Game of the decade

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DArtFlash

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Rules are simple:

You pick 3 games that you consider worthy of potentially being game of the 2010-2019 decade.

My picks:

Skyrim

First open world CRPG that felt like a wholesome combination of everything I've ever wanted in the genre - with modding.

Kingdom Come Deliverance

Not unlike Skyrim, except that it didn't need mods to be truly great - and while it wasn't as compelling as a freeform experience - it combines an absolutely marvellous story with great mechanics and superb immersion.

Last of Us

Not terribly effective as a gameplay experience - but it really does represent the most powerful example of interactive storytelling - tied with Bioshock Infinite - for this decade, for me.
 
With 3 RPGs I might go for The Witcher 3, Mass Effect 2, Fallout New Vegas.

Games in general is pretty hard. I'd consider stuff like Rock Band 3, Civilization V, Read Dead Redemption (have not played the second part yet). Hard to compare them against each other or the RPGs I noted. So that's not really my list, since I have a hard time switching out either of the RPGs against those three.
 
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With 3 RPGs I might go for The Witcher 3, Mass Effect 2, Fallout New Vegas.

Games in general is pretty hard. I'd consider stuff like Rock Band 3, Civilization V, Read Dead Redemption (have not played the second part yet). Hard to compare them against each other or the RPGs I noted. So that's not really my list, since I have a hard time switching out either of the RPGs against those three.

The reason I chose 3 is that I know it's hard to pick just one :)

But, it's true - it's still hard even with multiple entries.

That said, I did struggle to come up with three games that truly qualified.
 
Oh good, DArt's back to making topics. That makes this forum a lot more interesting.

X3: Terran Conflict. It actually showed up in late 2008 but my playtime covered 2009-2013 so I'm counting it anyway. So much detail and I loved building crazy mazes of factory goodness. The procedural missions were terribly repetitive but doing those let me see bunches of the traders I had set up cruising around the systems to make money for me, which was fun.

Witcher 3 - best storytelling I've ever seen, great graphics, and pretty good combat.

BattleTech - XCOM plus the Long War mod would have won out but BattleTech's mech customization makes it even more fun for me than the XCOM games.

(Best thing about the decade: the return of Turn Based games! Worst thing: the failure of 3D Vision.)
 
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Divinity: Original Sin
ELEX
The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel

Honourable mention:
Witcher 3
Pathfinder: Kingmaker
The Great Gaias
Skyrim/Enderal
Valkyria Chronicles 4
Kingdom Come: Deliverance
Battle Brothers
Underrail
Fallout: New Vegas
 
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1. Legend of Heroes: Trail of Cold Steel

2. Underrail

3. The Great Gaias.


Close runner-ups would be Battle Brothers and Disgaea....the three I played, at least.
 
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Hard to remember over 10 years what the games were that I played. I looked up a couple. Before I list my three I want to explain something … just because :p

Some games are high on my fun list and favorites but they are not games I would pick as games of the decade because they don't stand out. A food analogy I came up with explains it well.

Two of my all time favorite desserts are white chocolate raspberry cheesecake and peanut-butter and chocolate cream pie. I don't have them very often, maybe once a year, as they are rich, hard to make or even find (good fresh ones that is), and a treat.

On the other hand I also like oatmeal cookies. They are not special and rather common. But they are easy to make and have a lot of variety - for sweeteners use brown/white sugar, honey, or maple syrup; healthier with applesauce or yogurt, raw nuts, whole oats, and mixed grains; or more decadent with real butter, chocolate chips, and roasted walnuts.

Skyrim and Fallout 4 are oatmeal cookies to me. I have sunk thousands of hours into both and enjoy them immensely. Yet they are common - there really isn't anything spectacular about their story or game play (to me anyhow) except maybe for the companions in FO4 which I really like, especially Dogmeat, Mac, and Piper. Yet they are open-world games that let me mod, write stories, interact with the Nexus community, play with ENB and ReShade for screenshots, and very flexible … much like oatmeal cookies.

Yet they are not outstanding examples of game play for me so not going to list them here even though both of them I am extremely fond of and still play both of them fairly regularly.

IF I can count Dragon Age Origins, released 11/2009 so super close to 2010, then that would be number one (oddly this page lists it as 2010: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_role-playing_video_games:_2010_to_2011).

Lastly I rate games on a gestalt - that is the fun factor made up of all the parts. I don't rate on some perceived quality or some checklist made up by some random players.

Anyhow my cheesecake and PB pie games would be:

1: Dragon Age Origins
2: Pathfinder: Kingmaker
3: Greedfall


Honorable mention to:

Pillars of Eternity 1 and 2 (this could be the third if DAO can't qualify)
Mass Effect 3


Of course there are many other games I have played in that 10 years I very much enjoyed (and odds are I might be forgetting one that I might list). But the above 3 finalists all stood out in some way - DAO because it was so new to me in style, 3D, companions, the story and lore … played the hell out of it and loved it and the companions. Pathfinder - because IMO its the next true Baldurs Gate game - so much intense attention to detail. Constantly finding new things, the choice and consequence blows my mind some times. It is so intricate and so many things you miss unless you do XYZ. I love how many paths there are and how many characters you can create from the options. Lastly Greedfall because it was so unique in story, lore, and setting. I simply found myself enthralled while playing. Also loved the companions.
 
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I'm going to go:
Pillars of Eternity 1 (White March)
Pathfinder: Kingmaker
Torment: Tides of Numenera

Honorable mentions:
Wasteland 2
Original Sin 1/2
 
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1. Skyrim
2. Skyrim Special Edition
3. Fallout 4

6,976th. Fallout 76
 
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Dark Souls

Few games have had as much influence on gaming as 2011's Dark Souls.

If Skyrim never happened we'd still have Oblivion, we'd still have Morrowind. Nothing new here, really. But Dark Souls created it's own genre and showed developers, who were, at the time, more focused on board accessibility in their designs, that a rewarding challenge is something people want, after all.

Since then we've seen "souls-like" has become overused and applied to anything with a bit of challenge or action combat system that uses stamina.

Divinity: Original Sin 2

Just a fantastic RPG. Probably needs no introduction.

I personally like playing co-op with 2 players who kill almost every NPC and there are very few games which allow this sort of freedom. Very fun!

Star Citizen

While Souls may have made a splash where gameplay is concerned, there's no arguing that Star Citizen has been a complete tsunami of crowd funding power. While it hasn't really shaken up the industry, and may be a bit of a dead parrot with beautiful plumage, it certainly has been entertaining to argue about and a significant part of the last decade.
 
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I strongly considered D:OS 2 as well, not least because of the absolutely fantastic cooperative multiplayer. It's extremely rare in the CRPG genre to actually have the foundation of the PnP experience considered as more than an afterthought.

But it had a few too many issues with balance/mechanics for my tastes.

If Witcher 3 had been released with W3EE gameplay - that would also have been a strong contender.

As for Bethsoft games, I could have picked any of the modern ones. Yes, even Fallout 76 - which is definitely their best vanilla release.

No, not in terms of bugs (and boy does it have some technical issues) - but because it's mechanically superior to their past games WITHOUT mods - and because it's much richer in terms of distinct content, with something like four times the content of Fallout 4 (and that's not exactly a small game in that way in the first place).

However, as much as I love Bethsoft open world CRPGs - there's more to life :)

Skyrim, for me, was the first time everything they've tried to do since Arena finally came together and actually worked more or less as intended.

Morrowind and Oblivion both had too many problems and they were too ambitious at a point where they couldn't really deliver what they wanted to deliver.

Arena and Daggerfall belong to the previous decade - and they also represent another kind of experience, even if the ultimate goal is very similar to modern Beth games.

Oh, as for Star Citizen - it will very likely be the game of the next decade ;)

It's more or less inevitable, though you kinda need to love space sims - and it's too hardcore to become a mainstream thing.
 
These have my most play time, so I would consider my top 3:

Divinity 2
Witcher 3
Underrail

Closely following:
Skyrim
Metro last light
Kingdom come
Origins
Wasteland 2
Elex
Fallout 4
 
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Three titles without much thinking:

- TW3 as a nogrind (unless you want to) masterpiece of c&c with eyepleasing PC graphics in several styles, outstanding music, exciting ingame CCG, actual expansions so good that are worth of being a separate game and superb trailers that tell separate short stories

- KCD as the most stunning godrays world looking vastly superior to overrated Rockstar's junk (both GTA5 and RDR2) hitting all the correct emotions in a world where almost everyone is illiterate with characters one can only love, making no compromises with rating boards and showing gore in detail - if it wasn't polished to the point of almost no bugs officially I wouldn't have nominated it

- Valkyria Chronicles 4 as an oddball of RPG with an unique combat system kissing keyboard&mouse in live play just as it's predecessor but this time with proper mouse use in menus and giving some time to every single character instead of just the main cast, the publisher discounted DLC so much it basically gave it all for free to those who were suspicious and didn't buy it instantly


Also from the top of my head games awsome, yet tainted by something:

- DX:MD as unbelievably underrated hybrid thanks to pisspoor decisions by it's publisher (partial phonegame designs) making your GPU sweating with the most realistic heavy and spiky hair I've seen in a game (Jensen) while telling a compelling story of de facto racism in a world where cyborgs are supposed to be a normal thing

- AC:Odyssey as unexpectedly grand RPGization of series playable as one of two totally different characters with enormous amount of c&c and interesting mercenaries mechanics tainted by copied from Bethesda radiant quests idiocy and Helix points scam

- D:OS, D:OS2 and P:K as Baldur's Gate spiritual successors where former two couldn't make the story epic enough while the later killed the potential game of decade with irritating timers

- Southpark 1 & 2 where both were hilarious yet the first one was respawning enemies just because while the second one wasn't stingy/insulting enough

- Does ME2 qualify being from 2010? Even if it does, and although I'm ME series #1 fan, no DLC:The Game where the DLC never got discounted can take my vote

- ME3 with so much fun yet critical content cut for sakes of scammy Bioware points just as it's predecessor and players forced to mmo for no reason

- FF15 with the most beautiful PC visuals and fantastic music yet with a story supposed to be a tragedy but it just couldn't deliver as was so dull

- The Outer Worlds would be my instapick if it didn't receive a news update recently - there will be DLC because screw all of us who thought it's a full game we got yay! and because of course there has to be DLC

- DA:I with fantastic main story content tainted by cheap&grindy openworld with pisspoor k+m controls (especially irritating in tactics mode)

- Grimrock (sorry didn't play the second one yet) as an awsome and possibly the best crawler ever, but all the time a player feels something is missing preventing the actual wow effect

That's all without thinking much. If I did think, maybe I'd change some entries… Or not.
Note that many titles I do adore can't possibly "nominate" due to either outdated technology (Tales of Berseria for example, a gem suffering from pisspoor hardware designs it originates from) or not being epic enough (Mars: War Logs is the most charming game ever made yet is two afternoons max needed to complete it). And then there are some titles I cannot play because no PC port but I do have a feeling those could be RPGs of decade (example: HZD).

EDIT:
Well sh… Forgot Greedfall, I knew I'll skip something. No to top3 game of decade, yes to this year's goty. This nonrevisionist fantasy criticizing atrocities during real history of humanity needed just a little bit more of epicness to reach the game of decade status.
 
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Skyrim
Kenshi
Fallout New Vegas

Honorable Mention: ELEX
 
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I don't think the topic is the next decade's milking by remaking previously full games into episodic nonsense. :)
 
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1) Battle Brothers - Easy #1 game for me. Only game I have gifted to about 10 friends. This game made me rethink Kickstarters. Would rather support a great game already made than maybe getting screwed on a K/S project. BB seems like it was made for me. Two expansions are fantastic also.

2) Skyrim - With mods is a perfect roleplaying sandbox.

3) Hard for me to pick the third. Maybe Kingmaker or Underrail or Wasteland 2. Witcher 3 was also fantastic.

Nice topic for the end of the decade.

I don't know when it was released but with mods, Gothic 3 is fantastic. I have played thru it 3x the past 5 years.
 
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