Any role players in the crowd? Created 7 years ago2017-09-17 10:38:14 UTC by monster_urby

So I've recently discovered a love for proper in depth RPGs both in the form of video games and tabletop/pen and paper games.

Recent "RPGs" that I've played (Bethesda's Skyrim and Fallout 4) haven't quite hit the mark, so I reverted back to Fallout: New Vegas, which I'm now giving a proper second play through. I will likely create a new character as soon as I've finished and approach everything differently.

I've also been trying out games that I previously couldn't stand. Isomeric and turn based games. Fallout 1 for example. Having played Fallout 3 first, I couldn't stand the originals for more than five minutes. I've also picked up Obsidian Entertainment's two recent releases Pillars of Eternity and Tyranny and they've both got me hooked.

I was just curious if anybody else has a soft spot for RPGs and had any stories from their adventures, or and recommendations.

I never was that much into tabletops/pen and paper games, but for video games RPG is my favourite genre.

I started playing RPGs with TES III: Morrowind. One hell of a ride, with great soundtrack, excellent atmosphere, curious game mechanics (am I the only one that loves this game's rng? Or stamina affecting all actions?), amazing story and world building (and more exploits than you can think of). I can also recommend TES II: Daggerfall if you're into dungeon crawler RPGs. This game can be depressingly funny at times. It gives a lot of freedom and has some interesting mechanics (gold weight and banks, buying houses, boats, item repair taking a few days depending on how worn out they are). Too bad that it was a rushed release and still may contain more bugs than you can count, and some things were never finished. You may find yourself out of things to do and feel that the world is pretty generic though.

From whole Might and Magic series I played only Mandate of Heavens. It's quite hard in the beginning, but it's quite good.

First two games in Gothic series were great as well and both are incredibly hard in the beginning, keeping up with challenges later on. Gothic 2 with it's expansion is much better than the first one IMO.

Then there's The Witcher. I enjoyed the first one the most, mostly due to it's character progression being more meaningful than in later games (in second and third they were smaller, incremental bonuses). Third one got best combat mechanics, open world and movement not restricted by player clips, though second one has cool stuff like baits, throwing knives, traps and highest difficulty in the series.

If you're willing to try turn-based games, both parts of Baldur's Gate are great games. They're oriented towards parties, but are possible to beat alone as well (won both with neutral evil sorcerer). Planescape: Torment is great story-wise and similar in gameplay mechanics to Baldur's Gate. Kinda weird, but really cool game. I also played Divine Divinity. Couldn't stand it's graphics, but otherwise it was quite solid game.

I also like hack & slash variety of RPG games. Diablo 1 has great atmosphere and provides a nice challenge. Second game in the series greatly expands upon it, adding much more gameplay mechanics.

Dark Souls games are incredibly good, that whole extremely high difficulty is kinda myth. It's just much less forgiving than other games. Once you get a good grasp of gameplay mechanics, it flows smoothly. It's not as in-depth RPG game as TES or Gothic, but it has awesome story, great level design and gives a lot of satisfaction.

EDIT

Forgot to mention Heretic and Hexen series. Brutal, raw and atmospheric. There weren't many RPG mechanics in those and gameplay was more like fantasy Doom, but I still count them as early slashers.

Depends on how far back you're willing to go. I had a good experience with Baldur's Gate II.

Until I discovered a glitch where you could start a new game with a full inventory and I decided to start over with a bunch of overpowered items and wound up disenchanted and quit it soon after.

Hardcore RPGMaker games player ->

In case you're interested, Fallout works incredibly well in a tabletop setting.

Look up Fallout PnP or Fallout D20 if you want to get a good game going. I'm pretty sure there's a wiki and player's manual for it. And if you roleplay online on roll20.net, there are already Fallout presets based on how Fallout 1 & 2 play.

Maybe not a traditional RPG, but in terms of making a character and evolving them into a high-level badass, no game does it better than Xcom 2 right now. The new expansion is remarkable, and the effort they've put into making each member of your team matter makes the stakes of every mission utterly enthralling.

I've been meaning to pick up XCom Enemy Unknown again. Give it another go.

As for the other suggestions, thanks. There are a few I've played already, such as Diablo 1 and 2. I also tried The Witcher 3 a couple of times and could not get into it at all. I have very little interest in playing a role that has already been written for me, such as Geralt.

Try Knights of the Old Republic I/II.

You may run into problems with launching these games on modern systems, such as Win7/Win10, but tweaking the graphics settings should help.

Also it's recommended to play KotOR II with the TSL Restored Content Mod installed. It restores about 40%-50% of all the content that was cut from the final game.

My wife was going to get me Divinity: Original Sin 2 for my birthday, but she treated me early and I got it at the weekend.

I've only really played the prologue and I already love it. Just creating my character and origins alone was a blast and the dialogue is incredibly well written and acted.

I created a ranger/archer type character as I tend to do on my first playthrough of anything, but I was also able to put together a brief origin story as well, in that I was able to say that I was a scholar and a noble before the events in the intro took place.

It's actually quite funny as well, which I was not expecting. Within minutes of getting into the full game world I came across a cat (who I was able to speak with thanks to one of my perks) who has just started following me out of sheer bewilderment.