, the sheer scope and wealth of excellent roleplaying possibilities easily offset those marks to the point of negligability in the overall scheme of things, the big picture, and lift the game up sitting on the corner of the same pedestal it's predecessor stands on. After all these years since it's release and all the pompously advertised technical advancements in the gaming industry, it still stands well on its own feet as one of the best cRPG experiences I've ever had the pleasure of playing.
 

Broseph

Dangerous JB
Patron
Joined
Nov 24, 2012
Messages
4,394
Location
Globohomo Gayplex
Fallout: New Vegas

The Codex seems split on this game; either you love it to death and praise it as a true successor to the original Fallout games, or you declare it a mediocre but well-intentioned attempt at resurrecting the franchise in a shoddy game engine. I am firmly in the former camp. For all its flaws, the amount of replay value New Vegas offers compared to other RPGs is nearly unparalleled. In most RPGs with factions, you're given the option of doing quest X for faction A or quest Y for faction B. Not so in this game. Almost every quest has multiple resolutions and methods of dealing with it based on your character build, and I especially liked donning a disguise and doing quests within an organization to weaken them from the inside. This is the kind of stuff I always dreamed about experiencing in a CRPG, but most have never delivered in the way of reactivity as much as this. New Vegas slightly suffers from the loot hoarding, hiking simulator FPS gameplay it inherited from Fallout 3, but it's the best we could have hoped for as a true Fallout sequel in 2010.
 
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jagged-jimmy

Prophet
Joined
Jan 25, 2008
Messages
1,550
Location
Freeside
Codex 2012
Why don't you guys step up your game and write Haiku reviews? I posted one in some ToEE discussion, but noone noticed my edginess.
 

Minttunator

Arcane
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Sep 26, 2012
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Estonia
Codex 2012 Codex 2013 Codex 2014 PC RPG Website of the Year, 2015 RPG Wokedex Strap Yourselves In Codex Year of the Donut Codex+ Now Streaming! Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Codex USB, 2014 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 Pathfinder: Wrath
Why don't you guys step up your game and write Haiku reviews? I posted one in some ToEE discussion, but noone noticed my edginess.

The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings
Last day of autumn,
smell of old leaves in my nose.
Rolling on the ground.

The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind
Ancient Dunmer town,
silt striders scuttling softly.
Where the fuck's Caius?
 
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tuluse

Arcane
Joined
Jul 20, 2008
Messages
11,400
Serpent in the Staglands Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Shadorwun: Hong Kong
Fallout 2
Still feels like Fallout
SPECIAL, gore, freedom, quests
Yet, Monty Python
 
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Koschey

Arcane
Joined
Jan 14, 2013
Messages
615
Location
Germany
Arcanum
Traveling to Tarant,
further to Black Mountain Mines.
Oh no, why, Tim, why?

Planescape: Torment
Waking on a slab,
deceased, yet not a mortal.
Do not trust the skull!

Gothic 2 - NotR
Naked and unarmed,
my skills long forgotten, I
run from shadowbeasts.
 

OSK

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Jan 24, 2007
Messages
8,004
Codex 2012 Codex 2013 Codex 2014 PC RPG Website of the Year, 2015 Codex 2016 - The Age of Grimoire Make the Codex Great Again! Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 BattleTech Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire
Really Codex? Haikus? Let's try to class this up a bit with some limericks.

Arcanum
They'll tell you the mines are too deep,
That it's combat might make you weep,
But don't listen to them,
Arcanum's a gem,
What other game lets you fuck sheep?
 

felipepepe

Codex's Heretic
Patron
Joined
Feb 2, 2007
Messages
17,274
Location
Terra da Garoa
Baldur's Gate II
The mage calls me child,
of a deceased divine.
I must be truly wild,
for I can pause real-time.

Also
A list I would compile,
of those that brought incline.
"Forget that", the thread went,
"let's try to rhyme".
 

Harold

Arcane
Joined
May 10, 2007
Messages
785
Location
a shack in the hub
VTMB
Caine drove me around
The L. A. night streets and warned:
Don't open the box.

Got into a fight
With a street sign that said 'STOP'.
Malk chicks are so hot.

Met an old kine friend,
Said I was her pet turtle,
Laughed as we parted.

Down in the sewers
I had fond memories of
The Black Mountain Mines.

Troika was the best,
And those who say otherwise
Are dumbfuck morans.
 

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