Favourite RPG Series?

Favourite RPG Series?

  • Ultima

    Votes: 28 13.7%
  • Wizardry

    Votes: 9 4.4%
  • Might & Magic

    Votes: 14 6.8%
  • Realms of Arkania

    Votes: 10 4.9%
  • AD&D Gold Box

    Votes: 7 3.4%
  • Elder Scrolls

    Votes: 18 8.8%
  • Fallout

    Votes: 26 12.7%
  • Baldur's Gate

    Votes: 41 20.0%
  • Gothic

    Votes: 47 22.9%
  • NWN

    Votes: 5 2.4%

  • Total voters
    205
I have to admit, most of them I haven't played, but even so I doubt that one of them can knock gothic from it sockel
 
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Go, M&M, go!

It was hard not to vote for Wiz8 all by itself, but I couldn't begin to count the hours I've invested in M&M over the years. Why is nobody making games like that any more?
 
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This was a tough call for me. I absolutely love TES and M&M, but M&M won out in the end because it's 9 games vs. 4. I replay all the games from both series, though I haven't played MM1-2 in years.
 
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Gothic before BG and RoA. I've not played enough of Fallout, Ultima, and Wizardry to rate them. All the listed series have some redeeming games though:)
 
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I voted for RoA, mostly because I played them more often than the others and still have the fondest memories of it (read: nostalgia).

Unfortunately I have never really played Ultima. Tried but the games were already too old for me to enjoy them. Could never get into Elder Scrolls. And from Wizardry I only know part 8. Great list though!
 
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I really enjoyed all of those series of games... and I replay most of them when I get the chance... but for me, it had to be the Gold Box games. I played them when they originally came out... I was in my early 20's and I was heavily into tabletop D&D (still am), so those games captured my imagination. Transferring characters from one game to the next was a blast, and those games just gave me that D&D "feel".

So, that's a hard list to choose from, but Gold Box for me.
 
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I had to go with TES, and rather dislike having to make that choice.

ROA, Ultima, M&M, and Gold Box I haven't played. NWN, FO, and Gothic I detest to various levels. BG rates as just tolerable. And while I really like Wizardry, I only consider the last three entries to be RPGs -- the first five are dungeon crawlers that slowly picked up RPG elements. So it's hard to rate Wizardry high as an "RPG Series" Fun, yes, but overall lacking in elements I consider essential for the "RPG" tag.

That leaves TES as the one series I can credit as an entire series. (Yeah yeah, I know, <insert random rude oblivion comments>.)

If we were rating individual games from the different series, my response would be vastly different.

I did finally get a copy of the Ultima collection (sadly, no Worlds of Ultima included), and I've been trying M&M on and off. In both cases, I'm planning to go through them in order. Now if only I could find a reasonably priced copy of the RoA series. I don't like/trust downloading games.
 
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Gothic, BG, M&M.. a very tough choice! I voted for Gothic, though, since it's the only one post-2000. The others are too obvious. :)
 
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Despite the massive distaste left in my mouth from Ultima IX, and the massive enjoyment I have found in the BG series, I'd have to still go with Ultima. Without it, I may never have gotten into the RPG genre!
 
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This is a tough one, since there are several ways of looking at it.

For example, I thought Fallout rocked, but Fallout 2 (on balance kinda) sucked. IMO this means that I can't really rate Fallout as my favorite RPG series. Similarly: I thought Gothic mostly rocked, Gothic 2 really rocked, and Gothic 3 mostly sucked.


Also, I've only played isolated games from some of the other, older series -- and many of these are so long ago that I really don't remember them well enough to be able to say anything much about them. IOW, I have played Wizardry, Ultima III, and Might & Magic III, and they all rocked... but since I haven't played any of the other games in the series, I can't really say anything about the series.

I'm quite enjoying BG2 now that I'm over my initial frustrations about it (largely but not entirely caused by my misguided choice of "Hard" difficulty -- I assumed that "Normal" would have the nerfed fireballs etc. of NWN and NWN2) -- but I haven't played BG, TotSC, nor ToB (yet), so once again I can't speak for the series.

OTOH, I thought NWN OC and NWN SoU sucked hard, but NWN: HotU rocked, DoD rocked, WCoC rocked, that pirate premium mod rocked, NWN2 OC mostly rocked although the ending kinda sucked, and NWN2 MotB rocked all the way. IOW, although none of the NWN series games/premium modules actually reach the real summits of, e.g., Fallout or The Witcher, the NWN series has more cRPG's that I quite like than any of the others mentioned.

IOW, despite my mixed feelings for it, because the question was about game series rather than individual games, my vote went to... NWN.
 
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RoA? That game was an excelsheet-experiment gone horribly wrong. The pixeled mess with unusable ui that they called combat was dated during release allready. Not to mention other things the whole series got nothing but bad reviews.

Only germans seemed to like it but thats most likely because they were fans of the pen&paper game which it was based on.

Wizardry I-V were perhaps good during release but the whole series has dated poorly. Wiz6-7 especially 7 is just maschocism. Wiz8 is superb though.

AD&D gold box has also dated quite badly. Rest of them are more or less okay.

My choice would be krondor series which is still very much playable even today but since its not in the list I choose fallout.
 
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Jeez, PJ, I wouldn't want to have your fragmented mind right now. ;) And so many acronyms, too. I guess NWN is to blame.

I'd just go with my gut and feeling about the titles listed. Mostly good vibes or fond memories *) of a series? Vote!

*) I guess all series as such are old enough by now to warrant nostalgia.

RoA? That game was an excelsheet-experiment gone horribly wrong. The pixeled mess with unusable ui that they called combat was dated during release allready. Not to mention other things the whole series got nothing but bad reviews.
Ah, well, and Gothic had horrible controls according to various reviewers. It was still a better game than Morrowind. ;) RoA had, in my opinion, a fantastic atmosphere, which more than made up for any shortcomings in other areas. (And I never played any P&P, so that's not an argument as far as I'm concerned)
 
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Ah, well, and Gothic had horrible controls according to various reviewers. It was still a better game than Morrowind. ;) RoA had, in my opinion, a fantastic atmosphere, which more than made up for any shortcomings in other areas. (And I never played any P&P, so that's not an argument as far as I'm concerned)

I agree. I'm currently playing my yearly visit to The Dark Eye (I already found four map pieces in "Blade of Destiny"). People who argue with the graphics are hard to discuss with. I think that a great visual presentation is by far the less important thing a good crpg must have.

Back to the vote: It was hard for me to decide, because I played most of the games. So I stick with the ones I have the fondest memories of ; - ) Btw. runners-up were Gothic and M&M ...
 
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Unfortunately most of my favorite RPGs (Planescape Torment, Arcanum, Darklands) never made it into series production. So I had to go with either Fallout or Realms of Arkania and voted for the epic saga of the Vault Dweller. Not sure if I would still choose Fallout once Bethesda has contributed their part to the series... We'll see.
 
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Ah, well, and Gothic had horrible controls according to various reviewers. It was still a better game than Morrowind. ;) RoA had, in my opinion, a fantastic atmosphere, which more than made up for any shortcomings in other areas. (And I never played any P&P, so that's not an argument as far as I'm concerned)

Gothic controls (originally designed for consoles) were good once you got used to them. RoA controls were just unusable. I.E in combat you had one big list of options what to do. It was cramped with useless options and slow to use.

Heres few reviews from 90s:

Blade of Destiny 1994 65%
-million different selection lists -> cramped ui with huge amount of useless options
-discussion with ncps is mostly i like you/i dont like you
-magic is joke and mostly useless
-the combat option list is too crambed i.e why do you need two different options to choose which hand you put an item to?
-frustratingly hard and gets harder all the time
-weapons brake and you cant see their condition
-smith can fix only one weapon at a time and it takes ages to do it
-you cant attack diagonally with close combat weapons (even ultima3 had that option 10 years before)
-you can sleep but only 9 hours at a time. So if you need you can sleep even 300 hours but then you need to put the group to sleep 34 times.
-Magic points come back extremely slow and wizards easily become totally useless in battle
-if you want to move south from town you must find sign from southern part of town..sign on the north only guides to north..ridiculous waste of time
-you get only little xp from battle
-if you save anywhere else except temple you loose xp
-amatourish design overall the game is like add gold box except worse

Realms of Arkania 2: Star Trail 1995 75%
-few unlogical problems
-battles are ridiculous long
-badly digidized speech
-huge amount of skills (som of them have no use at all)
-when in combat characters get too close to each other its hard to see which is which - it all becames one pixelated mess. 2D combat would have been much better than this 3D mess.

It was never anything like gothic. Gothic was actually well designed game with good production values. RoA had nothing of that imho. Million different skills and options that have no use does not good crpg make.
 
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Woah there. I'm actually speechless.

Those points are probably all valid from today's point of view. Thing is, you could probably apply them or similar points to other old gamest too, because they all had flaws. Games were simply different back then. Imagine the old Lucas Arts UI in todays adventures (of what little there are). I'm seeing the reviews already: "you have to click way too often for even the simplest task". ;)

And things like "combat takes too long" in a game with tactical, turn-based combat is just backwards. I guess some reviewers were totally sold on real time even in those olden times.

Thank goodness for differences of opinion, it was still my favorite series. ^^
 
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Had to go with NWN on this, but not because the boxed campaigns were good. For me, NWN gets the vote because of the sheer number of hours I enjoyed with that game playing in RP persistant worlds. That game provided the PnP campaigning that I had so missed over the years. And not only that, but playing NWN in that way was the very first time a computer RPG allowed me to create and develop my characters as I wanted to - I could give them full personalities, goals, motives, quirks and so on, and really act on them.
The boxed campaigns I never finished, and I haven't really spent much time with NWN2 yet so I'm only counting NWN, SoU and HoTU here along with the tons of user mods, haks, scripts etc. But for those alone it's worth a vote.

I have fond memories of the Gold Box games, as that was the first time I could play D&D on the computer in full, orchestrated campaigns, which was a far cry from the ramshackle ad-hoc super-casual tabletop games I always had. Those games gave the full-on D&D experience at the time. But the greater flexibility that NWN provided is why I give that the nod over the Gold Box series.
 
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Woah there. I'm actually speechless.

Those points are probably all valid from today's point of view. Thing is, you could probably apply them or similar points to other old gamest too, because they all had flaws.

Those reviews are from 1994-1995. Point is they were bad/mediocre games then allready.

And things like "combat takes too long" in a game with tactical, turn-based combat is just backwards. I guess some reviewers were totally sold on real time even in those olden times. ;)

Not at all. I.E other turn based games like might and magic, magic candle and krondor got high scores back then. RoA simply had bad production values and design errors imho.

Thank goodness for differences of opinion, it was still my favorite series. ^^

Naturally the game sold well (in germany?) so som surely liked it. I would compare it to games that really divide opinnions (actually mentioned in the RoA reviews) like i.e two worlds today. Som like it som really hate it.

The point is I would never consider two worlds or RoA a classic. Even though I like the former.

People who argue with the graphics are hard to discuss with. I think that a great visual presentation is by far the less important thing a good crpg must have.

Actually I play lots of retro games with poor graphics like FF2 NES, might magic NES and pool of radiance, curse of azure bonds, etc. I dont mind the graphics as long as the gameplay and UI is good. With RoA its about the UI not graphics.

I kind of like retro gfx but I cant stand handbreaking user interfaces.
 
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Voted Fallout mostly not for the love for it but for being Arcanum's predecessor. Remember the talk "RPGs are about choice", yeah? Ultima is also great. And, shame on me, not only I never played Realms of Arkania but actually don't even know anything about it. As for the other series in the list, they seemed good once, but later gameplay experience has spoilt me. Gold Box, Wizardry and M&M have really tedious and rather unspectacular battles - and not much to do besides battles, come to think of it. Daggerfall and Morrowind looked fine at the time, but having played Gothic the world seems dead and the combat dumbed down. Gothic itself has a living world and great action elements, but character development is too simplified and combat-centered, leaving no place to thief or diplomatic types. Having played later Bioware games like KOTOR and Mass Effect, BG and NWN seem to have much less of plot, much more of filler combat.

So, of all the games I know that are on the list, Fallouts and Ultimas are the only ones I can replay and still have fun.

As for the ones that didn't make it here, I must notice Spiderweb's Avernum & Geneforge. They're marvelous! I'm currently 10 hours into Avernum 5 and it's great, great fun.
 
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