Spurned RPGs That are Masterpieces Today

[General Disarray]

I wonder how much the Kickstarter stuff will even be remembered - if we were to get a really good run of cRPGs for the rest of the 2020s (there's no immediate reason to expect this will happen, but just hypothetically), I can honestly see people a few decades from now just considering the 2010s to be a bit of a barren patch with a few noteworthy games that don't really coalesce into an "era" in the way that we all thought the Kickstarter stuff might back in 2014 or so.

For RPGs specifically, critics of the "Kickstarter era" willfully forget just how barren the preceding "wasteland era" was from about 2004-2011, during which the best computer RPG release was either The Witcher (2007) or Fallout: New Vegas (2010). The following period of hemi-semi-demi-Renaissance was far better for CRPGs, even if things were not as great as they used to be, and more recently we've had a resurgence of Tactical RPGs / squad-based tactics games with RPG elements. Many worthwhile games were released, most of them without funding from Kickstarter:

• Rogue-Like
  • Unexplored (2017)
• "Turn-based Blobbers" a.k.a. Wizardry-likes
  • Paper Sorcerer (2013)
  • Stranger of Sword City (2016)
  • Grimoire: Heralds of the Winged Exemplar (2017)
  • Operencia (2019)
• "Real-time Blobbers" a.k.a. DM-likes
  • Legend of Grimrock (2012)
  • Legend of Grimrock II (2014)
• Tactical RPGs
  • Wasteland 3 (2020)
  • Dungeon of Naheulbeuk (2020)
  • Solasta (2021) with new campaigns in 2022 and 2023
  • Jagged Alliance 3 (2023)
• JRPG
  • NieR: Automata (2017)
• Choice & Consequences
  • Age of Decadence (2015)
  • Underrail (2015)
  • The Warlock of Firetop Mountain (2016)
  • Wildermyth (2021)
  • Age of Incandescence (2023)
• Open-World RPGs
  • The Witcher III (2015)
  • Kingdom Come: Deliverance (2018)
  • Conan Exiles (2018, MMORPG that can be played as a single-player CRPG)
  • Outward (2019)
• Action RPGs
  • Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen (2012/2013/2016)
  • Dark Souls (2011 but 2012 on computers)
  • Salt & Sanctuary (2016)
  • Elden Ring (2022, also Open World)
  • Salt & Sacrifice (2022)
  • Dragon's Dogma II (2024)
• Tactics games with RPG elements
  • Transistor (2014)
  • XCom 2 (2016)
  • Dungeon Rats (2016)
  • Troubleshooter: Abandoned Children (2020)
  • Urtuk (2021)
  • King Arthur: Knight's Tale (2022)
• Metroidvania with RPG elements
  • Hollow Knight (2017)
  • Bloodstained (2019)
• Action with RPG elements
  • Dragon's Crown (2013)
  • Yakuza 0 (2015)
  • Ghost of Tsushima (2020)
• Other
  • Kenshi (2018)

You can add Vagrus - The Riven Realms (2020) to that list as well.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

ATOM, Underrail, Age of Decadence, Disco Elysium, Knights of the Chalice, Solasta, and plenty more I'm too lazy to list now (maybe Zed Duke of Banville can do the job for me, he's good at making lists).

We could refer to what the Codex considers the top games, for example from the 2012-2016 poll:

• Age of Decadence
• Underrail
• Dark Souls (From Software released its first game in 1994, but was a small-time player until Dark Souls)
• Shadowrun: Dragonfall
• NEO Scavenger
• Legend of Grimrock II
• FTL (not an RPG, though)
• Fallout 1.5
• Dark Souls III
• Shadowrun: Hong Kong
• Expedition: Conquistador
• Dark Souls II
• Dungeon Rats
• Xenonauts (???, doesn't appear to be an RPG)
• Heroine's Quest
• Legend of Grimrock
• TOME
• Invisible, Inc.
• Lords of Xulima

I note the Codex's top 25 CRPGs from this five-year span did not include Paper Sorcerer (2013), Transistor (2014), Serpent in the Staglands (2015), XCom 2 (2016), Stranger in Sword City (2016), Warlock of Firetop Mountain (2016), or Salt & Sanctuary (2016). And that's merely five years.

 

[Infinitron]

For RPGs specifically, critics of the "Kickstarter era" willfully forget just how barren the preceding "wasteland era" was from about 2004-2011, during which the best computer RPG release was either The Witcher (2007) or Fallout: New Vegas (2010).

Something I've always wanted to see is a retrospective of the various shovelwarey Fallout-esque and similar isometric titles that got retail releases during the 2000s, before digital distribution on Steam became the standard. I mean games like Planet Alcatraz, Cops 2170 and The Fall: Last Days of Gaia. Lots of crap from that era people are glad to have forgotten ever existed.

 

[Beans00]

Something I've always wanted to see is a retrospective of the various shovelwarey Fallout-esque and similar isometric titles that got retail releases during the 2000s, before digital distribution on Steam became the standard. I mean games like Planet Alcatraz, Cops 2170 and The Fall: Last Days of Gaia. Lots of crap from that era people are glad to have forgotten ever existed.

Literally no one ever liked planet alcatraz in large numbers here.

The fall gaia was never released in english officially.

 

[JarlFrank]

Lots of crap from that era people are glad to have forgotten ever existed.

A lot of that crap is still better than Pillows of Eternity and NWN1 though.