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Community The RPG Codex's Top 70 PC RPGs (And Some Hidden Gems)

Zed Duke of Banville

Zed Duke of Banville

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Late Bloomer said:
Sweeper said:
I eat frozen vegetables said:
Surprisingly, I either own the majority of the games ranked or have them on my wishlist
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The fuck you want? A medal?
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He wanted an award actually.
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Parabalus

Parabalus

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Great list.
Would be nice to have all the Top X lists in one place, especially the data.
 
Rincewind

Rincewind

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luj1 said:
Underrail is great but it can't match the atmosphere, writing and style of Fallout

But it can match, and did outmatch its combat and build variety
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Outmatching Fallout combat is a pretty low bar. And I like tactical combat a lot, even one vs many in AoD.

Then people arguing about the ranking above... It's pointless, the ranking is invalid, like all rankings. Even a single person's ranking of more than 5-10 games quickly becomes an exercise in futility.

Sure, you can order 10 games nicely that range from absolute shit to the best thing ever (for you), but ranking 10 games you really like is pretty much meaningless, or extremely subjective at the very minimum. Part of the problem is condensing the whole experience into a single number.

For example, I really like Rogue, Eye of the Beholder, Age of Decadence, Quest for Glory I, Windwalker, Kingdom Come Deliverance, Witcher 1, and Gothic. All for different reasons, so however I'd rank them, it would always come out wrong to me when I look at the list. Or, viewed differently, if I *randomised* the ranking, I could always invent a story to jusitfy it for myself.

So yeah, down with all rankings! :) Especially aggregate/averaged rankings, the most meaningless of all (thought experiment: 70 best cRPGs as voted by all inhabitants of Earth; would you like the outcome?)

This is a mostly fine *unranked* list of game recommendations, although I'd replace quite a few entries with my own favourites if I had to keep it 70 entries.
 
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Rincewind

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Ryzer said:
Notice how the replayability in Underrail consists of trying new builds but not experiencing new things in the game because the game plays the exact same every fucking time, only the type of weapons used changes. This is fake replayability.
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Yeah, it blew my mind people replay any game like that without anything new to unlock, but I'm in the AoD and QfG camp.
 
Falksi

Falksi

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Shaki said:
luj1 said:
BING XI LAO said:
Ryzer said:
Notice how the replayability in Underrail consists of trying new builds but not experiencing new things in the game because the game plays the exact same every fucking time, only the type of weapons used changes. This is fake replayability.

In Bloodlines, a Malkovian feels different to a Nosferatu, the Nosferatu feels different to the other clans. This is TRUE replayability.
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C&C and story-based replayability are gimmicks anyway.
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C&C was never a principal tenet of CRPGs.

It was a principal tenet of text adventures - such as the Colossal Cave Adventure, Oregon Trail or Michael Crichton's Amazon - and CYOA gamebooks.

Thus the problem is people making CRPGs into something they're not, via deconstructing genre boundaries and other norms. Post-modernism plays a huge role here.
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C&C is a principal tenet. But not the modern "C&C" like having some different flavour of dialogue option depending on what previous flavour of dialogue option you chose, or having slightly different ending slides. Actual important C&C, is facing hard choices at character creation screen, then having to live with the consequences. Underrail is a masterclass in C&C.
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Main thing with me for C&C, is that...regardless of how those changes occur...we get some actual mechanical/gameplay changes to back them up and make us feel them. The more impactful the changes, the better I'd rank the C&C.

I still class story-beat changes as C&C, just C&C in a weaker form.
 
Optimist

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My team has the sexiest and deadliest waifus you can recruit.
I voted out of codexian duty, but I'm still not a fan of the regular list vs hidden gems setup. We've had less votes to cast on the main list, and the definition of what counts as a hidden gem was nonexistent. I get the intention behind it, but some titles there feel odd.

How about in the next n years we go with a setup of 15/20 titles for the best-of list? I'd keep the hidden gems section, but this'd just be a set of reviews submitted with nominations, for all the games that didn't make it to GOATs.

I still appreciate Butter 's work - thanks!
 
lukaszek

lukaszek

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luj1 said:
HoboForEternity said:
Putting Morrowind above gothic is a joke. Gothic is waaay more advanced in immersiveness and details.
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I doubt that. There is a reason why Morrowind always ranks within top 10 in these lists, while Gothic was always outside of top 10.
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are we in process of creating comparison metrics?
Morrowind scores higher than Gothic because it got higher count of letter 'r'
 
Bruma Hobo

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HoboForEternity said:
Putting morrowind above gothic is a joke. Gothic is waaay more advanced in immersiveness and details.
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I could agree with you if you're saying that Gothic is better as a game, but not as an RPG. Gothic is great, but it plays like an open-ended action-adventure game with some RPG elements, while Morrowind on the other hand, although at times awkwardly, is always trying its limited best to be an actual role-playing experience.

This is like comparing Jagged Alliance 2 and Fallout. You may think that the former is a better game, but the latter is definitely the better RPG even if it plays awkwardly at times.
 
Falksi

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Beans00

Beans00

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Falksi said:
Chrono Trigger as best console RPG on that list declares the Codex as woke-normie-gay-fag as woke-normie-gays.

It should be burned and never spoken of again.
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How was CT woke compared to other JRPGs at the time? lol
 
Falksi

Falksi

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Beans00 said:
Falksi said:
Chrono Trigger as best console RPG on that list declares the Codex as woke-normie-gay-fag as woke-normie-gays.

It should be burned and never spoken of again.
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How was CT woke compared to other JRPGs at the time? lol
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And the vile rainbow community are always claiming it as theirs in Facebook groups, with shit like this...

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