Also, it's goddamn free!

EDIT: Pretty much done. Sorry for the length... I tried to keep it shorter for the games I added in later.---------------------------------------------------------------------------I'm mainly a pen and paper RPG gamer, and that is reflected in my taste in video game RPGs. I like games that provide me opportunities to role-play. Especially those that give me not just the freedom to create my character, but also a reactive, emotional and engaging story that would make meto explore as this character. I played both JRPGs and WRPGs growing up, but as I got more and more into P&P, my opinion shifted heavily towards WRPGs, since they're much closer to what I consider a good RPG experience.---------------------------------------------------------------------------[List order is random and I restrict myself to one game per series.]---------------------------------------------------------------------------(3 points)The magnum opus of BioWare. A member of the Infinity Engine family, with some of the most celebrated RPGs ever, BG2 stands a head higher than even other games of its era. Most other games go for either width OR depth, but BG2 just said fuck it and went for both. And that goes for every aspect of the game. Not only is the game, with Athkatla alone featuring more quests than several other games I can think of, but each quest feels original and unique, without a single quest feeling stupid or redundant. I am constantly amazed by the amount of work they put into even the sidest of quests, I can barely think of quests that feature no sudden complications or surprises. Not a single procedurally generated bore-fest to be seen.BG2 also took companions to the next level. While there are less than the first game, there is no shortage of of them (17 overall including ToB), and each of them feels unique. Besides maybe a few, they each featurepersonal arcs and stories (which is not something I can say about many other RPG companions). As I traveled with them, I really came to think of them as people rather than data or stats. But where the game truly stands above even other excellent RPGs is the depth of interactions between members of your group, with characters bonding, making rivalries, mentoring, joking and even romancing. I can't stress enough how exciting it was the first time I played the game to suddenly have to make very delicate intimate choices, and to see the romance grow and the characters change with it. And all of that stuff is entirely optional but still feels integral to the story if chosen.The combat system, which in essence is identical to other IE games, really shines as well. The encounters play to the system's strength - Pitting you against spell casters, large groups of various classes and other such adversaries that require you to manage several different kind of threats. The game always keeps you on your toes and battle feels wholly engaging. While not perfect, combat is much better than the somewhat straightforward encounters of the first BG (and even later IE games like PS:T.) The higher power levels also help, D&D is usually mostly boring until about level 8, which exactly your starting point in BG2, so more interesting weapons and abilities are available to the player (and enemies). And again, width AND depth, despite the large number of weapons in the game, the number of generic "+n" fillers is relatively low. Instead, we get unique weapons with unique abilities and written histories.BG2 is really the quintessential RPG - It doesn't just do everything, it does everything. Some things better than others, but even what it's worse at it does decently. Playing through this game is an experience, and a must for every RPG fan.Another Infinity Engine classic. PS:T sets itself apart not only in quality but also in content. The game takes place in the world of "Planescape", a center point of the cosmos in which planes and worlds collide into a cosmopolitan city, Sigil, based upon Industrial-era London. The setting of Planescape is crazy, it's a city shaped like a doughnut, in which anything can be a door with the right key (which can also be anything, from an object to a thought) to any world. As mentioned, the city is pretty much smack in the center of the cosmos, easily accessible to the planes such as Mechanus(a world of machines), Abyss (Hell), Celestia (Heaven) and more. Sigil, the city of doors, is populated by everything from alien races, robot-like creature, zombies and people from other D&D campaign settings who happen to go through a wrong portal. The genius of the game is in making this cooky world feel real and alive. You believe the cultures and people inhabiting this city, thanks to details like the unique slang ('eh cutter?), the amazing prosaic writing and detailed pre-rendered graphics to name a few.But a game is more than it's setting, and PS:T does more than simply present you with crazy lore. The game uses the weirdness the setting affords to tell a different story than the ones we're used to from RPGs, and an amazing one at that. This is not a game about saving a world, this is a completely personal quest, that engrosses you into the life of the Namesless One. This is the most personal RPG I've ever played, pretty much every character or story-line directly revolves around the Nameless One, and in the end, it really does manages to get through and tell you something.Because this game it tied so closely with BG2 in my head, I feel the need to explain why I didn't give it the 3 points. First of all,. Yeah, I'm just gonna say it - Combat in PS:T is garbage. It's not fun, it's not engrossing, it's bullshit. And don't get me started on that "You don't have to fight!" mantra some people repeat with this game, because we all know there are certain parts of the game in which sneaking is such a chore that even if it's technically possible it's not very feasible. In the end, combat is a glaring flaw in the game, one that sadly makes it as a whole less fun than BG2. But other than that, I think there's another, more interesting reason I chose BG2 over Torment. PS:T is an amazing game with an amazing story, but it lacks some of the "depth" BG2 had. I do not mean depth as in "Makes you think of stuff", but as in a "vertical design", how far the game goes with the content it presents. Quests in BG2 had that sprawling feeling to them - They started as one thing, evolved to another, and then ended with a memorable bang. Characters weren't just interesting concepts, but evolving people you formed relationships with (A character could start as an apprentice, and go through the process of joining a Knight order, for example). In PS:T, quests were interesting but lacked the twists of BG2 and characters were interesting but rarely evolved into something different than their initial concepts. I attribute this largely to the foreign world of Sigil. While BG2 had the benefit of a recognized and easily understood world, PS:T had to spend much of the game getting the player familiar with concepts and ideas. It did it the best it could, but it still provided the game with some limitations on how far down they could go vertically.PS:T is the RPG that shows what RPGs can do, how far they can go. It may not "have it all" in the same sense BG2 does, but that's only because it decided to go further, to push the limits into uncharted territory.If I had to choose one series that best translates the feel of pen and paper RPGs to the video game format, It'd be Quest for Glory. The series is a perfect blend of "RPG" and "Adventure", with each genre perfectly complements the lacking of the other. It also does an amazing job of immersing you in its charming cities, cultures, quests and stories. While the combat is rather simplistic (not to say boring) compared to other RPGs, it more than make up for it with everything else, and the "Adventure game" aspects usually make sure you have creative alternatives to combat. It was hard for me to choose one game to represent this series, it was a close race between this and Trial by Fire, but in the end I felt like Shadow of Darkness wins out thanks to the better story and puzzles (and the darker tone.) I consider this series a must play, and I really do mean that.Vampire: The Masquerade's World of Darkness is one of my favorite settings in RPGs. I'm usually always in at least one P&P campaign running it. After the snooze fest that was Redemption, Bloodlines was everything I wanted in a WoD game. It's one of those game you can always run through and get a very different experience, which is, to me, a sure way to tell it does something right as an RPG.I'm a huge fan of Spiderweb, and Geneforge is one of their best offerings. It mixes good story with a very original settings. I have to emphasis how awesome this setting is. Unlike Planescape, where the coolness comes from going off the cliff with weirdness, Geneforge keeps the basics of a fantasy world intact, only changing where necessary and logically following from that, which makes the setting much more accessible than other games with an "out there setting".The one JRPG even I couldn't snub. The game starts you off with a choice of 7 stories of different genres - From Western, to Kung-Fu and even Horror. These genres aren't just limited to self-contained stories, but also dictate gameplay and tone (with one chapter featuring no combat and one chapter featuring no dialogue, for example). Each of the stories is a short, fun, troperiffic adventure in a genre. The game closes with two more chapters that bind the stories together, which helps the game feel more like a single coherent products rather than a collection of mini-games. LAL is first of all an amazing experiment in narrative, as it plays with many genre tropes fluently and masterfully. The game is never low on self awareness, and the end chapters play like some sort of crazy meta-RPG. It's really really great - and that's coming from someone who usually can't stand JRPGs!I didn't start out liking SC2, it was too unwieldy for me and I kept dying without any idea why. But once the game clicked, it quickly became one of my all time favorites. It has that combination of fun, engaging combat, interesting story to follow and just truckloads of charm. That third part is really what holds it all together, the amazing alien races in the game makes everything leak fun. I still quote many of them regularly.So, do not forget to *enjoy the sauce* and Download it now! For me, this is the gem to complete the Infinity Engine crown (even though it's not an IE game itself). Fallout 2 is an amazing game, packed full of awesome content - especially the little bits, the flavors to the quests that make it such a vivid depiction of a nuclear wasteland.. It's paints such a strong picture of the wasteland, it's my go to game to judge every post-apocalyptic game since, RPG or not.I'm not a huge fan of the NWN series. The first game was my first (and harshest) gaming disappointment, and the second proved to be a barely decent endeavor. Then I heard about Mask of the Betrayer here on Gaf. I was skeptical at first, but soon I bought the game on sale. And boy, was I in for a treat, this expansion pack was came very close to the IE glory days for me. With a great story, great cast and great writing to boot. The game takes my favorite part of Fearun, The Unapproachable East, and shows us just why it is such a cool place. A wrod of caution though - It's still NWN2. The game is so clumsy I wanted to punch my monitor several times, and the companion "loyalty meter" is still as stupid as it ever was, with crunchy bonuses based on how close you are with companions, which soon proves to make the conversations into vehicles to minmaxing.Wasteland 2 is the first RPG in years that made me make up stories IN MY HEAD. 10 hours into the game I knew my party inside and out, as people and not just as "warrior guy" or "shotgun guy", which is a feat in today's RPG climate. Most newer RPGs make me view many characters as the sum total of their skill points, but WL2 encourages you to think and imagine, with flavor texts and highly illustrated writing. The game story and text driven approach made me more immersed in the world than any fancy rendering tech. And this is, to me, the essence of a good RPG. The game does have some problems: It suffers from a clunky dialogue system - Seriously, can we please erase the "ask everyone everything" method of dialogues in RPG forever please? The combat is fun, especially when confronted with interesting encounters, but sadly too many encounters are unmemorable and don't do the combat system justice. But I chose this over games that might be better overall because I realize that those lists are first of all political. There is no true value to ranking games, the reason we do it is to bring certain games to attention and build a narrative by deciding which games are the "essentials" in the genre. Wasteland 2 is more than a great game, it's an important game. It's, hopefully, the harbinger of the return of isometric party-based RPGs, in the form of small, Kickstarter funded indies. So I can forgive the rough edges and the issues, because no other game excited me more this year or made me more hopeful of the future.------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------IWD is very recommended to anyone who liked the Infinity Engine combat system. It's fun and it has a pretty good story despite being basically an hack & slash title. But I always found it to be the weakest entry in the IE pantheon. It lacks much of what made the BG and Torment series so engaging. So it ended up off the main list.An unorthodox choice, I know. A short, simple game, with barely any combat and no numbered skill or stats to be found. Some people even classify it as a visual novel rather than an RPG. It hasrough edges - much of the design is somewhat clunky, music loops forever and the graphics get the job done and little else. So why give it an honorable mention? I wanted to highlight this unpolished gem, because it did something interesting. It chose an unorthodox story: Set in ancient India, the plot doesn't feature heroes or champions, but let's you play people of simpler fates (such as a peasant girl or an elderly priest). People locked into traditions and castes. Your dilemmas are simple and less grand than most games - For example, You have been wed against you will, what do you do? The system help bring those concepts forward. Combat is rare and dangerous. Rather than skill or stats, you have text-based traits such as "Opportunist", "Kind" or "Bold" which have no gameplay benefit, only helping you farther establish the story you weaved. The game is far from perfect, and the ending left a sour taste in my mouth, but it still does something few games have done, and I wanted to give credit where it's due.A great game. One of the best JRPGs I've ever played. Loveable characters, cool story of epic proportions and adorable graphics. Plus, the game manages to avoid most of my annoyances with JRPGs. Still not exactly my cup of tea, but still unquestionably a game worth playing.The only reason this is an honorable mention is that the game is too old to be thoroughly enjoyed today be most people. I couldn't finish it. But even just playing around in it, today, you can still feel the genius of it.