RPG Codex - GOTY 2020 Results
 

The RPG Codex has voted for the GOTY 2020:

Game of the Year
1st - Wasteland 3
2nd - Yakuza: Like a Dragon
3rd - Troubleshooter: Abandoned Children

Best Remaster/Port
Persona 4 Golden

More information.

This is my top 3 as well - only Troubleshooter would be on the first place.

It was a weak year at least as far as games that really stood out. I think that, after time and updates, Cyberpunk 2077 will be remembered as the best RPG released in 2020.

Could be - Gothic 3 is a similar case.

2020 was a weak year for RPGs.:tears:

Still Cyberpunk 2077 won 1st but you know RPGCodex logic says it didn't. That's why I prefer simple pick three lists without rated scales. Oh well congrats Wasteland 3.

I'm sure RPGWatch's GOTY will be similar or not. We'll see.

I can't see anything stupid in the Codex' voting system. Many played Cyberpunk 77 and many gave it a not so high vote.

If they had used our system Cyberpunk 77 would be out of the top 3 of many players.

Very weak indeed…

Only 58% played Cyberpunk 2077, yet it broke the sales record. We also know that most people played as much or more this year than usual (that poll was were, but I'm pretty sure it's a good general indicator).

Does that mean RPG Codex users are more cautious than average?

Nah you'll never change my mind about felipepepe's system.

Gets the most votes but yet only half of the poll takers played it?o_O

It reminds me of someone with a savant syndrome.
Shh..sales don't make a good RPG remember. :shh:

I always read this especially on this forum. (cough…Fallout 4…cough..Mass Effect 3)

Credit where credit is due: I like that they make a distinction for ports. I don't think a several year old game could/should be a GOTY the year it simply gets released on a different platform.

I have mixed feelings. I understand the concept but I'm still skeptical because, while we take care to weight the data with their confidence, we calculate this confidence interval on the whole data set, which comes from different profiles.

The variety in game genre is also varied (how do they define RPG?), and restricted to a small number of items in order to limit the number of votes, which IMO is another bias.

What I'm saying is that trying to put everything in the same bag will ultimately give a result that may be statistically founded, but still uninteresting.

EDIT: at the same time, it'd be fun to see their global results over the last year, on the graph we see a few good titles on the right / top ;)

We can see that 2020 was a year of nice niche games:

• TROUBLESHOOTER: Abandoned Children
• Yakuza: Like a Dragon
• The Dungeon Of Naheulbeuk: The Amulet Of Chaos
• Spellforce 3: Fallen God
• Trials of Mana
• Horizon's Gate
• Nox Archaist
• Sakuna: Of Rice and Ruin

are all worth to play.

The results are within the reality of what the year was in terms of RPGs, though not everyone will agree with it.

My greatest disagreement comes with the logic behind downvoting CP2077 allegedly because of being buggy while still maintaining WL3 up there, when it was worse in that aspect, in my opinion. At least CP2077's bugs weren't game-breaking, while WL3's were in many cases, causing people to lose hours of progress or having to restart the game from scratch after many hours played. Not to mention that game was announced and hyped as multiplayer/co-op as one of its selling points, and I couldn't ever get the multiplayer mode going. After trying for hours, we got one game running, and after a couple hours playing, the save file vanished/reset, so my partner and I just had to give up and resign to play on our own after all the effort and time invested. I couldn't in any stretch of generosity consider that a "GotY".

One could argue that CP2077 still wasn't that great even when you get past the bugs, but I feel it warranted a top3 in this generally weak year.

It's still in my opinion a valid top 3, all things considered.

I do.
#1 is mmo.
#2 and #3 are not (and these two will get my vote here, you know that already ;)).
Even the best port isn't.

I agree.

I think the votes are relative to people's expectations, and Cyberpunk 2077 suffered as a consequence, especially since those expectations (and the frustration not to see them fulfilled) were still fresh, and quite high. To be fair, they mostly brought that on themselves.

As @JDR13, @HiddenX and others said, the results could have been different if the vote had been made a few months later.

That being said, I'm surprised to see Wasteland 3 got such a high score. But it's still only a winner by default to me ;)

Yeah Wasteland III feels like a consolation prize in most of these GOTY polls. Maybe if they actually release some DLC as it's been half a year already, it might be worth it.

Oh wait they are Fantastical Costumes Coming to Wasteland 3. :roll:

It feels weird when most niche games are better then the Triple A games.

Well, I have yet to even purchase Cyberpunk. Nor do I have plans to do so until the tales of its bugginess die down. Is Wasteland 3 a fun game? yes. Is it goty material? In a year devoid of many releases, it's probably in the running by default.

So I see nothing wrong with the Codex results. Except that Factorio isn't #1 O_O But it's not an RPG so to be expected.

The only game that I've played to date on their list is Persona Four, which was simply fabulous. I will get around to acquiring Wasteland three at some point, for certain, not sure about the other ones.

I thought Wasteland 3 was a great game and would probably also be my pick for rpg of the year. I guess the fact I played the game in December, when most bugs had been corrected, certainly help. But yes, 2020 hasn't been a great year for rpgs. The only great thing is that I had far more time to play than previous years.

I'm glad I quit my PC masterrace membership years ago cause consoles had some pretty outstanding releases last year.

Wasteland 3 was a buggy mess when I tried to play it in September with reboot crashes so shelved it at this point I may as well wait for the complete edition like WL2.

BG3 and Solasta didn't cut into the list because they are in EA?

The reason is that RPGWatch's focus is the PC gaming market. As a result, some games wont be voted on during their year of release, their year of release as far as RPGWatch is concerned in the year it arrives on PCs.

It's a similar nuance to Kickstarter and early access games, in that some games will already have been played for years before they are officially released and thereby qualify for the RPGWatch poll.

It just the rules that we play by. You have to have rules if you want to have focus.

Yes.

See my above post replying to another similar question.

Any game still receiving regular updates or patches (save for some miniscule/low odds game breaking thingie) should also be disqualified, at least in my book it should be. Expansions, of course, being obvious exceptions as that's new content.

All votes and all lists are subjective. At least they are more open about method than 'media polls' etc.

Huh, I just noticed that game on Steam the other day and wishlisted it, now with your endorsement I guess I'll have to go ahead and buy it.

I like the looks of that Troubleshooter game meself, I just haven't pulled the trigger on actually buying it…..yet!

Keep in mind that you have to spend >200 hours to finish Troubleshooter.

Well…I have nothing better to do this year. ;)

Way to up-sell it, HiddenX. Grrrrrr! =p

I haven't played a better rpg released this year than Wastleland 3, that said I found it in many ways dissapointing. For every improvement over Wasteland 2, there was something worse. And in general I think the improvements came at too steep a cost. For example, I'd trade WL3's improved combat for Wasteland 2's more hubs, more npcs, & more quests, but that's me. I found the last half of the game difficult to finish, because it is so combat heavy and so thin on everything else. It's still a pretty good game. I really thought the main story quest was well written and well concieved. Kudos to whoever came up with the concept for it. In other years WL3 wouldn't have made my top 3. If that's the best this year has to offer its pretty sad. That said I will play Troubleshooter, which is in my library and Cyberpunk, when the price comes down.

I've always liked the system they use to vote. Is it different? Yes, but why should every site be the exact same? I like the variety. As long as you know how they tally the votes and take that into account it works fine.

As always the graph is really the best part of their poll. As everyone else has already made the good points about the 2020 winners, how about that 2017-2020 graph they included? Because I have too much time on my hands apparently, here is my breakdown.

https://www.rpgwatch.com/forums/pict…&pictureid=433

1. Good games but not for everyone. Given the games not too surprising. Although I would not have guessed that Disco and Elex are the #2 and #3 most played games of all, even surpassing Pathfinder which going in blind would have been one of my guesses for top 3 most played.

2. 85% played and still over 80% approval? Very nice. And it's %played is WAY higher then anything else. Not surprising that it is the most played but, to me at least, a little surprising that it is that much higher in % played then anything else.

3. Simply put, overall good games. Once again not too surprising. Nier could perhaps be lumped with group 1 instead of 3 (but that would not have looked as pretty with my circles!)

4. Best of the best. ATOM might not make my personal best of this list but Kingdom and pathfinder would (no disrespect to ATOM, I really liked it, I'm just thinking of my personal top 3/4).

5. Why haven't you played these games yet! What is wrong with you?! By the way I have played neither. Both are on my wishlist though.

6. These are the niche games that most experienced gamers can tell whether or not they will enjoy without actually playing. Well made and fun for who they are made for.

I really like the approach the Codex uses. I'm not so sure about breaking out the ports - I guess that depends on whether you're likely to play a game on the other platform. I've never had a chance to play Persona 4, for instance, so it's essentially a new game to me. If it were FF7, though, I would be wondering what it's doing on the 2020 list.
If you want to finish it. It's only $25 USD so it isn't like you wasted money if you only played the first third of the game.

From the write up:
I wonder if people are playing less recently released games? I don't know if Steam Spy or some such can track game reviews to see what games are getting lots of up votes over the past X months, but I would be curious.

I kinda can't believe people are playing games less than before Covid outbreak.
It is just that the game in question got some people, me and silent ones, on the wrong foot. Although I loved WL2.

Truly, these past few months I find myself catching up on books and films more than playing video games. Even items that I've read or viewed before, often it gives me far more satisfaction than gaming does.

I have probably played more game during this last year than the 5 previous years together. I used to have a pretty busy social life… not anymore.