Community RPG Codex GOTY 2021: Results & Cool Graphs

[Roguey]

So the top three games are all various degrees of Slavjank. Fitting.

Another day on the Eurodex.

Europe 450,279 54.56%
North America 220,710 26.74%
Asia 86,158 10.44%
South America 34,192 4.14%
Oceania 27,094 3.28%
Africa 6,142 0.74%
Central America 785 0.10%

So what was the best rpg of the last 5 years accoridn to codex voters?

Kingmaker apparently.

 

[agris]

Is Encased really that bad?. I haven't played it yet, but it looked promising.

If you enjoyed DoS you'll lap it up. If you have taste, you'll dislike it. The first ~1/3 is promising, despite MMO-tier itemization, but the remaining 2/3s are underbaked crap and all the cracks in the mechanics and itemization really dominate the experience. Add in lack of difficulty, and it just isn't a good experience.

Perfect for the Larian crowd, though.

 

[Grauken]

Why do you think people who enjoyed ToEE would boot up cringefinder and not hate the.. cringe?

You can enjoy both

 

[agris]

Why do you think people who enjoyed ToEE would boot up cringefinder and not hate the.. cringe?

You can enjoy both

Can and, I'm sure, did. 11% of negative votes doesn't indicate a conspiracy to slander by the fans of the game that actually won this poll. It seems strange to peg a minority of players voting something down on a movement by fans of another game. I followed the Lololos thread since it was released, I never saw people comparing it to cringefinder and I certainly never saw people trying to campaign against it.

That's the nice thing about the one-thread-per-game convention, it acts as a containment device.

 

[Thac0]

I recommend a double qualification for games in the voting list:
Either a game has a thread here, or someone specifically recommends it in the various nomination threads that always pop up around the end of the year.
A few of the 15-50 votes games, for example Hearkenworld and Bravely Default 2, do not actually have threads by virtue of using other threads (Kotc2 thread or general Bravely Default thread) for their discussion. Both were recommended manually, and scored around #30.
So recommend every rpg that has a thread here, add those games that are manually recommended, and the list should get cut down to a manageable level of ~50 rpgs.
Because even on the codex noone plays shit like 剑魄 JianPo, so those options are only clutter for the poll.

 

[Grauken]

Why do you think people who enjoyed ToEE would boot up cringefinder and not hate the.. cringe?

You can enjoy both

Can and, I'm sure, did. 11% of negative votes doesn't indicate a conspiracy to slander by the fans of the game that actually won this poll. It seems strange to peg a minority of players voting something down on a movement by fans of another game. I followed the Lololos thread since it was released, I never saw people comparing it to cringefinder and I certainly never saw people trying to campaign against it.

While I have no doubt that some people down or up-voted games they didn't play I'm not too bothered by it, since the overall tally of the results checks out for the most part. Whether Wrath is first or second or third doesn't matter too much, but that most of the games in the top list are worth playing.

Still wondering about The Forgotten City though. Also that sir Brante game, didn't hear about that either

 

[Thac0]

Still wondering about The Forgotten City though. Also that sir Brante game, didn't hear about that either

Forgotten City is a Skyrim mod that went out of control. It is some sort of mashup between a time travel plot and a murder mystery in a roman city. It does have rpg elements, but is VERY short (far below 10 hours).

Sir Brante is a gamebook. Imagine a game that is half Fighting Fantasy book, half Disco Elysium. A fantasy version of Suzerain.
You play as a young boy called Sir Brante, who is born into a weird fantasy world, and during his life you shape his decisions, ending up in an influential position where you can: Overthrow the regime, butcher a large amount of civillians, save the kingdom, lead a crusade, burn the heretics, die miserably and accomplish nothing, and other fun stuff.

Both are very much storyfag games, with neither featuring much combat in the traditional sense.

 

[Antigoon]

Is Encased really that bad?. I haven't played it yet, but it looked promising.

That one is really weird. Sure it isn't a masterpiece, I voted 2/4 but its certainly not the worst game from that list. Worse than Tortured Heart? lol :D

 

[Grauken]

Still wondering about The Forgotten City though. Also that sir Brante game, didn't hear about that either

Forgotten City is a Skyrim mod that went out of control. It is some sort of mashup between a time travel plot and a murder mystery in a roman city. It does have rpg elements, but is VERY short (far below 10 hours).

Sir Brante is a gamebook. Imagine a game that is half Fighting Fantasy book, half Disco Elysium. You play as a young boy called Sir Brante, who is born into a weird fantasy world, and during his life you shape his decisions, ending up in an influential position where you can: Overthrow the regime, butcher a large amount of civillians, save the kingdom, lead a crusade, burn the heretics, die miserably and accomplish nothing, and other fun stuff.

Both are very much storyfag games, with neither featuring much combat in the traditional sense.

thx, interesting but not really my cup of tea

 

[Humbaba]

Another day on the Eurodex.

There's Germans on this site and no one wants to talk about. No one wants to talk about it folks.

 

[Darth Roxor]

so have we found any hidden gems among the shovelware

 

[Angelo85]

Lest we forget: Congratulations also to the now officially confirmed worst 10 RPGs of 2021 with Dungeons & Dragons: Dark Alliance wearing the crown proudly.

 

[thesecret1]

Still wondering about The Forgotten City though. Also that sir Brante game, didn't hear about that either

Played both. Forgotten City is kind of an alright adventure game (and its gimmicks are fairly cool), but it tries to posit itself as a historical game... except everyone has modern day personality and whenever you drop some woke shit at them they bascially go "WOW THAT SOUNDS SO COOL!!!". It's atrocious in this department. Worse, it even tries to dabble in morality and philosophy, and has such incredibly low IQ takes that you'll just be cringing and face palming all throughout, like holy shit, even retarded shitposts from retards here on Codex tend to have more merit than whatever it was they tried pulling there. So yeah, mechanics and puzzle-wise, it's alright, but the writing (for a supposedly historical game!) is really bad, and only gets worse as you progress.

Sir Brante was okay. It's a CYOA game with some quite original setting (really, props on that one) and multiple completely separate story paths one can endeavor on. Not much more to say about it, really – a good CYOA, no more, no less.

 

[Thac0]

For everyone whining about muh hidden gems:

These are 11-30.
More than half of the games I gave 4/4 ended in this corner of the list, and I am gonna take the plunge on Tainted Grail:Conquest next time it goes on sale, as I have it in my wishlist for a while and it scored decently well here.
Rest is either not my genre or I played it already, but for some people the raw data might have more value.

 

[Alphons]

Glory to the potato modders!

 

[Lord_Potato]

I gave 4s to Trudograd (completed) and Archolos (played for 30 hours so far, I'm loving it), so I'm happy with the results of the poll. Pretty decent year.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

Why do i feel like I'm looking at a Starflight star chart?

 

[Jenkem]

Half the number of voters that we've been getting the past few years. Maybe half our usual crowd didn't care about this year's games and maybe a good chunk of them gave up when they saw that bloated list. Four games got 0 votes period and over 50 got a single digit number of votes. Like I said a while ago, the list of games should be restricted to those that have had a thread with multiple pages worth of discussion. A goty poll is not the time or place for "exposure" for a bunch of RPGs no one gave a damn about for most of a year.

Anyway congratulations to the Archolos fans for successfully downvoting Wrathfinder into second place. And RIP Encased for screwing up a Fallout clone for the Codex of all places.

not gonna dance like a marionette and vote in a rigged poll. fool me once, shame on you...

 

[Dyspaire]

Deadfire right dead-center in the middle of the one graph... so perfectly balanced.

No words... Should have sent an... accountant.

 

[FritzedProcess]

Is Encased really that bad?. I haven't played it yet, but it looked promising.

The game is OK for the first half or so, and then it suddenly becomes sparse with content, as if they had rushed it out of the door. Also, the stealth system never seemed to work properly (and thank fuck!). I guess releasing early access builds as final releases is becoming the new normal.

 

[S.torch]

I expect there's a good bit of truth to people being turned off by the massive list. Your criteria here for inclusion (multipage thread to demonstrate organic interest) is a good one, as is the argument that this type of poll isn't really the place to promote exposure.

If that logic gets followed, the conclusion would be another generic list of mostly-mainstream-only games which almost every single site out there already does. With little room for interesting or obscure games to be. A bloated list is better than a generic one.

I agree that something could be done for better organization, though. Instead of just having a massive vote list, there should be an actual list on the forum. With one or few criteria for sorting. Example, games could be divided by specific sub-genres: tactical, action, turn-based or post-apocalyptic, high-fantasy, low-fantasy, sci-fi. People could go to the sub-genre they have interest and find the games they want to vote for.

That would be a good compromise that gives an organized yet rich list.

 

[Fenix]

JH is too low
Was shit year for RPGs
To hell with this poll

They need to make it eat less CPU resources, or GPU. Coolers whistle like cowboys.

 

[Kruyurk]

so have we found any hidden gems among the shovelware

They are literally hidden in the parts of the graph with the clusterfucks of surimposed names.

 

[agris]

I expect there's a good bit of truth to people being turned off by the massive list. Your criteria here for inclusion (multipage thread to demonstrate organic interest) is a good one, as is the argument that this type of poll isn't really the place to promote exposure.

If that logic gets followed, the conclusion would be another generic list of mostly-mainstream-only games which almost every single site out there already does. With little room for interesting or obscure games to be. A bloated list is better than a generic one.

I don't think so, as many non-mainstream games have threads here with >1 page. There is no logic to follow to a conclusion beyond what is absolutely written. It's a simple idea Roguey promulgated, no need to make it more complex with sky-is-falling-ism.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Ah well. No matter the polls, the only clear winners are Barbarians.