Top 10 CRPGs of all time

vanedor said:

Might have included «Mount and Blade» here but it's not enough polished yet.

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Heh, that one is fun, especially with some mods.

Here is my list if someone is intrested in to know what makes me tick

In no particular order.

1. kotor 1 & 2
2. Gothic "trilogy" (I liked even the 3:rd part)
3. Baldur's gate I & II
4. Fallout 2
5. Deus ex 1
6. Planescape torment
7. Arx fatalis
8. system shock 2
9. Witcher (yes it is this good)
10. Outcast. Not really a rpg, but very close. I love this game.

*Fable.. Fable is pure fun and on top of everything the storyline is quite cool. I really like the fairytale theme and seeing my character visually change during the game.

*Elder Scrolls Series (morrowind/oblivion) I'm not sure if this belongs to my list or not...I dislike some of the design decisions, yet I've spent so many days of my life in tes world...

Here are my list:

1. Fallout 2
2. Planescape: Torment
3. Deus Ex
4. Baldur's Gate II
5. The Witcher
6. Albion (I'm wishing for an exact remake of this one.)
7. Arcanum
8. Neverwinter Nights 2: Mask of the Betrayer
9. Wizardry 8
10. Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines

I also like older games such as Wasteland, Eye of the Beholder, and Darklands. I like Gothic too but I haven't played Night of the Raven and Gothic III. X-Men Legends: Rise of the Apocalypse is my only favorite action-RPG. It's because I just love the Age of Apocalypse timeline in the X-Men story.

My list:-

1. BG2 SoA with/ without Mods.
2. Ultima VII
3. NWN with Mods
4. System Shock
5. Daggerfall
6. UnderWorld II
7. Icewind Dale
8. Deus Ex
9. Planescape Torment
10. System Shock 2

I have yet to finish NW2, Oblivion, Morrowind, Fable, Kotor, Gothic 2 which I will one day and that may change the list.

Kelvorn wrote:

6. Albion (I'm wishing for an exact remake of this one.)

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Let's make a petition -> Should we include Amberstar and Ambermoon ?

I'll give it a try. I played so many good (and a few bad) games that it really is going to be hard to choose only ten. So here is it, in no particular order, those that I consider my top ten computer RPGs.

- Ultima VII : My first CRPG. Before that, my only RPGs were from the consoles. Not that those are bad, but the rich world and open-handed gameplay captivated me in like nothing before. I eventually played the rest of the series but U7 is my personal classic.
- Might & Magic World of Xeen : Yeah I know, it's actually 2.5 games, but it's so hard to restrict me to only ten games darn it . The MM games always offered large worlds to explore, but the Xeen games are the best of the series IMHO.
- Lands of Lore : I have a particular fondness for dungeon crawlers, and the first LoL was one the best with it's interesting story, beautiful graphics, great music and well designed dungeons. Too bad that the sequels were so crappy.
- Ultima Underworld : That one was such an innovative game, not to mention the incredible atmosphere, that it's impossible to dislike this one. And did I mention that I love dungeon crawlers.
- Baldur's Gate 2 : I wasn't overly fond of the real-time combat, but BG2 is such a great game, not to mention a great sequel that fixed most of the problems with its predecessor, that I can easily forgive the RTS-style fighting.
- Planescape Torment : A one-of-a-kind gem. The setting alone is so unique that it's sad it's not used more in gaming.
- Wizardry 8 : One of the few games that managed to successfully move to 3D. The fact that it did it while keeping turn-based combat is even more impressive.
- Gothic 2 + Notr : The Gothic are one of the best CRPG that came out these last few years, even though they're single-character and real-time games. The second Gothic is my personal favorite. I have yet to play the third one, though, as my PC is obsolete, but I will someday (and, yes, I am aware that G3 is not as good and will not expect too much from it).
- Arx Fatalis : It successfully imitated UU, and add a few nice touchs of its own like the rune magic. And did I mention that I love dungeon crawlers... wait a minute I did, and twice already .
- Quest For Glory 3 : This mix of RPG and adventure appealed a lot to me, as I enjoy both genres. Too bad I never got to play the rest of the series, since QfG3 is apparently the worst of the lot.

Special mentions goes for Betrayal At Krondor, Divine Divinity, Icewind Dale, Newerwinter Nights, Wizards & Warriors, Eye of the Beholder and Realms of Arkania. All of those would also deserve a place in my top ten. Not to mention that The Witcher, which I have yet to play, will likely end up in there.

Excellent list, Dantre--(nice sig, also.) If nobody's said it yet, welcome to the forums.

Hi Dantre - good list ...

... and I love dungeon crawlers, too

I had done an article at GamerDad about getting old DOS games running on XP ... and you just cited several reasons why

magerette said:

If you read all eighteen pages, that's a pretty good effort yourself. Feel free to post your own list--this topic is ever green.

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Maylander said:

Welcome to the forums Dasale.

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Thank you both. Here is my list:

1. Gothic 2 Merged with NOTR : The RPG world is really deep with a high density of story stuff, the sword fighting is amazing, the real life mimic is quite good if you compare to other RPG, often the game offer many ways to achieve some important steps. Enough to make it the best from far and despite some weakness like a poor bow system, a magic system a bit average, an interface design which is quite old and it require a long time to get used to it. The only CRPG I ever replayed fully and even I played it fully 3 times.
2. Fallout 1 : First RPG with a real adult feeling. Many choices and different paths, adult contents and general story, a global mood that setup a nice realistic mood. Good turn based fight system. Story density is good.
3. Ultima Underworld : Fascinating game, the interface was incredibly original and well though. I played only a large part of the game but never finished it because I sold my computer!
4. Gothic 1 : Almost as great than Gothic 2, same qualities, but not the same world density than Gothic 2 Merged with NOTR. Some people feel that its main story is better than the story in Gothic 2, not me but I understand the point of view.
5. The Witcher : The one I'm playing and not yet finished. But already really impressive, amazing mood and stunning graphics that aren't just nice but definitely have style and setup a strong mood. Adult feeling, many details polishing, ton on voice acting not only for dialogs but also for many talks between NPC, best real life mimic I ever seen in CRPG, best raining implementation from far . The strongest realism feeling I ever got from a CRPG, only Gothic 2 merged with NOTR is close. Original and interesting fighting system with sword and magic, even if some more polishing could improve it. I could put it second in my top but didn't because of three points. Loading time a bit long but worse, requested a bit too often. In some area the fps are a bit low despite my system is still quite good and runs perfectly some recent games like Gothic 3 and Oblivion that seem to be in similar categories for CPU and graphic card requirements. If details polishing can be amazing on some points budget saving is obvious, like many house inside area (but not all), like the lack of any stealing system.
6. NWN1 Dreamcatcher Series : User addon, a fascinating series, sense of details, great story, a lot of imagination and diversity, very nice action design.
7. Badur's Gate 2 Throne of Bhaal : Less big than Shadows of Amn but many improvements, better dungeon quality, better fights and better main story.
8. NWN2 Mask of the Betrayer : Epic game, better puzzling than most modern RPG, deep party NPC, great story, much more subtle on the moral point of view than are usually the CD&D CRPG games.
9. Realmz Sword Lands Trilogy : User addon, very very impressive trilogy made on a "lowfi" engine. Amazing sense of details, great story, great puzzling, nice fight design.
10. NWN2 OC : Certainly the biggest main quest of all CRPG. Great castle management to manage in parallal. Story, story, story everywhere including through many party NPC much more detailed than ever. That's enough to compensate dugeon quality a bit average and some graphics a bit on the low side when compared to other contemporain RPG like The Witcher, Gothic 3 or Oblivion

Wooo already 10, it's a pain! Honorable mentions for : Badur's Gate 1 + Tosc, BG2 Shadows of Amn, Citadel Adventure of the Crystal Keep, Divine Divinity, Temple Of Elemental Evil, Zelda : Twilight Princess.

And for mention a list of CRPG I plan to try, I already try some of them but the beginning wasn't enough good so I couldn't stop play them but I haven't give up yet : Arcanum, Prelude to Darkness, Betrayal at Krondor, Arx Fatalis, Albion, Planescape Torment, Vampire Masquerade and Fables. Plus one special mention for Ultima 7, at its release I played only a little part of this game but enough to get very impressed alas I sold my computer and couldn't finish it nor got an opportunity to replay it yet.

This thread has been around for a long time and I haven't taken the time to post my top 10... mainly because after over 20 years of playing CRPGs it's really hard for me to narrow it down to ten. So... I'm going to give it a shot... however, this list will probably change the next time I think about it, so we'll just call this a snapshot of some of my favorites.

Like almost everyone else... I'll say that this list is in no particular order...

1. Wizardry 8
2. Pool of Radiance (original gold box game)
3. Baldur's Gate 1
3. Demon's Winter
4. Ultima 5
5. Gothic 1 & 2 (I put them together because they feel like one big game to me)
6. Magic Candle 1
7. Elder Scrolls 2: Daggerfall (buggy like crazy... but you could spend a lifetime there)
8. Eye of the Beholder 1
9. Realms of Arkania Trilogy (sorry... I just have to lump them together)
10. Dragon Wars (spiritual successor to the Bard's Tale Games)

This list is changing as I write this sentence, so I'll just stop now.

Zakhary said:

I see this clearly now since I've started (As some of you may know) just recenlty getting into the games of early 90's. I genuinely think that these games are actually better and far more interesting than most of the stuff they release today. And there's no nostalgia factor here. I've never played this stuff before.

EDIT: HAH! This post made me a senior member. Seems fitting

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Senior member but very very young guy. I'm much more old than you but I disagree. That said, I haven't played ton of games from the early 90's and my point of view could be biased, at least despite I'm much older I'm probably not better placed than you to make a comparison between modern and old.

Anyway I think that some design choices are different in modern CRPG and agree that some features have a decreasing quality in those and when compared to the best older CRPG.
- Puzzling : A terrible quality drop down when compared to the best oldies. I mean by puzzling not only puzzles or riddles but everything that stops you and give you opportunity to scratch you mind and think more. That could be, collect some information to find something, have clues of a secret there and scratch you mind to find it, have to find some special actions to do to progress somewhere, eventually some good puzzles or riddles that aren't too classical and get some hints. Among 00's RPG there are a few noticeable exceptions like Divine Divinity, NWN2 MoTB and Realmz Sword Lands Trilogy but it's a user trilogy addon and made on an engine that have more an early 90's design.
- Puzzling difficulty : A too difficult puzzling is a pain but how good it was to scratch your mind, be blocked and finally solve the problem after a lot of sweat. I think I have the explanation about this, it's because of the walkthrough guide any player can find on Internet. It's not worth put a high difficulty because 99% of the players won't let them block very long and will give up and check any walkthrough, sometimes I did it myself. Again there's few exceptions but in 00's CRPG I see only Divine Divinity and Realmz Sword Lands Trilogy.
- Action difficulty : It's a pain to die every 3 seconds or have to do one hour battles, but modern CRPG really lowdown too much the difficulty of the fights. Again there are few exceptions like the Gothic series and more particularly Gothic 2 when it is merged with NOTR (alone it is a lot too easy).
- Turn based fighting : It almost disappeared and I regret it even if I don't require all CRPG use such systems. But there's one noticeable exception among modern CRPG, Temple of Elemental Evil is the best Turn based fight system I ever seen in CRPG.

All of that said modern CRPG have qualities that really make stronger the RPG and that are far above older CRPG:
- Story stuff density is much much better than almost all older CRPG. Not to mention that ton of well known older CRPG are mainly dungeon crawling a design choice quite weak on a CRPG point of view and more modern games just burried them all when looking at some action game with few RPG stuff like Diablo 3 or some modern CRPG like Icewinddale or BG2 Throne Of Bhaal have also a much better dungeon design than in older dungeon crawling CRPG.
- Party in NPC never got really detailed in older CRPG and few modern CRPG really brought something here.
- NPC are often much more detailed in modern CRPG.
- Real life mimic got a strong improvement. The raining implementation in The Witcher is a very nice example. Different level of raining, NPC react differently depending of the weather condition, NPC do plenty comments about raining and many are fun, run to find a protection if the rain is too strong, ground and walk sounds can be changed and even I think some ground textures are changed to reflect water on the ground.
- Few modern CRPG are designing new action systems that are major improvements over older rare CRPG that had the same approach. It's for example Gothic 1&2, or eventually The Witcher even if for this last one you could wish soem more polishing or few changes. I can even add Dungeon Lords, it's an unfinished game but it's action system is quite interesting. In no way Dungeon Master but even Ultima Underworld have a fight system that suffer the comparison.
- Graphical design and mood can't be compared, yes symbolism can works quite well but when it's a quality like in Gothic 3 and even more The Witcher that's just another RPG experience.
- Diary/Quest log implementation got major boost since modern CPRG only. There's many interesting example in modern CRPG, The Witcher, Oblivion, Gothic 3, and so on.
- Character system get better design effort even if all the bases an main variations has been setup a long time ago. I won't say that there's currently any major new character system but there are some very interesting effort like in The Fallout system, like in The Witcher but I agree some improvements could be wished, Dungeon Lords which is an unfinished game but it has a very interesting class system.
- Interface design gets better and better even if there are a few major exception like Ultima Underworld.
- A lot of voice acting seems to be a detail but that adds a lot to the mood and immersion, not something you had in older CRPG, sometimes text reading is quite a pain when it's too detailed and not so well written.

SleepingDog said:

I have yet to finish ... Gothic 2....

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Really don't play it without it's addon Night Of The Raven. This addon is a merge with the original game and adds a lot of density to it. It also setup a much better difficulty level, certainly a bit too high but ok anyway, plus it's an opportunity to discover the depth of the sword fighting system, and this merge avoid the too easy difficulty setup in Gothic 2 alone.

The problem is that once you have played Gothic 2 then play NOTR isn't the same because a strong part is merged with Gothic 2 and you lost most of the magic of discovery.

1. Darklands
2. Betrayal at Krondor
3. Realms of Arkania 2
4. Fallout 2
5. Wizardry 8
6. Wizardry 7
7. Gothic 2
8. The Witcher
9. TES: Daggerfall
10. TES: Morrowind

Dasale said:

The problem is that once you have played Gothic 2 then play NOTR isn't the same because a strong part is merged with Gothic 2 and you lost most of the magic of discovery.

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That's why I'm holding off on buying The Witcher. There's so much excitement about it that I'm expecting it to get better and better with time via patches, expansions, mods, etc. I'll probably have a new computer by then too, and that's another big advantage to playing games that are a little older.

Squeek said:

That's why I'm holding off on buying The Witcher. There's so much excitement about it that I'm expecting it to get better and better with time via patches, expansions, mods, etc. I'll probably have a new computer by then too, and that's another big advantage to playing games that are a little older.

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Certainly a wise decision, usually I always do that, sometimes not a clear decision but just because I didn't follow game news but it's clear it proved to be always good to start after many patches and eventually close to final patch.

For me The Witcher current weakness after first patch aren't enough to not continue play it but it's clear that the best advice is to wait more, at least until 1.2 patch that pretends fixing important stuff like loading time and playability improvements.

Dasale said:

Certainly a wise decision, usually I always do that, sometimes not a clear decision but just because I didn't follow game news but it's clear it proved to be always good to start after many patches and eventually close to final patch.

For me The Witcher current weakness after first patch aren't enough to not continue play it but it's clear that the best advice is to wait more, at least until 1.2 patch that pretends fixing important stuff like loading time and playability improvements.

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I prefer to play the most stable and complete version of a game so I always wait for the final patch and all expansions before playing any computer game. I wait at least 6 months, as after that time a game has usually been patched enough and any upcoming expansions are at least announced at this point.

These days, though, I can't play any recent game on my PC since it's obsolete , but I'll eventually get a new one .

Dantre said:

I prefer to play the most stable and complete version of a game so I always wait for the final patch and all expansions before playing any computer game. I wait at least 6 months, as after that time a game has usually been patched enough and any upcoming expansions are at least announced at this point.

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Hehe, I'm still waiting for a decent patch for S.T.A.L.K.E.R.

don't hold your breath JDR. i know we may have had this discussion before but some games are just so massive and wonderous (gothic 3 also) that it would take years to make them bug free. stalker is an awesome and unique experience that can be frustrating with its 'problems' but only temporarily as none are game breakers and in a matter of seconds whatever irked you becomes just another anomoly that can be worked around.

my biggest problem with stalker was how the loading system worked. any place that you create a stash is subject to a loading period anytime you enter a predetermined radial area. last spring when i first played it everytime i approached the garage in garbage i ended up waiting so long by the time the game unfroze daytime would be nightime. i wised up a bit in this playthrough, saving less stuff and visually noting the exact radiui of my stashs. for example i made a couple small ones in garbage, the 3 obvious and unavoidable ones near the traders, and i found in the army wherehouse the best place for a stash was the neutral stalker campfire as you can head north to the red forest or into freedom's base without triggering that stash if you hug the wall of the base.

My list in no particular order. I tried several Gold Box games in my early days but I just never could get into mapping and note taking so I gave up on 'em until automapping and quest journals made an appearance in later games.

Dungeon Master Simply because it was the first CRPG I finished and the first game that actually made me jump after being startled by a purple worm or whatever.

Betrayal at Krondor Kinda cheesy "video" characters but it was an entertaining game and I've read a bunch of Raymond E. Feist's books since.

Ultima Underworld I loved this game. Ultima atmosphere in a dungeon crawler. I kinda missed out on the original Ultima series because of my stated aversion to mapping above.

Baldur's Gate D&D rule set in a CRPG! And especially Minsc, "Go for the eyes Boo!" This still ranks as one of my all time favorites, I replayed this way too much considering nothing changed the second, third time through.

Fallout The perks system was a blast. I hated the slavers and got great satisfaction from killing 'em. Getting the power armor was a big thrill.

Planescape: Torment Best story driven game I've ever played and that includes any adventure game I've played. Mort was an even better sidekick than Minsc.

Knights of the Old Republic It's Star Wars! Also great characters which after looking at my choices above, really makes a game for me. Helps a lot with immersion in the game. I guess that's why you won't find Daggerfall, Morrowind, Oblivion on this list for me.

Vampire: The Masquerade This was a game I wasn't sure I could like. I'm not into vampire mythology much, even though I've read Bram Stoker. I read too many good things about the game to ignore, so I tried it. I'm sure glad I did. Total immersion for me, I really felt like I knew the seedy side of L.A. at night after playing that game.

The Witcher I haven't finished this game yet, but it sure seems like this one will go down as one of my favorites. I started playing this game and haven't been able to go back and finish either Bioshock or Mask of the Betrayer.

Honorable mention to Darklands. Fun game, I liked the depth of the game and European atmosphere, but the bugs did not allow me to get as far as I wanted before I became frustrated. Also I needed something to round this out to 10.