Your top 9 games [(-2023 EDITION-)]

[Great Deceiver]

Btw, this tool exists

That's what I used to make my grid; however, it crops the images down instead of properly resizing them.

 

[Bendu]

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

Darkwood perhaps shouldn't be there, maybe, but it's my favorite indie game at this current point in time.
Also Doom should perhaps be there instead of Duke 3D. Fucking impossible to decide. So many games I wanted to list.
Maybe one day I will resurrect my top 100 list.

Can't have Arx Fatalis but not Ultima Underworld. I like Arx Fatalix, but everything in it, Ultima Underworld didn't just inspire, it did a lot better.

Thief games are overrated here. It's not that they aren't good, but they are not as great as the hivemind would have you believe. This is coming from someone who played them when they originally came out.

I’m not even debating the Thief games being the greatest games ever. I’m just specifically pointing to the bit where New Vegas is somehow a better pick than Thief 2.

Thief games might be better at what they do than New Vegas, but New Vegas is an open world RPG, which puts it much higher than a stealing/sneaking oriented stealth game. There is a reason why stealth games are relatively few in number, sneaking around and stealing stuff is not as fun for most people as fighting, getting better gear, participating in dialogue, exploring, and everything else that a fully fledged RPG offers.

Stealth games on average probably do better than most RPGs, especially when RPGs were still truly RPGs as opposed to action games with skill trees or something.

Cyberpunk 2077 is one of the best selling “RPGs” of the 21st century and it’s largely just a stealth game with a few unrelated side activities.

Uhh, I completed Cyberpunk without using any stealth. It's an RPG, with multiple ways to play it. And dialogue. And driving. And a bunch of other stuff that Thief doesn't have.

Thief games are overrated here. It's not that they aren't good, but they are not as great as the hivemind would have you believe. This is coming from someone who played them when they originally came out.

I’m not even debating the Thief games being the greatest games ever. I’m just specifically pointing to the bit where New Vegas is somehow a better pick than Thief 2.

Thief games might be better at what they do than New Vegas, but New Vegas is an open world RPG, which puts it much higher than a stealing/sneaking oriented stealth game. There is a reason why stealth games are relatively few in number, sneaking around and stealing stuff is not as fun for most people as fighting, getting better gear, participating in dialogue, exploring, and everything else that a fully fledged RPG offers.

New Vegas is an open-world RPG whose only above average elements are plot/dialogue and C&C. Combat sucks and level design is mediocre. Exploration is serviceable but far from the best we've seen in the genre.

Thief not only has superb stealth mechanics, it also has some of the best designed levels in the history of gaming. They're so good that if you took them and copypasted the most barebones RPG character progression system you can imagine on top of it, it would win the Codex RPG of the year contest by a huge margin. Yet, it doesn't really need that, the variety of tools and approaches for doing stealth alone are already more than enough to feel motivated to check every corner. Why would I want to get +1 defense with a new armor or a bunch of crafting materials when I can steal nice treasure and use it to get some nice arrows and gadgets?

Might also add that Thief did interactive narrative elements much better than most games that came after: by having the player overhear enemy grunts talking and find hand-written letters instead of putting half the lore in emails and recordings you find in dead bodies*

*more of a rant toward SS than FNV.

Meh, like I said overrated. What can be so great about level design when you are only sneaking around and looking for shit for mission goals? And come on, how many levels in first 2 Thief games where you are just crawling around some mines or caves, dealing with annoying undead.

The first two Thief games also have some pretty fantastic first person melee combat despite the whole point of the game being to avoid combat. They’ve got better melee combat than any Bethesda game has ever had despite Bethesda’s games being combat centric, and the Elder Scrolls series being a fantasy series with sword fights being the major way you’ll likely do combat. I’d say that until Breakdown came around in 2004, the Thief games had the best first person melee combat of any game around.

The melee combat was so good in Thief it was a little mind boggling that they removed it in Thief: Deadly Shadows.

By the time Bethesda was up to Skyrim, and the sword combat and stealth still sucked, it was pretty aggravating. Its like: You stupid motherfuckers, Thief came out like 13 years ago, just rip this shit off you fucking hacks.

The melee combat you couldn't use (on harder difficulty)? With animations so shitty, you can't tell what the enemy is doing until it's too late? Let's not use Bethesda as a watermark for melee combat please.

Can't have Arx Fatalis but not Ultima Underworld. I like Arx Fatalix, but everything in it, Ultima Underworld didn't just inspire, it did a lot better.

Fake news. There are many things Arx did better than UW. Controls, sound design, visuals/art direction, some of the RPG systems, sense of realism, actually having full screen viewport, soundtrack consisting of unique tracks per area not just the same tune on repeat, and then some. There are also indeed many things UW did better too, but 11 years of technological advancement (1991-2002) really provides contrast here.

UUW/Arx are games where gameplay is literally figuring shit out. To proceed through levels, you have to solve many "puzzles" or figure out how to unlock the level. This is the central core of these games, unlike any other lineage. And in this aspect, UUW is miles ahead of Arx. All the puzzles in UUW were brilliant, whereas in Arx, they were a mixed bag, some were great, some were shit.

You can run around killing everyone with little to no regard for stealth in stealth series like Metal Gear Solid, Hitman, Splinter Cell, (outside of maybe the CIA mission in the first game) Assassin’s Creed, and Thief too. One of more entertaining times I played Hitman (think it was Blood Money) was over at a friends place, somewhat stoned, doing a hammer run of the opera house... it was not a stealthy run at that level, and nobody went unhammered.

If the game's highest difficulty prohibits melee combat, that says a lot about how a game is meant to be played. Thief was never about combat.

Cyberpunk 2077 is a stealth game that seems to be largely inspired by MGS5, where it’s also totally possible to go in guns blazing on missions. The majority of your missions in 2077 are meant to be done with stealth; outside of side story stuff like the arena fighting, the AI cars, and the racing. I’m pretty sure the vast majority of the missions your given are framed in a way to tell you: Hey, we’d rather people didn’t know you were here. I guess you could go and punch everyone into submission for those missions where they want you to take someone alive, but stealth is the faster living takedown option a lot of the time.

Cyberpunk 2077 isn’t a RPG. Just because a game has unlockable skills doesn’t mean it’s a RPG. Fucking Devil May Cry games do that and those aren’t RPGs. Metal Gear Survive had skills too. Metal Gear Solid 5 and Commandos: Behind Enemy Lines have driving. The Mercenaries games had driving and you could use vehicles as a form of stealth like 2077 selectively lets you do for one mission (Gimme Danger) when you’re told to sneak into the Arasaka Industrial Park and upload something.

I wasn’t using Bethesda as a benchmark for melee combat. I said Bethesda has worse melee combat than two games whose whole point is not to get into combat despite Bethesda’s games all being combat focused. The comparison was only drawn because a comparison was already being made.

I have no idea where you are getting this. CP2077 is definitely an action RPG, as much so as any other popular action RPG as of late. It has everything action RPGs have, a skill/talent tree, character levels, combination of combat, exploration and dialogue, a very detailed story, side quests, etc.

 

[kinzadza]

starcraft
heroes 3
diablo 2
morrowind
FF9
vagrant story
front mission 3
bg2
mgs1

 

[Modron]

I decided to make a list without games you're guaranteed to see 200 times in this thread life Fallout, Gothic 2, Arcanum, VTM:B, SMAC, HoMaM 3, Jagged Alliance 2, Desu Ex, and Master of Magic. Even with all that it was tough to pare down to just 9 games.

I probably should have figured out a racing game to include.

 

[CootKeeper]

 

[Dr1f7]

Making a grid looks like work. I'm not doing that. Ordering the list is also work so I'm also not doing that.

Resident Evil Remake
Demon's Souls
Dark Souls
Dark Souls 2
Bloodborne
Diablo
Silent Hill 3
Dino Crisis 2
Diablo 2
Twisted Metal 2

I spent about 1 minute thinking that up so probably not very accurate. Twisted Metal 2 is an iffy one because I doubt I could ever go back to that and have fun with it. Just a pure nostalgia choice.

yeah nice try fucker we all know your list is

1. Diablo 4
2. Dream daddy: dad dating simulator
3. Grindr

 

[Ash]

Reading through these choices highlights just how much the fucking poisonous NA IGN disease has plagued gaming.

Everywhere you look shite like Ocarina of Time and Mario 64 get regularly featured in normie "greatest ever" lists, whereas the majority of choices made in this thread so far get shunned.

Bunch of normie cunts.

Well, you cited two console-centric entries. And I agree those games are most definitely overrated, there's much better stuff on console, but I want to point out how disgusting PC-centric lists often are too. e.g Twitcher 3, Half-Life 2, Skyrim and then some.

Let's take a look at PC all time greats as per metacritic USER score: https://www.metacritic.com/browse/games/score/metascore/all/pc/filtered

Fucking disgusting. Almost all are retard-tier games with compromised gameplay in favor of story, or are just watered down versions of older games.

Bunch of normie cunts.

 

[Falksi]

Reading through these choices highlights just how much the fucking poisonous NA IGN disease has plagued gaming.

Everywhere you look shite like Ocarina of Time and Mario 64 get regularly featured in normie "greatest ever" lists, whereas the majority of choices made in this thread so far get shunned.

Bunch of normie cunts.

Well, you cited two console-centric entries. And I agree those games are most definitely overrated, there's much better stuff on console, but I want to point out how disgusting PC-centric lists often are too. e.g Twitcher 3, Half-Life 2, Skyrim and then some.

Let's take a look at PC all time greats as per metacritic USER score: https://www.metacritic.com/browse/games/score/metascore/all/pc/filtered

Fucking disgusting. Almost all are retard-tier games with compromised gameplay in favor of story, or are just watered down versions of older games.

Bunch of normie cunts.

Well said Ash. Thing is, how the fuck has wank like the Witcher 3 found it's way into the Codex's top 101 RPGs?!? It's in the top fucking 20 too!

It's pretty much the Chrono Trigger of modern Western RPGs. All style, little substance or gameplay, laughable difficulty unless you do something purposely stupid.

Normie wankers poisoning everything.

 

[kangaxx]

You've just mentioned two of my pet hates/overrated games: Chrono Trigger and W3. I can't for the life of me understand why they're so popular.

The same applies to the Final Fantasy games, frankly.

 

[Lemming42]

Chrono Trigger is wildly overrated but some of the battles are kind of cool, they play more like puzzles than the usual jrpg shit.

I loved Final Fantasy as a kid and teenager but looking back, yeah, they're pretty abysmal. Walk a few steps, get into the same battle you've gotten into 500 times already. If something's too hard, walk one step left and one step right for an hour until you've fought the same battle a hundred more times and the numbers have gone up enough that you can get past the hard bit.

FF4 was the only one where the pacing was really tight enough to mitigate it since, without grinding, you'd be pretty much perpetually in the sweet spot of the game being neither too easy nor too difficult.

 

[Ash]

Teenage you had better taste. How unfortunate. Looks like the combat brain worms still have a hold of you too. Championing 4 as the most notable or forgivable is blasphemy, as it is by far the least gameplay-centric even if the combat is mildly challenging.

Equating (90s) FF to Chrono Triggered or Twitcher is straight decline. They are not equivalent at all. Monocle revoked.

 

[kangaxx]

Equating (90s) FF to Chrono Triggered or Twitcher is straight decline. They are not equivalent at all. Monocle revoked.

You can dislike all them whilst recognising they're completely different games...

 

[Beans00]

Reading through these choices highlights just how much the fucking poisonous NA IGN disease has plagued gaming.

Everywhere you look shite like Ocarina of Time and Mario 64 get regularly featured in normie "greatest ever" lists, whereas the majority of choices made in this thread so far get shunned.

Bunch of normie cunts.

With games like that people always have an emotional attachment to games they played as a kid. I had m64 and ocarina for the n64 and I wasn't crazy about them(especially compared to LTTP and all the snes mario games). Most people start with consoles before pc(i did with snes before pc) so people who grew up with the shitty n64(i hated the controller so much it made me hate the console) that had like 7 decent games for it blow those 2 and a few others completely out of proportion.


I have the same feelings about ff7, people who grew up with the ps1 were in love with it(my family got a ps1 before the n64). I'm not particularly fond of JRPGS(except for FFT) and had played fallout 1(maybe 2) before playing ff7 so the hype completely passed me by.

 

[Silverfish]

i hated the controller so much it made me hate the console

By contrast, I've never used a controller as comfortable as the N64's.

 

[Modron]

More people should have played Ogre Battle 64 and Legend of the Mystical Ninja.

 

[Beans00]

i hated the controller so much it made me hate the console

By contrast, I've never used a controller as comfortable as the N64's.

The important thing is you enjoyed it and had fun with it. Personally though I hated the n64 controller.


Oddly enough I had zero issue with either the dreamcast or original duke xbox controllers. Which a lot of people seem to dislike.

 

[Humanophage]

I made two versions. One is the top 9, and the other is a top 9 excluding games that were either in the Codex RPG top 20 or in the Codex non-RPG top 20.

For convenience, top-20 for Codex:
Non-RPG: Heroes 3, Thief, Thief 2, StarCraft, X-Com UFO defense, SMAC, Doom, Half-Life, Quake, AoE2, STALKER: SoC, MoOII, Crusader Kings 2, Warcraft 3, Master of Magic, Civilization 4, HoMM2, Max Payne, Silent Hill 2, Portal
RPG: Planescape: Torment, Fallout 1, BG2, Arcanum, Bloodlines, Fallout 2, New Vegas, Deus Ex, Gothic 2, Morrowind, Age of Decadence, Dark Souls, Pathfinder: Kingmaker, Jagged Alliance 2, Witcher 3, Underrail, Gothic 1, KOTOR2, BG1, Wizardry 8, NWN1, Grimoire

Top-9	Top-9 excluding Codex RPG top-20 or Codex non-RPG top-20

 

[Falksi]

So, looking back through the entries so far, it backs up my personal experience with gaming up to make one stand out point - Deus Ex is probably the best game ever made.

 

[Assisted Living Godzilla]

i hated the controller so much it made me hate the console

By contrast, I've never used a controller as comfortable as the N64's.

The important thing is you enjoyed it and had fun with it. Personally though I hated the n64 controller.


Oddly enough I had zero issue with either the dreamcast or original duke xbox controllers. Which a lot of people seem to dislike.

You must not have played many games that use the d-pad must. The D-pad is why people hate the Dreamcast controller, would fuck up your thumb. The big VMU pack on the back wasn’t great either, but the D-pad fucking up the middle of you thumb is the reason the controller is hated.

The Dreamcast controller is also a worse version of the Sega Saturn 3D controller, which is one of the best controllers ever made.

 

[LB_wannabe]

 

[HansDampf]

I'm surprised to see Hurrican here.

 

[Axel_am]

What are the names of the second to last and the one before that?
Very brave to list new DmC and new PoP. Did you put them for the sake of variety in the thread or are they really amongst your favourites?

 

[KörangarTheMighty]

...the one before that?

Icewind Dale II.

 

[Ahnx]

Deus Ex
Diablo 2
Civilization
Doom
Elite
Fallout 2
Arcanum
Red Dead Redemption 2
Disco Elysium