RPGWatch 2008 Game of the Year Vote!

Originally Posted by JDR13
Looking at that list makes me realize how sparse 2008 was for quality crpgs.

I would have voted with Geneforge 5, as it is really good. Other than that there were just some decent ones, nothing without significant flaws.

Originally Posted by JemyM
My best RPG experience 2008 was finally finishing Arcanum.

Ditto - well, not on finishing Arcanum, but on re-experiencing games I love or have missed.
I planned to get completely out of reviewing new stuff but failed, and failed miserably for the last couple of months as I got roped into doing stuff like 'Quantum of Solace' and some DS crap … better luck next year …

My problem with games like Geneforge and Avernum are their size. I felt a bit weird over pouring countless of hours into Avernum, a game which no friends played. If I am going to pour down that many hours, my demands on quality go up.

Probably kings bounty in spite of the light RPG aspects, a disappointing year in general.

Honourable mention for Avernum 5 though, I did enjoy that game, very similar to previous efforts so probably not deserving of a full game of the year but another consistent quality old style rpg from spiderweb.

I might have to get around to trying these Avernum and Geneforge games.

Good luck w/ that.

Originally Posted by xSamhainx
Good luck w/ that.

I take it you weren't impressed by them?

They are good. I just find them too large.

I just cant seriously play anything that looks like it was slapped together w/ a free "create your own rpg" toolset. People play and adore them, so I'm sure there's some merit there, but someone w/ any kinda standard for graphics probably wouldnt stomach them.

Personally, it has to be at least Baldur's Gate level for me to be able to play it w/ a straight face for very long.

I think the spirit engine 2 is missing from the list.

seems hard to be a god is a 2008 RPG, maybe the worst of 2008, but it's missing…

Depends on what territory you use. We show the release as Oct 2007.

I hear what you're saying Sammy, I'm pretty much the exact same way.

Jeez, what's with all the bellyaching? This has been one of the best years ever for gaming! Mass Effect (with the *free* expansion) was great fun and had a really impressive story. Yeah, it got kinda easy, but watching the Mako fly out of the Conduit was awesome enough that it didn't matter. I got my money's worth from Fallout 3 20 hours of gameplay before I finished and I still have a second playthrough coming on that one. Not to mention who-knows-how-many sweet mods. Conan kinda went "meh" but the other MMOs have been doing nicely.

In the other genres there's all kinds of fun, too. Sins of a Solar Empire made for some great strategy (and should be getting some serious free upgrades real-soon-now) and Galactic Civilizations 2 got an expansion as well. Far Cry 2 was passable (I have to attack the same fort again!?) and Crysis Warhead was plenty fun. Good Old Games has started cranking out the old hits for us, too. I got to play Sacrifice for the first time in eons!

So how does all this compare to, say, 2007? What RPGs did we get last year? Let's see… BioShock was real good but it only had some RPG elements. Shivering Islands came out for Oblivion. What else was there? Mask of the Betrayer?

Originally Posted by Zloth
This has been one of the best years ever for gaming!

I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you're being sarcastic.

Originally Posted by Zloth
Jeez, what's with all the bellyaching? This has been one of the best years ever for gaming!

In the other genres there's all kinds of fun, too.

Oooookay, I'll just say our standards are different. I liked Mass Effect and Fallout 3, but replaying Fallout 3? Not gonna happen unless the mod community really changes a lot of the gameplay and Mass Effect when compared to KOTOR 1 or 2, imo, is horrible.

As for other genres, well this is an RPG site. I think most of us here are concentrating on the releases of CRPGs, but out of the examples you gave, I played Sins and GC2 for about an hour and quit. So once again our standards are a bit different.

I voted for Fallout 3 myself since I didn't care for any of the other games on the list and am looking forward to Drakensang.

I just decided to setup dosbox with all the old dos games I played years ago and some I missed and found out I like them better then these post windows 95 games. Been playing Neuromancer, Might & Magic series, Ravenloft series, SSI games, and others and have been getting more interested in them then any windows based game.

Originally Posted by Zloth
So how does all this compare to, say, 2007? What RPGs did we get last year?

The Witcher

Well, our database has these RPG releases for 2007:

Avencast: Rise of the Mage
Call for Heroes: Pompolic Wars
Dawn of Magic
Depths of Peril
Dungeons & Dragons Tactics
Elder Scrolls IV: Shivering Isles
Eschalon: Book I
Geneforge 4: Rebellion
Hard to be a God
Hellgate London
Hired Guns: The Jagged Edge
Jade Empire: Special Edition
Kingdom Elemental
Legend - Hand of God
Mass Effect (XBox)
Nethergate: Resurrection
Neverwinter Nights 2: Mask of the Betrayer
No Time for Dragons
Overlord
Parhedros: The Tunnels of Sethir
Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords
Requital
Scallywag: In the Lair of the Medusa
SpellForce 2 - Dragon Storm
The Chosen: Well of Souls
The Witcher
Titan Quest: Immortal Throne
Two Worlds

Originally Posted by Zloth
Jeez, what's with all the bellyaching? This has been one of the best years ever for gaming! Mass Effect (with the *free* expansion) was great fun and had a really impressive story. Yeah, it got kinda easy, but watching the Mako fly out of the Conduit was awesome enough that it didn't matter.

ME just didn't grab me much at all. A lot of the dialogue was painfully embarassing, a lot of characters were annoying or clichéd to heck, the story (what there was of it) was forgettable, party members were from the special school of AI, it was full of embarassingly blatant copy-paste side-quests and time-sinks.

As I said at the time though, it's a competent game with some interesting ideas. It looks pretty, it's got high production values, it tried fairly ably to get in on the nouveau-ARPG realtime, involved combat thingy; atmospheric score, space makes a difference from sword'n'sorcery, the Mako was a nice idea that fell short in execution.

It felt disappointingly workmanlike though, no "soul" or something.

So how does all this compare to, say, 2007? What RPGs did we get last year? Let's see… BioShock was real good but it only had some RPG elements. Shivering Islands came out for Oblivion. What else was there? Mask of the Betrayer?

The Witcher thrilled me up good and got my GOTY nomination without a second thought. I can't say I had that clarity this year. Mask of the Betrayer deserves more than a last-minute mention an' all.

Originally Posted by Zloth
Well, yeah, you see… there's a thing…. I think to get on the list you have to release something that people have to pay for. City of Heroes/Villains had a couple of big updates, too, but they were free. So no CoX on the list. If, on the other hand, NCSoft and pushed the two updates together and charged people $15 for it, it would be on the list plus it would have gotten reviewed in the press. If Wrath of the Lich King hadn't come out, WoW wouldn't have been on the list, either.

The Seeds of Destruction expansion for Everquest was released in October. The poll is invalid if we can only vote for games this site wants to promote.