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Dorateen
Arcane
Temple of Elemental Evil
Has the best combat, full party creation and is a traditional Dungeons & Dragons adventure.
Has the best combat, full party creation and is a traditional Dungeons & Dragons adventure.
Alex
Arcane
I voted Arcanum.
Arcanum has several flaws, actually. The character system in it is rather bad, I think. I dislike how many of the backgrounds could have had a more interesting impact on the game but don't. And ultimately, I don't really like the setting. But there was such an amount of love that went into making the game world seem real and alive that I can't vote another.
Arcanum has several flaws, actually. The character system in it is rather bad, I think. I dislike how many of the backgrounds could have had a more interesting impact on the game but don't. And ultimately, I don't really like the setting. But there was such an amount of love that went into making the game world seem real and alive that I can't vote another.
rusty_shackleford
Arcane
- Joined
- Jan 14, 2018
- Messages
- 50,754
Nope, that's easily Bloodlines. I've never really seen anyone articulate why it's even a good game beyond "wow cool setting but I wish the game wasn't so shit"
Terrible combat(major strike one), terrible stealth(major strike two for it being a vampire game), mishandles the lore pretty badly(lol random bloodhunt on the streets,) terrible adaptation of the actual ruleset while generally vastly simplifying it(?!),
I'm convinced the best way to get people to like your game is to just frontload as much content as possible because it seems most people just uninstall games instead of getting more than a third of the way through them. Santa Monica is genuinely very good, and if you just shut the game down after finishing the Therese/Jeanette arc, well, I could understand the praise.
Oh, and the werewolf fight was fuckin' retarded. Let's assume everything goes exactly as it did: a garou wouldn't die from being crushed by a door. Garous soak lethal damage for breakfast, and can come back from the dead once per fight just because they're so pissed off. Equally stupid was being able to defeat Gruneld. Most of the plot is completely unexplainable unless you just shrug and go 'lolcaine'. See above about lore rape.
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Pots Talos
Horizon's End
ToEE has the best combat. Arcanum has the best world building. Bloodlines is pretty good at both so I guess Bloodlines wins.
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Sent from my Pixel 6 using Tapatalk
rusty_shackleford
Arcane
- Joined
- Jan 14, 2018
- Messages
- 50,754
If you can't summarize why a game is good, then it's not good.
And no, it doesn't have good writing. Again, the plot doesn't even make sense unless you handwave half of it away with "a
It's full of fourth wall breaking jokes and pop culture references.
Much of the plot is too segregated from itself and feels like it was written concurrently with no integration -- something that has become a very frequent and serious issue in video games but it appears Troika was ahead of them on this front. How much of what you did in Santa Monica affects the rest of the game at all? Wow, that choice with Jeanette and Therese was a big one. Wait, what did they even do again afterwards?
Now contrast this to something like the iron crisis in Baldur's Gate, which generally isn't well known for its writing. Something that starts off as small as the local iron mine having troubles in your quest to avenge your foster father and while avoiding assassins is an intricate trade feud & sabotage that's actually subtle political manipulation to try to drag Baldur's Gate into war by the player character's half brother who is responsible for killing your foster father, holy smokes, it's all so delicately woven together.
You can apply this to most quests in the entire game, and there is very little overall reactivity to what you actually do. The quests themselves are almost completely linear. You can't do step C before you do step B, you must do exactly what the game wants you to do in the order it expects.
VTMB is a poor man's Deus Ex for people who were goths as teenagers.
Late Bloomer
Scholar
- Joined
- Apr 7, 2022
- Messages
- 2,916
I go with Temple of Elemental Evil. The combat is amazing to this day. The D&D adventure module feel is fully captured. I am suprised Arcanum isnt leading the poll so far. Will be interesting to see after more time has passed.
wishbonetail
Learned
- Joined
- Oct 18, 2021
- Messages
- 671
Except Deus Ex is hardly an RPG.
rusty_shackleford
Arcane
- Joined
- Jan 14, 2018
- Messages
- 50,754
More of one than VTMB.
Sarathiour
Cipher
- Joined
- Jun 7, 2020
- Messages
- 3,262
The question was wich one was your favorite, not which one was better.
SilentSeeker
Novice
- Joined
- May 21, 2022
- Messages
- 20
TOEE was great, except for the beginning. Arcanum was great, except for the middle. Bloodlines was great, except for the end.
Two fantastic games among the three ef them.
Two fantastic games among the three ef them.
Ryzer
Arcane
- Joined
- May 1, 2020
- Messages
- 5,460
You're not lukaszek.
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Miner 2049er
Scholar
- Joined
- Apr 27, 2016
- Messages
- 185
I like building characters and fighting turn based battles, so it's ToEE I guess.
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Never got into ToEE because of radial wheel menu, that shit infuriates me into a boiling point. I was told it was fun, but it's third place on my list.
Think I'll have to go with Bloodlines over Arcanum. It's neck and neck though.
Think I'll have to go with Bloodlines over Arcanum. It's neck and neck though.
Darth Canoli
Arcane
I'm not surprised, it's not a RPG fans forum, most people here enjoy Morrowind, Oblivion, Fallout 3/NV, Bitcher and all that FPS/walking simulator garbage.
So of course, Bloodlines leads.
Anyway, there's still a valid Poll from 2014, before all the millenials even heard of the Codex.
It says Arcanum 5th, Masquerade 6th, it was close but that's how it is.
Any poll after that is null and void because i'm pretty sure millenials IQ is below 100 and they shouldn't have the right to vote for anything.
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I want the answer to be TOEE, but the fact is, Hommlet is such a drag. If they'd have converted more modules to the setting or had some better out of combat content, I'm sure it would be.
So instead, I have to go with VTMB. Like Grunker pointed out, the presentation is fantastic with the voice acting, memorable characters and environments. I loved it even though it's not normally my thing (e.g. I'm not a storyfag and I think vampires are gay).
Arcanum is a distant third, which sucks, because I absolutely love the ideas and setting, but I couldn't get into the actual game.
So instead, I have to go with VTMB. Like Grunker pointed out, the presentation is fantastic with the voice acting, memorable characters and environments. I loved it even though it's not normally my thing (e.g. I'm not a storyfag and I think vampires are gay).
Arcanum is a distant third, which sucks, because I absolutely love the ideas and setting, but I couldn't get into the actual game.
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