Have there been any good RPG's lately?

I'm in the lucky situation that I can play one game several times over and over again before I really feel an urge to start a different one, and return to it after some time anyway. Therefore my game progression - when it comes to the number of titles - is very slow. Even though RPGs accompany me for years, it's been just Fallout 2, Fallout and Arcanum, plus Planescape: Torment just this summer. I have a whole world of Neverwinter Nights, Baldur's Gates, Gothics, Final Fantasies and the like ahead of me, but at the time I'm happy with my great four. I guess I'll start worrying when I will have already all of the good old RPGs tried out, but I'll most propably be retired by then. If still alive.

 

I have the same goddamn problem. Many of the games made today are awesome, or rather, have the potential to be awesome. They have amazing graphics, realistic physics and mindblowing effects all over. But what they do miss is that spark which some games just have and others don't.

Take Morrowind versus Oblivion. Oblivion had everything in favour; better technology, experienced developers, an impressive budget and scores of fans. And still, Morrowind ended up superior (at least according to about everyone I've met who've played both games). Why? Because Morrowind has that extra something which makes it great, and Oblivion doesn't. It had bits of it strewn around its in-game world, but in general it just lacked awesomeness.

Game developers of today should really backtrack and try to figure out what made those good old games good in the first place.

 

Oh DE, how I feel your pain. I'm sure I've ranted on this subject before, actually. The only good RPGs that I've picked up in the last year have been remakes of older RPGs (The two PSP re-releases of the original Star Ocean games, in case you're wondering). As much as I love Phantasy Star Portable (and believe me, I do), I don't count it as an RPG, while it's got the potential to change the ending, so does almost everything these days. Dissidia is a fghting game, and everything else seems to have been FPSs or Oblivion wannabes.

What the hell HAPPENED?

 

Golden Sun is newer, but still a couple of years old. Maybe not your flavour, but they are quite clever games.

 

Unfortunately, publishers generally are rather picky about what they're willing to work with. A studio's market is, more than anyone, their publisher, and the publisher's market is the retailer, not the consumer. So at each layer, there's a lot of executive meddling (or alteration to appeal -to- executives, whether or not they meddle) targeting people who will never play the game. So any game that hits the store shelf is going to be targeted at Halo players, unless it's on the Wii (in which case it's going to be targeted at the people who nobody else looked at. Brilliant move by Nintendo by the way, though they -had- to be such a pain in the ass to the traditionalists who just wanted ordinary games and didn't want to fuck with the Wiimote at all).

BioWare isn't Black Isle or Troika, because they made -their- niche by throwing the executives their proper due of burnt offerings and then going after all kinds of gamers; they give us Hardcore RPGers who still long for the days of Black Isle the meatiest storylines their writers can come up with, they give the new-school WoW kids the smoothest, best-designed real-time tactical combat and 3D graphics they can provide (which incidentally shuts up the executives), they give gamers of all skill levels a variety of difficulty settings...and they've -finally- learned to give males aged 18-25 the hot lesbian alien sex scenes.

That said, you can always trawl for indie games, though they usually won't have the kind of polish you see in, for instance, Mass Effect. They're still around and still producing, even if the absolute heyday of indie game development is past (the -one- thing I miss about AOHell is how much shareware was available there; I first got Jill of the Jungle off it). And sometimes indie games actually go wildcat, like Mount and Blade did.
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tl;dr of course. You guys just want to know where to find some awesome RPGs!

http://www.spiderwebsoftware.com/ has lots of games, including the Geneforge series.

Also, you can probably find Mount and Blade somewhere (I could look, but can't be arsed to google it for you). Great game, though definitely not for everyone.

 

I love how Golden Sun came up with the idea of gaining exp for killing monsters and when you defeated enough you would gain a level. Or the fact that they created the whole find the summon quest. Or the Zelda type puzzles they thought of before Zelda. OR using magic in a video game. *takes in deep breath*

 

I have to admit, I'm thinking of tracking down either the Witcher or Mass Effect, having heard some surprisingly good things about them recently.

 

I played King's Bounty for a while. It'sn't bad, for a Russian Game. I bought Overlords 2 earlier today, and will play it tomorrow. Reading the box reminded me of Dungeon Keeper 2, and thus it was purchased. Not quite an RPG, but it looks/sounds to be an enjoyable game, none-the-less.

 

Never said it was original, only clever. True, they are full of annoying little things like unskippable cutscenes right before bossfights and things like that, but I really like the atmosphere and the magic system.

 

Track down Mass Effect. Okay, the combat's a shooter. But Wrex is too awesome to pass up. I mean, he's a psychic warrior frogshark.

 

Track down the Witcher. The storyline is way more powerful than Mass Effect's, and while both games are difficult at times, I felt cheated far less in Witcher than in Mass Effect.

"Okay guys, we have to make sure none of the possessed citizens die by using these stun grenades".

"But there's 20 of them, and I only get 4 grenades, and they're spread across the whole map."

"Yeah, get to it."

In the Witcher, the only time I felt really violated because I was losing based on game mechanics rather than my own skill level was the "Walk the Barmaid Home" quest, where she kept drawing her dagger and wading knee-deep into monsters.

Mass Effect only costs $20.00, though.


EDIT: Darkfool, you are in for a horrible, nasty surprise. SPOILER: That pile of broken controls is nothing like Dungeon Keeper. The dungeon that you get to walk around in is neat, though.

 

I'm looking forward to Dragon Age: Origins. Seems like a decent RPG and uses a morality system which supposedly affects how NPCs interact with you. Hopefully they do it closer to Arcanum than Fable.

 

It seems iffy when she actually shows up. I managed to get the card on my first play-through, but not on my recent one with the Enhanced Edition. Maybe she's just running inside and locking the door every time?

 

Been interested in this for a while, but I have no idea when it comes out:
http://www.irontowerstudio.com/

 

I swear I read the thread!!

...Ok I skimmed it after seeing mostly Mass Effect vs. The Witcher. :???: