Unofficial 'Codex Top Ten.

[TheGreatGodPan]

One thing I've noticed - are party-based games goin the way of the dodo? Single character (with support d00ds that u cant directly control) seem to be the way now.

That's one trend I'm happy about. It makes for better role-playing, and if you've got a full party of different people the only way designers think they can challenge you is with combat.

 

[Jed]

Okay gang, no more posts. I will start compiling now and post results as soon as I am finished.

 

[Volourn]

Post.

Game over.

Moron.

 

[Twinfalls]

 

[Moggs]

Hammer of Persia?

 

[protobob]

It's Karateka, not Prince of Persia.

 

[Moggs]

It's Karateka, not Prince of Persia.

Yeah, I guessed that from the white outfit with the black belt, but somehow I was reminded of the Prince of Persia sprites. Excuse me while I go shed a tear for the death of the Amiga...

 

[protobob]

Yeah it was made by the same guy (Jordan Mechner) that made Prince of Persia.

 

[Chefe]

Ha! That's great! :D

 

[tarkin]

Okay gang, no more posts. I will start compiling now and post results as soon as I am finished.

Faster will u? There are people waiting for something to bitch about.

Let me guess, it will look like this:
1.Fallout
2-10. fuck me if know (it is not an invitation)

 

[bryce777]

I haven't heard that music in 15-20 years, and now it's RIGHT IN MY HEAD.

 

[Jed]

Okay, after a long day of compiling and parsing the results, here's it is.

[Notes on my methodology: Any game with less than three votes was dropped. This was as much for my convenience as it was to streamline the results. Yes, I'm dumbing down. Games that tied were ranked alphabetically, except in the top ten, where ties were noted. The top ten is ranked from leat to greatest; all other games after that are ranked greatest to least.]

Enjoy:

10. Elder Scrolls 2: Daggerfall: 13
Shagnak: “Daggerfall? Fuck I hated the combat in that game (It has a lot of other stuff going for it though)”

9. System Shock 2 // Gothic 2: 16 votes
[2 way tie for 9th.]

8. Ultima 7: The Black Gate // Baldur’s Gate: 19
Pr()ZaC: “I don't know... BG 1 and 2 bored the heck out of me and I tried to like them. I still have BG somewhere but why waste your time with it when you have Daggerfall?”
[2 way tie for 8th.]

7. Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines: 21
[This surprised the hell out of me. I'm wondering if the fact that it is one of the most recent games most here have played inflated its showing.]

6. Deus Ex: 22

5. Baldur’s Gate 2: Shadows of Amn: 28

4. Arcanum: 40
RuySan: “i'm quite surprised to see so much people mentioning Arcanum. I thought the game was mediocre. Very unbalanced and the dungeons had a very empty feel.”

3. Fallout 2: 42
Kthan75: “I see the majority of people have FO1, FO2 and Torment in their top 5, with FO1 usually being first. What I don't understand is why some people have Fallout 1 in their list and not FO2 I don't want to get another flame started with this, but I really don't get it how you could like FO1 so much and not give a shit about the second one, not even including it in a top 10.”
Deathy: “It was more of the same. Originality counts for a lot, at least in my eyes, and Fallout 2 had none. A carbon copy of the original, just with more quanity. Sure, it was decent, but Fallout is already on the list, so there's no room for another game that is exactly the same.”
Vault Dweller: “FO1 is a masterpiece, everything was done right: the atmosphere, the setting, the towns, character system, game flow, story, etc. FO2 was a decent game at best because all those things I mentioned above were fucked one way or another.”
Section8: “For me personally, Fallout 2 didn't have the impact of the first, because it emphasised quality over quantity, and didn't have the wow factor of playing a game unlike anything you've ever played. Also, I've probably become more jaded toward it over the years through endless discussion and debate. Under close scrutiny, there are a lot of undesirable facets to it, some of which could even be claimed as a taint on the good name of Fallout.”
Whipporowill: “It's not that the towns are different - it's that they don't fit the setting. A martial arts town (worst of all!) and New Reno felt a bit out of place. Some people hated the fact of a working car, which I didn't - and so on. Fallout 2 is more of a garbled "mess", less elegant and unique - but as you say they fixed some of the issues from the original - with followers and inventory.”

2. Planescape: Torment: 46
Borys: “…sorry Planescape, you were too damn boring.”
[I'm not sure why, but PS: T scoring second bothered me. I mean, I love that game, but is it really what we think of as the second best cRPG?]

1. Fallout: 57
Deathy: "The game just oozed style, and had great technical aspects too."
[No surprise here. This game deserves every accolade it receives.]

*****

Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind: 12

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic: 11

Icewind Dale: 10

Jagged Alliance 2: 10

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic: The Sith Lords: 10
Trash: “hope they'll finish that 'original ending' mod soon though”
Locue: “despite being an unfinished mess”

Ultima Underworld: 8
Section8: “The first to me was sheer brilliance because of it's limited setting. Since the setting itself was confined, the was no artificial limit imposed on the world boundaries. It also managed to start you off as a blank slate, unlike most of the Ultima's and I always preferred that to assuming tomes of avatar backstory applied to your character from the start.”

Gothic: 7

Greyhawk: The Temple of Elemental Evil: 7

Wizardry 8: 7

Dark Sun: Wake of the Ravager: 6

Eye of the Beholder: 6
Elwro: “ahh, the memories...”

Geneforge: 6
Deathy: "The ultimate in open endedness, the fact that what I did actually mattered, even more so than Fallout."

Realms of Arkania 2: Star Trail: 6

Ultima 4: Quest of the Avatar: 6

Arx Fatalis: 5

Betrayal at Krondor: 5

Prelude to Darkness: 5

Ultima 7: Serpent Isle: 5

Wasteland: 5

Avernum 3: 4
Deathy: "Huge living world."

Bard’s Tale: 4

Buck Rogers: Countdown To Doomsday: 4

Darklands: 4

Lands of Lore: 4

Might & Magic 5: Dark side of Xeen: 4

Ultima Underworld 2: 4
Android: “…UW2 was a bit more complicated then just the descend-8-levels-and-kill-the-boss plot.”

ADoM: 3

Albion: 3
Jinxed: “I forgot about Albion. That was a damn good game.”
RuySan: “And for anyone who agreed with me with the greatness of Albion: i love you man.”; “the game had a very distinctive graphic style (lots of orange and green) to make it very atmospheric.”
Naked_Lunch: “Albion would've been much better if it just stayed isometric. The first-person parts gave me a headache.”
Shagnak: “Agreed. I thought the iso parts were purty.”

Champions of Krynn: 3

Dark Sun 1: Shattered Lands: 3

Diablo: 3

Diablo 2: 3

Dungeon Master: 3

Escape Velocity: Nova: 3

Eye of the Beholder 2: 3

Fairy Tale Adventure: 3
Section8: “Holy fucking shit, there's a blast from the past. One of my favourite Amiga games of all time, and a pretty fucking cool isometric action-adventure (close enough to an RPG, I guess). I don't think I ever managed to achieve anything significant, but the game world was fucking enormous, so I had endless hours of freeform amusement. Way ahead of its time for 1987 too.”

Gearhead: 3

Geneforge 2: 3

Icewind Dale: Heart of Winter: 3
Shagnak: “I actually thoughtthat HOW was pretty bad. I liked Trials way more. Can't remember why.”

Icewind Dale 2: 3

Might & Magic 4: Clouds of Xeen: 3

Nethack: 3
Deathy: "Challenging, intelligent gameplay, excellent interactivity."

Quest for Glory: 3

Realms of Arkania 3: Shadows over Riva: 3

Sims 2: 3

System Shock: 3

Teudogar & the Alliance with Rome: 3

*****

Most Abbreviated Game Series: Baldur’s Gate series

Number of inane posts by Volourn: 7

Number of ironic top tens by “clever” posters: 6

Participants in the survey: aboyd, android, Araanor, Avè, baby arm, Baley, Balor, Barbader, BbaxterD, Borys, bryce777, Calis, Claw, copx, crufty, Deathy, deus, EEVIAC, Elwro, Excalibur, Fodel, Frau Bishop, GhanBuriGhan, Greatatlantic, Jaesun, Jed, Jinxed, Jora, Kamaz, keeks, Kraszu, Kthan75, Kuato, LlamaGod, Locue, Lomer, Mandake, mEtaLL1x, micmu, Moggs, Moribunny, Naked_Lunch, Nicolai, POOPERSCOOPER, protobob, Pr()ZaC, Psilon, Revasser, roguefrog, Rulion, RuySan, Saint_Proverbius, Section8, Shagnak, Sol Invictus, Sparrowtm, Spazmo, Surlent, TheGreatGodPan, Tiliqua, Tintin, Tshiller, Trash, Vault Dweller, Whipporowill, & z3r'0'.

 

[Naked_Lunch]

Oh man, this is total news-quality stuff here. Nice job, Jed.

 

[Atrokkus]

Great work!
I think we should have this survey regularily updated and either pinned or even posted as a site feature.

We did the same thing on our RPGPlanet.ru forums. Although, we did the all-genre top10. You can see it here

 

[Shagnak]

Good stuff.

I guess Fallout and Torment were kinda predictable.
Bloodlines was more popular than I predicted, and both Ultima 7 and Daggerfall were lower than I thought they would be.

Disappointing result for my favs, Wizardry 8 and Ultima 4, but atleast they got mentioned by a few.

Oh well, guess I better try and finish off Torment soon. :wink:

 

[Section8]

Nice work. I fucking love a good countdown. How about a Top Ten (all genre) games?

 

[Atrokkus]

very hard to make a top10 of all genres, cuz there are just lots of games, hard to grab this elite bunch out of them. I mean, hell, there are much less great and exceptional RPGs, i could only think of 9 ^_^

 

[Jed]

Oh man, this is total news-quality stuff here. Nice job, Jed.

Great work! I think we should have this survey regularily updated and either pinned or even posted as a site feature. We did the same thing on our RPGPlanet.ru forums. Although, we did the all-genre top10.

Thanks! It sure was a hell of a lot more work than I expected. I wouldn't mind if this was stickied or even turned into an article for the site. I think instead of adding to the alleged "codex hivemind" that it actually dispells a lot of stupid anti-codex fanboi myths and canards. Though obviously not the Fallout/Planescape ones...

Good stuff. I guess Fallout and Torment were kinda predictable. Bloodlines was more popular than I predicted, and both Ultima 7 and Daggerfall were lower than I thought they would be. Disappointing result for my favs, Wizardry 8 and Ultima 4, but atleast they got mentioned by a few. Oh well, guess I better try and finish off Torment soon.

Again, no surprise that FO & PS:T topped the list, but the showing of some of the others actually was fairly surprising: Gothic 2, Bloodlines, and Deus Ex. Actually, I was really surprised that Arcanum took 4th. I thought it was much more of an "underdog" than that...

Nice work. I fucking love a good countdown. How about a Top Ten (all genre) games?

I was actually already thinking of this. "Top Ten games if you could play only ten games in your entire life," or some such. I've been collecting all the uber-classic abandonware games that I can because I'm about to go laptop-only for the next couple of years, and it seemed like a good opportunity to go back and play a lot of games I missed out on. Maybe I'll take it on sometime in the next few weeks...but if anyone else wants to do it, they're more than welcome.

 

[Jason]

We should have a Codex Top Ten list of games that have prostitutes in them. You know, the important stuff.

 

[Twinfalls]

Deus Ex being in there while Gothic is not, is an outrage.

 

[Atrokkus]

Yes, by the way, I'm quite unpleasantly surprised that Gothic 2 is there, while Gothic isn't.
Personally, I consider this game duo as one entity, *but* with Gothic 1 being played *first*, and Gothic2 second, only in that order. Otherwise, the experience gets flawed somewhat, at least for me. Why? Because Gothic felt more original and unprecedented not just because it's the first, but because it was actually better in terms of novelty and impression. The first RL hours or days of Gothic 1 for me were just priceless, the imerssion in the world, and, more importantly, the unusual feeling of being an ordinary chap who got into trouble, and not a chosen one, it is only later in the game that you discover your "mission". That is, very soft flow. Gothic 2, sadly, starts with you being the chosen one. That's why I recommend everyone to play G1 first. That said, if we are to choose a separate game, not a series, then I would always go Gothic 1 on higher rank, and only then G2.

 

[Kthan75]

Great work! I think we should have this survey regularily updated and either pinned or even posted as a site feature.

Thanks! It sure was a hell of a lot more work than I expected. I wouldn't mind if this was stickied or even turned into an article for the site. I think instead of adding to the alleged "codex hivemind" that it actually dispells a lot of stupid anti-codex fanboi myths and canards. Though obviously not the Fallout/Planescape ones

Nice work, cool results! I definately think this should be posted as a site feature and that we could do more things like this in the future. Actually, I would volunteer to compile results for other surveys, but only after mid-November, I'll be swamped with work until then.

About the results, I was a bit surprised not to see any of the KOTORs in the top ten, with KOTOR2 not even mentioned... I found KOTOR2 somewhat more "role-playish" than the first one, until the end, at least -- yes, I tend to like sequels...

 

[Second Chance]

I find it amazing how people that vote for Fallout 1, Fallout 2 and PS:T actually COMPLAIN about nowadays' RPGs.

 

[Vault Dweller]

About the results, I was a bit surprised not to see any of the KOTORs in the top ten, with KOTOR2 not even mentioned...

Thank fucking God for that.

I find it amazing how people that vote for Fallout 1, Fallout 2 and PS:T actually COMPLAIN about nowadays' RPGs.

Huh?

 

[Elwro]

Great work, Jed! Interesting data.