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PaperclipPerfector  10mo ago (text post)   2494 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for June 16, 2023

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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In a similar vein to @Pasha’s thread below, what are your favorite RPG games?

Divinity Original Sin 2, Disco Elysium and TES: Oblivion stand out to me.

Other people have mentioned a wide variety of games that I've enjoyed, but one I haven't seen mentioned yet is Hades(although I guess it's different from a standard RPG because it's a rogue lite). Great story, great game play, great music, lasted me a couple dozen hours, 10/10.

Baldur's Gate 2 - IMO the jewel of Bioware's golden age, Dragon Age and Mass Effect might have surpassed it if not for the EA buyout, it holds up great to this day. I keep meaning to try Wrath of the Righteous which seems like as close as I'll likely ever get to a spiritual successor.

Path of Exile - More of a character-optimization simulator than a 'role playing' experience, it's still the best there is at what it does. (and the worldbuilding and lore is surprisingly tight for an ARPG, at least in acts 1-4) And there's nothing wrong with some roll-playing, some of my favorite tabletop campaigns have been filled with nigh-silly theoretical charop bullshit. Once you get to maps Chris Wilson owns your soul.

A few recent indie favorites: AstLibra (a weird Japanese JRPG/beat-em-up hybrid 1-man passion project), Phoenotopia Awakening (a zelda2-like with gorgeous sprite graphics), Crosscode (closest might be Secret of Mana, set inside a MMO world)

I'd say my favorite RPG was the Witcher 3, but only after I modded the fuck out of the gameplay with the Witcher 3 Enhanced Edition mod. The story was chef's kiss, but the stupidity of the combat system made me give up on vanilla playthroughs.

In a lot of RPGs, I despise leveling mechanics, you're telling me that Geralt, a superhuman dude who can block arrow with his sword, needs approximately 17 minutes of constant wailing on a town guard to kill them, and not even get the contents of his wallet for his pain? Oh, sorry, I didn't realize that the guards are always conveniently higher level than you, guess I'll die then.

I actually enjoyed Divinity 1 more than 2, because the former was often gutbustingly funny while the latter took itself too seriously. Good game though, I need to get around to finishing it sometime.

Unfortunately Larian can’t write, and despite hiring new writers for Baldur’s Gate they don’t seem much better.

Yeah I would give a lot to see an RPG like Divinity in scope and combat, with writing on par with Disco Elysium.

Hah I have the same thoughts on both games. Witcher 3s combat was saved by gwent for me though.

The first divinity was hilarious. You kind of had to not take it seriously because you’d die every 10 minutes walking on random traps.

Also,

No one has as many friends as the many with many cheeses!

Have you read this article about the history of Krondor?

That was an excellent read, cheers!

I finished Divinity 2 this week and quite liked it, though I’m not sure I would rank it among my favorite RPGs yet. I loved the Red Prince though, he was a great companion.

My favorites include New Vegas, Three Houses, VTMB, Mass Effect (ME1>ME3>>>>>ME2).

The Elder Scrolls series is my favorite though, with Skyrim being my favorite game of all time. For all their faults, no RPG really offers what the TES games do. Witcher 3 has reactive storytelling, but in exchange for that you will always play Geralt with a preset story. In Skyrim, if you turn left out of Helgen you can have a whole play through without ever becoming the Dragonborn.

Granted, I mod Skyrim to its absolute limit to fix all my issues with it and revamp the mechanics. Oblivion also needs mods to fix the horrible leveling and item scaling situation. Morrowind ironically is the most playable unmodded, all you really need is a visual overhaul and bugfixes to dig into it.

Cyberpunk 2077, because it's a first-person shooter and its text sequences are both short and good.

Aside from what others have mentioned (and it's nice seeing so many fellow FFIX fans), Earthbound (Mother 2), Suikoden I and II, and Stardew Valley if it counts.

I can't believe you are the first person to mention Mother or Suikoden! The first two Suikoden games are quintessential psx rpgs imo. The stories are kind of generic for the most part, but the combat is decent, the strategy sections are awesome, and the characters and world are just fun to spend time with. It's a shame about the rest of the series (well 5 and tierkreis were alright) although Eiyuden Chronicle is supposed to be out this year, and I am cautiously optimistic.

And Earthbound was one of the first jrpgs I ever played, and the reason I gave other jrpgs a chance - sometimes to my detriment (fuck you ffxiii) but also leading to some lesser known gems like Illusion of Gaia and the Shin Megami Tensei games (I was one of those guys who didn't like the Persona games because they were too accessible). And Mother 3 is... I lack the words to express my admiration for it. It is such a beautiful game. The rhythm based combat is simple and elegant, the music is gorgeous and the story is... Beautiful. Like I said, I lack the words. Few games have brought tears to my eyes, but Mother 3 did so multiple times. I have a folder on google drive where I keep files I want on all my systems like background pics, ringtones, take ownership.reg, and essential programs like double commander and teracopy - and mother3.gba, just in case. Fortunately pretty much everything can run a gba emulator these days.

To add to what others have said:

FFVII and FFX - probably two of the greatest JRPGs ever developed.

Fire Emblem Sacred Stones and Fire Emblem Radiant Dawn - in the somewhat uneven timeline of Fire Emblem games, I think these two hold up very well.

Dark Chronicle - though I shudder to think how many hours of my teenage years this game ate, I wouldn't want them back.

Bravely Default/Second - despite a pretty disappointing narrative, some of the most engaging and entertaining battle systems in any JRPG.

Sacred stones is one of those games I played so much I had to get a new cartridge. I loved grinding in that tower.

Divinity Original Sin 2

Original Sin I and II are great-looking but flawed RPGs. The pixel hunting and buggy quests really pushed me to my limit, on top of II's bizarre physical vs. magic armor system.

Disco Elysium

One of my favorite RPGs. Excellent writing that's elevated with the full voice-over cast. There's a lot of debate whether Disco Elysium is truly an RPG. Nevertheless, everyone should experience it.

Alpha Protocol is an action-RPG, but I think it's criminally underrated. It's an over-the-top and unabashedly comedic take on modern Bourne-esque spycraft, which to me almost lent it an Archer vibe (although it predates that show). The mechanics are rather poorly balanced but still fun, and the characters are so well-written I didn't really mind the flaws in the game design.

Final Fantasy 9.

A mix of comic theatrics and serious exposition, I think it's the best FF out there next to Tactics. Uematsu is at the apex of his compositional powers, and beyond some minor theft (from himself) made excellent music and score with strong melodies. Also the best characters and character development of any final fantasy.

Valkyrie Profile - anime norse influence before it got really popular. Unique gameplay.

Do roguelikes count? I've played a whole lot of them, like Dwarf Fortress, Cataclysm DDA, ADOM, and of course NetHack (for which I have to shamelessly brag that I hold the shared realtime speedrun world record in, from back when tool-assisted runs were allowed)

That is an absolutely insane project. I love it.

Thanks! If you're wondering why on earth we named it SWAGGINZZZ, it's due to us messing up the execution a bunch of times, and since we created a new account/player every time we pretty quickly exhausted all the good names we could think of. The final run was named that because we were just testing things and didn't expect that one to actually succeed..!

Folks have already sung the praises of my heavy hitters (glad to see FFT getting so much love), so I'll add:

Shadowrun: Dragonfall

Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord

Skyrim VR (modded, at least lightly)

Skyrim falls down in a lot of places compared to its predecessors in terms of story, characters, RPG mechanics, etc. Where it shines is its beautiful open world filled with interesting locations. And dear Lord is it a marvel to explore that world and its dungeons in VR. Unfortunately Skyrim VR out of the box is...lacking as a VR game, but with 3 mods (VRIK, HIGGS, PLANCK) and graphical mods to taste for textures and lighting, it gets there.

Fallout 4 has similar highs and lows to Skyrim so should also benefit from VR, but unfortunately I have been told that while Skyrim VR out of the box is barebones but functional, Fallout 4 VR is a bit of a mess.

Elden Ring

Ahh I want this but I’m a cheap bitch. Also I’ve heard some people complain it’s too easy?

It's worth it.

How easy it is depends on your build too, and if you look up any tutorials. If you go into it completely blind with 0 Fromsoft experience and look up no help, I guarantee anyone would struggle with it.

Unless you're a veteran of souls games I would not call it easy. It's probably the hardest game I've played that's come out in the past 10 years (though I have never played a souls game before ER). Also there are ways to make it even harder, such as not using summons.

It's a bit of mixed bag. Some things are incredibly op to the point that they trivialise the game (even more so at release) but outside of that I wouldn't say it's too easy. If anything I feel it's is poorly balanced compared to earlier entries, since because they kind of expect you to have some of the OP things they have overtuned some encounters to reintroduce some challenge, which makes playing without the OP things unfun.

Elden Ring is apparently easy if you've played souls games before and hard if you're accustomed to the typical game released nowadays where you are gently handheld through cinematic spectacle you occassionally get to influence by pressing buttons and moving your thumbstick.

I haven't looked into that complaint in depth (attempting to avoid spoilers until I have a good enough setup to play it myself) but I would expect most people making it are long-time veterans of the rest of the Soulsborne games, which skews their perspective a bit. If you haven't played the other games to death, or if you aren't looking to have your balls busted, it probably wouldn't be an issue. Though, as mentioned, I'm trying to avoid spoilers so I could be wrong.

BG1-2, Gothic1-2, Morrowind, New Vegas, VTMB, NWN (for the custom modules and persistent worlds), Kotor1-2, Torment, Disco Elysium.

For slightly less RPGish games i also like Witcher3 and FFIX.

For non strategy/tactics games I really have trouble enjoying them unless they have a great soundtrack.

BG 1-2 are probably the games ive spent the most time with. Incredibly fun and challenging when played ironman with SCS+ascension (not recommended for first time players).

What are VTMB and NWN?

Vampire the masquerade: bloodlines

Neverwinter nights

Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines and Neverwinter Nights, respectively.

Witcher 3, Mass Effect 1 and 2, TES: Morrowind, Shadowrun Returns. Morrowind in particular really is my first love, I love everything about the setting to this day.

Deus Ex Human Revolution and Dishonored, also Prey.

I watched a long ass video on the Tamriel Rebuilt project, and I gotta say it’s the most impressive passion project I’ve seen. Just ridiculous how much time and effort that the team has put in, despite all the turmoil and drama internally.

It’s a shame because I really can’t get into Morrowind, combination of not having good controller support and dated graphics/combat system. Alas.

Why can't you play with kb&m? Disability?

Yeah I have carpal tunnel issues - although as I've mentioned elsewhere I see it more as a sort of mind-body stress issue than an actual disability. I can still use mouse + kb fine for work, but playing pc games is a bit too much over any extended period.

Just played Prey, definitely underrated

Dragon Age: Origins is probably the best one I've played.

What’s good about it? Story, gameplay, soundtrack, or all of the above?

I don't remember the soundtrack, but the things I liked included:

  • the worldbuilding: the dwarves and the elves, the not-Byzantines and the not-Ottomans, magic and religion all have an interesting twist to them that is reflected in how the story unfolds

  • the plot: it has one annoying hole the size of a refrigerator truck, but nothing some fanon can't patch up. Otherwise, it's a nice plot that actually weaves your backstory into the game, with a clear goal and some nice twists

  • the character build system: while it looks simplistic when you start, it gets better and you can craft some pretty interesting builds

  • the combat system: it's sufficiently complex to be entertaining and actually requires you to care about the positioning of your party, but simple enough that you can get enough feedback. I disliked how Pillars of Eternity made you feel like throwing punches in a dream

  • the companions: it's not peak Bioware companions, but they don't try to steal the spotlight and are interwoven with the main plot. I loved the one that hated the way you usually talk to NPCs in RPGs

Things I didn't like:

  • the aforementioned plot hole. There's a big twist in the first act that is never rationalized properly

  • the enemies. If your ostensibly new and original monsters end up looking like Peter Jackson's orcs, either redo the design or just call them orcs

Gameplay is great. You have a genuine party that you can control in real-time with pauses. The character-building is DnD-based (STR-DEX-CON, etc) as are the spells (cone of cold!). There's plenty of settings and stories, racial strife and noble houses, otherwordly dangers and mundane politicking.

I don't remember the soundtrack.

It's just a really well-made DnD style RPG video game, which besides Planescape: Torment you don't typically see.

DA2 and DA:I I never played and don't really want to. They turned the series into more action-RPG than I care for.

It does amuse me that you chose Torment as your example. Out of all its contemporaries, it has to be one of the least conventional (and best written).

The story is excellent. Gameplay was extremely challenging, at least in the beginning, for me. It's based around the DnD ruleset I think. While if you play it today the technical limitations are obvious (large battles are pathetic) the skyboxes and environments suggested a massive world around you.

In many ways a typical Bioware RPG, but just a lot of different ways to play and in that fantasy setting as opposed to something like Mass Effect.

Soundtrack was excellent too.

Disco Elysium and Planescape: Torment for narrative RPGs.

Fallout 2, Fallout: New Vegas and Dragon Age: Origins for regular RPGs.

The Last Sovereign and The Spirit Engine for indie shoestring-budget RPGs.

Ivalice (RIP) for MUDs.

Everything below this line is not really an RPG.

Final Fantasy VI, Chrono Trigger for JRPGs.

Final Fantasy Tactics, Tactics Ogre: The Knights of Lodis, Front Mission and Bahamut Lagoon for TRPGs.

Seiken Densetsu 3 and Terranigma for ARPGs.

Have you ever played Langrisser 2? It’s the natural companion to those TRPGs.

No, thanks for the suggestion.

I have fond memories of the SNES emulator version. There’s a recentish remake on Steam, but I heard it’s heavy on fan service. The core gameplay and soundtrack should be great regardless.

but I heard it’s heavy on fan service

Can't be worse than Amayui/Kamidori

I see there are a lot of tactics fans here. I'm curious if you or @guajalote have ever tried Fort Triumph? It's a relatively new game, but I've been playing it and it's a blast. A bit like Heroes of Might and Magic with an overworld component, but the writing and humor is perfect for me.

I have not, will give it a try.

No, I haven't. I tried quite a few games (FFTA, La Pucelle, Disgaea, Shadowrun Returns, Mutant: Year Zero, Invisible, Inc., Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mask), but bounced off of all of them.

MY0 was probably the most successful attempt, but I am an incorrigible hoarder of consumables items, so a game with a limited number of healing items ultimately stressed me out too much.

Modern tactical games are often obssessed with tight mechanics: situational skills and weird classes must be pruned, math must be simple, the fewer characters you have in your party, the better. I very much prefer the old-school approach with Cheesecake Factory-sized lists of abilities and classes. Yes, most of them are useless, some of them are broken, but you get a different sense of "pride and accomplishment" from finding out which is which and either blasting through the game or beating it with a gimmicky party than you get from cracking the designer's puzzle of a level, and I prefer the former to the latter.

I've been enjoying Triangle Strategy recently. Though there is very little customization or unit development in the game, the units themselves are highly varied and specialized, and on Hard you might have to resort to 'cheesy' play.

Ahh I see. I'm surprised Disgaea wasn't a hit for you since that game has a ridiculous amount of complexity, too much for me personally.

I'm sad you didn't like Fell Seal, to me that's one of the most faithful "FFT type" games I've ever played. It's definitely pared down, but I had a blast. Story was a bit weak, but oh well.

Fort Triumph is shallow on first look but the physics system is quite deep - almost every object in the environment is breakable, and there are all sorts of items and combos you can put together. Unfortunately you do lose all but one item after each Act, so you might not like that part.

Ahh I see. I'm surprised Disgaea wasn't a hit for you since that game has a ridiculous amount of complexity, too much for me personally.

That's a different kind of complexity. FFT is broad: Samurais do this, Thieves do that, Summoners do the third thing. Geomancers worry about the type of terrain, Archers worry about the height of terrain, Calculators worry about the prime factors of the height of terrain. Zodiac signs really matter when you're doing something like an SSCC, otherwise they just slightly randomize your damage. You can combine the abilities of different jobs, but when you do, you do that at your own pace.

Disgaea or Fae Tactics, which I didn't buy after reading the reviews, try to stack the mechanics: you have to worry about lots of mechanics on every one of your units.

I actually wanted to like Fell Seal, but the art style was just not my cup of tea. I know it was designed as a faithful spiritual sequel to FFT, so maybe I'll give it another chance.

Edge case, but I tried played System Shock 2 several times but couldn't get past the clunkiness and fiddliness. Gave it another go last year and it finally clicked for me and I couldn't put it down.

The trailer on steam is quite compelling, I'm impressed usually trailers are terrible at conveying story. The graphics look at little tough for me to get into.... I might give it a go if I'm struggling to find something.

Anything you can say to sweeten the deal without spoiling the plot?

Seconding everything Folamh said.

Consider this video review for an explanation of the premise, the production values, and the appeal without unmarked spoilers.

It was written and designed by the same team that made the original BioShock (BioShock is effectively a spiritual sequel to this game), so if you liked BioShock, it's effectively that but with the complexity and difficulty ramped up. It's been a huge influence on numerous other games, including Prey and Alien Isolation. Despite the boxy dated graphics, it's a genuinely tense and unnerving game owing to its effective sound design (recommend muting the music though). One of the first enemies you encounter in the game is a psychic monkey whose brain extrudes its skull.

You could always look into the newly released faithful remake of SS1 if you find the graphics of the original sequel too rough.

Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines. The only RPG I've ever really loved, longstanding candidate for my favourite game ever. Impossibly immersive, cleverly written, funny and spooky.

I've heard great things, but never picked it up. I've read some of the lore as well and it's definitely the most interesting take on the vampire mythos I've seen - and that's after reading quite a bit.

Do you know if the PC version has controller support? I can't play with PC/Mouse but interested in picking it up.

I very much doubt it would have native controller support, but it still has an active modding community so I'm sure a relevant mod exists somewhere.

Disco Elysium. Pillars of Eternity 2. Wasteland 3. The original Fallout games. SW KOTOR 1. The Mass Effect trilogy apart from the ending. Witcher 3. And if Deus Ex counts as an RPG, that was one of my favorite games ever.

Edit: forgot to mention the Persona games! I love 3, 4, 5 highly.

I sunk a bit of time into Wasteland 3, but bounced off well before finishing it. The writing seemed good at first, but it got too goofy for me to take it seriously at one point. That, and the combat got increasingly bad as I got later into the game. I think I was on the hardest difficulty, and every fight either felt like a cakewalk or impossibly brutal.

Witcher 3 is also amazing - forgot that one! I downloaded a mod for Gwent and did a full Gwent playthrough, it was excellent. I should go back and play the DLCs.

PoE, Mass Effect, and Persona are definitely on my list now. What did you like about them specifically?

Wasteland 3 does get a bit too goofy, you're right. Not sure why I listed it so quickly on my list, it's only somewhere in my top 20 probably. Also forgot to mention that Morrowind was one of my favorite experiences.

Pillars of Eternity games: I think one of the biggest strengths is the world-building, which, as orthoxerox says, is quite different in PoE 2 due to going to a Pacific islands setting. Some people favor PoE 1 though. 1 has a stronger main storyline, and a much longer one. 2 has a lot of great content aside from the main quest. Anyway, it's a cool universe with a bunch of gods interfering in mortals' affairs. It just makes sense as a world. The language use is pretty cool too. It's semi-inspired by real world history and cultures. You have one culture that's Romance language inspired, so you can kinda guess at many of the words' meanings, and it all just works. The voice acting is fantastic too IMO. And the soundtrack is great, sets the atmosphere kinda like the one in Morrowind did.

There's great reactivity and roleplaying in these games. You develop dispositions and reputations which a lot of NPCs react to.

Another strength of the Pillars games is that any build can work, due to how the attributes and skills etc are set up. You can have a wizard with high "might" because might affects damage for all attacks, and low mental skills and you can make him/her work.

Graphically it's almost exactly like the old isometric Infinity engine games, with beautiful backgrounds with 3d characters on top. PoE2 looks a lot better than 1 in terms of the 3d.

Mass Effect: the first truly cinematic space opera experience. Here too the world-building is great. High production values. I'd say the story, main character and side characters is the main strength in the whole trilogy, but it didn't stick the landing. Definitely worth a playthrough though. The first game is dated in some ways so be prepared for that.

Persona games: Could talk for an hour about these. P5 is perhaps the most slick and responsive game I've seen. The UX is top notch. But what I love about all the P games is the combination of a pretty intriguing life sim rpg and dungeon crawling. You spend about 50/50 in each. Half as a Japanese high school student who needs to forge social bonds and answer exam questions, take part time jobs etc, and half as a persona user fighting 'shadows'. It's all pretty Jung inspired. Some of the social relationships actually feel meaningful. There are many bonds you can rank up, one for each 'arcana', and you get to help the person develop and overcome challenges, by picking the right responses and hanging out with them. Top notch music that sets the tone, good voice acting and writing.

If you're going to play the Persona games you have a bit of a dilemma because while there's recently been a PC port of P3, it's not a good one, and they're releasing a much better looking remake of it next year. Though, there's no reason you have to start with 3. They're separate stories with different characters. Persona 4 Golden (each game has a significant 'expanded edition' that improves the game) is on PC, and if you don't mind PS2 era graphics, you might start with that one. If you want a modern game, you might start with Persona 5 Royal, but if so it might be tough to play P3 and P4 later because of the many QoL improvements in P5R.

I would skip PoE and go straight to PoE 2. It fixes a lot of issues with the first installment, like replacing the most vanilla setting (it's not, but you have to care to notice that it's not Forgotten Realms) with Pirates of the Hawai'ian, being set in the most exciting time period for the location, making wizards actually useful and having optional turn-based combat that is supposedly less floaty than RTwP.

It keeps the brilliant disposition mechanics that are much better than just rolling for speech.

Some drawbacks of PoE2 are the lackluster main quest and the companion relationship mechanic that either works too well when your party has the right NPCs or causes them to hate each other if it doesn't. Both totally fixable in PoE3, but alas, we're not getting it any time soon.

I'm not sure if it completely counts as an RPG, but Final Fantasy Tactics is an incredible game with one of the best storylines I've ever seen in a video game.

I enjoy Divinity Original Sin 2 and am looking forward to the full release Baldur's Gate 3, which is made by the same company and appears to be a similar game except using the rules of DnD 5th edition.

I hope BG3 is good, but I can't say I like the art direction. Why's everything got to be so clean and perfect?

but Final Fantasy Tactics is an incredible game with one of the best storylines I've ever seen in a video game.

Can't agree strongly enough. A lot of my strongest memories of my childhood are of playing that game, hell I even played it on vacations. It was truly a masterpiece. The gameplay and combat system were incredible too, and so innovative. Although some people claim it was stolen from Tactics Ogre....

Have you played any of the early access for BG3? I have been holding off but a couple of my friends have told me they're unimpressed with it. I'm trying to reserve judgment.

I haven't, because I've been told it's very limited. After almost 3 years in EA I think it's still pretty locked down in terms of progression and content. So who knows how the full game will be.

Have you played any of the early access for BG3? I have been holding off but a couple of my friends have told me they're unimpressed with it. I'm trying to reserve judgment.

I have. It's an extremely limited amount of content so it's hard to judge; I assume it's around 5% of what the final game will be. It reminds me of Divinity visually and in terms of gameplay. I really enjoy the DnD 5e rules system so I like that aspect of it as well.

Although some people claim it was stolen from Tactics Ogre....

Not stolen, Square hired the designer of Tactics Ogre to make FFT.

Ahh interesting. I've been meaning to do a dive and write up a post on the history of tactics games at some point. I'm always fascinated by how different niche genres develop.

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