Putting the 'role' back in role-playing games since 2002.
Donate to Codex
Good Old Games
  • Welcome to rpgcodex.net, a site dedicated to discussing computer based role-playing games in a free and open fashion. We're less strict than other forums, but please refer to the rules.

    "This message is awaiting moderator approval": All new users must pass through our moderation queue before they will be able to post normally. Until your account has "passed" your posts will only be visible to yourself (and moderators) until they are approved. Give us a week to get around to approving / deleting / ignoring your mundane opinion on crap before hassling us about it. Once you have passed the moderation period (think of it as a test), you will be able to post normally, just like all the other retards.

Your favorite guilty pleasures

Sykar

Arcane
Joined
Dec 2, 2014
Messages
11,297
Location
Turn right after Alpha Centauri
Name some (a)rpgs, or in abscense of those take games from another genre, that despite not being particularly good you still got a surprising amount of enjoyment out of.

A few guilty pleasures of mine:

Restricted Area: Not gonna lie the game is pretty bad. Yet I enjoyed it enough on Jessica to make through it once which was surprising to me considering that negatives vs positives is heavily slanted toward negatives.

Blood Omen: Legacy of Khain. As a story the game is nice and the atmosphere is great. It is mostly an action game though with only light RPG elements if you are generous. Gameplay is also not the greatest. While finding secrets and exploration can be fun, combat is simplistic and janky. Not a bad game, not even average but just a notch away from good imo.

Soulreaver: Same franchise with a new protagonist. Similar to Blood Omen, nice story, great atmosphere and some cool ideas for exploration with the second dimension opening up paths unavailable in the "real" world but god damn the controls are imprecise as hell leading to quite a few enraged outburst from me when missing a platform several times in a row because of the bad precision. Combat is also clunky and the camera is at times working against you.

Mass Effect: I have defended Mass Effect before and I will continue to do so but this game has a lot of typical Bioturd flaws especially when it comes to story structure which they have rehashed over and over. Gameplay is interesting but raw and lacks refinement. Inventory and items though are basically garbage tier. Yet I managed to finish it and had some fun with some incomplete repeats.

Warframe(MMO): Somewhat the other way around from the earlier games, combat is fun, fluid and has some depth as does the customization of your warsuits. Everything else? Eh.... story is very uneven with some decent but also some pretty bad parts. The most aggrevating parts are the myriad of systems which need external sources or helpful players online to explain to you because the developers failed utterly to explain most of them. The YTuber Josh Strife Hayes has a great video about it.
Just to give you an idea what a hot mess of garbage the systems are, a lot of mission types have so called "rotations" which happen after a set amount of time or waves of enemies. The drops from these rotations are always random and usually low chances 5-10% sometimes even less. Worse though that certain rewards, especially weapon and new combat suit parts are tied to specific rotations and the system usually goes "A/A/B/C" or some such. Now often these weapn and new suit, or character, parts drop only in certain rotations, meaning if you ar playing too few or too little you are not getting the part you want and of course those parts also have very low drop chances, sometimes sub 5%. I can be quite aggravating. The worst part though that the tutorial does NOT teach you anything about it. Neither do you learn anything during the story missions.
Speaking of story missions, they are not cohesive. You get a sort of "story block" that you solve and then have to do missions of your own choosing to unlock sectors on planets inside the solar system until a certain point when the story finally resumes again.
All in all the systems of the game are a hot mess that are barely if at all explained during actual gameplay and confuse many newer players. Hell when I come back after a few months of a much needed break I have to look up stuff again.
 
Last edited:

Bigg Boss

Arcane
Joined
Sep 23, 2012
Messages
7,528
Apparently PoE 1 and 2 are not deemed as "good" here so I will list those along with Wasteland 2 and 3 since I am sure those are not good along with Fallout 2 which is also not good and Arcanum and Planescape Torment which is also not good and Morrowind which is also not good and I already know before I play it Pathfinder is not supposed to be good but I will probably like it because the RPG Codex is really split on it.
 

Bigg Boss

Arcane
Joined
Sep 23, 2012
Messages
7,528
I started that but it was on console so I told myself to wait for PC and have not did it yet.

But hey man I love Legacy of Kain but Soul Reaver ain't no RPG unless Zelda is.
 

Daedalos

Arcane
The Real Fanboy
Joined
Apr 18, 2007
Messages
5,559
Location
Denmark
Depends on who and what defines "good" doesn't it? Milage may vary, eye of the beholder.

Wasteland 2+3 were both excellent and enjoyed them, and I find them both good, even if codex is somewhat dubious about them.

Disco Elysium is another wrongfully hated game on codex, its amazing and I loved it.

Pillars of Eternity 1 - excellent story, so-so combat, very hated on codex

D:OS 1+2 - very very flawed games, not really good, but enjoyable for what they are

Diablo 3

Cyberpunk 2077 - again, deeply flawed.. overall not good, but had very high points like the story - codex hates it, me not that much
 

Falksi

Arcane
Joined
Feb 14, 2017
Messages
10,538
Location
Nottingham
Mass Effect 1 is brilliant for what it is - a shooter with RPG elements. It just captures a great sense of being a space adventurer.

Witcher 2 - My fave of the series. The C&C is just stunning. Dark mode adds some real weight to the character building.

Dark Souls 2 - Again, my fave of the series.

Risen 2 - Some of the best humour ever in any game I've played.

The Technomancer - Janky wank which just captures the vibe it's going for great and has some fun Rogue combat.
 

Van-d-all

Erudite
Joined
Jan 18, 2017
Messages
1,557
Location
Standin' pretty. In this dust that was a city.
Fall Last Days of Gaia - total jank, but I'm a sucker for post apo
Marauder/Man of Prey/E7 - been a sucker for those RTWP mechanics since Brigade E5, although AI got worse with every game...
Paradise Cracked - the epitome of jank, but it's cyberpunk and TB (painstakingly so, since EVERYTHING has it's turn)
The Power Of Law - as above (same dev), nice atmosphere, especially given the police radio in OST, also anthropomorphic cyber-rat character
Dungeon Siege III - I started expecting utter garbage, and it was quite enjoyable, albeit console-ish
Mars War Logs - absolutely amazing setting (it's no Kenshi, but still) despite janky gameplay, loved it
Dragon Age Origins - possible the only nuBioware game I really liked, despite it's setting being a Witcher knock-off some details (mages vs templars) and some quests (succubus) were very fun
 

Serus

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Jul 16, 2005
Messages
6,680
Location
Small but great planet of Potatohole
Two Worlds 1

Divine Divinity

Everything by Spiders
You mean Vogel's games? Hardly a "guilty" pleasure around here, some of his older games are considered quite good.


As for me, i think that would be diablo(2) clones if they count. I spent hundreds of hours on the net in Diablo 2 and Path of Exiles and offline playing Titan Quest and Grim Dawn. Plus some other but not nearly as much. And by hundreds of hours i mean hundreds each. Thousands in case of Diablo 2. I sometimes feel literally guilty for wasting so much time of my life. At least i came out from playing D2 with a real life friend and even a few bucks. Sue me, i was selling game stuff for real money at some point.
 

Pink Eye

Monk
Patron
Joined
Oct 10, 2019
Messages
5,793
Location
Space Refrigerator
I'm very into cock and ball torture
Warframe(MMO): Somewhat the other way around from the earlier games, combat is fun, fluid and has some depth as does the customization of your warsuits.
Oh hey. A Warframe player! I've been playing the game on and off since Closed Beta for many years now. Though it's been very hard to come back to because of the main reasons you've listed. Each time I come back, they add new shit, systems, that's hard for my dumb brain to understand or follow. I'd remember the only way I could continue playing the game without feeling confused. Is by doing crap that I'm familiar with. For example, couple of years ago. When I was playing with my little brother. We'd just run some random survival missions together while leveling our warframes. Killin' shit while doing missions that I'm comfortable with. Is how had my fun for a period. Though. Eventually. At some point we stopped playing. Haven't really gone back to it since. Every time I read up on it I get anxiety about the new stuff plus the grind. In my opinion, the game's kind of brutal for returning players.
 
Last edited:

Lord_Potato

Arcane
Glory to Ukraine
Joined
Nov 24, 2017
Messages
9,835
Location
Free City of Warsaw
Two Worlds 1

Divine Divinity

Everything by Spiders
You mean Vogel's games? Hardly a "guilty" pleasure around here, some of his older games are considered quite good.

No, not Spiderweb. Spiders. French studio making low budget/AA action-RPGs with stories akin to older Bioware. Their more famous arpgs:

Mars: War Logs
Bound by Flame
Technomancer
Greedfall

Also: Faery: Legends of Avalon (this was turn-based) and Of Orcs and Men (rtwp).
 

curds

Magister
Joined
Nov 24, 2019
Messages
1,098
I don't have guilty pleasure games because i don't feel guilty about liking something.
I never took the phrase as literally as that. To me guilty pleasure means something you like which is generally considered shit or lame, not necessarily something you feel actual guilt over.

Anyway.

Mine is Oblivion. It's chock-full of incredibly poor game design choices, bad dialogue, empty and featureless open-world, copy-pasted dungeons, floaty combat, etc, etc.

I could list the things it did get right, but the real reason I like it is because I played it when I was a child.
 

Sykar

Arcane
Joined
Dec 2, 2014
Messages
11,297
Location
Turn right after Alpha Centauri
I started that but it was on console so I told myself to wait for PC and have not did it yet.

But hey man I love Legacy of Kain but Soul Reaver ain't no RPG unless Zelda is.

I have to admit I am thinking about asking to move it to General Gaming so people can put in whatever genre they want.

Neverwinter Nights 1

Actually it is very good, the Codex just has shit taste.

Eh... That depends. The OG campaign is complete and utter garbage, single player with shitty companion system and the graphics were pretty terrible even for their time. Personally I did not even like the portraits and that is really rare for me that I am not even indifferent but actively dislike them. The build porn and build in editor were great though and some good modules were mode from it.
 

Krivol

Magister
Joined
Apr 21, 2012
Messages
1,951
Location
Potatoland aka Prussia
Skyrim (I always wanted to be a heavy-muscled barbarian with a 2-handed sword running on the hills)
Ass Creed Odyssey - I am also ancient-europe geek, so I liked that
EE of BG1 and 2 - I know, but it's just so simple to download, install and play...
 

Sheepherder

Augur
Joined
Feb 4, 2014
Messages
657
  • Neverwinter Nights: apparently it has a story. Apparently it's not that good. But who cares about the story of a framework for hosting Persistent Worlds? Some of my favorite memories of online play is from NWN PWs.
  • PoE1 and PoE2: both excellent RTwP games. The issue with these games is that if you put any thought into making your party or figure out the system mechanics and leverage your knowledge, the games become too easy, even on PoTD. PoE2 becomes a cakewalk from level 13 onwards.
  • Cyberpunk 2077: fantastic city. Even if it's mostly devoid of content, I loved wasting time getting ontop of buildings by abusing movement glitches. Too bad they fixed some of them. Would have been cool if they embraced the movement glitches, like for example Tribes did.
  • Much like Lord_Potato, I also enjoy all games by Spiders. I don't even know why I like them. They're just fun. Maybe because they at least try to come up with settings that are somewhat unique, instead of generic tolkien-like fantasy or generic space-opera sci-fi.
  • Sakuna of Rice and Ruin. Weebshit, but fun. After playing Grime, I discovered my love for these side scrolling, platformy games with RPG elements. Never saw anyone on Codex mentioning it.
 

Louis_Cypher

Arcane
Joined
Jan 1, 2016
Messages
1,519
  • Mass Effect 1
  • Mass Effect 2
  • Mass Effect 3
I love space opera, so for me, the games were ideal, full of world building on par with Star Trek, irrelevant of the reputation they have on the Codex.
 

Dodo1610

Arcane
Joined
May 3, 2018
Messages
2,155
Location
Germany
Ubisoft pseudo RPGs:

fun time wasters with pretty visuals and great open worlds.

Venetica:
broken console combat with the same 3 quests repeated in all areas often ugly but I loved the setting and story


Dragon Age Inquisition
hkxWos6.png

*refuses to elaborate further*
 
Last edited:

As an Amazon Associate, rpgcodex.net earns from qualifying purchases.
Back
Top Bottom