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Greetings traveler. I hope your mouse wheel / PgDown key are in good shape, because is this one MASSIVE piece of content!



About 5 years ago we made



But new games are released every day now, and we decided to make an updated version, with the same rules. This time



​

As with the previous one, the rankings after the Top 20-30 are not as important, this should really seen as a list of interesting games to try out. Few people will enjoy niche titles like Elminage Gothic or Tales of Maj'Eyal, but those that do will absolutely love them.



You can check the full results of the voting OBS: Some entries share the same number, that's because they were tied in the voting.



Thanks to everyone who voted and wrote reviews, have a good reading!





Read the full article:







Greetings traveler, I hope your mouse wheel / PgDown key are in good shape, because is this one MASSIVE piece of content!



About 5 years ago we made



But new games are released every day now, and we decided to make an updated version, with the same rules. This time



​

As with the previous one, the rankings after the Top 20-30 games are not as important, it should really seen as a list of interesting games to try out. Few people will enjoy niche titles like Elminage Gothic or Tales of Maj'Eyal, but those that do will absolutely love them.



You can check the full results of the voting OBS: Some entries share the same number, that's because they were tied in the voting.



Thanks to everyone who voted and wrote reviews, have a good reading!





----------------------







Jasede: Ah, wretched Planescape: Torment, always Planescape: Torment. This game is so hard to sell. I've many times attempted to get people to play it, only for them to get bored before leaving the mortuary or the bar outside it. If they do keep playing despite that, they are met with terribly shallow encounter design and an RPG system that seems more like a strange cross between Choose Your Own Adventure books and an adventure game, based around puzzles and conversations. Even calling it an RPG is almost a matter of some debate. So why then does this game hold such a high place to so many of us?



The biggest reason is that this game has shown us that story-based games can work. Often likened to a playable novel, PS:T tells the engrossing tale of a man in search of his past - or pasts. Starting from the tired cliché of amnesia, PS:T quickly draws those who will accept it for what it is, warts and all, into an engrossing tale of redemption, love and treachery, covering succinctly many of man's desires and shortcomings. While nobody is going to suggest this is the same level as classic literature, this is the game that showed us that video game writing can be above average, can indeed conjure up fantastic worlds and allow us to visit them. Not one NPC in PS:T does not have an interesting story, not one description of text or snippet of party banter an enticing tidbit that teaches us about the odd, foreign world that the tale occurs in.



PS:T invites us to a strange journey, and those who accept the invitation will, if they have the patience to read the game's copious walls of text, find themselves drawn to into an experience that they are not likely to ever forget.



MicoSelva: Probably the best story in any video game ever, Planescape: Torment is much more than just that. Allowing the player to explore one of the most unique worlds in the history of computer RPGs and interact with some of the most interesting characters ever created, PS:T is also a very solid game underneath it all. Everything you do in this game matters: how you create your character and develop it, how you approach people and what you say to them, what you do and what you decide not to do.



Torment will destroy your assumptions about what to expect from a fantasy RPG, as it comes with zero elves, zero dwarves and only two swords in the whole game, and it will also leave you wanting more from every RPG you play afterwards. Obviously it's not perfect (nothing is), with combat especially in need of some improvement, but so far it is as close to perfection as it gets.



Grunker: Most games that try to tell a story feature a 15-year-old's idea of coolness factor wrapped up in guns n' titties, or a decent-but-not-great writer's pretentious, preachy dribble. Planescape: Torment is irregular because its themes are deeply compelling and they are examined proficiently by the writing. Torment's twists and turns are legitimately surprising and broaden the wider mystery of the game's core concepts. It has the weakest gameplay of the IE-games, but more than makes up for it with an attention to detail in its worldbuilding that is second to none. Replaying it I find that boiling this masterpiece down to a "good story" is a misnomer - more than anything, what makes Torment so compelling is that it is wonderful in the original sense of the world; with some new marvel, impossible phenomena or mindbending idea awaiting you on every area load, like the Escher-painting of video games. It thrusts you into the truly unknown and uses its alien setting to explore weirdness in all shapes and sizes, usually with some poignant punches thrown at the end of each piece of dialogue. In the world of video games, that doesn't only make it stand out, it makes it unique.







Koschey: Born and raised in Vault 13, you are unceremoniously dumped in the post-post-apocalyptic outside world to look for a replacement to a vital part of the facility's water processing system. World War III lies decades in the past. The world was blasted to ruins by nuclear warheads and the survivors' descendants have begun to slowly rebuild, but your isolation in the vault makes you a stranger in a strange land.



In Fallout, your choices have consequences and your character is what you make of him or her, not just a race/class combination. Couple that with a believable antagonist (in the context of the game), B-movie shlock monsters like super mutants, radscorpions and deathclaws, over the top death animations, the dark humorous contrast between the blind pre-war optimism and the current post-war state of affairs, a 50's retro-futuristic aesthetic as well as a moody soundtrack by Mark Morgan, and you get one hell of a game. Combat is devoid of challenge but entertaining, in no small part thanks to the death animations.



Compared to its direct sequel, Fallout is shorter but has a more tightly focused plot and atmosphere. It also features fewer pop-culture references and easter eggs. Finally, I love the ending slides narrating the impact of your journey on the people you've met and places you've visited. Fallout is good stuff.



tuluse: It's difficult to write about Fallout to fellow codexers. The things it did well have become catchphrases at this point, and it should be self-evident why one would want to play it. Yet, in the 17 years since its release, it has almost become old hat. Well, sure it had C&C, but they weren't that deep. Who cares about ending slides, I want consequences while I'm playing! What's the point of multiple quest solutions if just about every character can accomplish them? These are the cries of bored gamers who want something to finally surpass the original masterpiece. Unfortunately, nothing has accomplished that.



Fallout remains the best not because of individual details or implementations, but because of the overall effect and the entire experience. It offers multiple solutions to every single quest, with choices based both on character skill and player decisions. It presents a world at once familiar and alien, opening it up to the player to explore as they like. It also makes exploring the world enjoyable. Everything from the dilapidated huts, to giant scorpions, to futuristic military bases, to exploding groins looks and sounds good. All the elements also fit together, maintaining a thematic consistency that sequels and pretenders couldn't match.



Jim the Dinosaur: Fallout's mechanics took only 7 times as long to construct as Icewind Dale 2's story, which means it has a lot of kinks in it that put its component parts a bit on the simplistic and not-completely-working side. Good thing, then, that Fallout 1 isn't about the constituent parts, but how it all fits together in one wonderful Gestalt that can't be reduced to its parts, no matter how much certain Codex staff members who wouldn't know a quality RPG if it shot them in the back like to imagine it can be. Fallout is about having lots of different approaches that are all flawed in their own special (wink) way, but which are all still very much enjoyably flawed.



Sure, combat's simple and sometimes frustratingly random, but when that beautiful main character sprite gets riddled by another beautiful sprite's SMG while a wonderfully pleasant squishy sound plays, it's hard to claim this isn't enjoyable on some level. Sure, most of the stat checks are insanely randomized, but this is the only game where you can convince a mutant cult leader that his plan is inconceivable after evading his psionic attacks by either drinking copious amounts of alcohol to dim your senses or convincing a wacko to give you his protective hat after having killed a lot of innocent people and failing your speech checks.



There's other stuff I should probably mention, such as the great ambient soundtrack, but the bottom line is that Fallout 1 is a fantastic game.







JarlFrank: When I first played Baldur's Gate 2, it immediately managed to grab me. Everything about it was just good - the graphics, the interface (to this day I believe that the Infinity Engine games had one of the best interfaces ever), the story (even though the writing was, at times, quite amateurish), and even the combat. It's a game chock full of content, with solid writing and combat that is actually good despite being real-time with pause. Baldur's Gate 2 is epic fantasy done right, and it's definitely the best game BioWare has ever made. Thanks to its huge amount of side-quests, many different possibilities for character development, and difficult combat encounters, the Codex even manages to forgive BG2 the fact that it's the game that introduced romances into the genre, and gives it a well-deserved place in the top ten.



Grunker: Shadows over Amn is a loveletter to a paradigm: "Content is King." Measured against its production values, this game provides the player with an amount of quality content unmatched, I believe, in any other RPG. The diversity of encounters, spells, quests and, well, just about everything, is staggering, and most of it has a satisfying conclusion with a great piece of loot and a cool fight at the end. The combat is often criticized on the Codex for not being turn-based which, to my mind, is quite like criticizing a cat for not being a dog. Baldur's Gate 2 checks nearly every content-box of an RPG flawlessly: a multitude of quests, vast amounts of unique and interesting loot, a myriad of monsters to fight, and a story which, while not exactly Shakespeare material, is quite solid and has one of video gaming's most memorable villains, voiced by an actor giving the performance of his career. Its sole, lackluster aspect is its mediocre character customization, but even in this it gets more milage out of AD&D than most games. BG2 might have been the start of Bioware's decline with its angsty, teenage companions, but it is also the mid era RPG at its pinnacle, filled with so much stuff in so many flavours you'll never get bored. Add to this the masterpiece of modding called Sword Coast Stratagems which presents the best, most tactical AI scripts ever written for an RPG, and this content-brimming titan turns into an exquisite combat experience as well.



octavius: In my opinion, this is pretty much the perfect RPG. First, it has an interesting storyline. Sure, the protagonist is a Chosen One, but (s)he's only one of several chosen ones - and in the end there can be only one. The writing is a bit on the juvenile side, but then so is much of fantasy literature. The antagonist is a guy you'll really learn to hate, and he is masterfully voice acted. Overall the voice acting is very good and, most importantly, limited -- only the parts that need to be voice acted are, such as greetings, intros, battle shouts, etc. No need to suffer through endless slow speeches.



Then there's a good mix of companions. They aren't as numerous as in BG1, but more fleshed out, with interjections and banter. Playing through the game with different party compositions, resulting in different party banters, makes it more replayable than most other RPGs. The fact that people tend to hate Anomen, Aerie and Minsc shows that BioWare was able to make engaging NPCs. And unlike BG1, where you were virtually forced to be good, you can do some pretty evil things in BG2, such as goading the wanna-be-paladin Anomen into joining the Dark Side. Personally I didn't like Imoen, but that was mainly because the voice actress who did the chirpy, merry Imoen of BG1 so well, failed to "nail" the more serious, moodier Imoen of BG2.



The game is huge, with lots of different areas to explore brimming with content. Especially Athkatla, the capital of Amn that functions as your base of operations in the early game, is a joy to explore, and is definitely the best designed city in any computer RPG, with every inch of real estate used to good effect. The combat is real-time with pause, which is the main reason some people dislike BG2. I was skeptical about the combat too at first, but once I got used to it, I discovered that it works pretty well. Compared to the turn-based Gold Box games, there are far more options here when it comes to skills, abilities, spells, items and monster variety, as well as the better (and moddable) AI. Combined with the best encounter design in any RPG I've played, the overall result is outstanding, despite the RTwP.



The game is infamous for introducing romances, but thankfully they are not the focus of the game like they apparently became in later BioWare games, and can safely be ignored. Overall BG2 is a very well-rounded and large game that does not have any definite weaknesses. That is, unless you hate RTwP.







Jasede: Arcanum is a vast, sprawling, buggy mess, with wonky combat, questionable mechanics and a sense of game balance that would make the Dark Souls developers commit seppuku. It's also incredibly sad. This game attempts much and fails in more categories than I care to explain. And yet it has flashes of brilliance that make it more memorable to me than even Fallout.



For one, the character creation is delightfully complicated. Arcanum can be played in a stunning variety of builds. You might find yourself drifting towards Speech-tagged gunslinger in Fallout on repeated playthroughs, but the staggering amount of skills, abilities, backgrounds, races, recipes, and so on and so on, which more often than not have an effect on dialogue, truly allow for diverse and varied approaches. You want to be an assassin? By all means. A thief? Sure. Have others fight your battles? Unlike Fallout, this is a lot more possible in this game. Add to all that the possibility to branch into magic or technology -- or neither, or both -- and you are met with a veritable playground of choices from the moment you create your character. It helps that the world you then explore is lovingly detailed, steeped in deep melancholy, and realized wonderfully through newspapers, rumors, and vibrant, varied towns, each with their unique flavor.



I really hope you like string quartets.



Koschey: Arcanum has its fair share of flaws. Yet it is high up amongst my favorites, because despite its flaws it manages to hit all the right notes. A high fantasy world in the throes of an industrial revolution with a lot of steampunk thrown in for good measure, accompanied by a great and perfectly fitting soundtrack. Likeable companions, a great villain with a well-reasoned motivation to his actions, interesting lore, and a nice twist on the usual Chosen One routine. What Arcanum does best, however, is reactivity. Not only do mages, thieves, inventors, etc., differ in how they play, but also in how the world treats them. Furthermore, almost every choice you make is acknowledged in some way, be it your in-character decisions, stats, abilities, race, gender, companions, or even the things you wear.



If you can stomach the boring combat and the occasional tedious dungeon crawl, give Arcanum a chance. You will not regret it.



Grunker: The quintessential Codex RPG in many ways, in the sense that the Codex has always had a weakness for diamonds in the rough. Arcanum is a monstrously huge but ultimately incredibly ugly jewel. The game is terrifyingly ambitious in every aspect of its design: an open and incredibly diverse character system, an insanely large world to explore, a complicated story and reactivity the likes of which few games since have been able to match. The trouble is, however, that Arcanum remains more of a design concept than an actual game, since so little of what was implemented actually works. Viewed favourably, Arcanum is the idea of the perfect RPG - viewed critically, it is a vast desert of wasted potential. The game showed us just how great RPGs could be, but failed to deliver on that promise of greatness itself. As such, perhaps Arcanum deserves the high placement, despite being more of a vision than a game.







Xor: Bloodlines has the best ambiance of any RPG I've ever played. From the dark alleys of downtown L.A., to the glittering streets of Hollywood by night, to the horrors found in vampire dens, Bloodlines manages to capture the soul of Vampire: the Masquerade. While it does have some flaws - the action-based combat, the rushed final act, and Troika's hallmark lengthy unskippable dungeons full of enemies - what elements it does well, it does very well. The clever writing, memorable characters, and the atmosphere that is second to none easily make this game worth a playthrough.



Grunker: Bloodlines is great in spite of itself. It plays awkwardly, it's outdated, and it shows its tumultuous development cycle in each crack and crevice. What binds it all together and makes it hold up is the atmosphere. And what an atmosphere that is: from the minute you get to the title screen you are treated to a perfectly composited menu theme along with a visual aesthetic that combines so well with the music the two become uneeringly entwined. It's cohesive, in other words, and informs you immediately about the game's mood. Then you enter the world and get the distinct impression that every visual designer had to write the project's vision on a blackboard 500 times before they could start working. There's just no other explanation of how everything fits so well together and seems to be designed by a single mind around a single, great idea. To this mix, Bloodlines adds great writing that fits with the style - a snarky cynicism that rarely goes to Deadpool levels which means it ends up being more grounded ("The Golden Temple in Chinatown - it's a pisspoor copy of a real place"). Additionally, the complicated politics of the world are fleshed out in some way or another in almost every single conversation, which fools you into believing you're playing a game with high stakes even if the C&C is minimal. Quests or plot developments often focus on one of the greatest themes of WoD: how agency is a mirage, information is always incomplete and the larger structure of society and power is the true decider. As is often quoted, Bloodlines also features some of the best voice acting in video game history. All in all, Bloodlines kind of shames a lot of the modern sandbox games by showing how foolish their attempts at achieving immersion through emulating the real world is - you don't get sold on a fiction by it copying the real world, that just draws attention to the areas where the world clearly doesn't act as it should. You get sold on a world by it adhering to its own, internal logic, its inner consistency, if its themes are otherwise appealing.



In other words, Bloodlines is like an ode to the importance of aesthetics. A critical memo to those (including me at some points in my life) who would claim that "substance" (i.e. game mechanics, themes of the story or whatever) is the only worthy pursuit.



DeepOcean: Atmosphere is the name of this game; it is the greatest achievement of Bloodlines. The realistic art style with abundant use of color; the incredible facial animation that, even if technically limited compared to the likes of L.A. Noire, manages to do a much better job of conveying NPC personalities; the electronic and low key music; the incredible voice acting and the competently written dialogue - all of that makes the immersion meter (dirty word, I know) go through the roof.



Bloodlines is the closest you're going to get to a game making you feel like you're a creature of the night. It never got to be a horror game, but the feeling of creepiness was constant and oppressive - the designers took obvious inspiration from horror movies while adapting their rhythm to that of the World of Darkness lore. All of this would have been useless had Bloodlines fallen prey to the hysterical need of many a modern game to handhold the player and scream the plot in your face; fortunately it didn't do any of that. Another big point in the game's favor is the way different races impact gameplay, and while this aspect isn't perfect, playing as a Malkavian differs a lot from playing as a Ventrue.



The atmosphere is excellent, the exploration is rewarding, the replayability is high, and the characters and quests are really good. What, then, is Bloodlines' biggest problem? It's being a story-focused game and not a full-fledged RPG, but also neither a good first person shooter nor a good third person hack'n'slash. Bloodlines carries the curse of all action hybrids such as Deus Ex - the curse that only gets worse as you advance in the game and have to do a lot more shooting than questing. The shooting is, however, mediocre at best, especially near the endgame, and the final levels are a boring slog.



Considering that, instead of fixing old gameplay problems, RPGs have devolved into dating sims/choose your own adventure games for retarded people, Bloodlines fully deserves its place on this list - even despite the numerous problems it has on the gameplay front.







Clockwork Knight: Depending on how refined your tastes supposedly are, this is either a comedic take on Fallout 1 with a bigger world and more things to do, or the beginning of the end. Boasting way more pop culture references and in-jokes than the prequel, Fallout 2 can take you out of the fabled state of "immersion" in a blink, and put you back there just as fast. One moment you'll be weighting the pros and cons of working with Faction A instead of their bitter rivals, Faction B. Then you're suddenly taking part in a Kung-Fu tournament. Later you meet a suspicious surgeon and wonder if installing the subcutaneous armor is worth the drastic effect it will have on your appearance. Shortly after that, Tom Cruise drags you to a chair to watch a scientology video. But hey, that video gave me two extra points of Luck for some reason; I wonder how to make use of that with my character build...



This goes for the entire game. People who liked Fallout for being similar to an efficiently organized sandbox with sufficient buckets and shovels for all the kids will probably not be very fond of this giant kitty litter where sometimes one big kid gets up and goes around kicking everyone else's castles down. But that doesn't change the fact that it is a really big box with lots of toys. Yes, some of those toys are things like real-world weapons that seem a bit out of place in this game, but hey.



If you are reading this and haven't played either of the original games yet (I'm sure you were quite busy), I'd recommend starting with FO2 first. It introduced some much needed improvements to the first game, such as the "Push NPC out of the way" button for those times someone decides to squat on the doorway (WHY HAS NO ONE ELSE COPIED THIS) and being able to give specific orders to your followers, and even a proper system of trading with them. Plus the unending torrent of jokes from this hyperactive kid won't bother you as much as it would if you were already accustomed to its older, serious brother.



In case you're wondering, the third brother fell on his head as a child. Ignore him and he should lose interest after a while.



tuluse: "Bigger, better, badder" might as well have been the tagline for Fallout 2. Bigger: the game world is huge compared to Fallout 1. There is a lot more stuff to do, and it has probably 3 or 4 times the content as the first game. Better: they cleaned up the character system a bit. The useless skills are now a little less useless. The faction mechanics were significantly upgraded and made more important. The game was made by people who clearly understood what was fun about Fallout 1. Badder: the large world lost the coherency of the first game's smaller one, and often feels like a theme park. They also jam packed the game with pop culture references frequently breaking Tim Cain's "it has to make sense even if you don't get the reference" rule. Overall a very good RPG, just not the revelation that the first game was.



undecaf: I had the misfortune (or maybe fortune) of playing the Fallout series in the wrong order - starting with the second game, which as a result stuck with me more than the first one did. As a sequel to one of the most revered RPGs of all time, Fallout 2 doesn't go off its way to reinvent the wheel, but offers what is pretty much an expanded version of its predecessor with a new storyline and a cast of mostly excellent characters.



Thanks to how well its different parts interact, Fallout 2 offers a still nigh unrivaled kind of gameplay with just the right amount of abstraction. Simple as it may be on the surface, it does its job well while also allowing imagination to fill in certain gaps without being completely reliant on it. While the game suffers from an excessive quantity of over the top and fourth wall breaking humor (which some would say stands in contrast to the otherwise extremely bleak world) and doesn't quite reach the literary level, tone or consistency of its predecessor, the sheer scope and wealth of excellent role-playing possibilities easily make up for that. After all these years since its release and all the pompously advertised technical advancements in the gaming industry, Fallout 2 still stands well on its own feet as one of the best RPG experiences I've ever had the pleasure of playing.







Broseph: The Codex seems split on this game; either you love it to death and praise it as a true successor to the original Fallout games, or you declare it a mediocre but well-intentioned attempt at resurrecting the franchise in a shoddy game engine. I am firmly in the former camp. For all its flaws, the amount of replay value New Vegas offers compared to other RPGs is nearly unparalleled. In most RPGs with factions, you're given the option of doing quest X for faction A or quest Y for faction B. Not so in this game. Almost every quest has multiple resolutions and methods of dealing with it based on your character build, and I especially liked donning a disguise and doing quests within an organization to weaken them from the inside. This is the kind of stuff I always dreamed about experiencing in a computer RPG, but most have never delivered in the way of reactivity as much as this. New Vegas slightly suffers from the loot hoarding, hiking simulator FPS gameplay it inherited from Fallout 3, but it's the best we could have hoped for as a true Fallout sequel in 2010.



undecaf: Fallout: New Vegas bravely continues the narrative legacy of Fallout and Fallout 2, and it could be, and has been, argued that in some respects it even outdoes them. In particular, the choices and consequences the game presents are - at times - some of the best offered in recent years in the RPG genre, and it also allows for a delightful amount of satisfying role-playing options.



On the less positive side, the game also continues the technical and mechanical legacy of Fallout 3 (which I won't mention twice here). While there are clear improvement everywhere, all across the board, the game's potential and scope are unfortunately marred by the oxidated technology and uninspired gameplay inherited from its chronologically closest predecessor.







Grunker: Modern stealth games and Deus Ex-likes - oft-times called "0451 games" - make one core mistake in their design. This mistake is the most apparent in Arkane Studio's Dishonored, but it can, in one way or another, be found in almost every 0451-game released since 2004. They ask you to focus on either stealth, combat or some other aspect of their "toolbox" design, and the character development and reward structures push you down "corridors" of character customization, offering you the "choice" of how to play the game from beginning to end, rather than asking you to utilize the full extend of the varied skills at your disposal.



What made Deus Ex so mind-blowingly awesome, such a hallmark of game design, is that it asks you to decide, for each single obstacle you face, which approach you want to use. You're not asked to stealth through the whole game even when combat seems a better approach, or to shoot and kill everyone even when creeping through the shadows would be smarter. It doesn't reward you for sticking to a single course of action during the entire game. It lets you decide what fits any given situation. Deus Ex, in other words, makes you feel like a superhuman spy with a massive toolkit fitted for any obstacle - your success depends on your ability to identify which part of your kit is best suited for the challenge you face. Contrast this to other games in the genre, which all to often restricts you to one set of tools for each and every encounter - since the character customization or reactivity penalizes you if you try to mix it up.



Deus Ex understood what each of its spiritual successors has failed to grasp, and for that, I salute it.



Ravel myluv: Deus Ex might feel bad in its gameplay, but it is a classic case where, if the player is willing to ignore the game's individual shortcomings, the whole forms a greater thing than the sum of its parts. Deus Ex offers many different paths and options to the player, setting a standard for all FPS/RPG hybrids. The game's pace is handled wonderfully, alternating between action, infiltration, and social interactions... Every level feels unique, and the game doesn't shy away from playing with your expectations.



The scenario is clever while not taking itself too seriously (which is further helped by the tongue-in-cheek voice acting). There's a sense of believability to the people you meet and the places you explore, and credit goes to the developers for not going the "epic" route of making everything grandiose and disproportionate. Overall, not only is Deus Ex a historically important RPG, but it is still tremendously enjoyable today since there are very few other games that can match its level design and writing







Aeschylus: A number of years ago, I played a game called Morrowind. It was a fairly fun game, and I sunk quite a few hours into it, but was consistently left feeling less than satisfied by the cookie-cutter NPCs, largely empty open-world, and generic writing and quest lines. Then, not long after, I picked up a game called Gothic II, and I thought Ah, this is what Morrowind should have been. Gothic II (along with its expansion) is both the greatest open-world RPG, and the greatest action RPG ever made bar none. The game is unforgivingly difficult, but rarely unfair. You will die a lot, particularly early on, but that only serves to make your eventual progress more satisfying. Unlike most games in its genre, every single bit of the world that you can explore in Gothic II is filled with interesting things to discover and quests to undertake. This is quite an accomplishment given that the game is around 3x-4x larger than the original, and no other game achieves neither this scope nor density of content. Sadly, no game of the genre since has been able to measure up to Gothic II's greatness -- some have made competent attempts (Risen), but none have reached its heights. Play it, and embrace being torn to bits by wildlife when you wander too far.



Koschey: Gothic 2 is to Gothic somewhat like what Fallout 2 is to Fallout, just with less Monty Python. That is, it provides more of everything, effectively doubling or even tripling in size as well as improving on the UI and some mechanics, yet also loses some of the mood and atmosphere of its predecessor. There is no handholding, no level-scaling and almost no randomization; everything is hand-placed. Combat is mostly challenging, especially with the expansion; exploring every nook and cranny and sneaking past tough enemies is fun and rewarding. Early in the game, hearing a shadowbeast's snore without being able to spot the beast itself is a positively tense experience.



If you like exploring large, consistent worlds without stuff like quest compass, Gothic 2 is a game you should try out.



Jedi Master Radek: Piranha Byte's masterpiece features possibly the best gameplay for low and middle level characters in an RPG ever. Really challenging at the beginning, it gives you true chills when it rewards you with a decent sword or a new level up. Non-respawning adversaries tie combat in with the world exploration while also giving the player an excellent opportunity to be torn apart by the shadowbeast in a couple of hits. You will remember this failure - and where the beast lives. Someday it will cease to live, providing yet another strong feeling of satisfaction and accomplishment.



When the player gains his few first levels and joins a faction, he feels like a true citizen of the game world. Skillful design and authentic NPC behavior only add to that. Finally, the game's action combat system is fun and the C&C and quest design are solid. Gothic 2 shows how great a sandbox game can be when it chooses to go for less, but more dense, detailed, hand-placed content and throws a challenging gameplay on top of that.







Broseph: Morrowind is, hands down, one of my top five RPGs. Vvardenfell is barely a 10 mile island, but it's designed in such a way, with natural barriers and excellent use of fog, that it feels massive. The game oozes atmosphere from every pore, its story and lore are almost unrivaled, and despite playing it for hundreds of hours I still feel like there is more to be discovered.



On a superficial level, Oblivion and Skyrim seem very similar to Morrowind, but in all actuality they could not be more different. Where Morrowind is subtle and intelligent, its successors are blunt and dumbed down. Play this game, especially if you prioritize story, lore, atmosphere and open world exploration above all else in your RPGs (and if you can't find Caius Cosades, Oblivion or Fallout 3 may be more to your liking). It's the best Elder Scrolls title, and it's not even a contest.



laclongquan: A classic tittle with all the trademarks of Bethesda's game makers -- some very involving gameplay that will keep you busy for hours, gorgeous art and graphics for all you to stare at, an open world for you to sandbox in, diversified item crafting for your inner packrat, and extreme moddability to boot. After you get tired of the base game, you can easily spend the same amount of time on various mods ranging from graphic changes to new quests.



Regrettably, Morrowind also features Bethesda's trademark writing, which is like a donkey hoof to the face. But that's okay - nobody plays Bethesda games for their writing - so feel free to totally (and easily) ignore it; you won't lose much. It is no wonder that the modding community and hardcore players alike adore this title. Morrowing is a good game for beginners to learn to play RPGs, for advanced players to learn how to powergame, and for hardcore long-timers to just mess around. This is the apex of Bethesda's game-making.







Lady Error: If you are looking for choices and consequences, this game is for you. You play a single character in a post-apocalyptic society. It is possible to align with different factions and backstab any or all of them, if you so choose. Combat is hard and unforgiving, which is why some love it and others hate it. The game is built for replayability, since it is impossible to see all the content in one playthrough. The graphics range from awesome (character portraits) to serviceable (3D graphics). One frequent criticism is in fact the 3D engine and the necessity to rotate the view. Overall, Age of Decadence can be considered a modern hardcore RPG classic - made by fellow Codexers.



AwesomeButton: Age of Decadence is an RPG done right. The game combines great writing and storytelling with branching storylines more complex than anything you've seen in a computer game.



There is a lot of depth to AoD's perfectly balanced turn-based combat, and deep classless skills-based character creation and development system. Weapons are split into synergy-related groups. The same weapons can execute different types of strikes, or target different body parts, with varying action point cost and to-hit chance.



Good old-fashioned common sense will be what gets you through the story in one piece, along with saving your game often. Whether it's about an ingame decision - like fighting a group of six armed-to-the-teeth thugs - or about your long term strategy in character-building - like spreading his character's skillpoints too thin over too many unrelated skills, being realistic about your character's capabilities is what will keep you alive. Putting yourself in your character's shoes, circumventing his limitations instead of playing superman - isn't this what role-playing is fundamentally about?







Jasede: Dark Souls is a rare gem in that it manages to be good at everything. Most RPGs merely excel in some distinct areas, such as character building, writing or other discrete aspects. Rarely does a game come along that executes everything it attempts, and does so with remarkable grace. Dark Souls is a study in melancholy and depression, plunging us into a world that is bleak and hopeless without the usual overly emotional or even pathos-laden trappings that often accompany these themes. This game is dark and straight to the point. It knows exactly what it wants to express, and every detail of the game - every line of text, every voice actor, every combat animation, every placed enemy, every area, every weapon - works towards realizing the idea it wanted to convey.



In Dark Souls all categories that make a game find themselves refined to a sharp point. I understand you might have reservations about trying an RPG (the genre status which is subject to much debate) that was first released on a console. However, if you've ever thought I've shown any semi-reliable taste at all you will simply have to take my word for it: Dark Souls ranks among the finest games ever created and is a much-needed reminder that not all modern games compromise integrity for the sake of broadening market appeal. If you ever needed a reminder that video games are not yet dead, this is it.



Bubbles: More of an action game than an RPG, Dark Souls is heavily combat focused and features only minimal story and dialogue. Luckily, the third person combat is excellent, greatly rewarding player skill while still working off a character stat system. The game maintains a strong sense of gameplay variety by offering a ton of different weapons with different move sets and over 40 different spells and miracles. It is also notoriously difficult and can frustrate new player to the point of rage quitting, though sufficient practice will greatly reduce the challenge.



If the combat is great, the atmosphere is better; the game makes fantastic use of its dated graphics and minimal soundtrack to create a bleak, lifeless, post-apocalyptic twist on a medieval fantasy setting populated almost exclusively by undead, monsters and demons. This tone sets it radically apart from the vast majority of RPGs out there; the game is relentlessly depressing and almost every character's fate ends in misery. Other noteworthy features include a tiny bit of C&C, a (rapidly shrinking) PvP and co-op community, and a new game+ mode if you need more of a challenge.



Dark Souls’ only downside is a truly horrible control scheme, which can either be fixed with a gamepad or partially alleviated by using the







MpuMngwana: Plagued on release by ridiculously long loading screens and a plethora of game breaking bugs, Pathfinder: Kingmaker hasn't been warmly received by the mainstream. Once you get past the technical issues, though, you will find an extremely ambitious spiritual successor to the Baldur's Gate series.



Kingmaker is more than just a clone, however; it adds a few twists of its own. Most notably, there is the kingdom management system, where you build and upgrade your towns, and assign NPCs to solve various problems or participate in numerous projects. Also, the game finally solves the rest spamming problem the Infinity Engine games always had, by combining heavy and costly camping supplies with (fairly generous) time limits, thus giving you the incentive to make as much progress as possible before replenishing your health and spells. Finally, the Pathfinder ruleset allows for a wide variety of builds, making character development more involved than the game's major source of inspiration.



While most technical problems have been fixed since release, the quality of the game still sharply drops in the last two chapters; the good parts, however, still offer more unique and interesting content than most other RPGs, and I can wholeheartedly recommend Kingmaker to any fan of Infinity Engine games.



Humanophage: PF:KM expands on the formula of Baldur’s Gate 1 by introducing much richer character-building from the P&P original.



It preserves freedom of exploration, a hallmark of BG1 that its spiritual sequels lacked. Loyalty to the original P&P system makes PF:KM less simplistic and “streamlined” than has come to be expected from the genre in the recent years. It does not pander to the low-skilled: the combat is famously uncompromising, character-building invites planning, spells and buffing are not to be ignored, whilst equipment needs constant updating. The game does not artificially isolate you from opponents above your level. This lack of hand-holding makes PF:KM uncommonly exciting and rewarding.



PF:KM has an expansive campaign with plenty of choice reactivity, including branching decisions which may affect companions. Unusually, the campaign dedicates a hefty portion to low-to-mid level adventures - a welcome change from the regular heaping of gods and dragons onto the player. The setting is well-explained - say, there are flavourful descriptions for monsters. Initially bug-ridden, the game has been fixed by now. PF:KM is detailed, dynamic, diverse, enormous, tough, bold, and brimming with late 90s ethos while looking perfectly modern.







Cholo: The king of turn-based squad level tactics games, which no competitor has been able to dethrone in fifteen years. Command a group of elite (or comically incompetent) mercenaries and orchestrate a guerrilla warfare campaign across the Arulcian countryside.



What makes this game a classic, other than the nearly flawless combat system, is the respect with which it treats the player. You're free to do whatever you want, in any order you want. There is only one objective, the assassination of the despotic Queen Deidranna, and this can be pursued in any manner that you see fit. You could finish the game in ten minutes if you're skilled enough, or spend an entire month on one campaign. As your soldiers accomplish tasks, level up (and demand more money!), and get better equipped, you feel like you're really in charge of the operation.



The mercs you recruit feel alive and vibrant, each with their own specialties, voice, personalities, and preferences. The look of the game has aged well, and the animations are notable for their quality. The game offers both tactical and strategic flexibility to the player to such a degree that subsequent playthroughs are as fresh and enjoyable as they are inevitable.



And should you need more guns? More stats? A deeper combat system? Two words:



HiddenX: In a quest to free Arulco from the dictator Deidranna Reitmann, you have to build up your character and up to 3 mercenary squads. Most mercenaries cost money (with the exception of freedom fighters), and you have to pay them by selling loot or freeing and holding cities to get an income. All mercenaries have a unique background, some love while some hate each other; others have drug addiction. Each playthrough is different if you go with a different squad mix. You can capture anti-aircraft bases, too. That way you can take advantage of a helicopter when moving your squads around.



All fights are turn-based and offer some of the best tactical combat I've seen in a video game. You can crouch, sneak, cover, snipe, burst, bomb, etc., your way through. You can use stuff ranging from night vision goggles to anti-tank rocket launchers, which you must loot or buy. So we have a strategic aspect - freeing cities and anti-aircraft bases; a tactical aspect - the turn- and squad-based tactical fighting; and a role-playing and questing aspect - there are different quests and find-and-rescue missions hidden all over Arulco. You can find new mercenaries, or get money and extra equipment.



All these aspects plus the great variety of mercs with hilarious personalities to choose from, make this game extremely fun, interesting and challenging. The replay value is ultra-high - I've played this game more than 10 times, not counting the excellent mods you can get for free. Highly recommended!







Mark Richard: A masterpiece or a scourge on the RPG genre? Depends on who you ask. Our hero Geralt is barely allowed to walk across a room without a literal step by step guide, revealing the game's serious doubts about the average player's intelligence. Fortunately what The Witcher 3 does well, it does REALLY well, and if you can accept some patronizing design choices you'll be rewarded with storytelling and presentation that's second to none. The world of The Witcher is adapted from the novels in uncanny detail with well over a hundred compelling side quests that could pass for official short stories. It's like a game made by superfans who by some miracle turned out to be excellent storytellers in their own right, and it's all bolstered by stellar voice acting & music to produce a consistent high level of polish from start to finish.



MpuMngwana: This game is far from perfect. Equipment progression is terrible, combat is serviceable at best (though some of the death and dismemberment animations are pretty fun to watch), alchemy has tragically been dumbed down since the first game, it has that annoying "enemies who are higher level than the player have artificially inflated stats" thing going on, and even the story kinda drops the ball near the end.



What the game does well, however, it does really well. Most of the time, it feels like a quality fantasy TV show - there is the overarching search for Ciri going on in the background, but the focus is on whatever is going on right now. The writing, voice acting and presentation are good enough to give context to the mostly repetitive gameplay and make it an enjoyable experience. There is a lot of care put in every single quest - even the seemingly generic monster hunts will have some memorable moments or a twist. And if you ever get bored and are in the mood for some actually good gameplay, The Witcher 3 has you covered with the addictive Gwent minigame.



The game has received two major expansion packs since release. Hearts of Stone has some of the greatest storytelling and quests in the franchise, while Blood and Wine gives Geralt of Rivia a much more satisfying conclusion than the base game's somewhat mediocre ending.







Vlajdermen: Underrail is a "retro-revival" indie game. Those often get a bad rep for being nothing but ripoffs of classic games, which is both true and false here. Underrail has a lot of its own spice, but the the influence from classic RPGs can be seen everywhere.



It took the dreary, labyrinthine world design from System Shock 2, XP system from Diablo, and everything else from Fallout. And it's all good thanks to Underrail's commitment to the "golden mean" philosophy: it has the perfect ratio of combat to exploration, luck to tactics, gameplay to story, levity to gravity. On top of that, it has the best combat out of any single-hero RPG, ever. It's so good I've heard people call it a full-on tactical RPG.



The aforementioned "own spice" shows the most in its quest design. You'll stumble across an island where people get attacked by their doppelgangers. You'll have to escape from an enemy base while it's slowly flooding with mutagen, and if you're not careful, get mutated yourself. Even the more standard quests are still cleverly written and full of edgy Balkan humour. Also, if combat isn't your thing, you can always choose the Oddity system which will instead award you XP for finding collectibles.



Underrail isn't just "retro-revival done right", it's the ideal retro-revival game. One that has the soul and imagination that makes it worth playing even in a sea of classic RPGs that inspired it. As long as you're not a storyfag.



Marten Broadcloack: Fallout's influence on Underrail is everywhere: in its turn-based battles, its caustic conversations, and of course in its isometric, pixelated, grim post-apocalyptic world. In some areas, Underrail doesn't quite have the mastery Fallout had – but what it lacks in mesmerizing death animations and quantity of dialogs, it makes for in finely tuned combat mechanics, large build variety and innovative exploration with no worldmap.



Whether you play a heavily armored hammer-wielding warrior, a classic sniper, or a stealthy assassin relying on crossbows and homemade mines, the tremendous tactical depth and encounter variety of the game can keep you hooked for dozens of hours. Of course, it would also be a shame to ignore the psi abilities, a range of skills turning your character into a powerful spellcaster – and even there, three distinct schools of magi… sorry, three distinct schools of *psi* will give you delicous dilemmas every time you level up.



But wait, there's more! Surprisingly inventive quests will throw you inside a serial killer's den or into a hostage situation, an exploration-based XP system will reward your curiosity and sense of adventure, the wonders of the sprawling underground world will alternately amaze you and disgust you. Yes, it's still not Fallout. Because in some ways, it's so much better than Fallout.







Aeschylus: The first game in the Gothic series is smaller, clunkier, and more difficult to get into than its classic sequel, but once you do break the initial barrier of a somewhat bizarre control scheme and dying every five minutes (some might consider this a plus) you'll discover a uniquely atmospheric and surprisingly well-designed open-world action RPG. Though the world itself is not as large as what can be seen in games by a certain company-that-shall-not-be-named, Gothic was the first open-world game where the world actually felt like it was designed, rather than simply being a giant sandbox where generic NPCs milled about generic buildings doing nothing of importance. In Gothic, every NPC is unique, and every corner of the world you can explore contains something worth seeing.



The game isn't perfect -- the controls can be tedious to use at times, and an occasionally frustrating number of bugs remain, but Gothic is not a game that should be overlooked. It's one of a tiny group of open-world games with meaningful character interaction and exploration, not to mention playing it will give you all the more excuse to play its absolutely amazing sequel.



Koschey: A lot of the things that can be said about Gothic 2 apply equally to Gothic 1, the most noticeable differences between the two being size and polish. The world of Gothic is tough and unforgiving, and rushing along unprepared will surely lead you to death. Set in a prison full of armed criminals, Gothic presents the player with an exceedingly hostile environment, even more so than its sequel. The prisoner camps follow the rule of force, and the nameless hero is pathetically weak at the beginning of the game. Piss off the wrong people and they will mop the floor with you, laugh in your face, and take all your money. You can't trust anyone, not even those who may seem friendly, though you will also find a handful of comrades who will stay true to you for the entire series.



If you have already played Gothic 2, you know what you can expect from this game. If you haven't played either, I would recommend starting with Gothic 1. While knowledge of the first game isn't strictly required for playing Gothic 2, that will not only allow you to enjoy the first game in its own right, but also to spot a lot of additional details as you play the sequel and appreciate just how much the colony has changed by the time of Gothic 2.







Ravel myluv: KOTOR 2 is to KOTOR 1 what Obsidian games are to BioWare games. More ambitious and much better written, but also more infuriating in many ways. KOTOR 2's main strength lies its ability to deconstruct the Star Wars mythology and its usual Manichean characters, even though it does seem a bit forced sometimes and there's no avoiding Chris Avellone's usual bloated ten minute monologues. The atmosphere is very dark and you can't escape the feeling that there's a Sith Lord lurking in the shadows... There is, further, a sense of decadence and despair to the game that should appeal to the Codex's most embittered members.



The characters that Obsidian actually spent time on are very memorable. The trio of villains, for instance, is one of the most badass I've seen in a video game. Gameplay hasn't changed much from KOTOR 1, but the game has Bloodlines-like stretches of never-ending combat that really get the point across that the game was left unfinished and released too early.



Overall, KOTOR2 is the definition of a flawed gem. You might not actually enjoy playing it as much as KOTOR 1, but you'll eviscerate anyone who dares to claim that the first one is a better game.



Deuce Traveler: This game was published with a jarringly brief ending, so you will want to download the fan patches which restore the cut content in order to fully enjoy the game. But when you do, you'll find yourself immersed in a very well written game.



The protagonist is an intriguing character: a Jedi and leader of soldiers who went to war but did not fall into subservience to the Dark Side despite his contemporaries becoming Sith. This backdrop drives the narrative, as the player enjoys a greater degree of free will than the supporting characters, all of which are riding events they cannot control. The tale unfolds as a tragedy, where even the most monstrous of the villains are revealed to be fatally flawed mortal men and women whose decisions lead to their undoing, while your own chosen path decides who among them will live or die.



I won't ever choose this game among my favorite computer RPGs because of the mediocre combat and poorly designed loot system, but I will admit that it is my favorite video game in the Star Wars setting, and that is has a story I believe ranks up there with the original trilogy of movies.







MicoSelva: Generally considered inferior to its much-acclaimed sequel, Baldur's Gate has you embark on a journey through the Forgotten Realms' Sword Coast to experience a story that is both personal and world-changing. And by Sword Coast I mean every square foot of it because, while not being truly open world, the game has a huge number of wilderness locations. For most people, the sheer vastness of the world and the relatively low density of content are BG1's major flaws, but some, myself included, consider these traits to be an advantage over Baldur's Gate 2's rather artificial quest overload, as it makes the world feel more believable and alive.



Granted, the dungeons in this game are much less interesting, the fights much less epic and the loot much sparser (again, a good thing in my book), but the adventure is just as true, if not more.



Jedi Master Radek: The pioneer of the famous Infinity Engine is a difficult game to assess objectively. You can argue it's good or mediocre, often depending on your mood, or sometimes even - in a true bipolar disorder style - hold both opinions to be true at the same time.



Plot can be best described as solid but nothing special, filled with expository dialogue that is often either painful or merely an excuse to throw another dozen enemies at the player. Combat is easily the strongest point of this game, featuring a plethora of spells and classes based on the 2nd edition AD&D ruleset. Encounters can be adequately challenging and it's always fun to burn someone with a fireball. Choices and consequences are, however, limited, and many of the game's quests and encounters feel like filler thrown in with the sole purpose of giving some substance to BG's numerous large and empty wilderness areas.



Worth playing, however, if only for the excellent Durlag's Tower dungeon.







Broseph: Wizardry 8 is the game that made me realize that, for me, fun and challenging combat, character development and party management are far more important in a computer RPG than a masterful story or a solid grip on choice and consequence.



This is the very best of what the "blobber" (first-person party-based RPG) subgenre has to offer; an 8 character party, abstracted battlefield positioning, a greater variety of combat options for both magic and melee-oriented characters, and some solid dungeon crawling to boot. It gets criticized for having too many respawning "trash" encounters, but in the early stages of the game I actually appreciated the constant sense of danger. Wiz 8 also has some of the best voice acting and party banter out of any RPG out there, a great soundtrack, and fantastic art direction.



Jasede: Instead of writing a review I'll just recount my favorite Wizardry 8 story. I was replaying the game, this time vowing to finish it with a party that I imported from Wizardry VII, which, into VII, was imported from VI. During VI I got an item that had a lot of meaning in that game, given the limitations of the time. There was a chance to surrender this item for a huge reward in VII, but you could keep it and it'd import into 8. In 8, you meet a character related to the person who gave you this item. If you (and there are no hints in the entire game to suggest you do this) give this character the item from 6, you get a massive XP reward, some unique dialogue and a completed quest.



That moment is the reason this is one of my top 5 RPGs. You do not see this attention to detail anymore.







Xor: Neverwinter Nights 2's original campaign isn't exactly remembered fondly by the RPG community. How would Obsidian follow that up? How about making a game with some of the best writing since Planescape: Torment. Mask of the Betrayer weaves several story threads together beautifully to form a grand tragedy that focuses around your character. The companions are leaps and bounds better than the previous campaign, there's great variety in the visuals, and quest design and dialogue are greatly improved.



Pretty much the only things holding this game back are the engine, which still has problems, and the length - it's an expansion, so don't expect a 40 hour epic. Still, it's a great follow-up to the mediocre NWN2 OC, and easily worth a playthrough.



Wise Emperor: Being an add-on to the rather disappointing OC made by Obsidian in 2007, Mask of the Betrayer picks up where the original campaign ended, and is set in an obscure part of Forgotten Realms - Rashemen & Thay. The main strengths of the game are the plot, C&C, dialogue, characters, the curse mechanic, the interesting art style, and the music. Furthermore, its similarities to Planescape Torment are quite visible.



The plot revolves around a curse which expects the player to "eat" souls, its nature and that of the other characters involved, and fighting or embracing it further. The game offers at least two different options to resolve all quests, using alignment or skills, plus interesting, unconventional characters with tons of dialogue and the ability to kill and absorb any character you meet (including your companions).



The main weakness of the game is combat, as well as the camera controls, but as I mentioned the game is first and foremost plot and C&C-driven.







Lady Error: Almost 20 years in development, the spiritual sequel to Wizardry 6 & 7 delivers exactly what the starved fans of this genre were looking for. The tone of the game is somewhat lighter and sometimes closer to the Might & Magic games, yet the scope is even bigger than the monumental Wizardry 7. Grimoire contains user interface improvements, such as autowalking on a map and remembering the combat choices from previous rounds. Some people complain about the complexity of the game or its outdated graphics. Yet the philosophy of games like this is to evoke a dream-like state where you use your imagination to fill in the blanks - instead of having boring photorealistic graphics that leave nothing to imagination.



Dorateen: Released in 2017, this is a computer role-playing game belonging to the early 1990's, and places value on many design principles of that period. The game is viewed through an adventuring window, turn-based and grid-based, unapologetically opaque in delivery of mechanics as much as narrative; a behemoth in scope allowing multiple hundreds of hours of playing time for a player who is given just enough rope to hang their party as they explore Hyperborea. All this, as well as the chance to rise in exultation with each triumph, whether in combat or deciphering the mysteries of the richly developed game world.







Bubbles: Spooky-scary spaceship exploration/survival game with more zombies than you can shake a crowbar at. The super-blocky graphics from the dark age of 3D nonetheless manage to create a wonderful sense of atmosphere. Playing without spoilers is recommended, though you're likely to experience massive frustration at the punishing weapon degradation system and the constant enemy respawns. Features great level design, a number of alternate routes within the levels, secret stashes, stealth gameplay, hacking, a choice of melee/ranged/[magic equivalent] combat and a bunch of freaky-ass enemies that will give you nightmares. Excellently written crew logs abound. Inspired Bioshock in the same way that Planescape: Torment inspired Dragon Age 2.



skacky: Often lauded as one of the best games ever made, System Shock 2 is a sequel done right, not to mention an awesome game taken on its own. Set 72 years after the Citadel Station incident, it has you play as an unnamed UNN soldier waking up on the deserted starship Von Braun, a faster-than-light prototype accompanied by the UNN starship Rickenbacker, linked together by a tram tunnel. Unlike the first game, System Shock 2 is a RPG, and the amount of possible builds is astonishing. You can choose one of three classes at the beginning of the game, which offer unique playstyles, and then pick various perks. It is crucial to specialize and not spend points at random, because the game is unforgiving and often punishes the player for his or her mistakes. Instead of the usual experience points, you gain Cybernetic Modules that you can utilize to build your character the way you see fit. SS2 features a research system that is similar to XCOM's, though simplified, and a completely different interface compared to its prequel.



The game also uses Looking Glass Studios' Dark Engine with its fluid movement system and great sense of immersion. The atmosphere is dark, brooding, and scary. The music is a mix of techno beats and dark ambient that's very, very effective, but probably too loud at first, so I recommend that you tone it down a bit. The game features non-linear progression but is nevertheless a bit more restrictive than System Shock, mainly because the latter's levels were bigger and more sprawling. This isn't really an issue, though, since SS2 levels are still large enough and full of things to discover. The plot is well written and features a twist that everybody knows by now, but which still remains absolutely brilliant. The two issues I have with the game is the fact that level design gets sloppier and more linear as you progress (alas, a recurring theme in RPGs in general), and that the cyberspace was replaced with a rather boring hacking mini-game. But seeing as the cyberspace is impossible to replicate in the Dark Engine, I can't really blame the developers for that.



The bottom line is, System Shock 2 is an amazing game. Play it now if you still haven't.







Bubbles: If you ever played Baldur's Gate 1 and found yourself thinking "This is great, but I wish it had full party creation, a less confusing area and quest structure, and had a lot more combat and dungeons in it", then Icewind Dale is for you. Buoyed by one of the best soundtracks in gaming, and working off the exquisite AD&D second edition ruleset, IWD was made for those players who primarily enjoy Infinity Engine games for the combat. Graphics range from equal to BG1 quality to significantly better - especially the inventory icons and spellcasting animations are a true joy to behold.



Infinitron: Low-budget Infinity Engine dungeon crawling spinoff which features old-school full party creation. Icewind Dale's music and graphics are better than BG's, and Black Isle's writing is more mature and subdued compared to BioWare's. As a dungeon crawler, the combat in IWD takes front and center, and the combat encounters are appropriately better designed. However, even more so than Torment, the game doesn't provide the traditional sense of wide scope that most other games on this list do, which limits it appeal. You might not like this game if you don't enjoy playing around with AD&D character builds and testing their mettle in tactical combat, and even if you do, you might find it "too much of a good thing".







Aeschylus: Betrayal at Krondor is a classic for a number of reasons. It is one of the first games to feature a satisfying open world to explore, while also having one of the better stories to be found in video games at the time (or since, for that matter). The game was set in the world of Raymond E. Feist's novels, and was written by the accomplished duo of Neil Hallford and John Cutter. Even though I'm a particular fan of Feist's work, the characters and lore of the game are both extremely solid, and hold up quite well today irrespective of any feelings of nostalgia. There is a real sense of background and history to the world, which makes exploring the extensive landscape and wandering into seemingly non-descript towns an interesting experience each time.



While the story is a definite high point of the game, perhaps even more worthy of mention is the game's turn-based combat. Encounters range from simple skirmishes with bandits, to puzzle-like encounters with magical traps. It is further buoyed by an excellent magic system filled with strategic spells to manipulate the battlefield. Combine this with scarce special ammo for ranged weapons, equipment breaking at inopportune times, and unique enemies pulling out unexpected abilities it all comes together to make one of the best combat systems ever in an RPG. Sadly, the sequels (Betrayal in Antara and Return to Krondor) didn't live up to the original, but Betrayal at Krondor is a prime example of how to do a lot of things right, and should be played by a lot more people.



octavius: A game I missed when it was released back in 1993, when the Amiga was in decline and nearly all good games were DOS-only. The game is set in Midkemia, the world created by Raymond E. Feist for his Riftwar Saga series of Fantasy books. I read the first book - Magician - some years after BaK was released and thought it was very good. When I reread it and read the rest of the series as a preparation to playing BaK, however, I thought it was rather juvenile is style. In fact, I thought the writing and characters in the game were better than in the books; the style is more mature, and major characters can actually die. You control a party of three characters, but the game is divided into several chapters in which you control different characters.



This game should definitely appeal to those who like a good story in their RPGs. The setting is not terribly interesting, being a rather generic fantasy world, but it is quite well fleshed out and there's some nice attention to detail. But what makes Betrayal at Krondor so good, is that it is one of those very rare games that don't just have a good story, but also a solid combat engine coupled with a unique magic system. On top of that, which makes the game a true masterpiece, it also has great first-person exploraiton in a fairly open-ended world, as well as entertaining puzzles and NPC interaction. If I had to say something negative about the game, I'd mention that the character portraits look rather silly, being based on digitized actors wearing costumes.



Bottom line: a unique game which does everything that makes up a good RPG well, with the story being arguably its strongest aspect.







GarfunkeL: The first AD&D computer role-playing game. While it is extremely antiquated by modern standards when it comes to graphics and user-interface, it is perfectly playable thanks to DosBox. The simple but logical plot won't win any literary awards, but does its job well - propelling the player forward to discover new dungeons to romp through.



The first edition AD&D rules have been faithfully reproduced in-game, which creates a tactical combat system with high enough variety. You will create a six-character party, journey to Phlan and help the city recover from monstrous invasion, eventually discovering a new evil on the rise. Even the beginning is not completely linear, and by the mid-game the player is let loose on the world map with a stunning amount of freedom, which sadly few modern RPGs can rival.



Deuce Traveler: It took me several tries to beat this game, but not because of difficulty. Instead I rage-quit two times due to the stupid copy protection wheel I was forced to use in order to start and save my game each time I loaded Pool of Radiance up. So my playing through this wasn't until last year, when I downloaded some documents with answers to the copy protection questions that some kind soul had created.



And man, do I wish I had been a little more patient earlier. Pool of Radiance is a fantastic game that was ahead of its time, allowing for a wide range of tactical choices, a well-designed campaign progression, and such a solid transition of tabletop DnD to the computer that it spawned nearly a dozen sequels and offshoots. The main quest is also refreshing, as you aren't trying to save the world or rescue a princess. Your characters are simply trying to retake an overrun city from monsters on behalf of a displaced people, although of course you also engage in plenty of heroics along the way while dealing with daunting odds, insidious plots, haunted ruins, and rotten betrayal.



Game designers wishing to write more games using older DnD rulesets should be made to play this game in order to see how pacing, dungeon design, questing, and background story are all done right. Despite being made in 1988, Pool of Radiance is one of the best computer RPGs I have ever enjoyed.







Broseph: Might and Magic VI was the first installment in the storied Might and Magic series to feature 3D environments, free roaming movement, and optional real-time combat. It's also one of the largest and most content rich first person RPGs and generally one of the best RPGs I've ever played. Many an old grognard likes to dismiss the series from this point forward, and it's hard to deny that many aspects of gameplay took a downward turn from World of Xeen. However, The Mandate of Heaven also features the best and most memorable dungeon design in the series and a general feeling of adventure that is nearly unparalleled. Might and Magic VI doesn't handle you with kid gloves; instead it drops you right into to its huge, dangerous world and asks you to learn to fend for yourself.



Oh yeah, and it also has aliens, dragons, robots and laser guns, which is pretty damn cool. Play this game.



Minttunator: The first Might and Magic game to go 3D (though NPCs and monsters are still rendered as sprites) and abandon grid-based movement, MM6 is one of the more popular entries in the series - and for good reason. The game world is almost completely open from the start and the gameplay is fairly non-linear; you can pretty much go anywhere you want straight from level one, even though you are likely to get slaughtered for doing so. The world is also very large and the game in general is quite long (somewhere around 60-100 hours, depending on how thorough you are). The dungeons in MM6 are enormous; I don't mean simply "pretty big", I mean "butt-crushingly huge". You can easily spend hours clearing just one dungeon, and while it can get tedious at some points, one can't help but appreciate the effort put into designing them and the complete lack of hand-holding or quest compasses that are so prevalent in more recent games.



You'll notice that I haven't mentioned the storyline. The storyline doesn't matter. This game is about exploration, building your characters (the character development system is intuitive and addictive), and tons of - often rather simplistic and repetitive - combat against immense enemy hordes. Despite the repetitive filler combat, however, MM6 oozes atmosphere, charm and a je ne sais quoi that makes it almost impossible to put down. As is par for the course for the series, the soundtrack is also absolutely majestic.



In general - if you want a game with simple but addictive combat and a huge, quirky world to explore, drop whatever it is you're doing and go play Might and Magic VI right now.







EldarEldrad: The second part of Harebrained Schemes trilogy, Shadowrun: Dragonfall, is without a doubt the pinnacle of this RPG series. While Shadowrun Returns was too short and unpolished, Hong Kong is often criticized for an extensive narrative bias and reworked Matrix, Dragonfall has almost a perfect balance of lore, story and combat.



Story is closely intertwined with the events that are well-known to every Shadowrun fan, but at the same time the game tells the player everything he should know about common Shadowrun lore. This makes Dragonfall a perfect entry point into the vast Shadowrun community, covering both CRPG and board game.



Combat, while been criticized for its simplicity, is fairly competent. Having the same basis as XCOM: Enemy Unknown (turn-based tactical combat with extensive usage of cover), it is paying close attention to Shadowrun-specific features such as Matrix or different types of magic. Some combat situations are surprisingly well-thought and require harmonious team work – while your samurais throw some lead into enemies across the hall, shaman summons demons, and decker hacks enemy security system fighting ICs in virtual reality.



Overall, Shadowrun: Dragonfall is a pretty good game. If you like cyberpunk style (despite multiple fantasy tropes that is another Shadowrun feature), you shouldn't miss it.



Jedi Master Radek: Dragonfall may lack a complex combat system or robust character development (even if there are one or two nice encounters like the one with apex). However this Harebrained Schemes made game makes up for those shortcomings in writing, storytelling and atmosphere department. Contrary to other RPGs boasting about their storytelling, Dragonfall isn't overwritten, there is a nice balance between action and exposition. Each NPC serves a purpose and your party consist of pretty likable shadowrunners.



Thanks to hub structure you can choose between few missions available at a time. Each run is different, one day you participate in the corporate spying, the other you fight the neonazis, just to infiltrate corporate facility to kill a compromised shadowrunner in the next. Each mission has a few optional task that spice things up.



The game is good looking and has an excellent soundtrack by Jon Everist. It's a great entry point to the Shadowrun franchise.







Jasede: So you want to play Wizardry VII? First of all, take a month's vacation. It might be enough - but it's cutting it close. Wizardry VII improves on VI in almost every way. Everything is bigger. There are more items, more puzzles, more enemies, more NPCs, more text, more story, more challenges, more squares, more areas, more twisted mapping tricks, more skills. And that's only touching on some things.



The biggest change when you fire up VII is that everything is overhauled. VI was a dungeon crawl where you'd sometimes meet NPCs or solve puzzles. But if VI is a dungeon crawl, VII is a world crawl. You're thrust on a dangerous foreign planet with barely any clues on where to go. It's up to you to make allies or enemies as you explore it, up to you where to go, what to fight, what to do. Wizardry VII is one of the most dynamic games of its time: NPCs move around, plunder treasures if you don't move quickly enough, kill each other, and so on. While it's not true artificial intelligence, the mere fact that the world never stands still and every move you make, other NPCs might be closing in on important plot critical items makes the world come alive. And what a huge world it is! You'll be exploring forests, cities, strange abandoned towns, weird alien hives, ruins, even a city in the sky! The world in Wizardry VII is excruciatingly massive and you will spend a great deal of time trying to become familiar with it and unraveling its mysteries.



It is that sense of adventure that is very hard to find in an RPG, and Wizardry VII, despite its often punishing difficulty, has it in spades and is thus a must play in every RPG fan's book.



Dorateen: Wizardry VII is a remarkable computer role-playing game. The middle instalment of what would become the Cosmic Forge trilogy, it allowed the importing of characters from Wizardry VI, and then carrying them over to Wizardry 8, as well. There were multiple introductions available according to how a player finished Bane, or a separate start when playing Crusaders with a fresh new party of characters. Likewise, there were multiple endings that would lead into the conclusion of the saga, which introduced the enigmatic arch-antagonist, the Dark Savant.



While Bane was essentially a massive dungeon crawl, Crusaders opened up a new world, namely the planet Lost Guardia. This setting was rich with NPCs who had their own agendas, and fractious alliances that the party would learn about through exploration and talking to colorful characters. NPCs could cross paths with the party at any moment, and it was not uncommon to find out that some NPCs perished battling each other in some part of the land.



The game mechanics featured an intricate class system that allowed for upgrading to more powerful professions while retaining important skills acquired from the previous class, and even switching back and forth between classes. This was depending on attribute requirements, and stats were raised randomly upon attaining a new level. Combat used a phased turn-based system, where party members would be given their commands and then the action played out each round. This led to many tense and memorable confrontations. Combat in Wizardry VII could be brutal, and often was.



The backstory and lore of the setting was laid out appropriately in the game’s corpulent manual, but woven nicely into the world as the adventure unfolded. There was no handholding, and no overarching NPC to tell the player what to do or where to go next. In addition to exotic playable races, sci-fi elements were mixed with traditional fantasy. There were Umpani wielding blunderbuss weapons long before Sawyer talked of firearms in Pillars of Eternity.







Ventidius: Dragon's Dogma is probably one of the best - if not the best - implementations of the Action RPG concept in the industry. Its greatest asset is its commitment to approaching the kind of build variety and customization options that we see in turn-based RPGs in a third-person, real-time engine. Dragon's Dogma manages to implement nine different classes, each of which employs elements from at least three different styles of gameplay: melee, archery, and magic. The most remarkable thing is that the gameplay for each of these options is smooth and competent by the standards of modern action games while providing a genuine sense of build variety through its robust and refined physics engine.



Apart from having great build variety and combat, the game also boasts a large handcrafted overworld filled to the brim with encounters and monsters to fight, as well as loot and secrets to discover. The game takes a non-scaled open world structure that allows players to explore areas with varying threat levels at his own pace, and charting the map as its fog of war unravels constitutes a paradigmatic RPG exploration experience.



Once we throw in truly epic monster fights that allow the player to climb gigantic beasts, an impressive bestiary that brings to life legendary creatures that have long been a staple of myth and fantasy, and the option of bringing along a party of companions; the result is the most successful attempt to translate the feeling of epic fantasy adventuring of the great tabletop and computer RPGs into real time action.



felipepepe: Dragon's Dogma is a kind of game that should be common, but it's actually extremely rare: an open-world RPG with good combat.



Created by Hideaki Itsunom, director of Devil May Cry, the combat here is not only fast and satisfying, but also has a unique a sense of weight and interactivity, as you can grapple enemies and climb on top of large monsters. It's a a whole new experience to be climbing on a hippogryph's back to attack its head when the beast flies into the air, taking you away from your party and making you desperately cling to the beast, lest you fall into your death. Monsters can also get injured and even lose body parts as combat progresses, similarly to Monster Hunter. Add in tons of equipment and consumables, many status effects and a class system similar to Final Fantasy Tactic's Job System and you have a damn good combat.



Sadly, Dragon's Dogma often fails to play to its strengths. Battles against unique large beasts are sparse in the main game, with many monsters only being available in the post-game content or in the excellent Dark Arisen expansion (bundled with the PC release). Similarly, the game has other amazing ideas that it fails to fully employ: the game tracks your relationship with every NPC in the game, and many quests have multiple outcomes based on your actions, but all that reactivity is so hidden under the hood that you might think the game is entirely linear until you replay it or read a wiki. The party system is also a bit gimmicky, with you creating a companion and going online to hire other player's companions to your party, meaning I really recommend you to play this while you can - who knows when Capcom will shut those serves down?







Deuce Traveler: Many people believe that Ultima VII is the best of the series, and I can see why.



Conversations became much more complex because of the expansion of the dialogue system in a time before voice acting became the norm. The backdrop is of a world in transition, as the people seem happy but are leaving the old religion you set-up for them behind in order to follow a new faith. The environment interactivity is another great selling point, as you can fire cannons, bake bread, change diapers, and rig a particularly nasty set of events that leads to regicide. The main quest really engaged the player from the starting quest of trying to solve a local double homicide. Right off you know that there must be something very wrong in the land, but you have trouble understanding what it must be as life in Britannia continues uninterrupted while you are antagonized by the Guardian, whose veiled threats keep you unnerved. And so the game itself becomes a detective case as you try to track down the murderers, find out more about the mysterious Guardian, and discover how various smaller problems are interconnected into a larger, much more dangerous scheme.



If there is one thing I did not like in Ultima VII, it was the combat system where you choose a type of attack and let the computer fight for you in real time. But I do have to admit that this very long game brought Britannia to life like no other in the series.



hicksman: The seventh iteration of Origin's Ultima series sends the Avatar back to Britannia to investigate the Guardian, an entity that plans to take over over Brittania and rule as its master. In the intro, the Guardian speaks to you and invites you to come witness the "new age of enlightenment". Upon arriving you find a new religion has spread through the land. Are the two linked and can the Guardian be stopped?



Gameplay is similar to the other Ultima games, giving you a large map to explore, loads of NPCs to talk to, and side quests to take on. The game provides a lot of interactivity with the environment: most objects that are not nailed down can be picked up, moved, stolen and for the virtuous, purchased. The world follows a day/night cycle and NPCs respond to the time of day as well as weather. The focus is not on classes and stats, but rather interactions with NPCs and the actions of the Avatar and his companions. It requires consistent reference to your manual, the included map and your personal notes on quests, areas of interest, spells and clues. There is no automap nor journal. If you've never played it before, get a notebook.



Gamers will be attracted to this game for many reasons, chiefly its huge immersive game world and the ability to see how your actions change it, the branching NPC conversations, and the now well refined and familiar Ultima characters and lore.







Lady Error: Hands down, one of the best RPG's of the last 10 years. The turn-based combat in particular is outstanding, offering a unique experience not seen before. For example, if you throw oil on an opponent, you can then set him on fire - which can in turn be put out with water or ice spells - which in turn creates a fog of steam, shielding the opponent from view. In this way, combat becomes partly a chemical laboratory and is quite unique in this respect. The tone of the game is relatively light and for some this may require getting used to. Almost everything about this game is top-notch and much better than I expected: very large world, good itemization, interesting enemies, puzzles, storylines. If you like RPG's, there is no way you will dislike Divinity: Original Sin



SniperHF: A prequel to the earlier Divinity games, Divinity: Original Sin brings an entirely new gameplay model to the series and it's a treat. Turn-based combat, the return of a party, and multiplayer rule the day. The level of freedom while exploring is in some ways unparalleled. Players can combine items into that one great tool you need via an Ultima-inspired crafting system, tactically use those environmental effects in conjunction with your skills, or sneak around to find the unbeaten path. D:OS is an RPG where you can kill everyone on the map or strictly follow the story and everywhere in between in order to complete the game. The game's narrative suffers as a result though, the story is convoluted and ultimately devolves into a save the universe pitch. But what D:OS lacks in storytelling it makes up for in familiar Larian charm and humor. With a substantially more interesting combat system and new emergent gameplay features, D:OS takes Larian's RPG series to new heights.







Ventidius: To say that the second entry of the D:OS series has not been as well received in the Codex as the first is an understatement. The game annoyed many fans of the franchise through a series of drastic design changes that ruined the experience for them. Chief among these were the infamous armor and initiative systems.



Aside from those admittedly poorly implemented mechanics, however, the game's combat engine has anything a fan of the genre could ask. It's turn-based and squad-based, while also boasting environmental interactivity, a proper positioning system, now with elevation mechanics, and an impressive array of spells, status effects, buffs, debuffs, and moves.



Even the reviled armor system brought something to the table by limiting the effectiveness of the CC spam and alpha strikes that dominated the first game, allowing for more challenging and varied encounters. That is why despite its flaws, D:OS 2's combat remains a rewarding experience for those who can look past some of its more inelegant design choices.



Even though combat is arguably the game's central aspect, it's worth highlighting some of the improvements made in other areas: a more varied and nuanced skill system, greater race variety, increased reactivity, and better art direction, writing and exploration. This last element is especially noteworthy, as the game boasts detailed maps for each Act packed with diverse loot, encounters, quests, and secrets, which, combined with the game's environmental interactivity and open-endedness, allow for engaging expeditions full of surprises.







Martyr: My initial reaction when playing Kingdom Come was disappointment, because the developers had chosen to follow in Witcher 3s footsteps of cinematic story presentation. The story itself is a boredom simulator apart from one or two scenes, the characters don't talk and act in an appropriate way and the tone/ atmosphere were too light hearted and cheerful for my taste.



Nonetheless I've spent massive amounts of time on this game, which mostly had to do with exploring the gorgeous landscape and killing every bandit, Cuman and traveler on sight and searching for hidden treasure chests. the simple card playing game at the taverns was also more fun than it had any right to be.

combat is a mixture of Dark Souls' typical stamina management, blocking and evading attacks and Mount & Blade's directional attacks; fighting is generally fun, if you're not overwhelmed by big amounts of robbers at once.



All in all Kingdom Come is a flawed but still immensely enjoyable open world RPG, which should have taken more inspiration from Daggerfall than Witcher 3. As of now it is one of only a handful of purely non fantasy RPGs, which I am always going to prefer to the nth standard fantasy game.



Alpan: All fruit of creative labor share a sense of joie de vivre, a trace of the creative impulse imparted upon them by their authors. Some exhibit this far more strongly, like an aura -- such is the case with Kingdom Come: Deliverance, the RPG of medieval Czech life made by a Czech team of medieval enthusiasts. This fact alone makes Deliverance worth playing.



If good games instill the feeling of being transported, Deliverance achieves this by being a compelling portrait of medieval life in Bohemia. This is reflected in the entirely mundane world, the range of characters whose pettiness reflects that world, and the wide variety of skills on offer. It doesn't achieve much else. To Warhorse's credit, most bugs plaguing the game at launch have been fixed. But the progression from a bumbling fool to a polymath and a master of martial combat happens far too quickly; the combat system is itself not particularly enjoyable; and, in what is perhaps a strike against mundane RPGs, the plot and most quests are appropriately boring.







HiddenX: Dark Sun: Shattered Lands is an AD&D game from SSI released in 1993. The initial release was a bit buggy, but SSI patched it up later. The game takes place in the atmospheric wasteland of Athas, where you are hunted by Templars, slavers, and hostile desert creatures with PSI attacks.



The game features an easy-to-master turn-based combat, but the difficulty depends significantly on the composition of your party. You can choose from numerious races including Human, Elf, Mul, Thri-Kreen, and Half-Giant. Stats are high, rolled as they are with a 4d4+4 instead of 3d6 on creation. The available classes range from Fighter and Gladiator to Druid and Psionic. Each class has some access to psionic powers - PSI rules in this world!



The game is very non-linear, offering multiple solutions to quests and some choices with consequences. It is not as combat heavy as the earlier SSI Gold Box titles, and relies more on role-playing. The graphics and sound are very good for 1993. The "post-magical apocalypse" setting, the non-Tolkien races and characters, and the heavy use of psionic powers and spells all help in making this game unique.



If Wasteland is Fallout's father, then Dark Sun: Shattered Lands could be its mother. Two thumbs up!



bishop7: In Dark Sun: Shattered Lands, you begin as a gladiator in a city state in the harsh desert world of Athas. With a party of 4 companions you must escape from the arena and work to cement an alliance between the various free villages surrounding the city state before the armies of the sorceror-king arrive to eradicate them.



The game feels like a logical successor to the Gold-Box series of games, featuring turn-based combat and the AD&D rule set. Unlike previous AD&D games, the armor is worn in pieces on various body parts. Magical (and even metal) arms and armor are scarce on Athas. The story does a great job of outlining the dire situation concerning the future of the free cities and the world itself.







Minttunator: Released during the deepest decline, The Witcher really stands out amongst the "classics" of that period (such as Oblivion and Fallout 3). The game depicts the adventures of Geralt, a genetically altered monster hunter, who - in accordance with genre traditions - has lost his memory. The setting of the game, based on the works of Andrzej Sapkowski, is fairly grim and mature, with a lot of violence, profanity and nudity. Most of the storyline is relatively low-key, being centered on finding out what exactly is going on around you, killing monsters, and solving mysteries – though there is also the factional conflict, political intrigue, and backstabbing.



The main strength of the game is its focus on choices and consequences. Eschewing the simplistic "good/evil/random" options, The Witcher offers decisions in a morally grey area, often forcing the player to choose between the lesser of several evils. The character system is interesting but not overwhelmingly complex, featuring several different spells and swordfighting styles. A delightful addition is the excellent alchemy system, which allows the player to create a large variety of potions used in lieu of the traditional buff spells. The combat is fun, but while the rhythm-based fighting feels novel at first, it gets rather easy once you get the hang of it (which is why I recommend playing the game on the hardest difficulty). Overall, you should play The Witcher if you are looking for an atmospheric action RPG in a gritty setting with an outstanding story, colorful characters, and a great soundtrack. Oh, and tits. Everybody loves tits.



tuluse: The Witcher is a refreshingly bottom up look at high fantasy. Society is made up of poor, scared people, and they act appropriately, blaming anyone who looks or acts differently. You spend most of your time dealing with low key problems - a small village being terrorized by spirits, a murder mystery, trying to get permission to enter various parts of the city. All of this takes place against the backdrop of a struggle between a rebel group fighting a losing battle against society they cannot assimilate into, and an intolerant military that only sees them as a threat that needs to be eliminated. It's all well-written and very believable.



The game also features some nice choices and consequences, though some have complained it's too branchy. The combat, however, is pretty much a joke.







skacky: One of the first, if not the first, first person 3D RPGs and arguably the best dungeon crawler there is. Banished by a Britannian baron to the Great Stygian Abyss in order to rescue his daughter captured by a rogue wizard, you, as the Avatar, will have to carefully explore the darkest depths of the underworld and make friends and foes among the local inhabitants.



The atmosphere is extremely impressive and exploring the levels can be quite anguishing. Being a non-linear experience, you can tackle the game as you see fit, but beware of your actions! The enemies lurking in the lower levels of the Abyss are not to be trifled with, especially with low equipment. The game, while being an exceptional RPG, is also a simulation; you will have to manage hunger, sleep and be ever careful of the state of your food. You can fish, repair your stuff and use all kinds of objects to make your life easier. Exploration is rewarded, and while the game only has 8 levels, they are all huge and take a while to fully clear.



Despite a few issues (such as certain quest items looking like ordinary trash), this is easily one of the best RPGs I have ever played.



octavius: Few games have had such an impact on me as Ultima Underworld. From the moment I saw the first screenshots I knew this would be my dream game, or close to it. A full 3D game with a First-Person perspective, with awesome graphics (for its time) and a basic physics engine, it was at least a couple of years ahead of its time. When it became clear that it was to be a DOS-only game, it was the first nail in my Amiga's coffin, and I had to use my brother's 386 to play it, or watch in envy a friend play it on his 486.



The game turned out to be even better than I had dreamed, with excellent level design and so many exciting places to explore, with lots of puzzles and interesting encounters of both hostile and friendly nature. The basic premise of the game is ver