RPGWatch - GOTY 2021 - Best RPG

Moriendor said:
I'm surprised that Solasta scored the silver medal. I would have thought that Wildermyth, Encased or maybe even ATOM would be in the top 3 instead of a 5E rules combat simulator with no story or other content (aside from tactical combat) worth mentioning.
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JFarrell71 said:
He said none "worth mentioning". And nobody ever does, except to say that it's there. You'd be hard pressed to find a Solasta player who tries to argue that the story/characters/dialogue are good, much less exceptional.

To each his or her own, but I didn't even buy Solasta, much less rank it in my top 3.
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I suppose you would also be against any sort of dungeon crawler like say Icewind Dale, Grim Dawn, Diablo II, Wizardry or Dark Souls placing in the GOTY category, because they have much less interesting characters, story, et than Solasta does.
To each his own, but many of those games did win a medal in GOTY voting. While I know there is a faction here who can't enjoy any game without a focus on story and dialogue, many of us started off with dungeon crawlers and still love them.
 
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bizorker said:
I enjoyed Solasta, but couldn't bring myself to vote for it as something special.
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Why does it need to be 'special'?

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forgottenlor said:
I suppose you would also be against any sort of dungeon crawler like say Icewind Dale, Grim Dawn, Diablo II, Wizardry or Dark Souls placing in the GOTY category, because they have much less interesting characters, story, et than Solasta does.
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You would be wrong.

I don't agree at all that all of those games have less interesting stories/characters than Solasta. Solasta is bog standard fantasy stuff. Anyone who has spent any time playing D&D style fantasy RPGs has seen every bit of it already. Grim Dawn and Dark Souls, to pick two on your list, both have much more interesting settings and characters than Solasta. I never played Icewind Dale, but Icewind Dale 2 was much superior to Solasta in that regard as well. There are plenty of other dungeon crawl games (like Bard's Tale 4) that I would also put well above it.

You're making assumptions well beyond what I've said in supposing that not being interested in Solasta means I'm not interested in dungeon crawlers. It's like me saying I didn't care for Armaggeddon and you deciding I must hate all action films.
 
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JFarrell71 said:
You would be wrong.

I don't agree at all that all of those games have less interesting stories/characters than Solasta. Solasta is bog standard fantasy stuff. Anyone who has spent any time playing D&D style fantasy RPGs has seen every bit of it already. Grim Dawn and Dark Souls, to pick two on your list, both have much more interesting settings and characters than Solasta. I never played Icewind Dale, but Icewind Dale 2 was much superior to Solasta in that regard as well. There are plenty of other dungeon crawl games (like Bard's Tale 4) that I would also put well above it.

You're making assumptions well beyond what I've said in supposing that not being interested in Solasta means I'm not interested in dungeon crawlers. It's like me saying I didn't care for Armaggeddon and you deciding I must hate all action films.
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Assumptions are made likely because of the lack of description provided in order to reply without assumption.

What you describe here isn't story, it's setting and atmosphere. Your mention of characters is as close as you get to story, but story isn't the same as characters.

This reply, as with the previous post doesn't actually give any details or criticism of the story, just flat statements that it's bad to the point of non-existence, which is, well, wrong quite frankly.
 
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JFarrell71 said:
You would be wrong.

I don't agree at all that all of those games have less interesting stories/characters than Solasta. Solasta is bog standard fantasy stuff. Anyone who has spent any time playing D&D style fantasy RPGs has seen every bit of it already. Grim Dawn and Dark Souls, to pick two on your list, both have much more interesting settings and characters than Solasta. I never played Icewind Dale, but Icewind Dale 2 was much superior to Solasta in that regard as well. There are plenty of other dungeon crawl games (like Bard's Tale 4) that I would also put well above it.

You're making assumptions well beyond what I've said in supposing that not being interested in Solasta means I'm not interested in dungeon crawlers. It's like me saying I didn't care for Armaggeddon and you deciding I must hate all action films.
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I couldn't disagree more. Grim Dawn has some interesting lore bits, but its story is extremely generic and its characters are nothing special in my opinion. It does use a rarely used setting and has a great atmosphere. By the way, I love Grim Dawn and have played through it 3 times. I would also disagree that either Icewind Dale game has a better story, and to even put Bard's Tale 4 in the same category I personally find mind boggling, as I find the story and characters in that game borderline cringeworthy. I would say the tutorial alone in Solasta has more story than say Grim Dawn has in its entirety.
 
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I don't think Solasta should be compared to other games without keeping in mind that it tries to translate the fun of playing a board game to a video game. Characters will banter as if they were playing a game, for ex. They don't have a pre-made background story but the one you make (if you want to).

That, at least, puts it apart. The fact it presents a somewhat confusing D&D ruleset so clearly is commendable too, just look at how Larian failed to do it.
 
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Redglyph said:
@daveyd; It seems there are many people here with such sane reaction or caution when games are out.

Regarding Solasta and DM, that seems promising, I'm glad you're still following them and making dungeons. :)

The fact the game doesn't have a main character still makes it hard to identify and RP though. Of course one could imagine their main character is the first of the party, and if the custom quest created in DM takes it into account, the dialogues could be tailored to give that impression too (so you wouldn't talk to your own MC, for example).

I understand what they wanted to achieve by doing that, but I wouldn't be surprised if it put quite a few people off. I feel it creates a distance with the RP too.
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Yeah, actually the DM already recognizes "Main character" as the character in the first slot. So you can designate an area activator / "lore area" to trigger the main character to make a comment (only other option is to just make a random party member say it).

What I'd really like to do is make a campaign structured like BG where players just make the main character and are joined by companions with their own backstory & personality. I know most Solasta players feel making your entire party is one of the things that sets the game apart from most modern cRPGs (and it is) but having four essentially blank slate characters also limits storytelling a lot.

The rumors are the next DM update will introduce dialogue that works similarly to how it works in the main campaign; so presumably that means creators will be able to take personality tags and backgrounds into account.
 
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JFarrell71 said:
You would be wrong.

I don't agree at all that all of those games have less interesting stories/characters than Solasta. Solasta is bog standard fantasy stuff. Anyone who has spent any time playing D&D style fantasy RPGs has seen every bit of it already. Grim Dawn and Dark Souls, to pick two on your list, both have much more interesting settings and characters than Solasta. I never played Icewind Dale, but Icewind Dale 2 was much superior to Solasta in that regard as well. There are plenty of other dungeon crawl games (like Bard's Tale 4) that I would also put well above it.

You're making assumptions well beyond what I've said in supposing that not being interested in Solasta means I'm not interested in dungeon crawlers. It's like me saying I didn't care for Armaggeddon and you deciding I must hate all action films.
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I also couldn't disagree more. For us that grew up on Wizardry and Might and Magic, Solasta's story was fine. IWD 2 wasn't superior to Solasta story-wise. As soon as you mentioned Bard's Tale 4 you lost me. I gave a good amount of money to that KS and it's one of the reasons I hardly ever donate now. Whatever they were trying to do with BT4, it didn't work. The only good thing that came out of that campaign was the remakes.

I don't think he's making assumptions about you not liking dungeon crawlers. We are making assumptions about your taste in dungeon crawlers ;)
 
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bizorker said:
I went to Steam last week and checked out all the other contestants. I was tempted by Wildermyth, but ultimately 'none' made it into my shopping.
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Just curious, what made you stop from trying out Wildermyth?

I was not so keen on it either but it ended up as my GOTY #2. I'd say give it a try - under 2 hours should be enough for you to form yout opinion on Wildermyth imo :)

forgottenlor said:
I suppose you would also be against any sort of dungeon crawler like say Icewind Dale, Grim Dawn, Diablo II, Wizardry or Dark Souls placing in the GOTY category, because they have much less interesting characters, story, et than Solasta does.
To each his own, but many of those games did win a medal in GOTY voting. While I know there is a faction here who can't enjoy any game without a focus on story and dialogue, many of us started off with dungeon crawlers and still love them.
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That is indeed the case for me - I couldn't play IWD until I got NPC project mod installed. I started off my RPG journey with BG2 so not having rich companions was no good for me.

Solasta was also weird in a sense that they have some sort of personality and dialogues attached due to tag system - like, not a silent protagonist(s) nor full fledged companions either, some sort of weird in-between.

daveyd said:
Yeah, actually the DM already recognizes "Main character" as the character in the first slot. So you can designate an area activator / "lore area" to trigger the main character to make a comment (only other option is to just make a random party member say it).

What I'd really like to do is make a campaign structured like BG where players just make the main character and are joined by companions with their own backstory & personality. I know most Solasta players feel making your entire party is one of the things that sets the game apart from most modern cRPGs (and it is) but having four essentially blank slate characters also limits storytelling a lot.

The rumors are the next DM update will introduce dialogue that works similarly to how it works in the main campaign; so presumably that means creators will be able to take personality tags and backgrounds into account.
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Nice :D please keep us updated!
 
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daveyd said:
The rumors are the next DM update will introduce dialogue that works similarly to how it works in the main campaign
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Ugh, I don't see how that could ever work for custom campaigns :-/

I was hoping they'd introduce the normal dialogue chat box instead, to avoid the close-up faces, the animations, and not be feel forced to add voice acting.
 
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Redglyph said:
Ugh, I don't see how that could ever work for custom campaigns :-/

I was hoping they'd introduce the normal dialogue chat box instead, to avoid the close-up faces, the animations, and not be feel forced to add voice acting.
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Wait, so current dungeon maker version has different dialogue system to Solasta campaign? As in, just texts and no VAs & cutscenes? If so, I hope they let DM to choose which dialogue option to use in their mods.
 
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purpleblob1 said:
Wait, so current dungeon maker version has different dialogue system to Solasta campaign? As in, just texts and no VAs & cutscenes? If so, I hope they let DM to choose which dialogue option to use in their mods.
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AFAIK there's no dialogue at the moment, not in the public version.

But after reading that again, I may have misunderstood @daveyd;, he was talking about the tag system and not really how the dialogue is presented.
 
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Redglyph said:
Ugh, I don't see how that could ever work for custom campaigns :-/

I was hoping they'd introduce the normal dialogue chat box instead, to avoid the close-up faces, the animations, and not be feel forced to add voice acting.
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Yeah, at this point I am not entirely sure what that means or how it will work. I was thinking they didn't necessarily mean it in the sense of the close up faces & animations… just that you could set up different dialogue options for different characters…. and hopefully have skill checks, too. Unfortunately due to the NDA the beta testers are not allowed to get more specific.

I am hoping it will at least be possible to create a basic dialogue tree. After all that is also in the main campaign as seen when you interact with merchants.
 
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daveyd said:
Yeah, at this point I am not entirely sure what that means or how it will work. I was thinking they didn't necessarily mean it in the sense of the close up faces & animations… just that you could set up different dialogue options for different characters…. and hopefully have skill checks, too. Unfortunately due to the NDA the beta testers are not allowed to get more specific.

I am hoping it will at least be possible to create a basic dialogue tree. After all that is also in the main campaign as seen when you interact with merchants.
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The "face" presentation is natural to select the dialogues in function of the personality, that's why I first made the assumption above. But it could be presented as a multiple choice in a classic box as well, after all.

If someone could make a mod and show what it looks like, perhaps it would be more easily adopted.
 
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Wow, this thread is almost completely off-topic :) I think I voted for Encased but 2021 was a down year, imo. Of course, I like single-character, single-player games like Fallout and Skyrim, where you "roll" up a character and create your own backstory as you play. Bethesda really isn't good with protagonists, so it's best to ignore their main quest after your first run.
 
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daveyd said:
Yeah, at this point I am not entirely sure what that means or how it will work. I was thinking they didn't necessarily mean it in the sense of the close up faces & animations… just that you could set up different dialogue options for different characters…. and hopefully have skill checks, too. Unfortunately due to the NDA the beta testers are not allowed to get more specific.

I am hoping it will at least be possible to create a basic dialogue tree. After all that is also in the main campaign as seen when you interact with merchants.
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Personally, I don't think its realistic for devs to expect modders to add voiced lines so I hope its not the close up, cut scene like dialogue options - I think dialogue trees will be a much better option.

Yes, sorry about the off topic again.
 
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Astonished by 3rd place, would also have loved to see ATOM and/or Wildermyth further up.
Nonetheless, I'd love to try Chronicles Of Myrtana - is this suitable for someone who never played Gothic before?
 
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