We’ve done tons of rpg polls on these boards, but I thought I’d start one up that has a bit more to it. It seems to me that everyone always struggles to list the best rpg they have played because so many aspects factor in to what makes a game great. I’ve divided this up into several categories; you can add more if you want and you can justify your choices as little or as much as you want to.
On some level, I think we all should be trying to “sell” these games to others, especially the one we list as our favorite rpg overall. Okay, on with the poll.
Best Plot Final Fantasy VIII. Some people complained that this game was really Final Fantasy 90210, but I actually liked the story line in this. I’ve never had an rpg pull me in the way this one did.
Best Gameplay Fallout/Fallout 2. Almost total freedom with your charaters…Excellent.
Most Difficult Final Fantasy V
Easiest Might and Magic I: Secret of the Inner Sanctum
Best CharactersFinal Fantasy VII
LongestFallout 2 or Final Fantasy VI
ShortestChrono Cross
Best Overall Game I really think Final Fantasy VIII is the bets RPG video game I’ve played. This game had everything in good doses. Great gameplay, plot, characters, and it wasn’t totally easy. If you want an epic adventure that will take awhile to beat and will provide some challenge, this it the game I’d recommend.
Bah! Philistines! Computer games aren’t RPGs - they’re third person shooters. Hack and slash and monty haul.
Fallout is a refreshing exception, but it’s more a puzzle game than anything else. Glorified King’s Quest.
The only “computer RPG” that I’ve seen that even halfway deserves the eponym is the Baldur’s Gate series and it’s spinoffs.
You want an RPG? Go play Traveller or AD&D or Call of Cthulu or something! Invent a personality, suppress your own, and play as if you were someone else, and then you’re roleplaying.
This is, of course, assuming that we’re social enough to actually have friends who would play games with us.
I never really got into Baldur’s Gate. I tried, but the pacing was ridiculously slow. It would have greatly benefited from a run command like in Fallout.
Actually pen & paper RPG’s I’ve enjoyed are Champions and Shadowrun. Vampire, too, I guess, until I realized how impossibly lame it was (“What? I’m roleplaying that I’m cool?!”).
Bughunter is right about roleplaying. Computer games are limited in that the programmer has to decide, in advance, which player actions are allowed, and how the game will react. For example in Baldur’s Gate the best bit of ‘roleplaying’ I’ve met so far is when an aggressive drunk comes up to your party in a bar. Provided you follow a series of simple choices, you can calm him down and earn experience points. But your choice was very limited.
I only play strategy games, so shouldn’t really join in the poll. But I did like the old game ‘Pool of Radiance’, because it had a well-constructed plot, and you could do things in different orders, or even with a different alignment.
Actually, in my opinion the best “computer RPGs” are the ones that include a good element of strategy in combat.
In the original SSI Gold Box AD&D games, this was very good. Your success depended on how you arrayed your party in combat, how you placed your area effects, etc. I enjoyed that part of the game a lot. (I think my favorite combat was in Secret of the Silver Blades, where you had to fight an army of Drow deep in a mine.) But the plot was very linear, and your only real options were the order in which you accomplished the milestones leading to the finale.
Baldur’s Gate II was a lot better about this than BGI. (And it was also a lot better about pacing.) In BGI all you needed was a lot of missile firepower, and occasionally a few spells or trap detections. But with the exception of a few “bosses” at the end of the chapters, there was seldom any strategy to combat. Just find the enemy and pelt him with arrows. Fortunately, this is much less true in BGII.
I too prefer strategy and empire-building computer games (Panzer General, Civ II), since the gameplay typically achieves a lot more of what you expect out of that kind of game.
LOL, slortar - I noticed several years ago that the new crop of pen&paper RPGs, especially the Demons/Vampires/Werewolf games, are just a way for young adolescent males to act out young adolescent male fantasies. I guess the old games like Traveller and D&D were the same thing, but we preferred to be the heroes back then (them olden days of the 70s and 80s!), rather than dark, disturbed, depressed rebels cursed with supernatural powers.
Anyway, I didn’t mean to hijack the thread, just make fun of y’all!
Best C-RPG? Ultima IV It was the first CRPG where you actually had to play a role You might not like the kind of character you were supposed to play, but you did have to make the choices based on it.
Baldur’s Gate I think approaches this, but is still a bit to linear, would be nice if it had the more multistories part of a larger story approach that is lacking in most CRPGs.
Adventure, for the late great Atari VCS. All in your imagination, the way a good RPG should be.
(As for non-computer role-playing games, Paranoia is the only one worth playing. How many other games actually encourage players to lie, cheat, steal, and backstab each other – and gets them nailed for it regardless? )
Why is everyone leaving out Lunar 2: Eternal Blue??? This is a wonderful game with awesome characters, great gameplay, perfect dificulty (not an easy game, by any means) and they have voiceovers for most of the scenes. Who can resist the packaging either? Lemme tell ya, Working Designs knows what they are doing when it comes to boxing up a game.
FF8 can die, for all I care. If anyone thinks this game has the best plot of any RPG they have played, then that person hasn’t played FF3. In the FF series, I would say that 3 gets my vote as the best, while 2 was great, and so was 5. 9 was dissapointing, could’ve been better, but at least Square remembered that character design means something. 7 was the last truely great FF to be released, and everyone that calls themself an RPG fan can tell you that FF7 was fun.
Anyone played Valkarye Profile? Pretty good game, for something as obscure as it was. Crystalis on NES, although not a true RPG, was awesome.
Like I said though, if you haven’t played either of the Lunar games, go do so now.
Oh, well. Just dropping back in to justify one of my more obscure choices, Death Lord. It doesn’t get much fanfare, but keep in mind that I played it for 3 or 4 years straight and was still discovering new areas. The game was huge. And when you got sick of exploring with your old party you had a ridiculous number of class and race combinations to choose from. 8 races, 16 classes, I believe? It also had an extremely cool japanese theme (samurai, shukenja, kensai, ninja, yakuza, etc).
The dungeons were large and could get excruciatingly difficult. In fact, I’d say the dungeon crawling was probably the best you’re ever likely to find. Highly recommended.
Fun yes. Last great FF released, no. (IX is superior. Better story, better characters, better graphics, better system.) Near the top of the list, maybe, but not IMO. Middle (IX, VI/III, V/VII, VIII/I, IV (Yech! Only one I never successfully replayed. Of the one’s I’ve finished, of course.). Haven’t gotten far enough into II to form an opinion, yet.)
Bah! Like you tabletoppers understand roleplaying…you want roleplaying, play in a LARP!
Of course, between LARP events, you should get as much AD&D, CoCthulu, Paranoia, Toon, and so forth as you can manage.
For computer RPGs:
Eye candy: To date, FFVIII has got this category. All my computer wallpapers are pix of Rinoa (whom I eye with a certain measure of abstract lust). Besides being pretty, the game was fun, although not at all challenging. The plot was acceptable, but not great–a little rewriting could have made it good. The game was too linear, but the sidequests helped a bit.
Plot: FFVI, hands down. (Might I suggest a standard nomenclature here? Say, Roman numerals for Japanese-release numbering and Arabic for the American-release sequence? So FFVI=FF3.) The characterization was wonderful.
Plot Flexibility: Chrono Trigger–I’ve never seen any other cRPG that you could make come out so many different ways, and I wasn’t satisfied until I had played all I could find. Your decisions make a considerable difference in the way the game plays out, but not in individual interactions. The dead-Chrono ending was the most striking.
Sheer addictive power: Nethack. If you’ve played it, you probably know what I mean. This is a game stripped down to the essentials of dungeon-crawling, and you can make decisions that actually affect the development of your character, and the character’s interactions with others–what a novel concept! (BTW, keeping a monk vegetarian all the way through is a royal pain.)
Most Difficult (rant imminent): An often-forgotten (justifiably) game called Seventh Saga. It wasn’t bad enough that if you walked one step past the invisible boundary between one sector and the next (remember the days when monster-sector transitions were marked by graphical boundaries like rivers or levels?), you died. Your worst enemies were the other “apprentices” who were all after the same runes youu were…and they were all stronger than you throughout the whole game. It didn’t matter which apprentice you picked to start with, or how many levels you gained (they gained levels as you did), any other apprentice was perfectly capable of kicking your a$$ at any time. I fought the dwarf five times before I managed to damage him!
Worst (rant has arrived): Seventh Saga–besides being horribly paced, with serious discontinuities in monster power, and cursed with the frustration of having your runes regularly taken away by your bullying “friends”, the game was boring. The plot (insomuch as there was one) was uninteresting, there was no good characterization, the graphics were poor, the sidequests were insipid, and the goals were vague. It’s the only cRPG that I (reknowned as I am for bloody-minded persistence) never finished.
“F8 can die, for all I care. If anyone thinks this game has the best plot of any RPG they have played, then that person hasn’t played FF3. In the FF series, I would say that 3 gets my vote as the best, while 2 was great, and so was 5.”
Well, I have played Final Fantasy VI(which I’m assuming is what you meant by 3). I admit, VI was a classic and definately is my runner up with regards to plot(VIII taking the cake). Why has there always been such an back-lash against VIII?
If you were referring to III(the Japanese nintendo one), I’ve played and beaten that one also and you can’t possibly believe that one has the best plot.
So who else has played Final Fantasy II and III for the regular nintendo?
I’ve played both, briefly. A step up from the original (wasn’t FFV’s job system taken from one?), but by that time I’d already moved on to the SNES and wasn’t really drawn in.
FFVIII kinda scares me. I’ve been tempted to play it but I hear a lot of hatred out there about it.
What is it, specifically, that turns people off? Bad game system? Too much farming like in Seventh Saga? Corny plot? What?
The system (Draw…draw…draw…draw…), and the fact that the only interesting characters are Seifer (secondary villain) and Laguna (secondary hero) - and the female romantic lead is the most annoying character they’ve ever used.
FF8 is one of the most horrible RPG’s i’ve had the displeasure to play, i just cant understand how someone would enjoy sitting there for hours just drawing magic from enemies. all the other games from the FF series are pretty enjoyable. Valkyrie Profile was a very pleasant surprise, the voice overs where great, the characters rocked (i loved being able to hear the exploits of the heros i sent up, very nice touch). Both Fallouts and both Baldur Gates are great games and instant classics. But i gotta say Planescape: torment takes the cake for best game.
I found the plot to be boring at first, too–but it picks up towards the end. Once you collect all the runes–it opens up a whole different half of the game involving time travel…machines possessed by evil power…and a very interesting paradox that leads all the way back up to where the quest began in the first place.
Another vote for Fallout 2, I’ve been playing it again lately. Another great thing about Fallout 2 is the character creation and growth system - excellent, makes for unique and powerful characters.
Someone mentioned Final Fantasy VI as long - is that the one that was released in the US on the SNES? If so, I remember finishing it on a 3 day rental, seemed shorter and easier than the previous FF titles.
Baldur’s Gate II had a strong console feel to it. It felt less open-ended, and the plot was more forced. Your decisions didn’t really matter THAT much, except in a few cases. The first one was more open ended, but more ‘consoley’ than Fallout 2 (which is the only Fallout game I have played, I have heard the first is better but I can never find it).
