Best RPG Videogame Ever?

Cafe Society
41

Since the only console system I had was an SNES, I’m only able to comment on that.

For Console

  1. Final Fantasy 3 (or VI depending on who you ask)
    Great story, lots of characters, good magic system, great atmosphere

  2. Tie: Earthbound and Chrono Trigger
    Earthbound was tougher to beat and a lot longer, funny as hell too. Chrono Trigger was fun and had better graphics, but I found it too short and easy

  3. Tie again: Secret of Evermore and Final Fantasy 2
    Evermore had cool graphics and music and was pretty funny. Final Fantasy 2 was all about plot, but I found it dragged on at some points.
    For PC

  4. Baldur’s Gate II
    Near perfect

  5. Fallout 2
    Excellent story and setting

  6. Planescape: Torment
    As close to playing a novel as I’ve seen

42

The only Phantasy Star game I got into was the first. It was the first game I won without cheating (I did have to call the help line at the very end to see exactly how many steps there were to finding the demon that had possessed the mayor.) God that was a great game. There was a tremendous amount of thought put into it and the story line was incredible. The thought that the central character was a little girl (Alice right?) blew me away.

Let’s see, I can’t remember how Meow joins the party, but Odin is incased in stone and Noah is rescued on the desert planet (and he turns out to be a she.)

Great game.

Of course it now pales in comparison to the big PC games, my favorite being Arcanum because of the sheer magnitude of the playing experience.

Does XCOM count as a RPG? My top four of all time would be:

Phantasy Star I
Ultima V (the one with the gargoyles invading the planet)
Arcanum
XCOM

43

I’m currently addicted to Arcanum, but I can’t pass a final verdict until I finish it. The character advancement scheme is great, and the voiceovers are really good, but there are some minor graphics bugs and the interface is a bit clunky. I have a half-elf fighter-mage that I play with my wife, and a half-orc gearhead so I can play with all the schematics when she’s asleep.

Other favorites:
Fallout 1 and 2. Overall I like 1 better. 2 had a lot of improvements in the character system, but I thought the story and setting was somewhat weaker, especially the Enclave at the end. Loved the politics surrounding New Reno though.

Might and Magic VII. Kind of old school hackenslash, but very fun. My friend tells me that there’s a game-halting bug if you play an evil party though, as in you CANNOT finish the game.

Wizardry 7. I love this game. It came on 2 floppies, ran on an XT with no sound card, and yet had better graphics and sound and a larger world than a lot of the first CD-ROM based games. I’ll be borrowing Wizardry 8 from my friend when I give him back Arcanum…

Final Fantasy III. Cyan Quadra Slice (and Make Silk Rose)! Sabin Bum Rush! General Crystal Sing Silly Opera! Ultros!! Whoo!!! (I think her name’s Crystal. I never actually kept the default names.) None of the other FF games compare.

Eye of the Beholder and various Gold Box D&D games. Lots o fun, and, well, babes. Hey, I was a teenager at the time, what do you want?

Baldur’s Gate is fun and all, but I don’t quite feel it’s a classic. I have BGII but haven’t played it yet, so I’ll have to get back to you on that one.

44

LiquidLabotomy, I believe the name of the heroine in the first Phantasy Star was Alis. Something like that, it’s been awhile. And sturmhauke, the general’s name in FF6 was Celes. I have a depressingly good memory for geeky stuff like that, and none at all for real things…

Either way, put me down for another vote for FF6 and EarthBound. I never liked Chrono Trigger all that much, but I could never get past the Golem Twins boss. That thing frustrated me so much; I gave up and never bothered trying to play CT again. But FF6 and EB were wonderful.

I also liked the two Lunar games, mostly for the engaging characters. They may not have been long on non-linearity, but for story and characters they were quite possibly the best I’ve ever played.

I have a fondness for the Dreamcast game Evolution…it was one of the first games I ever played on that system, way back when I had to rent the DC from the video store. Sure, it’s not the best in anything really, but I still like it. Sometimes mindless dungeon crawling is fun.

45

you trade in the Liconium pot for him, remember? and he has the alshine on a pendant around his neck, which you use to free odin. meau makes an appearance in PS4, by the way, in 2 different ways: hidden in a cave, and his genes are inherited into another character, Rika(a character created after modifications on a prototype; yep, none other than Nei from PS2). Lutz is in both PS2 and PS4, but I won’t tell you how. but the great thing about the series is it’s continuity(disregarding the spinoffs that are PS3 and PSOnline). you should really play the games, alot of stuff happens during the 2000 years following PS1.

46

My favorites (in order):

  1. Ultima Underworld (PC)
  2. The Legend of Zelda (NES)
  3. The Bard’s Tale Construction Set (PC)

My criteria (in order):

  1. Fun
  2. Not an absolute pain in the butt
  3. Able to make steady, measurable progress
  4. Actually can envision finishing it within my lifetime

:stuck_out_tongue:

47

I was pretty disappointed in Arcanum. I really liked the world, but felt it was somewhat underdeveloped. I went the magic route and only ever used about 8 spells out of the 5*16 that were available to me, and the two I got the most use out of were, I think, level 1 and 2 spells. The magic system really could have used some work and balance. BEfore I went Magic I tried tech and was pleased to discover taht you can throw an infinite number of grenades in no time at all. That doesn’t seem right to me. The idea of your NPC leveling with you and getting cut off when you get cut off was really frustrating as well, as I made it to level 50 pretty quickly without even trying.

I think it was a very good start, and I think if there’s an Arcanum 2, where they can address some of these issues, I think it will totally rock.

The Ultima series is always a favorite for me. Someone mentioned ultima 4 and I agree - it was (and still is) great to have a game in which you can’t just kill whatever you want and really do have to think about the consequences of your actions. Ultima 5 is the one with Blackthorne, 6 is the one with the gargoyles and 7 and 7.5 are all-time classics - The Black Gate and the Serpent Isle.

(Incidentally, if you miss playing Ultima 7 and 7.5 on your newfangled computer, head over to exult.sourceforge.net, where there is a program that will allow you to run your game on a new Windows OS. It’s not piracy - you still have to purchase the game, but it allows you to run it, since those games used some kind of funky memory management system that wouldn’t run these days. Why Origin or EA hasn’t updated them to run, yet still sells them, is beyond me.)

Ultima 8 was a complete letdown, from the idiotic jumping puzzles to the inane plot that went against everything we had established for the character of the Avatar. I only played 9 for about 3 hours before I decided it wasn’t worth it. A sad end to a great series.

What I admired most about th eultima series is that, after Ultima 3, none of them just ended in a big boss battle. Too many RPGs are basically just preparing your characters for a big fight, because the problem is that no one has hit the evil demon with the right stick yet. I like games in which something other than fighting a big bad is the goal.

Let me also put in a good word for Wizardry 8. I played this one recently and loved it. As soon as I was done I was ready to play it again, with all different characters. It was very well done.

48

FINAL FANTASY TACTICS! End of discussion.

49

Planescape: Torment is one of my faves.

I enjoyed both Fallout games, but I prefer the first. The second had it’s moments (New Reno was fun), but it too frequently broke the universe to get a laugh. I mean, it’s very funny when you find The Gorge of Eternal Peril out in the desert, but what’s it doing there? It makes no sense at all.

They’re great games, and 2 was longer, which was nice. I didn’t like the fact that you had to fight in the end. Fallout could be finished, I believe, with a minimum of bloodshed, which was a fun challenge. I liked being able to talk to the Master, and to convince him that his plan was flawed.

System Shock 2 isn’t an RPG by my definition (there’s no direct interaction with other human beings) but it’s a very good game. It has an RPG worthy story, and the dialogue (the majority of it) is top-notch.

50

I’ll have to take you word for it for now. None of the damned download links on that page work! I did manage to find one link via Google but it won’t install, evidently that site is missing about half of the exe. I finally found one that’s listed at about 24Meg, hopefully this will work.

51

Yeah, its a 24 meg program. Sorry the links don’t work, they did last year. There’s a dink smallwood message board (several of them actually) where you can download add-ons and cheats. They even have walk-thrus. Its pretty fun. First computer game I ever finished. There’s a free games site out there that you can download the program from. That’s where I got it.

52

I actually liked that Arcanum was unbalanced. Too many games try to make it so that every class or skill combination that’s available are relatively equal when there is no need to, and I get the feeling that a lot of ideas are thrown out or changed for the worse to achieve balance. Balance is fairly important in online games, but how does it hurt Arcanum that the game is much easier to beat with an elven necromancer or half-ogre swordsman than with a dwarven engineer or a nom-magic using thief? It doesn’t, it actually improves the value of the game that the experience will be completely different depending on what choices you made for your character.

My first character that went anywhere was a smooth-talking gunslinger with a bit of magic knowledge and decent mechanical skills in gunsmithing, explosives, and metalworking. Yes, it turned out that I wasted skill points having my character know the Knock spell because it became useless once my mechanical aptitude became higher than my magical aptitude, but I did get to pop open a few locks with it before my character’s magical power withered away. I know I could have been more effective in combat if I had went more towards melee and made a pyrotechnic axe instead of sticking with my gun skills and using the same fine revolver for 30 levels, but the game was still beatable and was still a lot of fun. When I later made an elven necromancer I was shocked at how little challenge combat was for the first 20 levels or so - the ‘harm’ spell does ridiculous amounts of damage at low levels if you have a high magic aptitude, which I did because I was an elf and because I chose the ‘Sold your soul’ background for the extra 20 points or so - at 5th level I was able to kill that 35th level Doc Holliday-type character at the bridge leaving the first town (I had to because I robbed the bank and my co-conspirator ratted me out when I didn’t give him his share).

Anyway, I don’t think it made the game bad, and playing as an evil sorceror slaying all who cross his path was just as fun as playing the noble gunslinger, even though it was easier. I recently reloaded the game and am now playing a swordsman who dabbles in all the schools of magic that power-gamers avoid - he’s not going to be a powerful mage, just an adventurer who dabbles.

53

Ok, this one installed properly. Haven’t tried it out yet because I’m trying to finish Freedom Force before moving onto anything else. I wandered around in Dungeon Siege a bit until my character was killed by a bear.

I hope that I can play Dink; the site that linked to the proper download apperars to be in Swedish! If not, I just found another site that works.

54

Did I play another Baldurs Gate 2 that most others? I really enjoyed it (Playstation 2 version) but it was just so darn short…

The game I’ve spend most time on in my life would be XCOM (or UFO Enemy unknown, as it where known over here) but as another poster wrote, I’m not sure if it qualifies as an RPG.

55

Bard’s Tale III
Wasteland
Legend of Zelda
Phantasy Star
Ultima VII
Chrono Trigger
Fallout 1 & 2
Planescape: Torment
Baldur’s Gate 2
and just to piss people off, I’ll throw in…
Diablo

-fh

56

Gold Medal: Fallout 1&2 easily.
Silver Medal: Buck Rogers: Countdown to Doomsday & Matrix Squared the best of the “Gold Box” games from back in the day. Great stories and one of the best combat systems ever.
Bronze Medal: Final Fantasy Tactics, the only game Ive played with a better combat system than Buck Rogers. Only held back by an extremely linear storyline and one of the worst translations ever.

Homorable Mention: Lunar 1&2, the funniest RPGs ever.

57

Well, the best console RPG is, by far, Chrono Trigger. I mean, the game has about fifteen different endings, and you can actually beat the game at about the halfway mark (which I did the first time and didn’t realize.) Maybe that’s why you thought it was a short game, G.I.J, you beat it too early.

My favorite PC RPG’s are:
The old D&D gold box series (there’s one that is my fav whose name I can’t remember. The plot has to be with Bane coming back from the dead (again) and you travel on a big map of the Moonsea of do a lot of mini-quests.)
Baldur’s Gate and Baldur’s Gate II

I see some people listing Legend of Zelda, but I disagree on the grounds that it is an adventure game. (Well, Zelda II is more RPG…) Traditionally, in an RPG, you go up in skill level throughout the game. Getting more life, and more skills. In Zelda, you get more life, but that’s it. All the new things you cn do come from the items you get, and using the items in the right spot. I dunno, I’ve always seen it as an adventure game.

I also see a lot of people listing the Final Fantasy games. I have only played (briefly) FFVII, and have not seen nor played the NES and SNES ones. But after seeing the playstation ones a lot, and playing a little, I don’t see the appeal. The story seems forced (as in, it more or less makes you go where you need to) and everything seems to revolve around fighting. I recall a lot of people saying,
“I have almost beat it…just need to kill the final boss.” While a lot of games DO have a lot of fighting, and rely on an “end boss” to kill to win, the F series seems to think that the only way to advance in the game is to kill things. Just my opinion, though, and it is a little uinjustified since I have probably not seen enough, and definetly not played enough (though I will say that that series has too many cutscenes. Christ, it’s like watching a movie…)

58

The PS2 version (Dark Alliance) is a really bad representation of Baldur’s Gate, it is fun but it’s nothing like the PC games. It’s more like Gauntlet than anything else.

59

My favorite has to be the Fallout series…

Honorable mention to Baldur’s Gate

BUT,

Two old games that are still near and dear to my heart are Wasteland (The game that inspired Fallout) and a game called Darkland which was set in 15th century Germany… what I wouldn’t give to play Darkland again. ;>

60

In no order:

  1. Legend of Zelda for SNES (childhood sentiment)
  2. Fallout 2
  3. Deus Ex
  4. Secret of Mana for SNES (see 1)
  5. Morrowind
  6. Neverwinter Nights
  7. Shadowrun for SNES (refer to 1 or 4)
  8. Baldur’s Gate

Still need to play Planescape, Arcanum, and Daggerfall sometime.