Gamezone's Top 10 Western cRPGs

DocHop has wrote on the gamezone.com about top 10 western cRPGs. Apparently Fallout 3 or Oblivion are much better cRPGs than Planescape Torment or Bloodlines. Check it yourself and join the criticism... er... I mean conversation if you want to.

I wrote my comment on their site though I doubt it will help anyhow. Maybe if there are more people laughting and criticizing it on their site they may think next time before writing something like this. If you want to register on their site and post it is really easy and fast - you just write your nick, e-mail and password so tell them how retarded that list is if you have some time, maybe it will help if there are more of us

Methinks we could use Top 10 Something lists on the Watch too, preferably well researched. Maybe still with enough holes to generate discussions -- that's what those lists are mostly for, isn't it? Anyone care to write something up?

Maybe I will write something but I don't promise anything. Then I will post that list for discussion and criticism before making anything "official" out of it, change the mistakes (like taking another game to the list instead the one chosen by me or fixing the reasons why this game and not another etc) and fixing my not-so-good English so there won't be any mistakes with it as well

How about top 10 game journalism sites?

Somehow I think Gamezone wouldn't make it…

In fact, now that I think about it, I'd be hard pressed to identify 5 worth mentioning.

Much as I love my Xbox/360 RPGs, and as ignorant as I am about the history of PC RPGs, even I know Fable and Oblivion don't belong on there. I heart Mass Effect and Fallout 3, however.

In the top 10 Zombie games, Resident Evil is "credited" with creating the genre of zombies in games... when Wolfenstien 3D had zombies nearly a decade before. Doom's hordes were both undead and demonic. And I'll never forget an even earlier game, called Pool of Radiance, and hacking through legions of undead. But we'll ignore RPGs, since the undead are typical fodder in them, and generally not a focus.

Going through the various lists, I disagree with much of it. 10 games that should be made into movies? How about, ZERO! Every one has sucked. If it was possible to retroactively erase older movies, it should be done. Though I did buy Super Mario Brothers the Movie for $3.

RPGWatch needs a top 10 list too! (And we should all vote on it )

No idea how ME, Oblivion, Fable, NWN and Fallout 3 make these lists.

4 of those are mediocre action/adventure games at best. And NWN's OC was tediously dull. Hell, Divine Divinity which I've only played 20 hours in so far, deserves any of those spots more.

But what about Wizardry 8? That game was more enjoyable than any of those or even all of those combined! And it had more personality too.

And:

Baldur's Gate 2 > BG 1
KOTOR 2 > KOTOR
Fallout > Fallout 3

Also NWN2 > NWN (not that I'd put NWN 2 on a top 10 (or even top 50!) list. But MoTB > NWN + all it's expansion packs.

And all those mediocre games ABOVE Planescape????
Wow.

No idea why Baldur's Gate tops their list... I found that game nearly as tedious as NWN.
Hmmmm...
Now that I think of it, a list of 'western' cRPGs that isn't topped by Lands of Lore must be a fake .

As far as I'm concerned, all the games in 1..9 should be behind PS:T. I do think that Oblivion and FO3 belongs to the list, but I would remove Diablo2 and Fable, and in stead add Morrowind and Ultima 7.

I also, like many others, think that BG2>BG1. Can't comment on KOTOR and Mass effect, as I haven't played those. (I also haven't played Bloodlines, shame on me).

Konjad, why so upset? He did say "his favorite rpgs." If he likes those games in that order then more power to him. Why become an obvious troll just because he prefers Fallout 3 over Planescape?

The real question is why lists get people so charged up? Konjad isn't the first to go balistic over a list. These things have some kind of magic hate spell attached to them

skavenhorde, everyone likes what they do and if he likes ie. Fallout 3 over Bloodlines I don't care about it. The thing is he write it as Fallout 3 is one of the greatest cRPGs while Bloodlines is far inferior on main page of the site. Why do I care about that? Because it looks like Fallout 3 is a great cRPG people should play but this game is barely even cRPG! Almost no one heard about Bloodlines, no one will be interested in Arcanum after reading this ranking etc. This is just wrong. He should write it as "My favourite top 10 cRPGs" and I wouldn't mind that, I'd just ignore it. But he wrote "Top 10 Western RPG" - that means this opinion should be objective. And his ranking is definitely not objective. Why Diablo II? Because it's hack and slash? Because it did nothing new to cRPG genre?

If people are to write objective rankings they shouldn't write them subjective in the first place. They should give a good reasons why this game and not another. Putting random games I like as best cRPGs ever is not right.

How can it be possible to create an objective ranking? And, fwiw, when gamezone publish a list of the top 10, it is as far as I can se implicit that it's the top 10 according to gamezone.

I think when you come up with these lists you HAVE to try to be objective.

If I were writing a list for a website or magazine of the Top 10 RPGs it would not be MY own personal top 10 RPGs.

For instance, I can see why Deus Ex is on that list and have no problem with it. Do I love the game? No. I played it, enjoyed it very much but I don't consider it a personal favorite. But I can see WHY others list it as a favorite. They did a lot of things right as far as game design goes with that title, I just enjoyed other games more and not a huge fan of FPS games, hybrid RPG or otherwise. But I'd list it in an objective "Best Of".

The reverse applies as well. I LOVED KOTOR II but it has too many flaws (very easy, repetetive combat, bugs, poor ending, same linear game progression as KOTOR) BUT I can see why others prefer KOTOR (it has those same flaws but it did it first if that means anything and it had a tidy ending).

I would also do some brushing up on my RPG history as well - with all the great RPGs released in the last 15 years or so how do you end up with so many current games, and some that aren't even really generally recognized by RPG fans like Fable?

And forget the good things to come of NWN like 2 expansion packs (1 half-way decent, 1 pretty good), official mini-campaign modules, and the Aurora toolset which birthed many player mods and persistant worlds. Not too many will argue the fact that the official campaign SUCKED. Big time. So to list it in a top 10?

You're still using your personal criteria of what makes a good RPG, though. I think if you were to develop an objective list, you'd best base it on the average review scores for the games. That doesn't make it objective, but it evens out the subjectivity.

That would be pretty boring, of course. It's much more fun to post subjective lists of what is "best" and then argue about them.

These lists are never anything more than opinion, and should just be taken as such.

Compared to most lists I see on the web, this one isn't half bad. My only real issues are Diablo being that high, and Fable being on it at all.

Ok, here goes:

1. No mention of Ultimas
2. Fallout 3 in, while 1 and 2 are out
3. Fable in
4. Baldur's Gate is liek tha best game eva (while Baldur's Gate 2 is nowhere to be seen).
5. Oblivion appears to be The hallmark of Bethesda's Elder Scrolls series (while even a child knows that this title belongs to Morrowind).
6. While NWN has a fantastic CS that has spawned so much great campaigns over the years i don't see its original campaign as particularly "robust".
7. Mass Effect was actually quite fun, but to call it a "sci-fi noir epic" is a journalistic spectacle only comparable to calling Dragon age "dark fantasy".

Anderson said:

You're still using your personal criteria of what makes a good RPG, though. I think if you were to develop an objective list, you'd best base it on the average review scores for the games. That doesn't make it objective, but it evens out the subjectivity.

That would be pretty boring, of course. It's much more fun to post subjective lists of what is "best" and then argue about them.

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This is true, but you should still cater more to real RPG fans than recent converts or casual gamers who think Oblivion or Fable are the best RPGs evar. At least to some degree. Which I guess is what they tried to do by listing Planescape. But seriously, I can't imagine someone who thinks Planescape is one of the best RPGs of all time think the same about a bland, personality-less game like Oblivion.

Get someone who KNOWS RPGs to write about them. As was said above, there was no mention of the Ultimas. No mention of the Wizardry. I cannot believe Fable and ME are better RPG experiences than Arcanum.

I've played some FPS and Strategy games in my lifetime but very sporadically so I would not feel qualified to write about them much less make a list of the 10 best.

But yes, I guess this is why those lists are fun to come across... more debate fodder

I'm just glad they didn't pick this as their #1 game:

tolknaz said:

4. Baldur's Gate is liek tha best game eva (while Baldur's Gate 2 is nowhere to be seen).

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I think it's obvious that he just didn't want to place multiple games from the same series on the list. It's understandable though, considering he only had 10 spots to work with.