Vapourware RPGs that can legitimately be called masterpieces

[Cryomancer]

Hearing "Gothic 3" and "masterpiece" together in the same sentence is a new one for me.

IDK why people hate G3 on RPG codex. IS one of the best open world ARPG that i've played.

 

[Farewell young Prince into the night]

I only played it for a few hours, so I'm not an expert on G3, but my overall impression was "this does not feel like Gothic."

Do you think it is a good Gothic game? Or just a good game?

 

[Tigranes]

Dude only has one thing on his mind and it is a very specific and personal idea of being a mage. He'll tell you about it every time someone mentions Gothic.

I like G3, but it is a pale shadow of the other two.

 

[Farewell young Prince into the night]

Ah, I see. Thank you!

 

[barghwata]

I only played it for a few hours, so I'm not an expert on G3, but my overall impression was "this does not feel like Gothic."

Do you think it is a good Gothic game? Or just a good game?

Ignore what the codex tells you, they have a blind hatred for Gothic 3. It's not a good gothic game but it's an excellent Open world ARPG, the world is huge and completely open ended, the game has C&C and a reputation system and the faction choice is actually meaningful unlike in the first two gothics, the progression system is great even though it does have balance issues as for combat melee has a lot of problems but archery and magic are great. Of course you would have to play with the community patch and the consequences mod to enjoy any of these things, vanilla Gothic 3 is basically unplayable, but overall it's a good game you just have to be patient with its flaws and give it a chance.

 

[Cryomancer]

ude only has one thing on his mind and it is a very specific and personal idea of being a mage.

I like to use magic on fantasy games, Gothic 3 also has good archery gameplay. Iagree that the melee gameplay is not good. You can see by the fact that without alternative AI, the combat is who stunlocks first, the fact tha spears uses the same animations as swords, but for mages AND archers, gothic 3 is extremely fun. But arguably be a mage on G2 is not fun, the fact that you by no reason can't be a dark/water mage, the fact that mage gameplay is just exploiting ice block or running out of mana, is not fun IMO.... It doesn't means that G2 is not a masterpiece. Only because one style is not fun IMO;

But G3 is amazing. Mainly if you wanna be a WATER mage or a DARK mage...

Talking about magic on G3, i recommend to play with alternative balancing ON(the video below shows how strong you can be without it as a water mage). IDK why PB decided to make Fire Rain an circle 5 G1 spell and Circle 2 G2 spell be available before mid game on G3.... And due the low mana cost and mana regen, i could free cities just by pressing a button once few secs and letting enemies walk into their incinerator. Any intelligent enemy should run from the rain of fire and once has distance, fire bow/crossbow at the mage casting the spell but no, i cleared many cities in few minutes with it. Other thing that i particularly din't liked is that you now can only have one summon(except army of darkness, a end game dark magic spell)



Anyway, i don't think that vanilla G3 is a masterpiece. Gothic 3 with content mod, questpack, alternative balancing, consequences, etc is a true masterpiece.

reputation system and the faction choice is actually meaningful unlike in the first two gothics, the progression system is great even though it does have balance issues as for combat melee has a lot of problems but archery and magic are great. Of course you would have to play with the community patch and the consequences mod to enjoy any of these things, vanilla Gothic 3 is basically unplayable, but overall it's a good game you just have to be patient with its flaws and give it a chance.

Arguably the faction system on G3 makes way less sense. Without consequences mod and alternative balancing, you can learn the highest secret of fire/water and dark mages in a single character. Can fight for beliar with Paladin's Armor...

And G3 is heavily biased towards casters. I mean, melee characters needs to be at end game to learn how to regen health. And depending the path(ie - not siding with Innos nor Beliar and freeing cities), Rhobar and Kan will be unavailable to teach you health regen. While a magician at around lv 25 if he got a lot of stuff to boost his AK, can learn mana regeneration without siding with any side. Karrypto and Saturas requires nothing to teach mana regen and Sigmor only requires money and reputation on his city...

 

[Tweed]

Wow that looks neato, I may have to try Gothic 3 again just for a mage run. Last time I played was a really long time ago with only with the community fixes and I did melee, work them muscles and get an orc axe or whatever it was and just *click click click click click* your way to victory, really boring.

Gothic 1 did an excellent job of making magic feel powerful, I can't help but do the fire/water/necromancer route on all my replays.

 

[barghwata]

Arguably the faction system on G3 makes way less sense. Without consequences mod and alternative balancing, you can learn the highest secret of fire/ and dark mages in a single character. fight for beliar with Paladin's Armor...

I actually never played vanilla so i wouldn't know, but i still think the faction system is better in gothic 3, you're not really forced to pick a side so you can just work with whatever faction you want, you can even pretend to work for a faction while secretly sabotaging them from the inside for the benefit of another, and i like the fact that the more you help a certain faction the more opposing factions begin to suspect you untill they eventually attack you on sight; but more importantly which faction you side with actually matters in the ending of the game.

 

[Sykar]

Hearing "Gothic 3" and "masterpiece" together in the same sentence is a new one for me.

IDK why people hate G3 on RPG codex. IS one of the best open world ARPG that i've played.

Because it was complete garbage and the story did not make a lick of sense. The faction system was beyond garbage. Melee even with CP is a shit show. Get Halberd and spin to win. Chest loot is a shit show and the loot is tied to how many chests you open. A lot of melee animations come straight from stick up your butt valley at best. The open world had large stretches of terrible looking wasteland. I loved G1 and G2 and consider them to be top tier games. G3 was one of the biggest disappointments I ever had the displeasure of installing, right there with Oblividerp after I played Morrowind and Daggerfall.

 

[Cryomancer]

Gothic 1 did an excellent job of making magic feel powerful, I can't help but do the fire/water/necromancer route on all my replays.

The greatest G2 problem is that magic just doesn't worth. Except cheese magic(ie - Fear Dragons/Ice Block seekers)

For example, On G1, Firebolt costs 1 mana for 30 damage, Fire Ball costs 5 mana and deals 150 damage ( http://www.mikesrpgcenter.com/gothic/magic/runes.html ) On G2 fire arrow costs 6 mana for 30 damage, fire ball 10 mana for 60 damage...

My first run of G1 was as a TEMPLAR. Was fun to play as a sect camp, but my second run i did the fire->water->necro run. Then in my third run, i installed a mod that allow you to become a GURU of swamp camp. The requirement to become a Guru is to be at chap 4 with at least circle 4 learned and go to the temple and talk to Y'Berrion(yep, in mod he had a different "fate")

The unique alteration that i would do on G1 is to make water mages available earlier on. I mean, no, i an not saying that you should become a water mage on chap 1, but if you manage to find a lot of ore(that they are collecting), maybe they can accept you as some type of apprentice and let you learn circle 1/2 on chap 1, circle 3 on chap 2, circle 4 on chap 3 and then a water mage...

The faction system was beyond garbage. Melee even with CP is a shit show. Get Halberd and spin to win. Chest loot is a shit show and the loot is tied to how many chests you open. A lot of melee animations come straight from stick up your butt valley at best. The open world had large stretches of terrible looking wasteland. I loved G1 and G2 and consider them to be top tier games. G3 was one of the biggest disappointments I ever had the displeasure of installing, right there with Oblividerp after I played Morrowind and Daggerfall.

Spin to win is due the awful AI. Enemies should take distance and fire crossbows at you. Is not a gothic problem. The open world terrible? Come one. A big desert on south, forest on center and cold mountains o north. Explore the game allow you to find a lot of cool stuf...

As for Oblivion, a lot of problems with Oblivion doesn't exist on Gothic 3.

There are no awful level scaling making enemies requiring 60 melee strikes to die.
There are no press A for awesome BS
There are no quest markers
Enemy pack of wild animals can kill you very fast if you are unprepared.
No bandits with high tier "daedric" armor that worth nothing

 

[Mebrilia the Viera Queen]

Diablo a rpg?

 

[Cryomancer]

Diablo a rpg?

Diablo 1 and 2 has most RPG elements. Diablo 3 is a barbie dressing game.

 

[Mebrilia the Viera Queen]

Diablo a rpg?

Diablo 1 and 2 has most RPG elements. Diablo 3 is a barbie dressing game.

I don't know this list let out titles like Planescape Torment and Arcanum and puts a diablo on it. I never saw it as RPG more like a Dungeon Crawler or an Hack and Slash.

 

[ItsChon]

Moreover, the very fact that Fallout still outranks Underrail (or in your estimation equates to) proves how much of an utter joke the latter is, since it came out 16 years afterwards.

What does it matter when a game came out? Baldur's Gate came out a little over 21 years ago, and can you honestly name a single thing you'd change about the game that couldn't have been implemented when the game came out? A masterpiece is a masterpiece, regardless of when it was released, and the fact that Underrail can be compared to Fallout (though I'm sure you don't think so), is a point in favor of Underrail's quality versus a strike against it.

 

[Cryomancer]

I don't know this list let out titles like Planescape Torment and Arcanum and puts a diablo on it. I never saw it as RPG more like a Dungeon Crawler or an Hack and Slash.

Is up to the definition. IMO if you consider Bloobers as RPG's, then D1/2 are certain

Talking about bloobers, Might & Magic VI is a masterpiece. M&M VII and VIII are good but not as VI.

 

[octavius]

Diablo a rpg?

Diablo 1 and 2 has most RPG elements. Diablo 3 is a barbie dressing game.

I don't know this list let out titles like Planescape Torment and Arcanum and puts a diablo on it. I never saw it as RPG more like a Dungeon Crawler or an Hack and Slash.

PST is an interactive novel. D1 and 2 are action games. They're all CRPGs.

 

[Latro]

that Underrail can be compared to Fallout

just the combat system; nobody cares about it in any other way. there's never gonna be an underrail made by bethesda, or an underrail bible, or really anything influenced by underrail. that kind of influence is only relegated to masterpieces - masterpieces like BG or Fallout.

 

[Terenty]

Konung: legends of the north

 

[Nifft Batuff]

None.

 

[Cryomancer]

I was reading metacritic ( https://www.metacritic.com/browse/games/genre/metascore/role-playing/pc?view=condensed )

And looks like every BS is considered an RPG this days. Even WoW cataclysm that arguably removed the little RPG that wow had. On that list, i would only consider BG2, Diablo, Kotor, BG, NWN and morrowind are masterpieces.

PS : Magefags (like myself) love Gothic 3 by a reason. But on metacritic, he had the same score of the piece of trash that arcania is. Arcania is a barbie dressing railroad game, not a rpg.

 

[Nifft Batuff]

Indeed, masterpiece is differentiated from classics, flawed diamonds and "my favorites".

I don't know any masterpieces. Only classics, flawed diamonds or perfect shits.

 

[Funposter]

There's probably an argument that RPGs are too sprawling, long or ambitious to ever really be flawless masterpieces. I'm sure that for every single game in the Codex Top 10, someone can name "that bit" or "that mechanic" which annoys them, or even just design faults that make playing the game in certain ways not particular fun. Hell, some of these are even inhereted from the tabletop rulesets that some of the games are based on. There's too many variables at play here, so I can see why Lilura includes a game like Deus Ex in the OP, which is a way more cohesive experience game than any other game in the Codex Top 10. RPGs aren't like other games that can be distilled down purely to their mechanics, level design and controls - stuff like Super Mario Bros, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater or even DOOM or Quake, which are relatively quickfire bursts of video game action in tightly designed environments. Games like that don't really have any superfluous elements.

 

[RNGsus]

I had no idea the Circle of Eight was accepting new masters.

 

[Tito Anic]

Because it was complete garbage and the story did not make a lick of sense. The faction system was beyond garbage. Melee even with CP is a shit show. Get Halberd and spin to win. Chest loot is a shit show and the loot is tied to how many chests you open. A lot of melee animations come straight from stick up your butt valley at best. The open world had large stretches of terrible looking wasteland. I loved G1 and G2 and consider them to be top tier games. G3 was one of the biggest disappointments I ever had the displeasure of installing, right there with Oblividerp after I played Morrowind and Daggerfall.

Bethestard, eat dick!

 

[Cryomancer]

"G3 is trash because has a awful melee combat" ~ A bethestard that loves to swing his axe 65 times to kill a scaled up poor thief in daedric armor on Oblivion and can't criticize G3 archery or mage gameplay nor name one third person ARPG from mid 00s with good melee combat.

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The unique Japanese Franchise that i would consider a masterpiece is the Demon/Dark Souls series. I would't consider Dragon's Dogma a masterpiece, due the awful stat gain, simplistic stat mechanics, limit on 3 skills for my magick archer and ludicrous level of gear dependency BUT DD is a amazing game. And Demon/Dark Souls are a masterpiece despite being RPG's made with consoles in mind and from Japan. Lets be real, 99% of console RPG's are ultra dumbed down and 99,9% of the jRPG's are androgynous teenager with oversized swords saving the world.

For mmos, i would classify only Ultima Online as a masterpiece.