Favourite RPG

Top 8 because that is the number of deserving games (until I remember more).

1. Skies of Arcadia: Legends (GC)
2. The World Ends With You (DS)
3. Gurumin: A Monstrous Adventure (PSP)
4. Dark Chronicle (PS2)
5. Fallout: New Vegas (PS3)
6. Mount and Blade: Warband (PC)
7. Solatorobo: Red the Hunter (DS)
8. The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion (PS3)

Not counting: Any Zelda, any Monster Hunter, Freshly-Picked Tingle's Rosy Rupeeland, Mario Tennis GBC

NV and Oblivion are probably not best on PS3, but that's what I played them on. Morrowind would probably be above Oblivion if I had actually played a lot of it.

I'd probably include MonHun but not Zelda, but that's just me.  Jay, you've got another TWEWY fan!

OrangeRakoon wrote:

7. Solatorobo: Red the Hunter (DS)

Excuse me

Solatorobo is fantastic

Brilliant visual design, great sound, an interesting and wonderfully realised world (yes I have a soft spot for floating islands and mechs), and a simple but fun combat system. The story is interesting throughout and I love how it does a whole second half of the game after the credits roll for the first time (with brand new mechanics and a big twist too). I don't think most reviewers even got that far.

To be fair, Sola only had two things wrong with it: bad plot and bad gameplay. Seriously, I don't mind the visuals and don't remember the sound (apart from Red's irritating mutterings), but the dialogue was atrocious, and what you call "simple but fun", I found mind-blowingly repetitive and dull.  Without getting started on the minigames.  

I also felt it was more of an action-adventure than an RPG myself.  That said, it inspires a special level of anger in me mostly reserved for RPGs: the anger of having spent far too long on a game that wasn't worth it.  Other examples of this include TotA and Golden Sun: Dark Dawn.  I actually finished the latter!

DRUNKA'S TOP TEN ROLE PLAYING GAMES

I'm not the biggest RPG fan, because most of them are shit. Whiny characters, artificially over-extended stories, grinding, crap combat... some of them are okay though. Here's the best. I'm not including Zelda, because they could as easily be called adventure games or action games or metroidvanias or lord only knows what. Similarly, I've not gone with Fire Emblem or Monster Hunter or Animal Crossing because they're not really RPGs either.

10: Bravely Default

This is the closest thing to your standard JRPG I've ever enjoyed. With slick menus, customisation, action and everything else, gorgeous visuals and moderately likeable characters. Eventually, though, it got more and more like a standard RPG and started doing my nut in. I never completed it.

9: Witcher III

I didn't even play this, but sitting and watching Muss work his way through it I could tell it was something special. The sounds and visuals and gameplay all looked properly excellent but what clinched it for me was the writing. The stories it told were absolutely phenomenal. Quality videogame.

8: South Park: The Stick of Truth

Funny, enjoyable, well-made... this is the game that shows how to adapt a show. Honestly felt like playing an episode of South Park.

7: Dragon Age Origins

Hasn't aged the best, and followed by one crap sequel and another sequel which was utterly overshadowed by Witcher. Playing it now, the dodgy combat and brown graphics can't kill the quality writing, world and characters. I've never been a girl who was spurned by a boy, but somehow this game made me totally feel it. Incredible.

6: Undertale

Great little game with cute characters, stories, music, sprite art and gameplay. The ingenious way it makes you feel your decisions, care what you're doing in this world and to these characters. Mind-blowing.

5: Mario and Luigi: Superstar Saga

I haven't played much Paper Mario, which I would like to, but I have played the Mario and Luigi games are all absolute bangers and I definitely want them on my list.

4: Xenoblade Chronicles

Amazing music, world, charatcers, visuals, combat, everything... the only big RPG of this kind that I've ever sat all the way through and a perfect meld of Western and Eastern RPGs. Stellar.

3: Pokémon Red and Blue

God yes I love Pokémon games. Mechanically they've improved every single time, but the sense of mystery and discovery and of a world and a challenge I wanted to explore and achieve. No game will ever quite capture me as well as the original Pokémon, transport my heart and soul and mind to these worlds full of characters.

2: Dark Souls

Oh, wait, Dark Souls. Yeah, this is the world that calls to my soul. Nothing else can grip me like...

1: Mass Effect Trilogy

Oh! Mass Effect! The Mass Effect games and Dark Souls are both games I would call my favourites of all time, but I think of ME as an RPG more than I do DaS. Mass Effect had the team, and the stats, and the decisions and branching story and all of that which made me feel like I was playing a role in the galaxy. Mmmm, Mass Effect...

Smashing post, Drunka. Makes mine feel as effort-shy as it was. Good to see BD in there too, even if the second half bombed harder than [NOPE - Public Decency Police].

Balladeer wrote:

even if the second half bombed harder than...

Your mum in a swimming pool.
Hitler's bah mitzvah stand up.
A jaegermeister enthusiast at Spring Break.
A cracked wall in Zelda.
Hiroshima.
The IRA.
The western powers desperately trying to maintain the lumbering, outdated military industrial complex in the face of issues foreign and domestic completely unlike conventional warfare.

As everyone else is doing all-flavors of RPG's, I'm doing the same of what I feel is the genre the game comes under. Also this was hard, but I went for ones that came to mind first also 1 game per series.

Mostly good picks there mas. I'm still not sure about FE or Zelda, and SoTC definitely isn't! But that's just definitions which are boring anyway.

Fir Emblem is a Strategy or Tactical RPG that's 100% fine, Zelda to me is a Action-RPG it has all the quality's of a RPG but in action form and Dark Souls I think in a similar position to it but that may be slightly more RPG.

I said the reason why I think SotC should be a RPG as Balla asked the question it's one of the first games that came to mind even if simple.

Post of the Year.

Amusing, but I've definitely seen you raving about Pokémons.

And I thought Cappa only didn't like JRPGs but didn't know it was RPGs that not a fan of as theirs so many types of RPGs.

I was going to come up with an alternative C(l)appa Post of the Year - only of course it'd been made last year. But yep, the Cappster's all about the Pooglemans.  (His favourite is Blusossajmon.)

Incidentally, Drunka, all of those suggestions were more PC than what immediately sprang to my mind.

And on-topic ( ), I'd say that FE is a strategic RPG, but that Zelda's an action-adventure, even though I remember OoT showing up in N64's very first FuSoYa segment.  If I were including Zeldas, my top ten would look very different indeed, and it's probably fairer on other franchises this way!  But this ain't a voting thread, and I don't care too much about genre interpretations.  They lead to the most pointless arguments since 4chan fell out over the Gaussian curvature of a sphere.

When I think Action Adventure I'm thinking Uncharted, Tomb Raider, Assassins Creed etc

I'm with Balla (for once!) and agree that Zelda isn't an RPG. It's most definitely an action adventure - there's no "levelling up" and the combat is more Tomb Raider than it is Final Fantasy. I also wouldn't throw Shenmue in the mix either as it's very much an adventure game. It has action but 90% of it is more like Syberia or Heavy Rain.

I've not played many so can't really give a Top 10. Some I have really enjoyed include: Baldurs Gate: Dark Alliance, Grandia 2, Paper Mario TTYD, Pokemon Black 2, Xenoblade Chronicles, Fallout 3.

> Shadow of the Colossus


It's an action adventure, and arguably a puzzle game. There is no levelling. There are basically no stats (health and stamina increasing is not indicative of being an RPG). There is limited exposition and storytelling (don't get me wrong, the overall story/plot is fantastically told, but not in any way reminiscent of an RPG). There is no battle system - there are no regular battles, only boss fights which play out as action puzzles, and they share almost nothing in common with RPG staples (no numbers popping up, status effects, etc.).

Yes there is no strict definition of an RPG, but still, SOTC doesn't come anywhere near!

Mass Effect combat especially in 2 is more of third person shooter yet that's a RPG.

And I'm saying Action-RPG not JRPG like Final Fnatasy IX or a Western-RPG like Fallout 3, yes it's mainly Action but has heavy RPG elements.

You play as a young hero that finds out he's the hero, you explore dungeons fight a boss at the end of each, get new gear along the way and meet wonderful characters.  

Like most RPG's, on Shenmue it's a hard one as the genre SEGA said it was was Full Reactive Eyes Entertainment which at the time was like what but now you could put something like a Heavy Rain or a Yakuza but at the time it was sold to me as the next step in RPGs & storytelling.

Like I said when Balla used Phoenix Down on this thread and said about Top 10, I went for stuff that came to mind when talking RPGs of all genres be it SRPG/TRPG, Action-RPG, JRPG, Western-RPG and any other sort.  

Like Drunka said But that's just definitions which are boring anyway.

To wade in to the Zelda Rpg debate, I'd like to mention if Zelda were to be an RPG series it'd look like Ys.

It's weird one Athrun as if Balla asked Top 10 Action-Adventure games, I wouldn't put Zelda on it and then you all be going wheres Zelda that I can't really win but it's not the genre I see it as and never have and never will especially if Zelda U has taken inspiration from the likes of Skyrim.

Hey can we talk about which ones are good? Talking about definitions of genres is the most boring thing in the world.

masofdas wrote:

You play as a young hero that finds out he's the hero, you explore dungeons fight a boss at the end of each, get new gear along the way and meet wonderful characters.

Playing as a character does not make it an RPG any more so than an action adventure game. You don't explore dungeons, especially not in the traditional sense. You traverse a single open environment. It lacks enemies, loot, locked doors... any of the generic dungeon elements. It's much more like an action-adventure world. New gear is also a staple of action adventure games, and the way SOTC approaches it is just like an action adventure game. You unlock set gear throughout the game that gives you more moves. A typical RPG approach would be to have a large selection of optional weapons and gear that have varying stats, that you can find as loot/in chests/buy from shops, and more often than not don't give you more abilities as the game advances. RPGs tend to give you stronger variants that do more damage but do not change the gameplay, as RPGs are very stat driven. As for meeting wonderful characters, the entire cast of SOTC is about 5 people, including your horse!

Oh and

Spoiler:

Mass Effect is definitely an RPG/shooter hybrid. The combat isn't what makes it an RPG - the quest based structure, the character creation, party building and management, inventory management, experience points and levelling up, the role playing with dialogue choices, character interaction and differing routes is what makes it an RPG.

I was talking Zelda not SotC, OR. Mass Effect is a Western-RPG but was pointing out its action heavy ala Zelda.

SotC I wouldn't personally put Action Adventure again like Zelda if were asked the question Top 10 Action Adventure games. I wouldn't have it there and you guys knowing I think it's excellent, you'll need asking likely Zelda where is SotC.

But like Drunka, be better we talk about the good ones then what genres the games are like all of Biowares.

I'd say the levelling up and stats side of these games are what stick out as "that's an RPG". Saying that, I'd probably have a PES title in my Top 10 as I've spent hundreds of hours levelling up my team. You could make the argument that each match is a real-time battle, just as a portable Mario Golf/Tennis could be an RPG too.

That's one of the great things about games now - most don't fit in one genre.