Let's Talk Top 5 RPG's

[aegix drakan_v1legacy]

Why would you make this thread like...four days after Persona 5 made me decide to stop ranking my favourite RPGs, because I love way too many of them equally? Why would you do this to me?

I've massively enjoyed too many RPGs at this point to be able to rank them, or even remember all of them. This is to say nothing of all the games out there that use enough RPG mechanics that they qualify as RPGs (Deus ex, etc)...

I'm afraid to even list out any of them now for fear that I'll forget an important one!

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

1) Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of the Cursed King
2) Odin Sphere
3) Tales of the Abyss
4) Disgaea: Hour of Darkness
5) Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch

Does Okami count as an RPG?

 

[Grouchy Imp_v1legacy]

Do we not have enough 'Top X' articles on the Escapist already?!?

*sigh*

Fine ... here we go ...

1) TES III - Morrowind
2) Fallout 2
3) Fallout - New Vegas
4) Realms of Arkadia: Blade of Destiny
5) Balder's Gate II - Shadows of Amn

EDIT - Sorry OP, I shouldn't take my frustrations regarding the lack of site content out on you. If you feel my snarkiness was aimed at you I apologise.

 

[bjj hero]

1. Shining force 1 and 2. I still play them 25 years on.
2.Dragon Quest: Journey of the Cursed King. Yangus is still my fave rpg charecter who is not Shepherd.
3. Mass Effect Trilogy. Played through all 3 with the same 2 charecters. Renegade ftw.
4. Suikoden 2. It still hurts when Gremio dies.
5: Knights of the old Republic. Great games held back by the DnD clunky rule set. HK is amazing.

 

[Hawki]

On another note, I'll specify that I don't see the Zelda series as being RPGs, but rather action adventure. Zelda II and Breath of the Wild might count, but haven't played either of them. So, much as I love the series, I can't list it.

Do we not have enough 'Top X' articles on the Escapist already?!?

They're usually top 8. This is a top 5. Completely different. ;p

 

[Drathnoxis]

Not one mention of Mother 3. Not a single one! Shame on you Escapist!

Mother 3 has one of the most emotionally touching stories I've ever seen in a game. It's filled with quirky well developed characters that have something new to say after every little bit of progress in the story. The music is great, everything is packed with charm, and it's just... so good!! *sniff*

Play it!!!! (probably should play Earthbound first, though.)

 

[Kungfu_Teddybear]

1. Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind
2. Bloodborne
3. The Witcher 3
4. Dark Souls 1
5. Dark Souls 3

 

[Wrex Brogan]

Oh man, only 5? Time to shorten the list...

5) Final Fantasy VII. I know, you said not to, but honestly even though nowadays it might seem a bit cliche with others doing what it did better, at the time it was released it was pretty fucking revolutionary in, well, everything, and ended up shaping the modern RPG design. Plus it helps that it's well written (little poorly translated but hey, what wasn't those days), has engaging characters (which makes it annoying whenever people portray Cloud as a whiny emo) and some challenging ass boss fights to throw down with.

4) Final Fantasy XII. Not as revolutionary as Final Fantasy VII but still just as good, with solid characters, voice acting that wasn't a god-damn nightmare, a fun 'loose' world design where you could either bum-rush your objectives or explore around and some rare few villains in a Final Fantasy game you could actually sympathize with and understand their motivations. Look, I like Kefka as much as anyone else, but sometimes you want an antagonist whose main motivations isn't just 'shits and or grins', you know?

3) Pokemon White and Black 2. It's games like these that make me wish Pokemon did sequels more often - while I had my problems with Black and White, the sequels largely fixed them and introduced a lot of fun stuff to play around with. Plus, if you know what you're doing, Level 35 Volcarona! Hell yeah!

2) Baiten Kaitos: Eternal Wings and The Lost Ocean. A bit of a mess this one, with some of the voice acting sounding like they recorded it in a tin bathtub, but by and large a really fun game that took the whole 'fantasy' thing and really ran with it. There's a god-damn candy/storybook kingdom. The final boss is pretty disappointing though since it's got a 70% weakness to a common element (can literally be killed in two turns), but the rest of the game makes up for that. Plus the card-battle mechanic was surprisingly complex and engaging, despite how easy it was to break in the late game.

1) Pokemon Sun and Moon. I have to admit, I loved the story of this one, with the characters all being pretty interesting and the whole Ultra-Beast plotline was pretty cool to play through. Plus the final fight in the Elite Four was just... everything I've wanted from a pokemon game for the last 20 years. My only real criticisms is that everything this generation is fucking slow (there's only a handful of pokemon with speed higher than 60, and most of 'em are legendaries) and that there's this awkward point in the game where you out-level enemies by 10 and then suddenly you're underleveled by 5, but those aren't that major all things considered.

 

[jademunky]

Alrighty, here we go.

1) Goes to Planescape: Torment, just the amount of depth that went into that game, and unlike other games with depth, this one looked fucking awesome and was written by people who actually knew how to write.

2) Goes to Dark Souls, I hope I do not have to explain why.

3) Fallout 2: If I ever want to just lose myself for 20+ hours, I just start a new character in this game. Granted, I usually create the same build 90% of the time.

4) Witcher 3: This game is a bit of weird one in the sense that I kinda resent it. Sure it is a vast, immersive open world with tons of fantastic creatures, more quests than you can complete in a lifetime, great lore, great characters, etc. It is also, possibly the only video game that I can definitively say has made me a worse person.

Now this deserves some explaination that is going to go into superspoiler territory:

Spoiler

So, I finished Witcher 2, long story short, the game ends with Phillipa getting her eyes gouged out by King Radovid and huge numbers of mages getting slaughtered. This pissed me off but when I finally (years after release) got around to playing Witcher 3, it involved even more anti mage bigotry. So when I get the chance to kill him, holy shit it felt good. Never really felt hate for a video game character like that before.

5) Xenogears, yeah it is a JRPG, it is also mechanically fun, involves martial artists, Giant Robots and Giant Robots who also practice martial arts (because Japan). It also happens to have a 60-hour long story that spans 4000+ years that could only have also been written in Japan. Also it involves angsty teenagers using the power of friendship to kill (and thus liberate?)God.

 

[Elvis Starburst]

5. Persona 5 (It's only at #5 cause I haven't finished it yet, so I can't place it properly among the others. But I am HIGHLY enjoying it so far, so I at least want it on the list)
4. Xenoblade Chronicles
3. Lunar Silver Star Harmony
2. Does Rune Factory 4 count?
1. Suikoden 2

 

[Zen Bard]

1. Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim - People complain that Skyrim is shallow. And they're right. Which is what makes it awesome! One can graft his/her own story into the world and open up a whole new avenue of possibilities. Maybe you want to unify all the guilds under your rulership. Or maybe you're an agent of chaos tasked by the gods to recover all the Daedric artifacts. Or maybe, you just want to murder elves. With the mods and a little imagination, the world is your pearl oyster.

2. Fallout: New Vegas - The antithesis of Skyrim's shallowness, New Vegas was a wonderfully immersive world with colorful characters, sly humor, a wealth of diverse quests with a variety of ways to solve them. And it's worth replaying just to experience the four different faction endings (except for the Legion's because they're just pricks).

3. Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines - Probably the closest we'll ever get to a digital version of White Wolf's World of Darkness pen and paper games. I loved how each "Clan" character templates each offered its own unique gameplay experience. If it weren't for the rushed production and sloppy combat, this game could have been a masterpiece.

4. Jade Empire - This one deserves credit for the backdrop alone. How many Western RPGs take place in a mystical fantasy themed world resembling Feudal Asia instead of Medieval Europe? Typical of a Bioware game it has a strong story (with a twist!), memorable characters, interesting puzzles and genuinely enjoyable gameplay.

5. Ultima II - Eh. Sue me for having nostalgia glasses. But you never forget your first. I was a little tyke just getting into this new craze called "Dungeons and Dragons" at the time. So imagine my delight when I discovered a computer role playing game! Finally, I could explore a vast world all by myself without having to deal with those annoying other people.

 

[Trunkage]

Since everyone else is cheating...

5. Dark Souls trilogy
4. Baulder's Gate 2
3. Dragon Age trilogy
2. Elder Scrolls (I didn't play Arena, so I don't know about that
1. Witcher trilogy

I'm going to have to pick series. There are many good things about each entry, and newer one focussed on creating something better but usually at the cost of something else. Like ME2 had no storyline as there was only 5 real missions. ME3 had a long storyline but they reduced dialogue choices due to time constraints. Witcher 1 and 2 had you accidentally involved in political events (like riots in Witcher 1 or the summit at the end of Witcher 2). In Witcher 3, you really had to choose to intervene but the overall experience had better stories and was more personal.

Baulder's Gare is the only exception. BG1 is slow and its quest line would be a single quest in current RPGs. Missing all the time is frustrating and a sling is harder to use than a bow so its silly that mages can use that.

BG2 fixed it by having a higher starting level and then added better choice and consequences.

 

[Veylon]

Final Fantasy Tactics
Final Fantasy 6
Betrayal at Krondor
Might and Magic 6
Morrowind

 

[MysticSlayer]

5). The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim: I'm struggling to select a #5. There's a lot of games like Oblivion, Fallout 3, The Witcher, and various Tales games I want to put here, but I'm picking Skyrim simply because it perhaps best captures a "go out and role play" attitude of any game I've seen. Yes, its writing is weak, but it does a fantastic job giving a core set of mechanics and rules and letting the player forge their own character, with the modding scene only making things better.

4). Paper Mario 64: Simple? Yes. But boy does it have plenty of charm!

3). Mass Effect Trilogy: Overall, the Mass Effect trilogy is probably what I'll remember last generation the most for. The games were far from perfect, but the journey they took us through was simply unforgettable.

2). Xenoblade Chronicles: I sunk way too much time into this game, in no short part due to simply not wanting it to end. It does a fantastic job at making you feel like you're running around a massive titan, just a small part in a much larger world, which frankly is what quite a bit of the story revolves around. The characters are all charming and memorable, having wonderful arcs as they grow on their epic journey. I would put this at #1, but it's mostly held back by filler content and a story that gets way too preachy towards the end, but everything else is absolutely solid.

1). Dragon Age 2: Yes, it has some glaring flaws, but that won't stop me from gushing about this game. The combat is an absolute blast, and it is one of the few games where I always looked forward to a new battle or extensions of already-massive ones, and the game paced itself perfectly to never let the combat feel like a slog. Like most BioWare games, the characters are fantastic. Varric and Merrill in particular quickly became all-time favorites of mine. And the story is absolutely fantastic. It's small, but at the same time focused and is one of the few games where it felt like the characters were living actual lives, only for those lives to be occasionally interrupted by major events. It also is one of the few games I can think of that actually follows a character's tragedy as they slowly succumb to the world around them, all without pulling the usual "and then the hero died, how tragic!" ending.

 

[KissingSunlight]

I can list my Top 5 RPG with one finger:

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. It is the only RPG I have played all the way through. Even though, I felt it wasn't a perfect game. I really enjoyed the game. However, I felt that the game style was unique to RPG. So, I haven't really played any more of them until last year.

Honorable Mentions:

South Park: The Stick of Truth: I played about half of this game. I stopped when it was becoming redundant. I did like the feel of the game. It was like being a character in the TV show.

Skyrim: This game have been a pleasant diversion. However, it seems like something you would play when you have a lot of time on your hands. I may come back to it in the future.

Dark Souls: I was prepared for a challenge. On my first attempt at the game, it got really repetitive. I spent four hours getting to the next save point. Only to find out it was the same save point with a ladder to go somewhere else. I felt like that was a slap in the face for the effort I put into it.

Fallout 3: This was a game I needed to play more consistently. I completely forgot what I learned in the tutorial. So, I ended up floundering around until I gave up.

 

[Ryan Minns]

1: Breath of fire 2. This is probably the one I'll let it slide if people call out nostalgia. It was THE rpg to make me fall in love with them and the first game I ever played with multiple endings and even a secret character. Both I never knew existed until more than 10 years of always going back to it.

2: Final Fantasy... 6? My first FF was 7, then 8 and then 9 and 9 became my favourite pretty quick but also made me want to play the previous ones. Once I played 6 I considered it the winner and still do.

3: Final Fantasy 9. Just loved most things about it.

4: Baldurs gate 2. This one was great especially since when I mentioned thinking it was one of the greatest RPGs I'd ever played I was told to take my nostalgia goggles off (Very similar experience with Half life) but little did anyone know I played BG2 years after Neverwinter nights 2 was released and had no experience with any game similar to BG2 in anyway

5: Dragon Quest 8. This game was a true adventure, despite such a cartoony look it managed to have some rather dark tones and pretty damn awesome characters. Since playing it I have played numerous others which were great but I felt never replaced 8 from its spot.

 

[American Fox]

1. Record of the Lodoss War - Dreamcast
2. Shining Force 1&2 - Genesis
3. Phantasy Star
4. Neverwinter Nights 2 - PC
5. Cookie Monster Munch - 2600

 

[jademunky]

Dark Souls: I was prepared for a challenge. On my first attempt at the game, it got really repetitive. I spent four hours getting to the next save point. Only to find out it was the same save point with a ladder to go somewhere else. I felt like that was a slap in the face for the effort I put into it.

I think we all know that spot.

 

[CritialGaming]

The Witcher
Souls
Booodborne

There are at least 5 within the above series-wise. Surprising picks, I know. The order could change completely too depending on what I'm jonesing for.

We really need a more futuristic/Cyberpunk RPG though to balance things out. How does one even define an "RPG" anyways? You could technically say you're playing a role in almost any game that has a protagonist. If we're talking about stats, that narrows it down a bit, but then you have character creation to further deepen the "role" aspect. Does this mean The Witcher is less of an RPG than Blooodborne?

Oh, the semantics.