Baker's Dozen Best RPGs of 2007 @ Gaming with Children

Writing machine Mike 'txa1265' Anderson has kicked up a multi-platfrom article at Gaming with Children covering his favourite RPGs of 2007 across the PC and handhelds. Lets take a grab on Mask of the Betrayer:

RPG Expansion of the Year: Neverwinter Nights 2: Mask of the Betrayer - Neverwinter Nights 2 has spawned some heated discussion in the RPG community, and many have been unable to play it due to the way-too-high system requirements. As a result too little attention has been paid to this excellent expansion; as I say in my review “while there is constantly a battle to fight, the story of your travels and adventures in the planes and Rasheman are the focus. The game forces you to into a difficult moral position by giving your character a ’spirit hunger’ - you will lose energy and eventually face diminished attributes and possibly death based on whether or not you consume souls or siphon off spirit energy or try to fend off this hunger. The choice impacts your alignment as well, and plays significantly into how you become part of this unfolding tale. It is an excellent mechanic that forces you to think about yourself and your choices - no longer can you just rest ever five minutes to replenish health and spells. It is this innovative thinking and creative writing that make Mask of the Betrayer such an excellent game. Even if you skipped on Neverwinter Nights 2, I recommend that any role-playing fans pick this up - with Planescape: Torment-quality writing and characters and epic D&D battles, this is a blast of a gaming experience! “.

More information.

Oops … magerette pulled nearly the same quote for my overall 'GOTY' article …

Good list.

PS: is "RPG's" good English? I always figured that was incorrect.

Well, clearly you need to write even more.

There should be no comma since that would make it "RPG is" rather then a plural form of the word.

Originally Posted by Brother None
Good list.

PS: is "RPG's" good English? I always figured that was incorrect.

No - it is a bad habit … it should be RPGs.

Alright now that's just ridiculous, are we really getting that bored?

Originally Posted by JDR13
Alright now that's just ridiculous, are we really getting that bored?

What's wrong with an interest in writing correct English? By the way, there shouldn't be a space after Michigan in your profile's location.

I don't believe Grammar is that … necessary that we need to discuss about it.

As long as there are no bigger mistakes, I'm ready to tolerate quite a lot (knowing that I'm able to get misspellings out of my fingers in fractions of seconds myself).

I have no problem with discussing grammar - I have several funky punctuation habits I constantly battle. But I think that I had hoped for actual topical discussion - save the grammar discussion for the 'Grammar problems that drive me nuts'.

Grammar whining about forum posts is stupid. Pointing out a typo or bad bit of writing in a piece of someone who is here is good because then he can correct it. It's a public piece, after all, in it'd look a bit silly.

It's a good list, txa, though I'm not too familiar with handhelds.

I should probably go buy Immortal Throne. I hear it fixes a lot of the balance issues of Titan Quest. But I'll note this: Titan Quest was basically a simplification of Diablo. If IT is the same, I'd hate to see it "be the new standard"

I'm also not sure why you're listing Eschalon: Book I above Avernum V.

Originally Posted by Brother None
*snip*

I should probably go buy Immortal Throne. I hear it fixes a lot of the balance issues of Titan Quest. But I'll note this: Titan Quest was basically a simplification of Diablo. If IT is the same, I'd hate to see it "be the new standard"

Immortal Throne does a lot of things right, especially the shared stash where you can keep and transfer items between all your characters, making the loot hunt a lot more feasible. The Dream skill tree is extremely fun to play, but also extremely powerful, and while it does fix some balance issues, it raises others.

IMO though, IT completes the game. Nonetheless, I do agree it's a continuation of Diablo and not a new standard. It's hard to imagine this game coming from Blizzard. Still, while it covers much the same ground( with a different flavor setting) it does so competently and consistently and gives that kind of hack n slash experience better than anything else released recently.

@txa—as always, you make me wish I had a way to play all those handheld games—Etrian Odyssey and Jeanne D'Arc in particular. Maybe someday an emulator will come along.

Man, I should buy IT. Harbinger sounds like a lot of fun to play, even if imbalanced.

Wish I had time now, but alas. Later, then.

Harbinger rocks—Templar also if you like the Defense tree. I like the ranged builds myself. (Haruspex, Prophet ) and I've really wanted to try an all pet build, but I've kind of burned out on my TQ habit.

Anyway, IT's getting cheaper all the time, so waiting isn't a bad thing.

Originally Posted by Thaurin
What's wrong with an interest in writing correct English? By the way, there shouldn't be a space after Michigan in your profile's location.

Nonsense, that space is where I live.

Originally Posted by magerette
Harbinger rocks—Templar also if you like the Defense tree. I like the ranged builds myself. (Haruspex, Prophet ) and I've really wanted to try an all pet build, but I've kind of burned out on my TQ habit.

I generally don't like ranged builds in hack 'n slashes

Which classes have the best pet summoning? Nature and Spirit? An all-pet build might be fun, I generally enjoy playing summoning classes. I've played an eternity of Diablo II in which I was a Necromancer and my buddy a Barbarian. It was a hell of a lot of fun.

PS: and you're too late. Due to this thread I already purchased it at GamersGate. In fact, it's already downloaded and installed since my last post

Ritualist is the nature/dream buiild, and the dream pet enhances life and resistance and stuff for the nature pets, which are the most numerous(wolves and little nymph thingy) Evoker has a big earth elemental that's good for a melee/caster build. Spirit has the Liche KIng—best pet in the game apparently, as well as some hefty auras for the whole party that work well for melee… The downside of all the pet builds is that they are weak against bosses and in the early/very late game(I believe). From what I've heard you never really get a build equivalent to the Skellymancer in D2.

There's a good board on builds over at titanquest.net. that could tell you more than I can.

Oh, and Gamebanshee has a great TQ database.

Originally Posted by Brother None
I'm also not sure why you're listing Eschalon: Book I above Avernum V.

Because I couldn't bring myself to call it a 'tie'? Look - since I grab the games for the Mac immediately and beta-test for Windows, I play the Avernum / Geneforge games *to death* … I truly love them, and used Av 4 to poke at Oblivion a couple of years ago . But Eschalon I just became very enamored with and it had a nice new feel to it that I really liked.

As for Titan Quest, I agree with what magerette said, and I just see that with all of the other hack-n-slashers crashing and burning that we are left with Titan Quest as the one to compare to these days.

I often play with various pet builds, but I suggest getting at least one certain way of killing bosses except the pets - as magerette pointed out, the pets don't scale too well later on, so bosses will pretty much instantly remove the pets.

A favourite build of mine is going earth for the massive earth elemental tank (has a taunt ability so it will attract enemies) and then combining it with some way of dishing out damage.