Unfinshed? - That is bullshit. Ara Fell is a 30 hour game that tells a believable story with many side quests, never gets boring and is really fun. The boss fights are challenging. But it seems that indie games get more criticized on the Codex these days or are ignored completely.
To be fair, there are a number of games that seem to have been excluded, which, together with the joke inclusions (Saturday Morning RPG, wut) apparently stuck in
felipepepe head when he drew up the list, probably have no place being on it for the simple reason that very few people have played them (usually, for good reason.) Leaving them with virtually no chance of finding their way into the top whatever-whatever.
For example, you mentioned Ara Fell.
But what about:
Moekuri: Adorable + Tactical SRPG
Sproggiwood
Rabi Ribi
One Way Heroics
Mordheim: City of the Damned
Momodora: Reverie under the Moonlight
Magicmaker
Magicite
Long Live the Queen
Last Dream
Kyn
King's Bounty: Dark Side
Inquisitor
In Exilium
Hero and Daughter+
Fortune Summoners
Dungeonmans
Dungeon of the Endless
Dungeon Manager ZV
Zombasite
The Depths of Tolagel
Duskers
DarkMaus
Kagura Douchuuki
Tree of Saviour
you see my point.
I actually downloaded SteamSpy's database and sorted out all RPGs released in 2012-2016.
There was 1810 games. In the last year alone, 717 RPGs were released. And there's still non-Steam games, like Rance.
I HAVE to draw a line somewhere.
Some games I actually forgot / missed - One Way Heroics, Long Live the Queen and Fortune Summoners should've definitely made the list. For 2014 & 2015 I had the GOTY polls (which I ran) as reference, but these games are from 2012 - all we did back then was DU's
Year in Review, which didn't list these games.
HiddenX 's list is extensive, but also misses a few games - he complained about Ara Fell but forgot to list Penny Arcade's On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness: Episodes Three & Four, which have a quite solid Grandia-like combat system, even if the writing is absolute shit. As you can see, it's hard to come up with a definitive list of all note-worthy RPGs in the past 5 years.
However, other games I intentionally cut. I mean, why include something like Runestone Keeper when in 2015 it only got ONE vote, and it was 1/5? DO I really need to clutter the poll with games that already "failed" in a past GOTY voting?
