I'm in the mood for a new RPG. I will run down the basics of what I like and dislike, as to not bore you to death. I'm just wondering if they make any good RPGs anymore. Seems they are hard to come by.
Likes:
Baldur's Gate/Icewind Dale/Neverwinter Nights; party style, 3/4 top down, combat pause, D&D lore/character creation
Fallout 1 & 2; immersive world, lore, weapons, driving storyline, a plethora of side quests and choices
Oblivion + crap; not so much the interactive fighting system, immersive world and story, decent crafting, side quests, good graphics at the time seem dated now
Fallout 3; combining Oblivion and Fallout was a good idea...
(Final Fantasy 1; it's not a computer game, but it was my first love and I still play it)
Dislikes:
Witcher; not a fan of the combination fighting thing, 1/2 the game feels like running
Dragon Age: Origins; I really wanted to like this game but the character creation mini-campaign was more fun than the real game, the slow motion fatality shots got old fast, the party system was kind of cool but I found myself taking control of the characters during combat as they didn't seem to AI the way I had them set up, storyline wasn't enough to keep me coming back for more.
Mass Effect; I also really wanted to like this but I got bored with it, felt like a lot of running around, I got to the lesbian scene and quit
I don't know, there's probably some other crap I forgot to mention, that I can't remember now.
Thanks for your help
Have you ever played Arcanum or Vampires the masquerade: bloodlines? They are both worth playing. Arcanum as it is one of the finest examples of the rpg genre and VtMB as it is just a solid rpg experience. As for modern games, Mount and Blade: Warband is definitely worth trying just for the open ended game play and the insanely well thought out battle system.
If you like action RPG's, you could do a lot worse than Torchlight.
Try Gothic 2 Gold and Risen.
Or Vampire: Bloodlines.
Divinity II: The Dragon Knight Saga.
In Arcanum, you can fuck a sheep. Also, its a great game. A great game that has sheep fucking.
Divine Divinity.... good!!!!
its cheap on impulse too
Or you could support the developers by buying directly from them (same goes for Divinity II and the spin off Beyond Divinity).
I think Gothic 2 is the most all around solid of the games mentioned so far, though it's also a bit of a "safe" pick with nothing that exceptionally stands out about it. But it's a good game with a solid story and mechanics.
Arcanum and Bloodline are much less "safe", they both have horrible combat mechanics and no concept of game balance. But you may not care. Both have great worlds with lots of freedom to do stuff, and they stand out with their creativity. If you liked the fallout series there's a good chance that you will like these games.
Finally if you couldn't get into Mass Effect 1, it's possible that you'd like ME2 better. It's a lot better paced with less pointless running around and boring combat slogs. It does streamline a lot of things which many love or hate.
And of course there's also Planescape Torment if we are going into old classics....another game with amazing story and creativity and horrible combat and balance. But a definite classic still.
A good RPG should not be super concerned with balance, though honestly, I do not agree that Arcanum has horrible combat mechanics or balance. While most will bring up the real time combat as the biggest problem with combat, it is not the intended form of combat. The turn-based combat system is fairly well thought out, though some classes will find some parts harder than others. For instance, swordsmen will have a much harder time dealing with rock golems than a mage simply because their weapons break with each hit. However, combat is not why one plays Arcanum. The game features a quest system which allows players a high level of freedom in figuring out how to accomplish a given quest. In one scenario, the player is asked to acquire a boat, but is given several options on how to do this. One option is to help a pirate ghost, another is to buy one for a lot of money, and a last option is to win a boat in a gamble. On top of this, the story that is told is one of the best of any rpg.
I disagree that a good RPG should not be concerned with balance. They don't necesarily need to worry about if say a warrior is a little stronger then a wizard. But if they are for example to give the wizard multiple spells they should make sure that one isn't so strong that there is never any reason to use the others. An example of this in arcanum is that one of the early guns you could craft was so strong that you would never use or craft any of the numerous other guns you could craft later on, and also so strong that it trivialized combat. This is a bad thing, although later patches did make it less severe (but still unbalanced).
Even the turn based combat was pretty bad in Arcanum in part due to the poor balance, but it was better then say the combat in planescape. The real time combat was the real train wreck though. Turn based combat wasn't so bad early on but it really broke down later in the game. But I agree that combat is not why you play the game, as I mentioned though the combat is poor but it's possible to have a lot of fun with the game despite that because of how great the world, questing and options are. Some of the most beloved games had awful combat, and if you can tolerate them you can probably also tolerate arcanum.
I remember arcanum had a ton of game breaking bugs as well, but hopefully those have been fixed by someone somewhere by now.
This mostly comes through my brother since he does more RPGs and I more RTS, but he loves the Gothic series, of which 4 recently came out. I advise the whole run largely because the story makes the most sense of you play the lot of them and because my brother was hooked from the get go and never felt shafted by any of the sequels. Apparently it's one of those that gets better as you go. Keep in mind that he graphics are pretty old on the first couple, so there's little to ooh and aah about there.
Thank you for the awesome response so far, everyone.
I have Gothic 3, somewhere, but when I got it at the time, it just wouldn't run on the computer I had. Should I revisit it?
Just remember to avoid wolves, they (and to some extent other animals) are the most dangerous non-boss enemies in the game.
Lol, in gothic 3. i remember I was strong enough to take on bunch of orcs, but still died against a boar in 1v1
The gothic series games are awesome
Gothic 2 was really fun, but make sure you play gothic 1 too, its excellent. Gothic 3.... a very good exploration game, and forsaken gods.... so buggy and with terrible optimization, but i think there is an enhanced edition out now
Gothic 3 and the expansion (Forsaken Gods) requires you to go in and remove a text type that causes it to lag. It's really odd, but if you do some searching on the net, you can get details on how to do it. Beyond that, worth revisiting.
I downloaded the trial version of Mount and Blade: Warband, and I have to say I very much like it. Does the game get even more interesting if I were to get the full version? I mean I assume it would, but is it worth the $30? It seems like a more in depth and interactive (and better) version of The Guild, which isn't too bad.
Thoughts?
I know this is the pc gaming forum, but do you have any consoles, etc? That opens up some other good options.
nah i dont like consoles, not anything past NES/SNES and I have lots of RPGs for them and have beaten them all, many times, lol
In my opinion M&B:Warband is a great buy at any price. It is an interesting blend of the RPG, 4x, and sandbox genres with a great mod community.
Agreed. I picked this up about a few weeks ago, and just love it. I've put in almost 20 hours on it and still feel like I've barely even broken into the game yet. Great combat system. Good strategy elements. Empire building (of a sort). Better than expected RPG elements. Fun and distinct game phases.
Moral of the story: it's a real sweet game.
I have to admit, I bought it last night, and since I am calling in "sick" to work this whole week, I've been dumping tons of time into it and I absolutely love it. This is pretty much what I was looking for. I've found a good mod pack to add extra depth. $30 = great buy
I wish I could do that. I use Diplomacy, and have turned off the stat loss for 'old age.' What mods do you use? I've been tempted to try out one of the Europe 1200 mods, but am afraid that my computer can't handle it.
Diplomacy is one of the best mods. Especially for the late game when you are trying to do your own faction.
Diplo is awesome, and imo "Battlefield Tactics" is a must have also.
http://www.mbrepository.com/file.php?id=2743
"Native Mod Compilation - Full 0.9" is the name
If you have a strong enough computer, you should use a battle size modifier. Battles of 100 v 100 are ok, but 300 v 300 are wildly amazing
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