Spurned RPGs That are Masterpieces Today

[Saduj]

I never played Lionheart: Legacy of the Crusader. I think I played the demo and I remember Sarevok's voice actor at the beginning. I don't wanna buy it and then my autism kicks in and I have to complete it over 80 hours or so. But then, there's media I considered crap a decade or more ago that's fantastic by today's standards.

Don't do it. Quality of the game drops off substantially after Barcelona. I bought it years ago and felt compelled to complete it. I eventually rage quit very near the end of the game. Not gonna go into it but if you can't help yourself, avoid a melee build and you won't have the same issue I had (but the game will still suck).

 

[NecroLord]

Ive been seeing more and more codexers praising Oblivion, Fallout 3, ... and many other garbage games.

You should stick to reposting twitter rage-bait garbage.

I know, right?
Really surprised to see markec popping out every now and then in the General Gaming and RPG forums...

 

[JarlFrank]

NWN (2002) OC was considered shit when released, but is now considered decent by many.

Sometimes, people in the past were more correct about things than people in the present.

 

[Mr. Magniloquent]

NWN (2002) OC was considered shit when released, but is now considered decent by many.

Sometimes, people in the past were more correct about things than people in the present.

I try to judge it by my opinion of it then. I thought the OC was 3/5. I didn't hate it, but there were plenty of it which I thought was boring. I did not like the penninsula or docks districts in Act 1. I really disliked the entire Luskan chapter. The final chapter was also crap. Luckily I discovered online play, and that redeemed the game entirely. Both expansions were good. I will admit though, that I played some of the OC about a year ago to check out NWN EE. It was better than I remember it being. I have no idea why. Maybe then I was just disappointing that the OC wasn't more BG. Maybe now my expectations were low? I don't know. I don't let it influence my commentary on the OC though.

 

[markec]

Ive been seeing more and more codexers praising Oblivion, Fallout 3, ... and many other garbage games.

You should stick to reposting twitter rage-bait garbage.

Spotted a fan of a garbage game.

 

[Pikoman]

NWN is a good shout, but if we're talking about the game as a whole full package - expansions, premium modules, user created content and multiplayer. I think that people have mostly dealt with the disappointment of it not being BG3 and nowadays even a good amount of its detractors are willing to agree that it succeeds in its niche and was pretty revolutionary as a game of its time. The OC....yeah, has its moments, but I'm not gonna pretend it's not bland and boring, likewise barely see any of my fellow NWN jihadists around the net attempt to make it look good. At most - try to argue that it's overbashed, with which I can agree, it's just mediocre and dull - not the coming of the antichrist as it's made out to be.

Arcanum I doubt was considered one of the best ever on release by many as it is(deservedly so) now. Dated visuals for the time and awkward UI are alone enough to probably turn away someone who sees and hears of the game for the first time. Disregarding that, you'd be greeted with a buggy and freezing mess on release. I've replayed it recently and even with the shitton of patches, the game just decided to crash from time to time, I dread imagining what it'd be like pre-patch to play it near release. Still amazing and unparalleled in what it does right though, that much is true back then and today.

EDIT: Dark Sun: Shattered Lands at least from what I've been told wasn't "big" at the time and some of the earliest SSI fans even disliked it from diverting from the GoldBox games in certain aspects. But nowadays a lot of people including myself laud it as an excellent CRPG, introducing cornerstone concepts for the first time ever a few years before Fallout's release.

 

[PunchYouInTheFace]

• Icewind Dale was almost unanimously considered Baldur's Gate's inferior cousin, but now is considered classic.
• Alpha Brotocol was a janky AA game with shit combat but gets accolades now as peak C&C.
• Arcanum (of Magicka & Steamworks) was considered ugly, dated, and janky upon release, but is now the second coming of Fallout.
• NWN (2002) OC was considered shit when released, but is now considered decent by many.
• Divinity II was panned but is somehow on the RPG Codex top 70 list.
• Wizards and Warriors was considered middling and janky when it came out. Almost forgettable. Yet now it's also on the Top 70 list.

It's amazing to see an actual person living in a bubble.

Nobody outside the RPG bubble think IWD a "classic".
Nobody outside niche Obsidian cultist praise Alpha Protocol.
Nobody but you think Arcanum is "the second coming of Fallout".
NWN OC is still shit, nobody outside of the bubble even remember it.
Nobody plays Divinity 2, and nobody cares what RPC Chudex (internet's known shithole) "tier list".
Nobody knows "Wizards and Warriors", what is that? Dollar store DnD?

It is both amazing and insane that somebody would write this and genuinely believe that it's the truth. You gotta go out of your cumcave bro.

 

[cpmartins]

• Icewind Dale was almost unanimously considered Baldur's Gate's inferior cousin, but now is considered classic.
• Alpha Brotocol was a janky AA game with shit combat but gets accolades now as peak C&C.
• Arcanum (of Magicka & Steamworks) was considered ugly, dated, and janky upon release, but is now the second coming of Fallout.
• NWN (2002) OC was considered shit when released, but is now considered decent by many.
• Divinity II was panned but is somehow on the RPG Codex top 70 list.
• Wizards and Warriors was considered middling and janky when it came out. Almost forgettable. Yet now it's also on the Top 70 list.

It's amazing to see an actual person living in a bubble.

Nobody outside the RPG bubble think IWD a "classic".
Nobody outside niche Obsidian cultist praise Alpha Protocol.
Nobody but you think Arcanum is "the second coming of Fallout".
NWN OC is still shit, nobody outside of the bubble even remember it.
Nobody plays Divinity 2, and nobody cares what RPC Chudex (internet's known shithole) "tier list".
Nobody knows "Wizards and Warriors", what is that? Dollar store DnD?

It is both amazing and insane that somebody would write this and genuinely believe that it's the truth. You gotta go out of your cumcave bro.

You're probably a worthless nigger, but I'd assume even subhumans like yourself would be able to get a single thing correctly. I was mistaken.

 

[Percy]

NWN (2002) OC was considered shit when released, but is now considered decent by many.

Sometimes, people in the past were more correct about things than people in the present.

 

[PunchYouInTheFace]

You're probably a worthless nigger, but I'd assume even subhumans like yourself would be able to get a single thing correctly.

Go back to 4chan, inbred.

And tell your mom I'd slap her a little less harder if she actually managed to abort the next one.

 

[Modron]

Sometimes, people in the past were more correct about things than people in the present.

I know, the codex used to shit all over morrowind the first couple of years.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

The Codex voted The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind its top game of 2002.

 

[Vic]

The Codex voted The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind its top game of 2002.

Where's the vote? It's just staff members naming their favorite RPGs of 2002. All besides SP seemed to like Morrowind.

 

[NaturallyCarnivorousSheep]

Alpha Brotocol was a janky AA game with shit combat but gets accolades now as peak C&C

I will bore through your head with a drill.

 

[Beans00]

The Codex voted The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind its top game of 2002.

Where's the vote? It's just staff members naming their favorite RPGs of 2002. All besides SP seemed to like Morrowind.

Most morrowind fanboys live in complete lala fantasy land. Zed Duke of Banville isn't exactly known for being truthful or having common sense.



Anyways from this thread, I've learned people actually liked lionheart? Which I consider one of the worst rpg's i have ever played.

 

[Lemming42]

NWN sucks, I refuse to believe there's much of a revisionist movement. TOTAL ASS. Not a fan of anything BioWare have made in general but NWN was soul-sucking.

I was going to say "Anvil of Dawn" but really that's almost the opposite - it seemed to have been well-regarded at the time but it's almost forgotten today. It's a beautiful game though.

Where's the vote? It's just staff members naming their favorite RPGs of 2002. All besides SP seemed to like Morrowind.

There wasn't one; Zed makes that same post a lot when this topic comes up and it's based on that specific article, but it's not really representative of the full picture of early Codex's response to MW, which was broadly negative. The forum used to come into conflict with "Bethesda fanboys" who were outraged at the level of antipathy shown toward Morrowind and, later, Oblivion. I compiled all the times Morrowind was mentioned in Year in Review articles a while ago, and you can see that the general impression was that the game was shit, with Morrowind described as "terrible", "odious", and "rated R for retarded".

Here's my post from an older thread copied and pasted over:

Spoiler

As long as we're talking about contemporary Codex perspectives, this one always gets a laugh, from the 2003 Year In Review Article:
https://rpgcodex.net/content.php?id=94

Another goddamn Morrowind expansion​

During the summer of this year, the people at Bethesda Softworks saw fit to inflict upon us another expansion to The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind.Bloodmoon has you investigating werewolves on the snowy island of--oh, who gives a shit? It's the same old hopelessly dull Morrowind gameplay. You run around fairly pretty countryside beating the tar out of hordes of stupid cliff racers doing completely pointless quests that involve murdering people for no real reason and occasionally 'talking' to the walking search engines the game calls NPCs. Morrowind is a terrible game and the expansions for it don't seem to fix any of that horror.

The 2004 year in review article had this too, which is similarly amusing:
https://rpgcodex.net/content.php?id=115

A New Evil Has Awoken: Bethesda Replaces Bioware as the Top Villain​

Bethesda, developer of the odious Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind has sunk deeper into the abyss of mass-market friendly games (rated R for retarded), lies, and greed by snatching the sacred Fallout license from Troika's financially weak fingers, and attempting to dumb down the already dumbed down gameplay in Oblivion, the fourth chapter in the Elder Scrolls series.

Oblivion is the next revolutionary and uber immersive RPG based on the brilliant design of Todd Howard. The winning formula is "Fantasy, for us, is a knight on horseback running around and killing things". So, expect a lot of running around and looking for things to kill. The game looks very pretty and the prettiness continues taking its toll. The game will be shorter because "statistically gamers prefer shorter games and often do not finish more involved titles", so clearly there is no point in making deep long games. Some weapons, like crossbows and darts, have already been dumped, because cool people use bows, and uncool people should pretend that they are cool and use bows too.

Oblivion will fix some bugs that Morrowind had. For example, when you join one major faction some script error won't let you to join the other two. Todd has assured us that this was fixed and now you can join and "become the head of every faction all during the course of one game". Todd, you are an inspiration to every developer out there.

More drama in the 2005 in review article:
https://rpgcodex.net/content.php?id=122

Really, I think we completely pissed off the Bethesda fanboys. In fact, a huge chunk of them came over here and told us we were pretty stupid in lord knows how many threads. Heck, there's probably twenty or so threads asking why we didn't like Morrowind alone. Here's a hint though, it sucked. That's why we didn't like it.

You can check old threads on MW from 2002/2003 too, they're still available to read. Interestingly you'll also see that people shat on Baldur's Gate at the time and held it responsible for killing the genre, while it's revered as an all-time classic now. I think the conclusion is that the Codex's view on any game at any given time is either way too harsh or way too reverent with no reasoned opinions to be found, likely due to microplastics in the brain or something. Or people just always think that whatever they liked when they were 16 is an unassailable masterpiece and anything released after they turned 25~ is irreparable shit, so the "classics" and the "worst games ever" shift with each new generation of users.

 

[luj1]

Design has sunk dramatically, so Renaissance-era mediocrities are better than most games today.

 

[Conan]

The one right answer is Dark Messiah (of) Might and Magic

 

[Kev Inkline]

Invisible War is still shite.

Also ITT: A 2024 registered user telling a 2007 registered user to go back to 4chan.

You're probably a worthless nigger, but I'd assume even subhumans like yourself would be able to get a single thing correctly.

Go back to 4chan, inbred.

And tell your mom I'd slap her a little less harder if she actually managed to abort the next one.

 

[just]

sacred

 

[Vic]

sacred

nobody would call that eurojank arpg a masterpiece lmao

 

[Optimist]

Gothic III was tragically misunderstood and somewhat buggy at launch. Now, after some hard work from fans, and hindsight that allows us to see that no-one ever managed to create an ARPG open world of similar size that'd be as fun to explore it feels more like the Piranha's swan song then a huge decline. NotR (or Archolos for that matter) is a much more focused experience, but G3 is a damn solid game.

 

[Silverfish]

Alpha Brotocol was a janky AA game with shit combat but gets accolades now as peak C&C

I will bore through your head with a drill.

Make him do the Brayko fight with a smg build.

 

[PunchYouInTheFace]

A 2024 registered user telling a 2007 registered user to go back to 4chan.

You missed the part where I urge his mom to abort her next gnat-spawn lest it become the same shit as he is.

Also, just because I said this:

Nobody outside the RPG bubble think IWD a "classic".
Nobody outside niche Obsidian cultist praise Alpha Protocol.
Nobody but you think Arcanum is "the second coming of Fallout".
NWN OC is still shit, nobody outside of the bubble even remember it.
Nobody plays Divinity 2, and nobody cares what RPC Chudex (internet's known shithole) "tier list".
Nobody knows "Wizards and Warriors", what is that? Dollar store DnD?

That does not mean I hate the game. Look at my damn profile picture.

 

[NecroLord]

Arcanum I doubt was considered one of the best ever on release by many as it is(deservedly so) now. Dated visuals for the time and awkward UI are alone enough to probably turn away someone who sees and hears of the game for the first time. Disregarding that, you'd be greeted with a buggy and freezing mess on release. I've replayed it recently and even with the shitton of patches, the game just decided to crash from time to time, I dread imagining what it'd be like pre-patch to play it near release. Still amazing and unparalleled in what it does right though, that much is true back then and today.

Welcome to Troika.
All of their games had problems, but all of them are also classics.