How do you rank or compare the other popular cRPGS?

[daven]

I dont think ive ever read something positive about tides of numenera. The numene setting however does sound interesting and like it could have a good game set in it. Havent played the pnp though.

Edited July 24, 2019 by daven

[bugarup]

Numenera's setting is interesting indeed and that's why I eventually finished the game despite of abandoning it several times. Brain kinda erases memories of word vomit, non-entity protagonist, uninteresting story and weird for the sake of being weird but still dishwater dull companions and all that's left are impressions of really cool setting that you kind of want to explore moar. 

...guess I'll do that ranking thing afer all.

1. Tyranny. Fantastic setting and the only other recent-ish game that had me this invested in the story is SOMA. Read all the cyclopedia after the first play-through and still remember random lore tidbits, like how ring-shaped jewelry is extremely tasteless because world's currency are rings. And after I got the hang of spell system combat became enjoyable too. 

2-2.5. Deadfire/PoE. I like Deadfire better still because of multi-classing and being so very pretty, but PoE was the thing that made insta-preorder Deadfire because I wanted "moaaarrrr of this!". PoE is a place to go when I want some quality grimdark (and difiiculty. Getting thoroughly owned on PoE veteran after getting used to Deadfire veteran).

3. Kingmaker. You'd think I loved P:K to bits, given how many hundreds of hours GOG Galaxy counted. In truth, 30% of those hundreds is slowly crawling from point A to point B and another 30% is putting buffs on (or reloading and putting buffs on), this game is determined to waste your time like a subscription MMO. Still, despite that and oft rolling my eyes at writing I really liked it. Must be some sort of je ne sais quoi charm. 

4. Wasteland 2. Nothing too awe inspiring, but post-apo setting (one of my favourite) is v. well developed and consistent, writing's competent and makes sense, shootin' was quite enjoyable and it all coalesces into good and nice sum of all parts (with additional effort to come up with personalities for my party members who initially have none) 

Somewhere down, down, downhill. Divinity: Original Sin. There's this one dude in "Neverwinter Nights 2", a guard in the mansion of some geezer Charname has to protect, and at some point he says this line in comically exaggerated rural accent, something like "Oi shenshe a fouuuwl shmell oin tha ayr, tha shmell oi. doyn't. loyk!" in D:OS, everyone is like that, and the story & performance are written and directed by the Pegleg Performers.  I really like the combat system, I do, sank 20 hours before I just couldn't take it anymore. So mayhap one day. On mute with Rammstein in the background and reading nothing but combat log. 

 

(Really got to try those Shadowruns I keep hearing good things about from different people instead of "Deadfire turn-based now, lets make 5 new characters yay!")

 

 

[daven]

9 hours ago, bugarup said:

"Oi shenshe a fouuuwl shmell oin tha ayr, tha shmell oi. doyn't. loyk!"

  

I re read this mutliple times and can't decide what accent it's meant to be. Imagining ****ney, but that's a city accent. Possibly a bogan Australian though.

 

****ney?! You are *ing that. COME ON! OKay, an accept from the east London working classes.

Edited July 25, 2019 by daven
why has it censored me?

[bringingyouthefuture]

A mix between British gutter punk and Chaucer if I had my guess ...

[xzar_monty]

I understand the British gutter punk part, but where's the Chaucer in it?

I don't think it's meant to be any existing accent. I suppose they wanted to create something entirely new, like Burgess did for instance, but I wouldn't call that a resounding success; it looks rather forced.

[Ophiuchus]

It's hard to rank them but it'd probably be close to:

Fallout: New Vegas
Resurrected my interest in CRPGs. Whenever a friend asks me for an RPG recommendation, I point to New Vegas straight away.

Guild Wars 1
God damn was this a build sandbox. My friends and I would spend hours into the wee morn coming up with weird and wacky combinations. Only online RPG where I dominated at PvP.

Pillars 1/Deadfire
Should be obvious. I've clocked close to 1500 hours between both. I much prefer the first title's writing, narrative, world, and pacing but I find Deadfire's mechanics and combat system more fun and engaging. Both games excel at crafting builds that are powerful and thematically pleasing. On a personal note, age and disability have left me unable to play WASD games much anymore and I didn't react too well when they started to hit. Pillars 1 helped me come to terms with it.

Morrowind
To this day it remains my favorite exploration game: so many odds and ends to discover and pathways that take you in different directions. I knew this was one of my favorite RPGS the second I threw Caius Cosades' orders into the sea and went on my merry way. The immersion was mind blowing to me at the time, and the story felt meaningful and rewarding. Playing around with spellcrafting captivated me for hours on end and I enjoyed making weird spells like an enemy AoE Levitate combined with a self Jump. Also the game that taught me how to install mods and new PC components.

Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines
One of those games where the music, setting, and thematic elements blend together so well to where the atmosphere becomes its own character. Entering Hollywood for the first time hit me with a vibe no other game has.

Dragon Age: Origins
Not the deepest experience but I had a blast.

Divinity: Original Sin
The classless system was well executed and the combat is super fun and engaging. Using barrels as weaponry never get boring.

Icewind Dale 2
The first CRPG I completed.

Eye of the Beholder
My first CPRG. My older brother used to turn off the lights and frighten me at inopportune times. The way enemies just materialize onto the small view window is unnerving.

Special mentions:

Baldurs Gate 2
I played through it once as a kid with a limited attention span and little interest in using magic beyond blowing stuff up - used cheats since the mechanics were too complex for me at the time. I can't argue it's not legendary and I'd like to revisit it at some point.

Planescape Torment
Likewise. My brother bought it for me but it didn't grasp me at the time.

Wasteland 2
Woo boy. My therapy after a difficult month years back. I've wanted to delve deep into this one but I always clock out after the Arizona sequence; and I find the stat system annoying, especially after enjoying Pillars' linear progression. I like the game's style but there's something downright flatline about its presentation and the dad humor is what it is. MCA's contributions are great, though. Storywise, my favorite bits were the canon four from the original: having never played W1, I felt a sense of legend behind them, and I like how they were portrayed.

Neverwinter Nights 2
I got it on release but my machine didn't agree with it too well: lots of buttery smooth seven frames per second situations but I soldiered through the base game. Been thinking of revisiting it.

Fable: The Lost Chapters
I know, I know: old Pete sold us a lemon but this is my go-to game when I'm under the weather and want to turn my brain off. It's fun and whimsical: a solid fast food experience.

Edited August 8, 2019 by Ophiuchus

[jf8350143]

Pathfinder Kingmaker is one of the best CRPG ever, if you have several mods installed, better than Deadfire for sure.

However without the mod there is simply too much random design choices to bog my interest down.

It's the game makes me wonder what Obsidian would do if they can straight up adapt the DnD or Pathfinder system instead of coming up with their own. Because the strongest part of Kingmaker is straight up from the Pathfinder pnp game. All the things the designers added in was kind hit and miss.

Edited August 16, 2019 by jf8350143

[fYNX]

It's really hard to rank some of them, but:

1. Fallout New Vegas
2. Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire
3. Icewind Dale 2
4. Arcanum
5. Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines
6. Wasteland 2: DIrector's Cut
7. Divinity: Original Sin 2
8. Fallout 2
9. Planescape: Torment
10. Pillars of Eternity

Haven't played Tyranny, Tides of Numenera, DOS1, Shadowruns and haven't finished Baldur's Gate 2 (it wouldn't have been on the list anyway).

[xzar_monty]

On 8/16/2019 at 5:46 PM, jf8350143 said:

However without the mod there is simply too much random design choices to bog my interest down.

Which choices are you referring to? I'm playing without mods, and I've enjoyed it a lot. I'm currently in the House at the end of Time (or something), and at this point things do seem to get a bit dodgy. I don't like the encounter design, for the most part.

There seem to be some absurd design choices in the game. An example: extraordinarily expensive trade deals that require years of game time for you to even get your investment back. I can't get my head around some of this stuff - why do that?

[Elric Galad]

On ‎8‎/‎17‎/‎2019 at 6:06 PM, fYNX said:

3. Icewind Dale 2

IWD2's writing didn't receive enough praise, especially for such a combat-driven game.
Isair and Madae are my favorite villains of all RPG, just too bad they don't have enough "screen time", and even some of the secondary antagonists had great backstory (espically Sherincal and Saablic Tan)

In addition, it has arguably the best soundtrack of any classical fantasy game ever, together with the original IWD, (Planescape not counting as classical fantasy IMHO).

[xzar_monty]

Incidentally, I have now spent about two hours at the House at the Edge of Time, in Pathfinder: Kingmaker, and I think I'm going to stop playing that game just about now. It's frankly astonishing to note how poorly designed this (final?) dungeon is. The battles are way, way overpowered, to the extent that the game is basically cheating to get you killed. Never seen stuff like this in a cRPG before, ever. A big, big surprise.

What on earth were the developers thinking, I will probably never know.

So, when it comes to the question of Deadfire vs. P:K, apparently Deadfire wins hands down.

[draego]

I wonder if some of that has to do with outside combat buffing. Josh talked about in one of the POE talks that pre buffing is really hard to balancefor because i guess you basically have to balance expecting the player could be prebuffed to the nth degree each fight in dungeon. i mean you cant predict if the player wont do that for one fight vs another fight so if say you have 10 fights in a dungeon all fights have to be tuned expecting it otherwise it become to easy i suppose. im sure there are other things in pathfinder/dnd that cause video game balance to be out of wack 

Edited August 19, 2019 by draego

[daven]

6 hours ago, Elric Galad said:

IWD2's writing didn't receive enough praise, especially for such a combat-driven game.
Isair and Madae are my favorite villains of all RPG, just too bad they don't have enough "screen time", and even some of the secondary antagonists had great backstory (espically Sherincal and Saablic Tan)

In addition, it has arguably the best soundtrack of any classical fantasy game ever, together with the original IWD, (Planescape not counting as classical fantasy IMHO).

The music of IWD2 is really good.

[kanisatha]

20 hours ago, xzar_monty said:

Incidentally, I have now spent about two hours at the House at the Edge of Time, in Pathfinder: Kingmaker, and I think I'm going to stop playing that game just about now. It's frankly astonishing to note how poorly designed this (final?) dungeon is. The battles are way, way overpowered, to the extent that the game is basically cheating to get you killed. Never seen stuff like this in a cRPG before, ever. A big, big surprise.

You can turn down the difficulty setting. That tends to work in those super-difficult battles and allows you to move on.