Looking for some semi-recent top-down cRPGs to play

I'm looking for one or two top-down cRPGs to play. I'm open to any good game from the past circa 10 years that follow these three "rules":

1) I rarely play RPGs that are almost pure combat. Some stealth and a few puzzles would be nice.
2) Multiple ways to solve quests and/or choices that shape the story.
3) Turn-based or real-time with pause.

Thanks.

Incredible, Inc. Invisible, Inc.

Originally Posted by posfan12
Incredible, Inc.

Don't you mean Invisible Inc?

Omg, there is actually a game called Incredible Ink, but, hmm, I don't think you meant that one

Past 10 years? There's quite a lot of recent games, but 10 years old would be Drakensang: The River of Time. Based on a p&p system it has oodles of character builds and choices, the story is quite important.

Oops!

Thanks. The River of Time seems like a good place to start. I'll probably also play Invisible, Inc at some point.

Divinity: original sin (1 or 2), both are great
Shadowrun: returns, dragonfall, Hong Kong are very nice imho
Torment: tides of numenera (or better yet, Planescape: Torment)
Pillars of eternity (or better yet, The baldur's gate series)
Drakensang is good, but not top down. It is third person view.
If you are ok with 3rd person view: The Witcher series! One is nice, two is good, 3 is incredible.

Another "older" classic: dragon age: origin. (the first is still the best!), but also 3rd person view.

If you're an indie RPG fan, try some of the new Spiderweb software RPGs, or the Eschalon series.

As mentioned above, Shadowrun is excellent if you're into the cyberpunk feel.

I second Divinity Original Sin 2, does fit all your requirements, probably one of the best if not the best RPG coming out this year.

I'll definitely try Divinity Original Sin 2 when I get a better computer (I'm a "laptop gamer", and my computer is more than 4 years old ), also some of the other games, thanks again.

Invisible Inc. is a great original game, but hardly a RPG, it's a Stealth Roguelite.

I don't remember Drakensang series had stealth, and I agree its not really iso like or top down. But Drakensand series is a good one particularly River of Time. Also Shadowrun series has no stealth system, nor Spiderweb games.

The problem is stealth and party is hardly compatible, and DOS achieves it truly because of party slip and a token allowing teleport a part of party to the stealth character. Other with party and stealth system use stealth for a much more anecdotal usage, mainly to start combats or avoid a few combats, plus sometimes few rare small parts designed for some stealth progression but nothing noteworthy.

With a stealth system, but a rather limited use of stealth:
- Tyranny
- Baldur's Gate Enhanced Edition 1&2 (it's a rehash, the true releases are about 20 years ago, but in term of production level it didn't aged that much in my opinion)
- Pillars of Eternity
- Sword Coast Legends (yeah in my opinion it is cool to play, will be more limited in term of choices on how achieve goals)
- Torment tides of numenera (very special which can be a positive or negative opinion, depending of player)

With a possible but non mandatory heavy usage of stealth and beside DOS, I see only few indies RPG:
- Eschalon Book series (indie, and even an expert could play full stealth the full main story without killing anybody for one of the book, and only very few kills for others)
- Underrail (indie, great one until very weird last parts, stealth is real time outside of combats)
- Antharion (cheap indie but very cool in my opinion)
- Balrum (cheap indie but cool to play in my opinion, no true stealth system but allows an heavy usage of sneaking through noise&light systems + night&day cycle, so it's a sort of natural stealth system)
- Templar Battleforce (indie, and not truly a RPG as it's a Tactic RPG, but it has a real stealth system, your choices will be mainly how you achieve the missions that are mainly combats, it is quite borderline to qualify to all criteria, but I found it very fun and it uses a stealth system so I can't resist add it in the list)

If some sneak through parts without stealth system apply then there's also:
- Wasteland 2
- Dragonfall (I don't remind that Shadowrun Returns applies, and for Honk Kong I'm a lot more skeptical plus it has some real time action parts)
- Avadon trilogy (indie, real time sneaking, but Avernum series from same dev don't have any sneaking parts if I remember well)

:-)

Drakensang is a 3rd-person RTWP RPG, sort of like Dragon Age: Origins, that I would recommend. The RPG systems are quite strong, solid challenge level and pretty much all the RPG elements you could want.

Dasale: Thanks for the thorough rundown of games with stealth elements.

Planescape: Torment doesn't seem as good to me as the critics are saying but it certainly isn't bad. It IS different, though, in that there's barely any combat.

PST has a lot of (bad) combats, it's more that you can skip many if you play it tricky. I believes the EE edition will help me discover truly the game. I always found it ugly, not a big deal, but with EE it seems look great, and it could help me enter more deeply in the game.

But I doubt I'll ever be fan of some of the long dialog it has and that I don't find well writing, for my taste. Its plot is certainly great and well managed, but I'm more skeptical for the writing that looks heavy to me. TToN is almost the reverse and writing quality at this level is very rare in video games, but the plot management inside the context of a video game is quite more doubtful.

No one seems to have mentioned Expeditions Conquistador or Expeditions Vikings which both are turn based in combat and many quests have multiple ways of being resolved.

Both also contain a few puzzles.

Originally Posted by Pladio
No one seems to have mentioned Expeditions Conquistador or Expeditions Vikings which both are turn based in combat and many quests have multiple ways of being resolved.

Both also contain a few puzzles.

But not stealth nor even sneaking if I remember well. :-)