What are your Top 10 RPGs?

[Butter]

Does Borderlands feature character creation? Like it or not, that's an essential part of an RPG.

 

[Strange Fellow]

What's the difference between Deus Ex (RPG) and Borderlands (non-RPG)?

One of them is a thought-provoking piece of art, that will likely never age, while the other is a manipulative cartoony nightmare with terrible voice acting that will most likely age like milk?

Harsh, but fair. Not sure I'd call Borderlands "art", though.

 

[jungl]

fallout 2 definitely one of my favorites. I loved all the reactivity the game had going for it. Can get married then sell your wife into slavery. Plant bombs on people to assasinate them. Be a retard and get treated as such. Overrall a Interesting world to experience. I wish wasteland 3 was as interesting but its mostly xcom combat fag game.

I blame needing voice acting for every npc and modern gamer trends in making developers half ass writing portion of their games in favor of style, presentation. Of course don't forget janky coop that doesn't mesh well with the rest of the games mechanics but lets add it cause oh well!

 

[Lilura]

Jagged Alliance 2 > Kenshi
Fallout 1 > Fallout 2
Dungeon Rats > Age of Decadence
STALKER is not RPG
Fallout New Vegas is an Oblivion With Guns mod

and lmao at listing online games.

 

[Ol' Willy]

STALKER is not RPG

It doesn't need to be one, though.

 

[Lilura]

STALKER OGSE (which I reviewed) scratches a similar itch. But that's because it's got emphasis on Deus Ex aug equivalent (transmutable, equippable artifacts). Still, it's twitch popamole.

 

[EldarEldrad]

This is a bad definition. For one, it includes games that are clearly not RPGs, like strategy games, or adventure games. And for second, i believe stats are only one of the pillars of an RPG and not even the main one.

An RPG is what the name implies, a ROLE-PLAYING game. This means that it is meant to make the player LARP another character inside another universe and play through an adventure. This kind of ROLE PLAYING game is ancient, and one of the first types of games children instictively play by themselves. For example playing "cowboys vs indians" or "cops vs robbers".

Obviously some faggot wanted to make the LARPing more sophisticated for teenagers and adults to play, and he wanted to be able to SELL it and structure it, so he designed a dice-based system with rigid rules to accompany the LARPing. That way he could sell it as a complete LARPing system and make dollars. And the players would have a set of rules (that could still be overriden by DMs anyway) to make the LARPing fair and not have one player say "i used the force to kill you" and the other say "nuhuh, you did nothing of the short, i used the force to kill you first", and end up punching each other to death in real life.

Later, once vidya games began to be made, some faggots decided to transfer those systems to vidya games, and the CRPGs were born. But as the years went by all the autists and spergs, typically drawn to numbers and rules instead of imagination-heavy LARPing, focused extensively on the wargaming part of RPGs, the rules and stats, above the LARPing. Remember, spergs/autists can't really LARP, because their brains don't function that way.

So, we ended up having a multiple interpretation of what an RPG is. Autists think CRPGs are shit with extensive rulesets and huuuuurd cuuuuure gameplay with millions of savescuming per hour. Normal people think CRPGs are escapism games that allow them to LARP another character in a fantasy realm, like Skyrim. Obviously, autists are fewer, but due to autism they are more vocal and dedicated in small communities like this. While normal human beings are far more numerous (which is displayed in Skyrim sales vs any so called "incline" crpg sales), they don't frequent "hard core" sites like the RPGCodex much, people like me being the exception, LOL.

You are truly great at LARPing a dumbfuck here, but your ROLE-PLAYING game has gone too far.

Jagged Alliance 2 > Kenshi
Fallout 1 > Fallout 2
Dungeon Rats > Age of Decadence
STALKER is not RPG
Fallout New Vegas is an Oblivion With Guns mod

Agree with everything except the last. FNV has different structure and gamedesign approach than beth-shit. It makes it a superiour game generally. Still shitty game engine and related stuff though.

 

[Butter]

I think if you can put up with the NWN engine to enjoy Swordflight, you can put up with the Oblivion engine to enjoy New Vegas.

 

[Lilura]

I think if you can put up with the NWN engine to enjoy Swordflight, you can put up with the Oblivion engine to enjoy New Vegas.

Putting Oblivion With Guns Gaymbryo on par with Aurora is blasphemy. Aurora is an apex-level engine even without FPC and TB (ranked fifth all-time).

Also, Swordflight >>> Oblivion With Guns mod.

 

[Lilura]

Agree with everything except the last. FNV has different structure and gamedesign approach than beth-shit. It makes it a superiour game generally.

It doesn't matter. Nothing built on the Oblivion With Guns engine can ever be tolerated / accepted.

 

[Eirinjas]

In no particular order, though PST is hands down my favorite:

1. Planescape: Torment
2. Baldur's Gate
3. Might & Magic VI: The Mandate of Heaven
4. Dark Sun: Shattered Lands
5. Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines
6. Ravenloft: Strahd's Possession
7. Eye of the Beholder (Sega CD)
8. Phantasy Star (Master System)
9. Lunar - The Silver Star (Sega CD)
10. Shining in the Darkness (Genesis)

 

[curds]

Aurora is an apex-level engine even without FPC and TB

It has a good toolset for modders (same could be said for Bethesda's Gamebryo). That's all it has going for it. The engine itself is not anything special.

 

[TemplarGR]

It doesn't matter. Nothing built on the Oblivion With Guns engine can ever be tolerated / accepted.

Yeah, Jagged Alliance 2 has such a great engine, kept together with duct tape. Fallout 2. I remember the quality of it when driving the car and leaving the trunk behind with all my cool items in it. Good times. Now we are talking quality engines.

 

[TheBreadcrumb]

What's the difference between Deus Ex (RPG) and Borderlands (non-RPG)?

One of them is a thought-provoking piece of art, that will likely never age, while the other is a manipulative cartoony nightmare with terrible voice acting that will most likely age like milk?

Memelands aged like milk years ago and has reached the point where it's rancid and vomit inducing just being in it's vicinity. Look no further than the second title if you want the prime example of the Shakespearian writing of the king of the cucks Anthony Burch (videos related). Tried playing it last year and I didn't even make it past the first 2 hours because I got an existential crisis. How did we get to this point where this fucking series is considered to be ''comedy''?
Like anything popular but shitty, the only thing it's good for is the porn it created.

 

[Jason Liang]

1. Sengoku Rance 3/3/3/2
2. Rance X 5/1/8/1
3. Bloodlines 8/9/2/9
4. Baldur's Gate 2 Shadows of Amn 9/5/5/6
5. Rance VI The Fall of Zeth 1/6/9/7
6. Dragonfall 2/2/7/3
7. Final Fantasy VIII 6/8/1/4
8. Planescape Torment 4/10/4/5
9. Temple of Elemental Evil 10/4/10/10
10. Phantasy Star IV 7/7/6/8

Storytelling/ Combat/ Art Direction/ Satisfaction ranking

Neverwinter Nights would be my 11th if you count community modules. The reasons it didn't make my top 10 are 1) it implements 3E which is cancer and 2) the 3d rtwp combat system is tolerable but junk.

 

[Darth Canoli]

1. Planescape: Torment (ultimate storydriven game, obviously there are rpgs with better combat but unlike some others like Arcanum it's serviceable enough).
2. Baldurs Gate 2 (probably still the most complete all round rpg experience, unlike most games in the genre it doesn't drop the ball on anything, ticks all the boxes)
3. Dark Souls (best action rpg, also great atmosphere, I won't include Bloodborne but it's up there as well)
4. Betrayal at Kronder (the second best storydriven rpg, combat is good enough, navigating through the world is a bit dated by now but once you get past that brilliant game)
5. Might & Magic VII (does everything 6 does but a bit better, especially char customization options and better story/setting, I don't mind the shorter dungeons, overlong dungeons with a gazillion trash encounters aren't that interesting)
6. The Witcher (a game that gets better each time I play it, has a lot of heart and excels at writing, atmosphere, questing, the series is now very mainstream obviously but back in the day this took quite some risks steering away from Forgotten Realms clichés. I always found it weird that it didn't reach the codex cult status other, lesser eurojank games did)
7. Icewind Dale 2 (a very underrated entry, seems to be a lot less talked about than the other IE games despite having the best combat encounters and atmosphere)
8. Dark Sun: Shattered Lands (I feel this was when the genre really came to fruition, probably biased since I started playing rpgs mid 90s but everything before this feels a bit dated to me)
9. The Witcher 3 (Codex usually get a boner for games made by one neckbeard living on roots in his mothers basement but this game shows AAA doesn't have to be shit)
10. Might & Magic VI (always been my favorite blobber series, challenging but still fun)

Honorable mentions: TOEE, Nier, KOTOR2, MOTB, Div Div, SR: DF

Your "find the odds ones out" game is way too easy.

So, we ended up having a multiple interpretation of what an RPG is. Autists think CRPGs are shit with extensive rulesets and huuuuurd cuuuuure gameplay with millions of savescuming per hour. Normal people think CRPGs are escapism games that allow them to LARP another character in a fantasy realm, like Skyrim. Obviously, autists are fewer, but due to autism they are more vocal and dedicated in small communities like this. While normal human beings are far more numerous (which is displayed in Skyrim sales vs any so called "incline" crpg sales), they don't frequent "hard core" sites like the RPGCodex much, people like me being the exception, LOL.

How did you like larping a dolphin and a hedgehog in the RPG Ecco th Dolphin and Sonic the hedgehog?

 

[TemplarGR]

How did you like larping a dolphin and a hedgehog in the RPG Ecco th Dolphin and Sonic the hedgehog?

The best was LARPing your mom's dildo.

 

[Metatron]

Your "find the odds ones out" game is way too easy.

I started playing RPGs mid-90s, Might and Magic VI was the first rpg worth its weight I completed at a friends computer, Betrayal at Krondor was the first rpg I finished on my own crappy PC (I also was super into reading Feist back then so I was hyped anyway) so there's probably some nostalgia involved but when I replayed them they held up. The Krondor game holds up more than the books in any case.
That doesn't mean I don't enjoy a modern rpg with high productions values as well as long as it's well made. This might be hard to understand for a certain contingent of autistic Dexers who like to see the world binary and fitting in the little boxes in they developed in their heads but those aren't mutually exclusive.

 

[DaveO]

After much thought I'll again only post five that I consider to be the best with no rankings:

Realms of Arkania 1-3 (old DOS versions)
Might and Magic: World of Xeen (combines MM4 and MM5 into one game)
Might and Magic 6
Icewind Dale
Knights of the Old Republic

 

[samuraigaiden]

Borderlands is a FPS, not a RPG. All the gameplay is FPS, all the RPG mechanics revolve around the FPS gameplay.

Beyond checking boxes like character creation, leveling, etc., the gameplay is what truly matters.

A racing game with character creation, leveling, customization, quests, etc., is still a racing game.

 

[Darth Canoli]

Borderlands is a FPS, not a RPG. All the gameplay is FPS, all the RPG mechanics revolve around the FPS gameplay.

Beyond checking boxes like character creation, leveling, etc., the gameplay is what truly matters.

A racing game with character creation, leveling, customization, quests, etc., is still a racing game.

It's a damn shame, i like their artstyle and the world building for the little i have seen, it would have made a great Turn-Based party-based Blobber with guns with complete revamp of the itemization.

 

[DaveO]

Lilura, I'm sorry to hear of all your difficulties with veterans. I hope many here consider me one, although I don't have a very high post count. I also hope that the quality of my post counts makes up for the quantity.

 

[EtcEtcEtc]

In no order - although modded New Vegas is prob #1.

New Vegas
Ultima V
Ultima VII
Ultima Underworld
Witcher III
Baldur's Gate II
Age of Decadence
Underrail
Dark Souls
Planescape

Still haven't played any Piranha Bytes games - have a feeling they are in my wheelhouse. Same w/ Jagged Alliance II.

Original XCom and Stalker I don't consider RPG's but if they were they'd bump Underrail and Ultima V off to replace.

Love many of the codex faves, but too many have major flaws that I can't get past to consider them top ten material.

 

[Communist]

Still haven't played any Piranha Bytes games - have a feeling they are in my wheelhouse.

Gothic is the direct father of The Witcher and Kingdom Come.
There are so many immersive elements that have amazed players over the years. You can drink, you can smoke weeds, there are naked women bathing in the bathtub (in the second part, you can fuck them; the fucking mode is literally repeated in the first Witcher). Each playable character is unique, there are not many of them, but they are interesting and have their own character. You can hunt and craft. You can become a warrior or a mage (several circles of magic), and for this you must choose a faction with a unique passage.
But you don't have to play this game. Because the Gothic tradition has influenced the entire RPG industry from Eastern Europe. You can see the development of these traditions even in the Assassin Creed, which developers from Eastern Europe worked on.

 

[Sigourn]

1. Cyberpunk 2077 (it was a tough call between this and Skyrim)
   
2. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
3. The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
4. Fallout 3
5. Dragon Age: Inquisition
6. Undertale
7. Mother 3 (I only play it in Japanese)
8. Deus Ex: Invisible War
9. Ultima IX: Ascension
   
10. Pools of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Drannor