Role-Playing Games

[Ross Scott]

I generally can't stand RPGs with turn-based combat. It slows things down too much for me and feels more like a chore. I either like all-out combat or else none at all (like graphic adventure games). The only turn-based ones I've gotten through have been Fallout 1 because the game was so good in every other aspect it made up for it.

 

My favorites:

Gothic

Diablo

Dungeon Siege

 

Played, but haven't finished:

Final Fantasy 6 (I completely gave up when the big dramatic scene looked like fisher price dolls bumping against a wall, falling down, then repeating)

Revenant (definitely plan to finish)

Planescape: Torment (plan to finish)

Hard To Be A God (will probably finish, interesting story)

Drakensang: The Dark Eye (combat was turn-based-ish, fantastic visuals, very generic writing)

 

Plan to play once I upgrade:

Risen

Gothic 4

Divinity 2

Two Worlds 2

Nehrim Mod

[The Scoutman]

You should try Chrono Trigger, you get to pick in between either the slow turn based battle (when you can attack, time freezes and you take your time to do anything whatsoever), or the fast paced battle where the game wont stop just because youre not fast enough to choose your actions or because you used a poor strategy. Besides, the game is fairly short so it doesnt consume much time, and the story does a good mix between sci-fi and fantasy and the soundtrack is entertaining.

[Ross Scott]

Actually I forgot, I have played through Chrono Trigger because I know someone who's practically based his identity around the game. It's pretty good, though in general I'm not a big fan of jRPGs.

[BTGBullseye]

Favorite RPG: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadowrun

 

Coming now to your table-top!

[Alyxx Thorne]

At the moment my favourite RPG is Mass Effect, and Mass Effect 2 coming in a close second.

[BTGBullseye]

I am also a fan of the Avernum series by Spiderweb... www.spidweb.com/

[Chuckthe2nd]

I've only played it on the 360, but Kingdoms of Amular: Reckoning is surprisingly good so far. It ain't got shit on Skyrim for sheer epicness, but it does have some of the most entertaining combat I've ever seen in an RPG; puts Skyrim to shame in that respect.

[ISGC]

I've only played it on the 360, but Kingdoms of Amular: Reckoning is surprisingly good so far. It ain't got shit on Skyrim for sheer epicness, but it does have some of the most entertaining combat I've ever seen in an RPG; puts Skyrim to shame in that respect.

Honestly, having better combat than Skyrim is not a difficult thing to claim. It's not as bad as Morrowind's combat was, but it's not that fantastic either.

[Chuckthe2nd]

I've only played it on the 360, but Kingdoms of Amular: Reckoning is surprisingly good so far. It ain't got shit on Skyrim for sheer epicness, but it does have some of the most entertaining combat I've ever seen in an RPG; puts Skyrim to shame in that respect.

Honestly, having better combat than Skyrim is not a difficult thing to claim. It's not as bad as Morrowind's combat was, but it's not that fantastic either.

 

That's what I was meaning...but you might note that I said "best combat of any RPG I've played".

[Alyxx Thorne]

Kingdoms of Amalur is really not my cup of tea.

[standardbearer]

On 2/4/2012 at 12:55 AM, Ross Scott said:

I generally can't stand RPGs with turn-based combat. It slows things down too much for me and feels more like a chore.

There really isn't a more in depth and tactical way of combat than turn based unfortunately.
A couple you might want to try, maybe you'll get the hang of it (or not, still interesting ones):

Gateway to the Savage frontier
 - a later Goldobox game. The reason I recommend this is because the fixed up the interface a little, and you don't need to play earlier titles to enjoy this one. Use the Goldbox companion to aid you.
 

Wizardry 8
 - the LAST wizardry game. Super-imtimidating looking and complex, yet not that hard to get into. Yes, the fights get rather repetitive and drown out, but still, there's a fantastic tun-based engine in there.

Knights of the chalice
- similar combat interface as to those in the GoldBox games, but improved to the max. It's incredibly deep, yet super fun.

Shadowrun games
- super simplified tun based combat. the games are very story-centric though, and well written.

Some other great RPG games with turn based combat:

Divinity: Original Sin

Space Rangers

Gorky 17
Paper Sorcerer
 

On 2/4/2012 at 12:55 AM, Ross Scott said:

Drakensang: The Dark Eye (combat was turn-based-ish, fantastic visuals, very generic writing)

 

Play the second one,
Drakensang: The River of Time
It's like the first one, but about a hundred times better in every aspect. It's still a flawed game, but it has a huge heart. The visuals are even more cartoony and charming, and the story is much more intimate and relatable. The whole thing is "generic" in the most self aware and heartfelt way.

[rairii]

I'm amazed Dark Souls was never brought up in this thread. 
I will say now that 2 and 3 are out and complete, easily one of the best if not the best RPG series I've ever played. 2 was particularly amazing but it did take a minute to grow on me.

[Enviro-man]

For a great western-JRPG, as in fantastic writing plus cozy gameplay, the brilliant sci-fi romp Anachronox is the answer.
If the trailer doesn’t sell you on it – nothing will.
 

 

[Psychotic Ninja]

When it comes to RPGs, I prefer story driven ones like the Final Fantasy series, Kingdom Hearts series, and Digimon Cyber Sleuth, over quest driven ones like Witcher 3, TES series, and Fallout series. Nothing wrong with the quest driven ones, it's just the quests start to feel very samey, with most of them being fetch quests.

[Eshanas]

Fallout 1 and Fallout: New Vegas are high on my lsit, despite their faults (which , now that I think of it, basically boil down to that you go to a town, solve their problems, move on, never return - very linear. Makes the world feel so dull and dead. I don't know why multiple/layered quests aren't more of a thing). 2 was okay, good, but the tone was off for me and the plot made less sense than 1 because the Enclave are such bad villains compared to Unity.

 

Underrail is one of my favorite RPGs despite being loaded with ESP/Psionics stuff. The setting is basically Metro+Fallout; you're a nobody shmuck just trying to get by who gets sent out further and further and gets entangled into bigger and bigger things until you're facing down this huge being.

 

...Which also sounds a lot like Age of Decadence, which was very hard to get into but IMO worth it. The No-Magic Late Roman era setting also did favors for me. Though I never got over how weak the character is. Give me something.

 

Arx Fatalis deserves a shoutout.

 

And my first RPG was Icewind Dale. The first one. I really loved having this competent, capable party just spelunking in caves, fighting carrion crawlers and mummies, and the usual gauntlet of fighting a god. Four - maybe even Five - of these games all include fighting a god or god-like being in the end. Maybe that's just a hallmark of the genre.

 

I do tend to shift more to strategy - Mount and Blade, Rome Total War, and OG Xcom and the like are were my hours often go to - or even action shooters with a veneer of customization - but a good RPG gets my attention any day - I'm just very picky about them.

Edited July 28, 2019 by Eshanas (see edit history)

[Enviro-man]

12 minutes ago, Eshanas said:

Fallout 2 was okay, good, but the tone was off for me and the plot made less sense

There’s really no comparison here: the OG was definitely better than the sequel, especially with the water chip time limit patch. I’m surprised to find a fellow highbrow gentleman that’s able to grasp the superiority of the OG Fallout.

 

FYI it’s also high on my lsit.

 

18 minutes ago, Eshanas said:

I do tend to shift more to strategy - OG Xcom

Ooooh please do whisper in my ear how it completely trashes the modern dry entries and you've got yourself a zealot for life…

 

Do it

[rairii]

20 hours ago, Psychotic Ninja said:

When it comes to RPGs, I prefer story driven ones like the Final Fantasy series, Kingdom Hearts series, and Digimon Cyber Sleuth, over quest driven ones like Witcher 3, TES series, and Fallout series. Nothing wrong with the quest driven ones, it's just the quests start to feel very samey, with most of them being fetch quests.

I feel like the trend here is more that you prefer JRPG-style turn based RPGs over action RPGs. Fetch quests aren't really a thing in games like TES and Fallout, unless by fetch quest you mean "go to bleak falls barrow and find me the dragon tablet" rather than "kill 6 tigers and bring me back their furs". 

12 hours ago, Eshanas said:

Fallout 1 and Fallout: New Vegas are high on my lsit, despite their faults (which , now that I think of it, basically boil down to that you go to a town, solve their problems, move on, never return - very linear. Makes the world feel so dull and dead. I don't know why multiple/layered quests aren't more of a thing). 2 was okay, good, but the tone was off for me and the plot made less sense than 1 because the Enclave are such bad villains compared to Unity.

I feel like 1 is the type of game you play for the story whereas 2 is the type of game you play for typical RPG reasons, advancing your own character, that kind of thing. It never bothered me much that Fallout 2 had such a cartoonishly evil big bad compared to 1 because to be fair, so did NV. By the same metric, Fallout 4 had a relatively good big bad.

[Psychotic Ninja]

2 hours ago, Annie said:

I feel like the trend here is more that you prefer JRPG-style turn based RPGs over action RPGs. Fetch quests aren't really a thing in games like TES and Fallout, unless by fetch quest you mean "go to bleak falls barrow and find me the dragon tablet" rather than "kill 6 tigers and bring me back their furs". 

More or less. It's not exactly black and white. I still enjoy TES, and Witcher 3 (although I was kinda getting tired of it towards the end, and kinda rushed through the story), I just kinda lean more towards JRPG's. Which is kinda funny, cause Final Fantasy XV acts more like a Western RPG than a JRPG. And yeah, I do consider something "Go to this location and bring back this important item" a Fetch Quest.

[Eshanas]

On 7/28/2019 at 3:23 AM, Enviro-man said:

There’s really no comparison here: the OG was definitely better than the sequel, especially with the water chip time limit patch. I’m surprised to find a fellow highbrow gentleman that’s able to grasp the superiority of the OG Fallout.

 

FYI it’s also high on my lsit.

 

Ooooh please do whisper in my ear how it completely trashes the modern dry entries and you've got yourself a zealot for life…

 

Do it

I can go on for threads about how NuXcom was a disappointment.... Mostly because of the greater stuff like the shift from global strategic warfare to being this more covert-ops single base thing; or even just how it turns into this weirdly local and small war when in the original we were dishing it out on Mars.

 

On 7/28/2019 at 3:51 PM, Annie said:

I feel like the trend here is more that you prefer JRPG-style turn based RPGs over action RPGs. Fetch quests aren't really a thing in games like TES and Fallout, unless by fetch quest you mean "go to bleak falls barrow and find me the dragon tablet" rather than "kill 6 tigers and bring me back their furs". 

I feel like 1 is the type of game you play for the story whereas 2 is the type of game you play for typical RPG reasons, advancing your own character, that kind of thing. It never bothered me much that Fallout 2 had such a cartoonishly evil big bad compared to 1 because to be fair, so did NV. By the same metric, Fallout 4 had a relatively good big bad.

Speaking of, there's another RPG I played, and enjoyed, but forgot to mention.

 

Avernum Escape from the Pit, I think. The story was great and you can advance your own character, but for some reason it became forgettable. It's not a bad game, not at all, just the sort of thing you have to play your own music for. And the big bad there was an ultimate revenge quest that soars beyond any realistic scope or form, but it still worked out well.

[BTGBullseye]

FYI, there are 6 games in the Avernum series, all based off the original games called "Exile".