Unofficial 'Codex Top Ten.

[Vault Dweller]

I wouldn't mind if this was stickied or even turned into an article for the site.

Not enough stuff for an article, but here is a news post
http://www.rpgcodex.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=9901

 

[Shagnak]

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.

Kind of a "desert island games" thing - where if you were marooned on an island, and had a PC that ran (perhaps on coconut juice, I don't know), what 10 games would you take with you.

Personally, before I saw a "all genre top 10" I would rather see a "top 10 strategy games".
Simply because there seems to be quite a high cross-over for strategy and rpg players. Perhaps due to games like HoMM, Warcraft, etc etc sharing aspects that are familiar to rpgers?
Such a top ten would be interesting because it would also include management sims as per the content of tycooncodex.

 

[Whipporowill]

Top ten non-player characters, anyone? Or maybe it'd be to hard to come up with 10 characters good enough, heh?

 

[Micmu]

Top ten non-player characters, anyone? Or maybe it'd be to hard to come up with 10 characters good enough, heh?

1. Morte!

 

[Vault Dweller]

2. Zaxis!

 

[EEVIAC]

3. Ian.

 

[Naked_Lunch]

4. Harold!

 

[Jed]

5. Dogmeat!

 

[Whipporowill]

Iolo, Dupre & Shamino!, U4 (I think?) - U9, U:UWs

The feeling that you could always count on these guys somehow. I'd never trade them out of a party, wheter they were actually better than any other characters. It's actually sad to see them getting older while you as the avatar is still the same.

Spoilers below for those nitpicky

Saving your ass from being sacrificed in u6.
Iolo - your only help when basically landing in a murder scene. That old familar face. Sticking around albeit missing his wife.
Shamino coming to turn with his dead wife... in U7:BG?
Dupre's unsuspecting sacrifice in U7:SI

The Guardian, U7s, U8, U9, U:UWs.

Not only evil, bad damned disturbing and sadistic to boot - a true bully! No walking the middle line here... one of the few bad guys to actually get on my nerves and wind me up.

Morte

Enjoyably annoying. Like most companions in PST - chosen on coolness, or story relation rather than actual skills. More of that please.

Dogmeat

A lot of personality for such a silent companion.

 

[Jed]

That dog saved my ass so many times on my first playthrough...

 

[Whipporowill]

That dog saved my ass so many times on my first playthrough...

Pretty cool almost easter eggish way to get him as a companion as well. He didn't show up on any stat or info screen or anything did he? Just tagging along...

 

[Jed]

Personally, before I saw a "all genre top 10" I would rather see a "top 10 strategy games". Simply because there seems to be quite a high cross-over for strategy and rpg players. Perhaps due to games like HoMM, Warcraft, etc etc sharing aspects that are familiar to rpgers? Such a top ten would be interesting because it would also include management sims as per the content of tycooncodex.

Alpha Centauri!

 

[Volourn]

Dogmeat had no perosnality! He was frickin' braindead. Dumbest dog EVAR! Perhaps the most overrated NPC ever this side of Annah the Father Fucker!!

 

[yipsl]

Okay, here's the deal: I have the desire to create a definitive Top Ten list for the 'Codex. So, pick the top ten cRPGs you think are the best of all time, post in this thread or PM me, and I will compile and tally the data and post the results on Friday the 14th. PC games only, specify individual games rather than series, and dungeon crawls, even if set in the modern day (Jagged Alliance, Silent Storm) count.

Let the contest begin!

1. Betrayal at Krondor
2. Realms of Arkania: Star Trail
3. Elder Scrolls: Daggerfall
4. Elder Scrolls: Arena
5. The Magic Candle II
6. The Bard's Tale II
7. Wasteland
8. Curse of the Azure Bonds
9. Dark Queen of Krynn
10. Might and Magic VII

Here's why:

1. Betrayal at Krondor was the best RPG combining first person travel in an immersive world, but with the old school charm of a separate combat screen. I was in awe travelling up the coast to Krondor, in awe travelling along the river to investigate the guild war and totally stunned when I got to the Northlands. Though coded by Dynamix and abandoned by Sierra, it's still the best free game on the web.

2. Star Trail was a gem and I could have put it at the top of the list. It was certainly the most complex CRPG I've ever played and if they'd followed up the series with the Diablo clone they wanted, then they would have done to Realms of Arkania what Ubisoft is doing to Might and Magic.

Catching colds travelling, healing, hunting, herb gathering, starving, missing in combat, having spells fail and being insulted in town, what more can you ask of an RPG? It had the best Red Herring of any game I've ever played.

3. Daggerfall, what can I say? It was TES at it's best and will never come again, not with Pete's marketing studies guiding the series. Though I think Oblivion will be the next Daggerfall, it won't be Daggerfall and what I'd love to see is Daggerfall made with current tech. Don't know what's happened with the Dark Basic project for Daggerfall.

Do I win an award for the most uses of Daggerfall in a paragraph or just get flamed for it?

4. Arena was TES at it's inception and still good, despite a slightly more generic feel. Oblivion's going back to Arena's look for Tamriel religion, but sadly also to the nonjoinable aspect. The first time I saw snow in Arena, I was in love with the series. The towns still look good to me today and I play it every few weeks and will finish it again. The second best free game on the web.

5. Magic Candle II allowed party members to leave the party for to take up jobs, had very odd monsters in a unique world that wasn't a basic fantasy clone. I could even sneak my characters into a monster town in disguise and see their side of things. Gambling was allowed and NPCs all had their personal quirks.

6. The Bard's Tale II. Cities named after those in the New Testament, with cult Temples of Rok filled with Undead Freds and Rokmongers? What can I say? It was funnier than the first game, though more unfocused. Perhaps the last game I enjoyed with dark areas that had to be mapped by hand. You could go to any dungeon you wanted at any level and good luck to you on surviving.

7. Wasteland was fun and perverse at the same time. I'll always remember the town where sandbums had to be rescued from becoming hobodogs, and where I actually felt guilty buying hobodogs. The dungeon combat was average but the characters and classes were interesting and you could divide your party up for different missions, if they could survive that is.

8. Curse of the Azure Bonds, the story was great, following after both Pools of Radiance and the novel, but with some twists. I actually had all but two characters die in a wizard's tower in the first room, killed by the hasted Drow Lord. Then, I took my last two characters to the top of the tower where they died. I then created a new party to retrieve the bodies of the party and they fought the final battle at the top. From then on, I mixed and matched both parties as needed, since two of my original Pool of Radiance characters were maxed out at the beginning of the game.

9. Dark Queen of Krynn had more humor than the Pool series. It also had the best graphics of any of the SSI Gold Box games. Having to fight Minotaur guards because I accidentally walked into a shop filled with irate minotaur matrons was priceless. The early game had interesting underwater levels and my favorite part was fighting all the way to the top of that dratted tower only to find the door was locked and could not be opened, that I had to jump down into the garbage to find a teleporter. Things like that added to the gameplay.

10. Might and Magic VII was the best of the series. It brought elves and dwarves back into the mix, you could win your own region to rule complete with goblin infested manor. You could choose light or dark and build a golem to guard your manor, which would get reinfested as goblins respawned. If you chose the easy loan of a firewand and didn't pay the piper then your citizens suffered and you could play arcomage in every tavern in the world. I ran to the tavern in the dark city, taking quite a bit of damage and then after winning, teleported out with Lloyd's beacon.

You might note that most of my top ten are first person RPGs. I like first person exploration and dungeon crawling. Even hybrid games like Star Trail have first person elements. That makes a game world real to me. Only Magic Candle II and Wasteland had a top down view that worked for me.

What Baldurs Gate style games do wrong, IMHO, is take an RPG system and meld it to a Warcraft style RTS interface. If my character's talk back to me, I want it to be like in Might and Magic, where I can see their reactions to the environment ("what's that smell?" I always chose her for the wizard)

Honorable mentions:

Realms of Arkania: Shadows over Riva
Realms of Arkania: Blade of Destiny
Might and Magic VI
Might and Magic: World of Xeen
Wizardry 8
Morrowind
Arcanum
Ultima III through VII part two
The rest of the Gold Box games, including the Buck Rogers spin offs
KOTOR
The new The Bard's Tale (action RPG lite but still damned funny).

Games I missed but would like to give a try:

Darklands
Fallout and Fallout 2
Ultima Underworld

I've not yet gotten on the MMORPG bandwagon, which is why I haven't tried Guild Wars, WoW, Everquest or even NWN, which supposedly had a weak single player game.

 

[Kraszu]

You shuld start from Fallout is one of the best games, and it is very easy to start it, the interface is easy and creating a character don't take much time. It is fast pieced in some way, combat is tb and it is fast you don't have o w8 long for your turn, traveling is fast and you got equiptem pretty fast, it is not long but the quality of ich area is very good so you don't have to look for intresting bites in average place (in fallout 2 before you get someting usefull and intresting quest, you have to play some time).

 

[shiznit]

Fallout = best rpg EVER (tied with Tie Fighter CD for best game ever)

rest in no particular order:

Fallout 2
Deux Ex
Ultima VII part 1 and 2
Nox
System Shock 2
KOTOR
Betrayal at Krondor
BG 2
Morrowind

i havent played PT yet so i reserve judgement

 

[Pr()ZaC]

yipsl, you should also mention that Star Trail had a HECK OF A MUSIC SCORE (besides a neat party-gen structure).

 

[GhanBuriGhan]

3. Daggerfall, what can I say? It was TES at it's best and will never come again, not with Pete's marketing studies guiding the series. Though I think Oblivion will be the next Daggerfall, it won't be Daggerfall and what I'd love to see is Daggerfall made with current tech. Don't know what's happened with the Dark Basic project for Daggerfall.

Do I win an award for the most uses of Daggerfall in a paragraph or just get flamed for it?

You certainly win the award for "wordiest poster I know". Always worth reading, though!
The DarkBasic remake is probably dead, but there is still another one going on:
http://forums.dfworkshop.net/viewforum. ... 5cd87202ed

 

[k_bits]

My top 10 in no special order

1: EOB 1/2 - because it was probably the first RPG I ever played. Nostalgia value.

2: Y's - First console RPG I played. New experience. I remember renting it out from the video store, taking the cartridge apart, removing the chip and swapping it with one of my own cart chips, just so I could keep playing it without paying the fee for weeks on end. I guess a lot of fuckers ended up confused why their Y's cart would load up Shinobi

3: Ultima 8 - the first ultima I ever tried. Loved the fact you could poke around, interact with the environment, do your own thing. Plus reading the library books actually gave you clues to quests. Gotta say the graphics were snazzy for the time too.

4: Nethergate - world felt populated and not centred around your group

5: ADOM. I lost WEEKS of my life to that little fucker. Sure, it got dull after a while...but boy oh boy was it fun till then. An above ground roguelike - what will they think of next!

6: Ragnarok. The first ever roguelike I played. Had graphics, based on Norse mythology...yeah, that bad boy rawked.

7: U7. Dude - it's U7.

8: Teudogar. The spiritual descendant of U7. Just wish you could poke around more, fish, trap game etc. Wolf makes that bad boy moddable, I'm buying 5 copies.

9: Might & Magic. God knows which one - probably 1 or 2. Remember playing it on my Amiga years ago at 4am.

10: Schiffbruch / UnREAL World.

Notable mention goea to Jagged Alliance 2. Ditto IceWind Dale (though it got tedious pretty fast), Menzobarrazen (sp) (the egyptian one?), Final Fantasy 3 / 5 (or whichever one was the meant to be the shizznit on SNES)

Games I thought were ho hum.

Fallout
Geneforge

TEH KONTRAVERSI !!

Guess my secret Codex decoder ring and club membership has been revoked

 

[kingcomrade]

Nobody mentioned Stonekeep? Am I the only person who played this?
Or does it not count as an RPG?

 

[yipsl]

yipsl, you should also mention that Star Trail had a HECK OF A MUSIC SCORE (besides a neat party-gen structure).

I should have mentioned that, and Betrayal at Krondor and Arena/Daggerfall had great music too. I just don't consider music to be a factor in rating RPGs, though it adds to the immersion and experience. Atmospheric adventure games often have great music, but I don't play them.

K_bits, the most evil thing I ever did in a period of being broke was take Secret of the Silver Blades back to Toys R Us at a time when I knew they didn't have a copy in stock (a friend worked there and did inventory). I'd finished the game and there was a glitch where a couple of minor side quests didn't work, but I used that as an excuse to do an even exchange for another game that I wanted but didn't have the cash for. Still feel guilty about that one.

Menzoberranzen was interesting, but Dark Suns were better games. Menz. had the worst voice acting ever in character creation. Matron Malice intoning "Show me the statistics of the next character" or something like that.

When I first got it, I didn't have an adequate graphics card and the cut scene with the ice snake creature (decades since I played AD&D, can't recall the name of it) went like a slideshow one frame at a time. I'd sit back and watch the spear slowly, slowly fly towards the creature's throat!

Egyptian game? Did you mean the second Ravenloft AD&D? I don't recall any other Egyptian based CRPGs in that era.

 

[kris]

Seriously late and stuff, but I do put out a list nontheless!

Fallout
Fallout 2
Baldurs gate
Baldurs gate 2
KOTOR
Buck Rogers and the countdown to doomsday
Curse of the azure bonds
Ultima underworld
Eye of the beholder
Arcanum

These are the ones I remember best, played the most and in general rated high. although I would today not like a combat intensive like "Curse" that much.

 

[k_bits]

Egyptian game? Did you mean the second Ravenloft AD&D? I don't recall any other Egyptian based CRPGs in that era.

Yep, that's the one. WTF was that called? I'm pretty sure it was a follow up to the Menz
game.

*checks Mobygames*

Stone Prophet.

 

[yipsl]

Egyptian game? Did you mean the second Ravenloft AD&D? I don't recall any other Egyptian based CRPGs in that era.

Yep, that's the one. WTF was that called? I'm pretty sure it was a follow up to the Menz
game.

*checks Mobygames*

Stone Prophet.

Menzoberranzen didn't have a follow up. There were two Dark Suns games (Shattered Lands and Wake of the Ravager) and two Ravenloft games, the Egyptian mummy one was the second and I missed playing it, though I have a shovelware set around here somewhere that has all five of them. I played Menzoberranzen, the Dark Suns and Ravenloft separately when they first came out but I'm not averse to extra copies in a cheap set.

I'm sure googling Ravenloft would bring up the name but I'm too tired to do it now. What I do recall from a preview is that you basically get the peasants to rebel and then bug out through a gate because the mummy is not defeatable. That I didn't like, so I never bought it originally. You'd think if you're convincing people to die free instead of being unwilling minions of evil, that you'd do it yourself.

The whole Ravenloft demi-plane was odd. I played in one campaign that used it in my first edition days. The plane was surrounded by a mist made out of the souls of all who died there. Clerics only had spell level 1-4 based on their own personal faith because they either didn't have real gods that existed or their gods were in the Outer Planes and couldn't get spells through. The whole demi-plane was ruled by evil undead types, except for a few human cities that were totally clueless and thought they were in the real world (aka Forgotten Realms).

I had the only dwarf in the whole demi-plane (according to the DM) and that's because our party stumbled into the mist while out adventuring. Well, the human guards in the first town's gate said they'd never seen anyone short as Thurf and they asked what type of man I was. I replied "I"m a wee mannie lad, me father was a wee mannie before me and his father before him"

I still remember the popular restaraunt in the town where people kept disappearing, it was run by were-jackals and made a nice adventure leading into main campaign. PnP can be so creative depending on the DM and the players.

 

[TheGreatGodPan]

Why do they always make dwarves scottish? For some reason I think they should be german.