A review of every major CRPG from the last ten years - YTread (2024)

However, as the rpg tag is broad and, over time, different things have started to derive from it, leading to subcategories like j rpg, a rpg and c rpg then crpg is a type of role-playing game, a branch of an easy tree to recognize and therefore the key to defining it is as simple as looking a little closer at what c means, except it's not hard to imagine. There was a time when video games didn't exist and people had to engage in other hobbies as a means of entertainment with popular pastimes like playing outside listening to the radio or beating your wife.

These dark ages didn't last forever, but before the video. gaming really had a chance to take off, a bunch of nerds got together in a basem*nt and invented dungeons and dragons, although they were less popular than slapping your spouse and sometimes became a lot more controversial as well. very popular and therefore these role-playing games preceding their video game counterparts had a great influence on certain early video games such as Ultima or Wizardry, which were heavily inspired by pre-existing role-playing games as a video role-playing game. . The format of the game was different from that of a traditional role-playing game.

A term was needed to differentiate between the two, which is where crpg comes from. It means computer role-playing as opposed to what at the time were normal role-playing games, i.e. non-computer role-playing. -games that are also known as pencil and paper board games or traditional role-playing games, choose whichever term you prefer because each has its own problems, none of which we are going to deal with today, what is more important is which are different from video game role playing games, so the term crpg makes sense, we can follow this logic to conclude that all video game role playing games are video game role playing games, simple, right and wrong because, while This was once true, it is no longer true as it turns out logic and labels are not like this.

They aren't always best friends, and over time the meaning of crpg has morphed into something more specific. This is because as role-playing video games evolved, several subcategories emerged. Examples include Japanese RPGs, Action RPGs, Dungeon Crawler RPGs, etc., these subcategories are easy to understand. define, but as video games as a medium grew in popularity, the terms c rpg and rpg came to be used interchangeably as a name for role-playing video games and the c was often dropped because it was usually easy to understand if someone is talking about a video . game or board game only through context, at the same time, role-playing video games also increasingly moved away from their traditional pencil-and-paper roots.

There were two big causes of this: the first was Diablo, which successfully combined traditional RPG elements with an action game in an unholy world. A marriage that proved tremendously popular with both fans and future developers, a decade later and there was a new expectation for role-playing video games to have action combat to avoid being considered outdated and outdated, so this step of a game inspired by statistics and dice. as seen in traditional role-playing game experiences towards action-focused gameplay, as seen in many other video games, was the first big change for the genre, the second was the move from PCs to consoles led by the Once great champions of the CRPG bioware with the Knights of The Old Republic, which was accompanied by other developers who also wanted to capitalize on the growing console market, this move brought with it a rationalization and informalization of the genre, as the design of the The game was forced to change to appeal to console gamers and console hardware at the end of 1990s.

In short, there was a clear difference between the classic role-playing games of the late 90s, such as Boulder's Gates Fallout and Planescape Torment, with the more modern role-playing games such as Skyrim Mass Effect or the Witcher 3. Role-playing games had changed and therefore That's why the term CRPG began to take on a new meaning, which was that it was used to differentiate old role-playing games from new ones, this distinction was not exact. science, when exactly did all rpgs stop being crpgs, who knows which games count as crpgs and which ones are just rpgs, who cares? released only for simple pc right that's still wrong because things get more complicated again with the crpg resurgence sometimes referred to as the crpg renaissance if you want to sound a little more pretentious this is what happened in the 2010 with the rise of the new crowdfunding platform Kickstarter, where veteran RPG developers with recognizable names like Brian Fargo, Chris Avalon and Josh Sawyer were dragged out of whatever storage room they were in and forced at gunpoint to record kickstarter pitches asking fans for money so they could make cool rpgs again but they weren't just making any old rpg oh no they were making c rpg with an emphasis on sea rpgs inspired by classics old-school PC design with an unashamed focus on its reliance on statistics, often marketed directly as spiritual successors to older titles, and with no action combat system in sight.

After a 10 year hiatus, crpgs came back, which meant that crpg no longer meant old rpg because now there were new crpgs and we finally reached our destination. crpg used to mean computer rpg and was a term used to differentiate rpgs from video games. from traditional role-playing games that are not video games, it eventually came to be used as a term to refer specifically to older role-playing games because role-playing games began to change; However, in more recent years, CRPG has come to refer to both older role-playing games and modern role-playing games that are similar. in design to those older examples and crpg should be considered as a subcategory of rpg, if you want you can think of crpgs as classic rpgs because while that's not what the c represents, that description would make a lot of sense and that's it what we did.

Shadowrun is a pen-and-paper cyberpunk role-playing game adapted for the first time in video game form. on the super nintendo and then returned 20 years later as a faithful turn based crpg, as with most of the games we will see, this was facilitated by kickstarter and the return of Shadowrun is notable as the first crpg to emerge from the Kickstarter boom, Since it was released in mid-2013, Shadowrun's return was followed by two sequels, Dragonfall in 2014 and Hong Kong in 2015. All three games are based on the same engine and share many similarities, the most obvious of which is the setting.

One of the biggest draws of Shadowrun, although it's not as common as fantasy, there are still several traditional Cyberpunk RPGs and Shadowrun is by far the most popular. On the surface, it has all the basic elements you would expect from a runaway Cyberpunk RPG. Boundary-pushing cybernetics, shady conspiracy theories, you know the deal, but Shadowrun then launches into the unexpected by taking a big handful of classic fantasy tropes like dwarves, elves, dragons, and magic, and then throwing them all into the mixture, in addition to creating a great fusion. A pot of clichés that goes so far that it begins to develop a flavor that is clearly original, that urban fantasy side of Shadowrun is what gives it its own feel and that is one of the biggest appeals of these games.

Cyberpunk RPGs are already a rarity and Shadowrun's unique take on the setting. has proven popular withfans, although I'm personally not sure how much the fantasy elements add to the setting. A setting isn't better just because it adds more things, and part of the appeal of cyberpunk is how plausibly it is in the near future. setting that seems possible and adding magic and dragons conflicts with that, but even if that side of the setting doesn't appeal to me, I'm probably in the minority with that opinion and these games can take advantage of pen and paper RPGs. A rich tradition and a developed world.

The same can be said about the game's mechanics, which are mostly a faithful recreation, this means there's a greater focus on individual skills rather than pre-made classes and a high degree of flexibility in how you build your character. , meaning there's a range of weapon skills along with various types of magic and a few more tech-based options, the most unique of which allow you to fight using remote-controlled drones or hack a walkable 3D matrix to fight with systems. advanced security. Combat is turn-based with a heavy focus on cover and the percentage hit chance makes it seemingly very similar to xcom, although all actions are governed by a single pool of action points or AP, like classic Fallouts or many other RPGs, and as you progress through the game you'll start to accumulate a decent range of skills, spells and items that open up more options for you to flex your tactical muscles.

The combat overall seems very serviceable, though it rarely goes much beyond being reliably good but rarely great, and the same could be said for the presentation: there's no voice acting in these. games, but otherwise the graphics are not bad, they have a clean but elegant look that works well. What makes the Shadowrun game stand out the most is how simple they are compared to many of their crpg peers, from the interface to simplistic, tablet-friendly user interface to the mission- and hub-based structure around which the games are built, with a short but precise overall length. A major weakness of the RPG genre is that games can contain so much information that it can confuse, frustrate, or simply bore players.

They involve too many numbers and too many different systems combined with big worlds and slow plots when it comes to crpgs. The Shadowrun games. They are, on the contrary, one of the few examples of the genre that does not seem more complicated than necessary; Even something like loot, a staple in most RPGs, is limited to just being upgrades that you can buy at a store and equip before missions. It will depend on your perspective whether this is a good thing or not. Many people like crpgs for their complexity, but this means that the Shadowrun games could be a good entry point into the genre for inexperienced players, and even if some of the fat has been trimmed.

The Shadowrun games still retain many of the core features you'd expect in an RPG, including frequent skill-checking quests with multiple solutions and branching story options. The last thing to note about these games is that there's a huge jumping quality from the first game to the second, so much so that players should seriously consider skipping the Shadow Run returns entirely and jumping straight into Dragonfall. There's no plot reason why you need to play these games in order, and Dragon Fall not only has a much better main game. story that focuses on what might be the most interesting inhabitants of the setting, the dragons, it also has a full set of developed and well-written companions in Shadowrun returns, you play as one character and then take some goons with you on missions , which is also simplified.

Instead, Far Dragonfall's party members add a lot more personality to the experience, and unless you're sure you want to play all three games, skipping the returns and going straight to Dragonfall makes a lot of sense, there's always the third game, Hong Kong, which falls in the middle of the three in terms of quality for anyone who wants more Shadow Run after finishing Dragon Fall, so the best thing about the Shadowrun games is the setting and the simplified approach to RPG design, which is something that can appeal to both inexperienced players and anyone with less free time who still wants to be able to finish a good RPG, the games main weakness is its simplicity, which could easily be too simple for some, as well as a first mediocre game in general if cyberpunk is your thing.

The least worth watching in Exile is the entertaining sequel to the 1988 post-apocalyptic classic. It was one of the first big stories to come out of the Kickstarter Wasteland. He was the predecessor and father figure of Fallout and after Bethesda bought the Fallout intellectual property in the early 2000s and took the series in a different direction than the original games, he left an isometric fallout-shaped hole in the role-playing game market and the oldest fans of the series never forgot this and then, many years later, Wasteland 2 arrives on Kickstarter accompanied by several big names from X Fallout. developers and with it rekindled the dream of a faithful Fallout 3 that fans of the game always wanted but never got, it should come as no surprise that the kickstarter for Wasteland 2 broke records, but it also found itself with very big shoes to fill and it didn't. . it just had to be the spiritual successor to two of the most beloved crpgs ever created.

I also had to prove to the world the superiority of old-school role-playing design. This was the original Fallout vs Bethesda grudge match that people had longed for and Wasteland 2. found itself the people's champion who was expected to step into the ring with a goliath, hopes and expectations would likely play a big role in how one perceives Wasteland 2. Now we have passed 6 years since its release and although a sequel is just around the corner. It's still pretty obvious that this game wasn't the legendary killer some might have prophesied, that doesn't mean it's not a good game, but for some it just wasn't good enough even though Wasteland 2 still delivered a lot of what it originally promised. .

It's an old school post-apocalyptic crpg with lots of stats and lots of options. The influence of consequences can be quite noticeable, particularly in some of the less important details, like how you can inspect parts of the environment with a right-click to get text. description of your environment or how you traverse the world map in other ways, however Wasteland 2 feels like its own thing, the best difference is probably how you create a party of four characters at the beginning instead of just one, this not only allows you build. a more diverse team that can draw on a wide range of different skills.

It also means that Wasteland 2 improves on the older Fallouts in at least one way. Combat Fallout features a turn-based battle system, but you only control a single character, which means there are always encounters. Still fairly simplistic, Wasteland 2 gives you full control of your entire party, which can be increased up to a maximum of seven members, and this adds much-appreciated depth to an otherwise fairly straightforward combat system. On the other hand, the setup doesn't do much. to differentiate itself, it would be unfair to criticize Wasteland's setting for being too similar to Fallout because Wasteland originally came first and said there's not much about this world that feels very unique in Wasteland 2, every place you go seems to have its own craziness. . post-apocalyptic story for you to discover individually these stories can be fun one place has a group of self-destructive monks who worship an undetonated nuclear bomb another has a society where being polite is considered the highest virtue and is enforced through brutal violence another The Locations have warring tribes or mutated wildlife or killer robots and each is fine, but they never come together to form a very interesting whole.

There is a weakness in the world building where each location comes with its own problem for the player to solve, but in the end each. The location feels like it only exists to be a problem, and despite how much personality the individual locations or factions may have, there's no sense that the world itself has much of an identity, it doesn't help that the player's own faction, the rangers of the desert, whose mission to order. Discovering that the wasteland forms the main focus of the story is not at all interesting, although if you persist with the game you will find that the second half is much more narratively engaging than the first, persisting in wasteland 2 can be a bit difficult, however, like this the game is slow you spend a lot of time walking through areas or across the world map npcs you talk to have a lot to say maybe too many combat encounters can take a while to play out due to the turn based nature combined with a large The number of participants and the management of inventories of many characters takes its toll.

Some questionable design decisions don't help either, such as skill checks being percentage-based and can be tried multiple times, meaning each one can take much longer than it should despite the speed. Your progress has been greatly aided by the many quality of life improvements made by the Director's Cut of the game, and yet despite these numerous changes, it's still hard to deny that Wasteland 2 has a bit of a pacing issue, but If you don't mind taking your time with it, you'll find Wasteland 2 to be a big, deep RPG of occasionally mixed quality, but with a good core combat system and an even better character skill system that you can explore with a lot of fun. depth thanks to the great group. presentation size as for Wasteland 2 also looks pretty good, although the top-down camera perspective doesn't feel angular enough, meaning you can see very little in front of you unless you zoom out completely, moment in which you won't be able to appreciate Anyway, a lot about the graphics, the voice acting is a little better, although with a lot of voice lines and overall, Wasteland 2 is a good old school RPG, but it had problems somewhere because, for many, expectations were through the roof, the experience has also been greatly improved thanks to the director. cut edition and if you are looking for an RPG with a lot of depth and a lot of content and you are not put off by the slow pace, then Wasteland 2 is a solid choice, Divinity Original Sin and its sequel could be the most successful of all.

The games in this video, like many others, Larry and the studios were quick to jump on the Kickstarter bandwagon, but they did so with much less fanfare than some of the other adopters, despite this, with the decade coming to a close, Larian looks a lot like the new king of the crpg after being chosen for the prestigious role of developing the next baldur's gate game and achieving sales figures that most other isometric RPGs can only dream of and It's hard to say that the success is undeserved where so many CRPPG's of recent years stayed close. Instead, its inspiration, Original Sin, seemed happy to go in its own direction by putting a greater focus on the world and its interactivity in this game. , each item is a physical object that can be picked up and moved, this is then combined with a wide range of environments. effects that can be mixed, matched, combined and contrasted to provide a variety of different results.

This interaction is a big part of both combat and puzzle solving. You can electrify water, freeze pools of blood, explode poisonous clouds or ignite freshly laid oil spills and things don't always go as expected, maybe your pyromancy spells got a little out of control so you conjure a rain cloud to put out the fire, but now you created a cloud of steam and lost visibility, so you freeze these newly formed puzzles. so anyone trying to get close to you has to cross the ice and risk falling. The only problem is that you are not the only one moving the pieces on this chess board and the enemies cause their own carnage.

This is all just a hypothetical example, but there are many. The fun of this game is in these types of interactions and the unpredictability they bring. The core of Divinity Original Sins. Combat is like many other turn-based RPGs with actions costing AP, but the focus on combining effects creates controlled chaos that offers much more. freedom than other games while also rewarding creativity and experimentation, this also means that there isn't as much of a focus on hip percentage or lucky crits since, while still present, dice rolls seem clearly secondary to strategy, it is a hugely successful system and, although the individual fights are slow and original. sin also has a quality over quantity approach in the design of its encounters, ensuring ahigh degree of variability and few fights that feel like filler outside of combat.

The puzzles are also generally well done because the world is so interactive that it makes the experience more immersive and equal. In the midst of battle, these interactions reward you for trying things out and thinking for yourself, and if Original Sin's unique formula is fun on your own, the option to bring a friend and play through the entire game in co-op expands even more entertainment even if it is slow. Turn-based combat may not seem like a good fit for co-op because of all the downtime players have waiting for their turn. The interactive approach to Original Sins combat works greatly in its favor here by giving players plenty of reasons to communicate and argue. strategies each other there is nothing like having a friend to share your successes and not the successes because while things can be interesting when you are alone and something goes wrong with a friend, these moments are a cooperative experience in crpgs it is not After All in all, an unheard of feature in Boulder's Gate was possible, but it remains unusual.

This feature alone makes the original simulation game stand out and, like the only co-op games in this video, makes it a pretty obvious recommendation if co-op is preferred. what you're looking for, but you're still wondering how well the corporation works with respect to the story, the answer is not as good as with combat, but it still works, it could be a problem if players have different play styles, for For example, if one player wants to read everything while the other is more of a captain, then someone might have to come to an agreement, but if you can work this kind of thing out between yourselves, there's no reason you both can't enjoy the story. and each game is written to allow cooperative mode, both players can share the role of the main character, as well as the resulting decision-making.

As for the story itself, it takes a much more light-hearted approach than most other RPGs, with plenty of humor and a certain whimsical charm that doesn't always hit the mark, but still has a strong sense of personality. The first game's main story still feels pretty weak, but this is an area where the sequels made big improvements by having much better pacing, stronger characters, and a more interesting driving force pushing you along. forward original sin 2 also improves the world design with more interesting locations, some of the other changes that original sin 2 makes, however, are less successful, such as how initiative was changed to force turn order to alternate between players and enemies, which adds little time simultaneously. greatly devalues ​​initiative stats.

Another example is the new armor system which reduces the effectiveness of both crowd control and environmental effects, and while this is a logical change that helps balance the experience, it can also feel like it diminishes some of the fun and uniqueness factor. It made the game stand out to begin with, but the experience didn't suffer too much. Overall, the combat in Divinity Original Sin was already very good, but even a couple of changes that may not have been for the better still leave the game much better. combat than most, both original sin 1 and 2 are excellent games and excellent RPGs in terms of accessibility, they strike a good balance of being games that could easily be enjoyed by someone less experienced in the genre but still have a lot of depth, particularly In the way they reward players who think for themselves in terms of presentation, these games are also better than most, with good graphics, a high level of polish, and full voice acting - something that's unusual for a text. so heavy.

Genre, many modern crpgs are pretty low budget and that might be a turn off for some, but the original sin of Divinity and even more so its sequel doesn't feel like that at all. I would recommend both games to anyone who is If you are a fan of the genre and if you don't have much experience with crpgs and are wondering where to start, there may not be a safer bet than this, there are some RPGs that fans remember so well. honey like those created with Bioware's Infinite Engine that produced the likes of Baldur's Gate Ice Windale and Planescape Torment and so on, as with Wasteland 2 a few months earlier, when veteran role-playing studio Obsidian Entertainment turned to crowdfunding to create the successor. spiritual of these classics, expectations were also through the roof and Kickstarter records were broken, in fact, the then The project titled Eternity became the most funded video game in the history of Kickstarter and, with Obsidian's track record, The faith that fans had in them was not surprising, as was the case with Wasteland 2 before it, however, much of the reaction to Pillars of Eternity revolved around how much was expected of it in terms of appearance, Pillars of Eternity It certainly looks good, the pre-rendered isometric backgrounds of the old infinite engine RPGs already looked good, so the high-resolution version of Pillars of Eternity of this style manages to look classic and attractive, the sequel looks even better with some However, beneath the surface you see higher fidelity character models, as well as improved particle effects and lighting, and you'll start to find more differences between the mainstays and the games that inspired them, but it's still still a mostly faithful version of a modern infinite-engine game.

What this means is that, for the first time in this video, combat is not turn-based, but rather what is commonly known as real-time with pause. If you don't know what it is then the clue is in the name, it's a game system where combat happens in real time but the player can freely pause at any time to micromanage their party members by adjusting position or manually selecting spells or abilities. If you don't take advantage of the ability to pause, combat will move quickly, probably too quickly, and you won't be able to effectively use the tools at your disposal if you pause frequently, however, you may start to find options to micromanage a lot, possibly too much. abundant, and you may feel overwhelmed, but there's a distinct appeal to a combat system that gives you lots of options and then leaves it up to you how much you want to take advantage of them, meaning you can speed through easy fights and then when things get tough difficult, you can carefully plan each of your moves and it is that level of complete. control but very satisfying as someone who grew up playing these types of games.

This is a combat system that I love, but I may be in the minority as many RPG fans prefer turn-based systems. It is also not a combat system that is very friendly to new players because while, in turn, turn-based combat actions occur one at a time, which makes them easy to follow since you can clearly see what is happening. happening and what this causes, as a result, in real time, the actions with the paws happen quickly and at the same time, making it difficult to keep track of them. Paused time is a faster but more complicated alternative and if you've never played a paused real-time game before, Pillars of Eternity could be a good starting point due to a series of changes and adjustments made by Obsidian in an attempt to modernize and improve the experience is within these changes, however, pillars of eternity could start to fall out of favor with some older crpg fans because even if there are no individual changes that radically alter the experience, the net result will still It alters the overall feel of the game where the older infinite engine games might feel like slightly uneven pillars and require a more measured and confident approach, but by losing some of the sharp edges it might also lose a bit of excitement.

This is not only because of some of the small changes made to combat it, but also because those old infinite engine games were based directly on the dungeons and dragons ruleset, while pillars takes inspiration from dnd still uses its own systems. specially designed ones that focus more on balance, for example, where one point of strength can make a big difference in a character's effectiveness and this approach can greatly reward maximum intelligence. However, in pillars, each stat boost brings a flat buff that has a much smaller impact in comparison. Which approach you prefer is a matter of preference, but it's within these kinds of minutiae.

You begin to understand why some older fans were disappointed by the changes made to Pillars of Eternity in terms of setting, it also takes a lot of inspiration from d d and while this flavor of familiar fantasy can be seen as nostalgic, it could also be seen as a bit generic . From the enemy types to the classes and races you choose at character creation to the forests and cities you traverse as you travel, examples of something truly original are few and far between, Pillars of Eternity 2 goes some way to remedying this. This is exchanging the medieval European style forests for a set of islands with a pirate and colonial theme, and this change comes with a much more interesting world, but it does a lot to make the exploration really exciting, as well as a pirate ship a little less impressive so you can pilot and improve.

You can also fight with this ship, but the less said about this feature, the better the stories of these games will focus on the idea that souls are physical things whose essence is what facilitates the cycle of life and death, as well like the magical pillars of eternity. very seriously, possibly to a fault, but there is still a valid attempt to go beyond a more typical high fantasy story by introducing concepts of theology and philosophy, and the pillars deserve at least some respect for treating their audience as Adults. The downside to this is that the story can seem slow and dense with a lot of exposition, especially at the beginning of the game, where large amounts of story thrown into the player's lap could successfully fill in the details of the world, but failed to establish There is no reason for the player to really care if you follow the story to its conclusion then there is a narrative payoff at the end, but the story may still struggle to get players invested enough in the first place and, although the first game ends well, the sequel then wanders aimlessly and leaves everything important in the hands of a yet-to-be-announced third game that may not even end up becoming Pillars of Eternity 2 improves with its factions that were particularly forgettable in the first game, but this, along with the improved setting, makes the lackluster main story in many ways even more disappointing. its best pillars of eternity manage to look pretty epic the games have a lot of content the law is expansive the character build allows for a lot of options with lots of interesting builds and the sequel takes this even further by adding plus multiclassing in addition to normal dungeons and side quests , there's also fortress management in the first game, which becomes ship management in the second, and the games' sheer scale is matched by a consistent level of polish with plenty of high-quality voice acting in the first game and in the sequel.

Furthermore, by having fully expressed dialogue pillars of eternity, it firmly represents the old but new philosophy of CRPG design and, while it does not always manage to take the best of both worlds, its attempt to synergize these two fields is often found. about, there is always a risk. that by trying to appeal to both a modern audience and an older audience, you end up not going far enough to please either, but I can respect Pillars of Eternity for making a serious effort to improve its inspiration, even if it doesn't. I think it has been a completely successful work.

This game, if you don't mind real time with paused combat and are looking for something polished, made by a very small team over a very long period of time, Age of Decadence is not like the other games that have been presented so far in this . video there's no kickstarter or veteran RPG developers or long-dead franchises waiting to be rebooted behind this title, just an outspoken guy dissatisfied with the direction of the RPG genre who decided to back up his words with actions and the era of decay is the result you can probably tell. From the graphics you can tell there's not much to this game and that could be because development started in 2004, but the overwhelming brown color palette and bland user interface might not. be doing it any favors, don't expect anything as sophisticated as voice acting either.

With this one, though, get past the visuals and presentation and you'll find an RPG that does many of the things an RPG should do in ahigher level than what you might be used to, such as offering options or replayability or having impactful character builds, etc. It starts with character creation, where creating a non-combat character is treated as viable as anything else and this commitment to player freedom continues once the game begins because, despite gently nudging you towards one of the various paths to progress, the main game. story, everything else is completely up to you, with multiple factions that you can choose to work with or against as you try to progress through the world and find out what's really going on.

That question is important and it is not that easy. To settle it, as it might sound, the Age of Decline takes place in a sort of post-apocalyptic world amidst some sort of alternate Roman empire whose once-great civilization is slowly fading away. It is a fantasy setting with almost no extravagant elements where the remains of the past dot the landscape, except that those remains seem to present some level of technology, but not some super advanced or alien technology. No, it's technology that the player might be familiar with, but that the world's inhabitants have only a minimal level of understanding.

You can hear a Master of the Law talk about commanding fire elementals to bless or and realize that what this Master of the Law is doing is not any kind of magic, he is operating a foundry even though he does not understand really how it works, is that mixture of mysticism with knowledge of the real world. and how the players' understanding can be different from that of the game's characters, which makes for really effective world-building and adds a lot of intrigue and mystery to the setting. The main story itself is not that good, but the way it develops little by little.

And just as a result of the player putting things together themselves it's still very interesting, as for combat, it's once again turn-based and you control a single character, which can make big battles seem quite oblivious since you spend the vast majority of them looking. other characters take their turns with your own impact on the battle, you often feel quite limited. Individual combat isn't much better, as although there are different attacks you can perform and consumables to use, this is still not the most complex battle system and it is a group one. The battles aren't very engaging and the 1v1 fights are simplistic, it's probably safe to say that combat isn't really this game's strong point, but what Age of Decadence does well is make you appreciate your character's abilities in the battle if you decide to play as a Combat Focused Character, it feels good to be able to hold your own in combat and know that when things get tough you are more than capable of hitting back hard, whereas if you play as a less combat focused character combat, victory in battle cannot.

He will take himself for granted and therefore be grateful for every fight he comes out of alive. You will also start to be careful about the fights you get into, just like in real life, whether you participate in the fight against the Age of Decay is almost always down to player choice and learning to walk away is a very lesson. valuable. It's also true that other NPCs may not be as eager to see things come to blows, which makes a lot of sense because, in general, fighting to the death is dangerous and therefore not everyone wants to.

Betting with your life is something that seems blindingly obvious, yet very few games follow this logic, making Age of Décadence's more realistic approach seem notable, where Age of Décadence is most successful, however, is how it forces players who want to be good at combat. having to commit to that path, which means missing out on other things and those other things are important, for example a combat-focused character may not be able to understand much about the story or may have trouble with situations that require careful choice of words. Of which there are many, it is this approach to RPG design that makes Age of Decadence so replayable and at the same time so rewarding that you can't do everything you can't even come close to, so your character is built and the decisions you make matter much more. than in most other role-playing games, however, Age of Decadence's design philosophy can seem superior to the game that was built on it.

This is a game that shows its low budget in more ways than one and lacks an amazing story or truly fun combat. system that seems to need to take it to greatness. It's also a game that comes with a healthy side of frustration. You can easily find yourself in an unwinnable fight and sometimes loading a save game beforehand may not be enough, for example if you start the imperial guard questline in the first city and you will end up in a series of quests that take you They will lead to increasingly difficult battles with no chance to go anywhere else and you will upgrade your character in between if you get stuck, of course this is just the first city and you can always start over.

The Age of Decay is quite short but it makes up for it. In terms of replayability, it is also a game that does not waste the player's time, with no filler fights and the ability to fast travel even to locations on your current map. Sometimes it takes this approach too far with quests that take you directly to conversations. with the next npc making the game feel too small and closer to an interactive choose your own adventure game than an immersive RPG, but this is a minor complaint and what the developers have achieved with what is obviously a Very limited budget is still impressive.

I would recommend Age of Decadence to anyone with an interest in good RPG design or anyone who highly values ​​choice, consequences, or replayability. However, less experienced RPG players should probably skip this one, and as impressive as Age of Decadence may be, you should also know that there are more complete games that aren't content with the Age of Decadence taking all the glory of the game. indie underdog crpg under the beer, released a few months later and proving for the second time that year that a big budget and good graphics aren't all that underrail is. a brutal post-apocalyptic turn-based RPG that draws heavy inspiration from Fallout.

It is also the name of the vast network of interconnected railway lines and cave systems in which the game takes place and this is where humanity now lives after the surface became uninhabitable in most other post-apocalyptic games. , the first thing you witness is an explanation of what the hell happened to the world, which is how all the Fallout games, old and new, begin, as well as the Wasteland and Atom RPGs, and even the generally cryptic Age of Decay begins giving some kind of underrail explanation gives you nothing those questions about what happened and why are something you will have to work through building connections and exploring secrets and even then, the easy to understand answers are hard to find, this is not the only one However, in Underrail humans have been living underground for a while and enough time has passed for groups to have risen, resurrected and fallen again, but the secrets of the old world are still out there, sometimes hidden.

In forgotten corners or Sitting in run-down bars, I'm a big fan of this world, there are enough factions and politics to make it feel big and believable, while its depictions of struggling societies clinging to survival feel suitably dystopian and, without However, it's also strange in a way that always leaves you. you want to see more compared to other post-nuclear wastelands that can start to look too similar under the rails under the rails feels more unique and memorable exploring this setting is a big part of the game and that focus on exploration is different than many other crpgs The world in Underrail is large and there are no quest markers or minimap to tell you where to go, instead you have to rely on descriptions provided by npcs, as well as the occasional signpost and an optional compass, and although this is quite simple at first . caves once you get past the early game the world really opens up, there's always the subway system if you just want to get around but getting off the beaten path to see what's out there can be a lot of fun and as long as you use the weird experience system instead. of the classic system is also very rewarding, the oddity xp system is something recommended by the developers and most players and changes the way you acquire experience points, from killing enemies to acquiring them by finding a large number of rarities in the game, which are random elements.

Found in corpse bins or simply in some of the less frequented corners of the underrail, the purpose of this system was to allow players to level up at a similar pace regardless of play style, but in addition to this, it also manages to feel much more exciting and rewarding than a more traditional system would be, with the only drawback being that you're highly incentivized to search through the many containers you find in case an oddity is hiding inside, which can take a bit of time. Underrail can be a time-consuming game in general. and you will walk a lot as you travel through this world.

One very important thing to note is that you can increase the speed of the game outside of combat by pressing the plus key, which can save you a lot of time in the long run, but you will still walk a lot because the missions do not take the player's hand and the solutions They are not always very obvious. The quest design does a good job of providing multiple solutions and this is most clearly shown in the dungeon design, where there are almost always multiple paths through these non-linear locations that frequently present ways to take advantage of your various abilities. , such as lock picking, stealth, and hacking, and yet, as important as these skills make themselves feel, there is always at least some kind of workaround that can be found in a character who lacks these skills and that makes me leads to character builds, one of the best features of Underrail, while in many other RPGs there is an attempt to make all builds seem viable and present different equal options, that's not what Underrail is about.

The game's high difficulty greatly encourages max-min, and all good builds rely on careful synergies. It is often recommended that new players follow a guide for their first character, and while this is not strictly necessary, you should be aware that a weak build can run. in trouble and can make you feel like you need to start over there is a big difficulty spike at the end of the early game the dreaded depot which seems deliberately designed to put your build into pace as a general rule if you beat this location you will be fine, if not , then it might be time to go back to the drawing board and start again, but at least this is early enough that you won't get too frustrated and since you've done the initial sections once before, you can easily pick up the pace. a second time, if necessary, as for the combat itself, it's also very good, whereas many other turn-based games where you only control one character can feel overly simplistic.

Underrail succeeds in increasing its damage numbers so much that small changes in strategy can still have big consequences. Hits, death comes hard and fast for both you and your enemies, and you'll be saving and fast-loading a lot, but the fights are also short enough that doing an encounter multiple times doesn't feel like a waste of time, but instead the fights feel like mini. puzzles to discover that you'll be forced to take advantage of things like careful use of line of sight to stay out of harm's way for an extra turn or luring enemies into tight areas to plant devastating grenades or pre-prepared traps.

It also makes equipment very important and it's very satisfying to see all the little pieces fall into place as your character build and equipment come together to turn you into a killing machine. Underrail also has a very detailed crafting system that, while confusing to look at at first. Your Energy Shields is still very good and might be one of the deepest crafting systems you'll find in an RPG, so Underrail may be lacking in graphics and voice acting, but it's still a great game, just a last word of warning. Beware of the last area of ​​the game, once you enter you cannot leave again and this area is absolutely brutal, not only is it full of hostile and even more hostile environmental effects, but it also has some of the most complicated missions.

I've ever seen in an RPG one of these is so difficult that even using a wiki and an external help tool I still had trouble understanding it and ifWell this is optional, there are also non-optional quests that allow you to find large lists of in-game items. which are spread all over the map and would be very difficult to complete without at least a little help from Wikipedia, but Underrail seems to like putting the player through hell and I can only think of one other RPG that put me through so much pain but it still remained. I play until the end, if abusive relationships are not what you are looking for in your under el chan waifu rpg, it may not be for you, but make no mistake, this is one of the best games in this video and one of the best modern games.

Crpgs is also one of the hardest to recommend, it's the kind of game that journalists would call the dark souls of Crpgs and really, if Underrail isn't your thing, it's totally understandable, this is an old school RPG. with old school difficulty, but for the right player. It's awesome, but if you're not the right player, don't say I didn't warn you about what you're getting into as the second modern CRPG released by Obsidian Entertainment. The tyranny of 2016 is a bit like the pillars of small eternity. bro, it's a shorter, lower budget game in a different but still fantasy setting, with real-time combat with pause.

However, there are a number of key differences and if the mainstays were sometimes guilty of playing too safe, then Tyranny is a game that is at least more willing to take risks, the first of which is having you play as the bad guys, by least as you should, and that was the game's big marketing pitch in the world of tyranny, the immensely powerful evil lord kiros is nearing the end of his complete conquest of the known world and you play as one of his enforcers tasked with ending a last drop of resistance. There's a lot of freedom in how you play this role, particularly when it comes to the factions you work with, and ultimately this is one of the best things about the game: the different factions, and the routes they open up, create many narrative reasons to playing Tyranny again, which is good because it's not a particularly long game.

There are also many interesting things about this main story. The premise is unique. The writing is often good and the cast of supporting characters, especially those who might end up opposing you, can be very memorable, as there is a lot of focus on navigating the moral dilemmas of the world of tyranny. The morality of the setting ends up being much more complicated than most other role-playing games and as one of the main attractions of an RPG is the role-playing game itself. Having a setting designed to ask the player more questions and make them think more carefully about their answers is a real strength, unfortunately the game ends very abruptly and it can feel like just when your journey really starts to draw you in, it starts to come to an end, as a result , Tyranny's Story may end up feeling a little less satisfying than Pillars of Eternity despite being more interesting in many ways, Tyranny is helped by a very useful upgrade.

About the Pillars of Eternity, however, is the addition of a mid-text glossary that shows you what words mean if you mouse over them. This helps address the pillar exposure problem by making it easier for players to keep up with a wide range of names and terminology. allowing writers to avoid the need for npcs to explain every detail of the world to the player. However, there are other ways in which Tyranny is clearly inferior to Obsidian's previous efforts, the most important being the combat, although Tyranny reuses the same real-time with the pause system seen. previously you only had four characters to control instead of six, with less complicated character building and much less enemy variety, this is something that could already be a slight weakness in the pillars and in a shorter game should be a problem minor, but the tyranny is terrible in In this sense, there are only a few different types of enemies, which means that there is very little variation in the encounters you will face.

There's also a difficulty issue where Act 1 feels adequately balanced, but everything after that is too easy and, in terms of dungeons, the game basically. has only one that repeats lazily several times, the spell system is a little more promising as it allows you to create spells yourself, but while interesting in theory, in practice this system is too easy to take advantage of by just using simple things like aoe and ultimately leads to little real variety. Tyranny doesn't even look much better than Obsidian's previous efforts, as while the backgrounds are still great and the character models are still good from a distance, the UI is clearly less pleasing to the eye and the use of 3D character portraits.

It feels like a big step down, there's still a decent amount of voice acting, but for the most part, Tyranny really feels like a lower budget alternative to Pillars and it's a shame that the game, which was a lot more experimental and original, it received in many ways a There is much less chance of success, it is also much shorter and, while this could be seen as a positive for some, it is still an RPG that asks you to learn its systems and You engage in their world, and when the experience comes to an end, not long after.

It feels like it's actually working, that's a problem, there's a narrative reason to replay Tyranny, but unfortunately the gameplay can struggle to keep your interest even during a single playthrough if you care more about the story than the gameplay and the idea of ​​playing as a representative of evil. Empire sounds appealing, so Tyranny is worth checking out. I don't think it's a better game than Pillars of Eternity, but it is undeniably more interesting and makes you wonder what could have been if the budget and development length of these two games had been reversed. torment tides of numenera marks the end of kickstarter's big three where Wasteland 2 was a spiritual successor to Fallout and Pillars of Eternity, a sequel to Baldur's Gate Torment Tides of Numenera was going to be the successor to an even harder act to follow. 1999 RPG masterpiece Planescape Storm, much of that game's appeal was connected to its world, but since the Planescape setting has all but been discontinued, Inexile Entertainment had to look elsewhere for the canvas to base their game on. scenario they ended up with, numenera was down to a science. fantasy role-playing game setting that could be as strange as planescape but this meant, however, that in exile we are in a strange position since the question of how to make a successor to planescape torment has no obvious answer, that no was the case with those games inspired by fallout or baldur's gate fallout is its post-apocalyptic setting and boulder gate followed a classic high fantasy epic adventure formula that could be easily replicated, but what about Planescape Torment?

It's a game where the gameplay was the most forgettable aspect and where a big part of the setting's appeal was that there was nothing else like it. Planescape Torment was a dialogue-heavy philosophical introspective story about an amnesiac immortal who spends the game learning about his past lives and the end result turned out so much better than it had any right to be, so how do you capture that magic for a second? ? time, the answer according to tides of numenera is to copy as much as possible, so tides is a dialogue-intense philosophical introspective story of a kind of amnesiac immortal who spends the game learning about his past lives, and yet the end result It's just not the same, maybe the reason for this is because Tides copies so much that it loses that sense of originality in the process, but it could also be because Planescape Torment could have been good despite some of its features, no. because they require a large amount of writing.

In both games you'll spend a lot of your time in dialogue reading static text boxes, but Planescape's torment story wasn't necessarily good because of all this reading, you could just as easily argue that its story was good regardless. heavy it was the text and the endless text boxes titled numenera just don't feel very appealing. The writing isn't bad, but it doesn't try to be brief and there isn't even much humor or action to break things up. Sometimes it seems like writers wrote for the sake of it. of writing, which is fine for someone who wants to read for the pleasure of reading, but it's not necessarily the best approach in a video game. two tides of numenera credit.

Its skill system allows you to spend one of three groups of rechargeable attribute points to increase. Your chances at skill checks work quite well and make an attempt to bridge the gap between reading and playing, but aside from this feature, there's not much to make the endless conversations interesting, much like Planescape. The setup is very strange, but it might actually be too strange to the point where the various concepts and people you encounter struggle to come together to form an interesting or cohesive whole in many ways. The way everything is strange feels like the main identity of the setting and that can leave it a little empty.

There is also the risk that when everything is strange, nothing is strange as the strangeness becomes normalized, but tides manages to be like its inspiration, even if it is not as successful in being as interesting as its inspiration, it is the main story that has most striking similarity, however, so many Many of its concepts and themes are almost the same as flat landscapes and yet this similarity feels much more like an obvious weakness than a strength because it means that something that was once felt unique is now predictable and familiar. It remains philosophical. He approaches his subject with maturity. and it includes interesting ideas, but the impact it has on the player just doesn't feel the same and there may be parts of Planescape's torment that you can't simply copy.

The comparison between the two games is tough, but due to the nature of the game. It's impossible to avoid, and even when you look at Tide of Numenera's best qualities, such as her companions, it's still hard not to compare them to the incredibly strong cast of characters in Planescape Torment and see Tides as once again an inferior clone, a part of the game that The combat could be better, which was always the weakest aspect of Planescape, but the tidal turn-based combat is still not that good, it's not that bad, and it's not the main focus of the game, but it's still not very interesting and, in general, I remember the weak points.

I hold the combat in Planescape Torment much more fondly because it was part of an experience I was more invested in and that's why it's hard to find positive things to say about this game. Planescape Torment made me feel a lot of things, but I felt the main thing during my time with Tides. Numenera was boredom. I wish the developers hadn't tried so hard to make this game so similar to Planescape Torment and focused more on doing their own thing, but I completely understand why they didn't. There's an irony in all of this, which is I think those who can appreciate Tides of Numenera the most are actually those who have never played Planescape Torment to begin with because they'll find it easier to enjoy Tides as its own thing.

It should also be considered that this game is very story-focused. and while the story and setting did little for me, this is something that can be greatly affected by personal taste. If this story resonates more strongly with you, the experience could be much more positive, I would still recommend Tides of Numenera only to those who care. much more about the story than the gameplay and we are not discouraged by the large amounts of reading with Pathfinder King Maker, we are moving towards the second wave of Kickstarter RPGs and if King Maker is any indication that the second wave could be better than the First, it's a lot. of that unknown factor and the huge hype that accompanied it when Kickstarter was brand new replaced by more sensible pitches to a fan base that has a better understanding of what the money will go towards and yet, despite this pioneering, the creator king can do it. a better job than any game introduced so far at capturing that original kickstarter ideal of remakes of old games that fans know they want but publishers wouldn't agree to Pathfinder King Maker is an old-school isometric RPG With real-time pause combat that draws heavily from the original Boulder's Gate, where Baldur's Gate adapted advanced dungeons and dragons into video game form to great success, Kingmaker instead adapts DND's not-so-distant cousin, Pathfinder, which was originally a branch of d d 3.5 edition pathfinder king maker goes even further, however, by choosing to adapt a pre-existing adventure module which is the king maker module instead of creating an entirely new campaignfrom scratch, the result is a game that, for better or worse, is very faithful to its source material, which means character creation with an intimidatingly large selection of options that can lead to a lot of interesting character builds, but they can also confuse new players who aren't familiar with Pathfinder or Dungeons and Dragons, and your experience with character creation can give you a good idea of ​​what the rest of the game will be like.

King Maker is great at being filled with different enemies, different locations, and different rules and modifiers, the result is a game that can easily overwhelm its audience, since without a Dungeon Master to help you through the experience, the curve of Learning may seem steep and frustration may follow as a result. As a result, this game expects you to learn a lot, but it doesn't always do a good job of teaching information to the player. Still, this means that the game has a lot of depth. Different enemies present different challenges and may require different approaches to overcome.

An infamous example from The first Kingmaker game was a cave containing swarms of spiders that cannot be harmed by conventional weaponry, as swarms in Pathfinder are considered too small to being hit by normal attacks, which resulted in many players being completely decimated by a small swarm of undermanned spiders. I really understand why, but it's in this kind of complexity that King Maker manages to stay interesting in the long run, and by the way, my goodness, this game lasts a long time. Many RPGs are great, but King Maker is something else with a single playthrough easily taking over 100 hours and that's before adding DLC.

Over the course of your immense journey, you'll start as a low-level adventurer and work your way up to become the ruler of a newly created kingdom with an almost never-ending list of problems that sees you go from one disaster to another as your character progresses. slowly gaining power in that satisfying way that dungeons and dragons and similar experiences are so good at creating that neither the story nor the very traditional fantasy setting are hugely original, but it's an easy narrative to feel invested in, as is so directly focused on your own character, it's a more interesting approach than most RPGs where you instead travel around solving other people's problems before fitting in some mandatory world save and calling it a creator of kings of the day You are working to help yourself and with so many things going wrong, you really have to work for your land and your glory.

This overarching story arc is accompanied by a surprisingly detailed, though also quite time-consuming, kingdom management portion of the game, where you'll allocate resources and assign advisors to address problems you can't solve on your own. Managing this kingdom can be really interesting, although as it's not the main draw of the game you may find that the sheer amount of time and effort it can require gets in the way. way to enjoy rather than augment it, you'll still spend most of your time traveling the lands and adventuring, there are plenty of side quests to complete, plenty of loot to discover, and plenty of dungeons to crawl through that often lock you inside. to force you.

You must manage your resources carefully in a way that many other RPGs have tried to do but always failed to execute. The creator king dungeons can present a real challenge and I love this game, it provides an experience that can be uneven, but it was also uneven. all those games that inspired this new wave of crpgs and that unevenness isn't inherently bad, sometimes it's what makes the game exciting and while balance can be good, sometimes it's also worth sacrificing and that's what What Pathfinder King Maker does, the result is a big, beautiful mess of an RPG that I wouldn't want any other way.

If Pillars of Eternity was a modernized version of Baldur's Gate, then Pathfinder King Maker is just a modern version, I don't know. tries so hard to change or improve the original formula and as a result is arguably a better game, especially for those who wanted a spiritual successor that maintained the original spirit at the time of release. Kingmaker was plagued with bugs, but over time the developers seem to have worked hard to wipe out their own swarm of spiders and now the game is much closer to the level you would expect; It's still not likely to be the most polished RPG in this video, but for what is not a very large studio, alcat games has delivered a game with a very respectable level of presentation that can easily hold its own against the biggest names. from the crpg era Pathfinder King Maker is a great RPG for anyone looking for an old school experience packed with depth, as long as you don't mind dealing with a steep learning curve and occasional moments of frustration if Pathfinder King Maker was the more faithful successor to Baldi's Gate than the bigger-budget Pillars of Eternity, then Atom RPG is the more faithful successor to Fallout than the bigger-budget Wasteland 2.

Created by a small Russian developer, Atom RPG could very easily be described as Russian. Fallout and that description will tell you most of what you need to know about this game, from the UI design to the ambient soundtrack, to the list of skills or traits now called distinctions. This is a game that wears its Fallout influence on its sleeve and then waves that sleeve in your face every chance it gets, even going so far as to include regular references to the Fallout series - we get jokes about bottle caps as currency or rumors about bunkers. undergrounds designed to be experiments on their inhabitants, it should come as no surprise then that the setting is a post-apocalypse where the Cold War heated up and most of civilization was lost under the resulting nuclear charge, as the consequences were very American. in its iconography, geography, history and politics.

The atom is, however, very Russian, which is not a bad change. Really, this seems like a game made by Russians about Russians for Russians, but far from meaning that its appeal is limited to residents of the former Soviet Union, it ends up being one of the main things that makes the game stand out on stage as well. . seems pretty grounded and surprisingly bleak, this isn't the strange Bethesda fallout wasteland, but instead feels much closer to the first fallout in terms of tone, the setting also doesn't take place long after the bombs have fallen and so many residents This Wasteland actually remembers his previous lives and what the world was like before, making his quiet acceptance of this new reality strike a surprisingly melancholy court.

Talking to the inhabitants of this game is a big part of Atom more than in the original consequences and the npcs in this game have a lot to say, not everything is that important, whether this is a good thing or not is up to you, but the dialogue is at least well written and it can be nice to talk to other people so you know. that you are not the only ones suffering in this Soviet wasteland because that is also a big part of the atom's experience. The story revolves around a secret organization called Atom that was founded before the war and now seeks to right the world's wrongs again.

You are an agent of this organization, but before you get very far in your mission you will be robbed and lose all your possessions and it is very likely that this will not be the only time this will happen to you during the course of the game. The wasteland is a tough place and Atom will make sure you know that you are regularly robbed, scammed and extorted - and that's just from the friendlier inhabitants of the wasteland. This commitment to setting and tone is one of the narrative's best assets, but in other ways the main story can feel a little run-of-the-mill and not much happens until the game's conclusion outside of the story, everything else is very similar to consequences, which means missions with multiple solutions and good use of skill checks that can also be too vague for their own goods and leave you unsure exactly where you should go or what you might have missed in a location you've already explored between locations you'll travel across a world map, which happens a little too slowly considering how much traveling you'll be doing on this map, although I like how open the map is as it allows for more freedom and lets you tackle areas in the order you choose.

End-game locations are often closed off in some way, such as having to pay a high fee to access them so Atom can present an open structure that subtly protects you from ending up in places where you'll be hopelessly underleveled. for the economy. It also does a good job of making money feel valuable for most of the duration of the game and the team. The progression in particular feels very satisfying as starting the game with nothing and spending a lot of time with little will really make you appreciate what you have when you get it. The combat is less positive;

However, once again the Fallout mantra applies, but Fallout combat was never like that. Its stronger and atom RPG feature seems to increase the difficulty without bringing many real improvements. The biggest problem is the artificial intelligence of the teammate, like fallout combat, which is turn-based and you control a single character, but you can be accompanied by several teammates and it is those teammates that cause the problems, you can talk to your teammates. teammates out of combat to establish their basic strategy, but no matter which option I tried, I always found that their behavior in combat was not what I wanted and their actions often made little sense.

The number of times teammates will choose to move instead attacking when they have no reason to move is incredible and often fights become a series of trial and error as you desperately try to limit your partner's stupid behavior by doing things like standing directly in front of them to block their path and force them to attack for once, even then the fights can be infuriating in one fight, my character got hit by friendly fire four different times in one fight, that's me by the way, the guy who gets finished off by his teammates to tear off both arms.

Yeah, thanks guys, really appreciate it. Enemy behavior also has its issues because all enemies seem to be set to attack the closest target, meaning that if you have a melee character like, say, your trusty dog, then that's the one that every enemy will attack. every time you do that hand-to-hand combat. absolutely useless character later in the game once enemies get weapons. I hope you're not someone who gets attached to virtual dogs because this one is going to die more often than a quest mob in an mmo starting area so often in atom rpg I found combat It's more frustrating than fun and almost every time my Complaints would have been resolved if you only had the ability to manually control your teammates, all the problems of bad AI would go away and combat would be more active and you would have more decisions. to do and spend less time waiting your turn, but you don't control your teammates because that's not how Fallout was and in ways like this atom rpg seems to copy Fallout to the extreme, you have things like needing to manually equip a lockpick to get a bonus or inventory screen that looks like Fallout and is slow to navigate just like Fallout, so Atom RPG is the most faithful spiritual successor in this video, but it's not the best spiritual successor, and while it's certainly not a bad game, I found during fairly long playtime that the experience started to drag a bit.

The Russian fallout is definitely not a bad thing and you should play this game if that concept sounds appealing, but I hope that if Team Atom ever develops a sequel that you can at least directly control your party members, this collision is the ultimate game. presented in this video, and whether your main concern is the writing or the story, you'll find that we've saved the best for last, largely influenced by Planescape's spiritual successor Torment Studio Zoum. that classic is a radical departure from tides of numenera in the sense that, in most cases, it is nothing like the game that inspired it.

This coliseum setting is a kind of alternate reality that feels much closer to home than the usual fantasy or futuristic setting of other RPGs you play. as a detective who has been tasked with investigating a murder in the once great but now not City of Reversion or at least that's what your character should be doing if he wasn't busy drinking himself to death to escape his heart Broken and your life broken, you begin. the game waking up with amnesia and then having the long, slow process of rounding up at least some of you so you can do your so-called job and, hopefully,stopping your character's cycle of things or, if that's too much to ask, at least slowing down the pace going up a bit Overall, it's an absolute joy to mix equal parts tragedy and comedy, this game manages to be intriguingly strange when it wants to be. strange, genuinely funny when it wants to be funny, and deeply human when it wants to be human, all of this.

It's made possible by consistently clever writing that's much more enjoyable to spend time reading than any other RPG in this video and that's what you'll do in reading Disco Elysium because, as you wander around this world at times, The Most of the time you'll spend your days talking to its inhabitants about the politics of love life and occasionally even murder investigations. There is no combat in this game and Disco Elysium shows that maybe you don't need combat if you can do other things well enough and it does do these. Things are pretty good, one of the best features that Disco Elysium introduces to the genre is its skill system that distances itself from the norms of role-playing games to instead present a selection of 24 skills designed specifically to adapt to the game and surroundings, which include things like logical conceptualization and empathy as well as some less obvious options like esprit de corps or electrochemistry, if some of these don't make much sense initially, don't worry, they will over time, but the real Beauty of these abilities is how the game uses them like many other RPGs. are used to represent your character's abilities, and in practical terms this happens for a combination of skill checks and dice rolls, except that unlike other RPGs, each of your skills has its own personality and They will act as voices inside your head letting you know their opinion as they speak. you and others to offer advice or disagree with your actions.

If these internalized voices sound confusing it's because you haven't seen them in action because they actually work brilliantly by making skill checks and character interactions more interesting and at the same time allow for greater player expression and replayability because it is the structure of your character that determines which voices are dominant and what things in this world you will succeed at and that is what a good role-playing game is all about. Go Elysium is full of role-playing opportunities and the experience can change a lot depending on your character's abilities. Thanks to these interspersed voices and skill controls determined by dice, the long stretches of dialogue never feel boring and instead While skill checks are only used to determine whether you can persuade an NPC to do what you want, they instead govern a wide range of different activities, from stopping your character from vomiting to inspecting a days-old corpse. to putting on a sad karaoke performance, which means you can take advantage of quick saves to manipulate the dice to fall in your favor, but Disco Elysium also rarely fails skill checks. punishing and often entertaining as well, encouraging players to let the dice fall where they may and accept the consequences just as they would in a traditional RPG experience so that Disco Elysium doesn't have to worry about being in the shadow of the torment from Planescape or any other.

The title does its thing and does it well, and when comparisons arise, they arise first as a result of the quality of each title rather than any surface-level similarities. This is a game that shares much of the torment appeal of Planescape, however both allow you to get lost in their worlds as you step into the shoes of a character who has a lot on his mind but still allows for player expression and Both games are also great if there is one area where Planescape's torment comes to the fore and that is in strength. Despite its main story and thematic cohesion, Disco Elysium's most straightforward murder mystery entertains but doesn't reach the same heights.

Despite this, this collision still has some of its own incredible moments and anyone who values ​​games for their writing and stories he owes it to himself. play this game because even for those who aren't normally fans of RPGs, disco elysium is an experience not to be missed, so 15 games and 11 reviews later and it's safe to say that the crpg genre can be quite diverse and features games with different budgets different inspirations different combat systems different settings different lengths and different weight assigned to the narrative compared to the game. Hopefully these reviews have provided insight into those key differences, but I still want to make some recommendations based on some easy-to-identify criteria, so let's talk. about spiritual successors, if you wanted to make a graph to show where these games take their main inspirations from and where the similarities lie compared to the big three classics, it would look like this and as the graph shows, there is competition for every spot and so on We come to the never know best crpg awards, completely legitimate and highly prestigious, because if I like this game, what should I play?

Complicated love letter to its inspiration that keeps the tradition of faithful pen-and-paper adaptations alive and provides hours and hours of old-school adventures. Moving on, we have the award for best spiritual successor to Planescape Torment. What is this collision? An obvious but correct choice. and one of the few games that has ever come close to Planescape, tormenting the quality of the writing and scratching that same unique narrative itch, then takes the award for best spiritual successor to Fallout, which goes to uh, I don't know, I guess which is why this is not a real awards show, but this is actually the toughest of the three contenders.

Ale is my favorite and in many ways I think he's the best, but he also has the least in common with Fallout and is the hardest to recommend to other players, meanwhile, Atom. RPG is clearly the most similar, sometimes being faithful to a fault, but it was also the one I ended up enjoying the least. Wasteland 2 then feels like a happy medium, being in the middle in terms of similarity and quality and probably also being the best. Starting point for those who want a Fallout-like experience and may be less familiar with CRPGs, so choose based on your preferences.

We're all winners here at Never Knows' Best Show, except you, you, and finally our latest awards, the highly coveted Never. knows best the best entry point to the crpg genre going into the original sin of divinity, while pillars of eternity deserves mention for being a polished experience that makes a good entry point to real time with the gameplay of paul and shadowrun dragonfall too deserves a mention for being The Original Sins of Divinity, streamlined but still good, still feels like a clear overall winner with its turn-based gameplay that can be deep but still feels accessible and, more importantly, manages to be consistently entertaining .

Both original sin games are very solid overall and are one of the best. The safest options for someone who isn't sure if crpgs are for them, but wants to try out what my favorite games are. I don't think it matters too much, but I'm willing to share them anyway. First up would be Pathfinder King Maker and disco elysium very different games that I love for very different reasons, which makes it difficult to choose between them after these would be original divinity without one and two, both very well made games to start with, which I enjoyed even more than usual thanks to co-op and in third place would be the base and the pillars of eternity, both a little more flawed in my eyes, but still with a lot of content, a lot of depth and a lot that attracts my personal tastes and you should take that last into account.

Personal taste matters and While I have tried to make this video useful and informative for everyone, my tastes and biases will sometimes still be reflected in its content. No game in this video is actually bad and there's an audience for every one of them if something sounds like it. it could be for you don't let my opinion discourage you it's always better to make your own decision believe in yourself we all have our own tastes and you should be proud of yours even if they are worse than mine and hey maybe one day when you can create your own ultimate crpg guide complete with arrogant fake awards and indulgent self-reflections, all I ask of you is that you play some good crpgs, do it for me Lastly, although we have to talk about the crpg genre itself, it's been almost 10 years Since the first Kickstarter RPGs were released into the world, igniting fans' hopes and dreams of revisiting a fondly remembered past and reviving a genre that always seemed to deserve better and this story seems, somehow way, to be coming to an end or at least to the first act.

The two biggest names in the Kickstarter RPG boom were Obsidian, and in exile, both developers spoke at length about the freedom Kickstarter gave them and their desire to create those old-school RPGs that always they wanted to develop but the editors never allowed them. and now, years later, both studios have given up all that freedom of assertion to be owned by one of the biggest publishers in the industry, Microsoft, it is unknown if either studio will make a crpg again and this twist in the narrative suggests that perhaps the resurgence of the crpg was not as successful as some had hoped and yet as the years have passed.

Then, some smaller studios have made a name for themselves with only a fraction of the budget that the more well-known RPG developers had to work with, so the dream of the crpg genre continuing in their hands in the future seems alive and well, and the software has already produced an expansion for Underrail and a sequel seems inevitable. The Age of Decadence developers are underway on the next project. Colony Ship Alcat's next Pathfinder game looks to release sometime in 2012 and I don't know what Zam will be working on next, but the world will. We'll surely be watching closely as Disco Elysium received huge success in both awards and sales and who's to say there aren't more developers working hard on their own titles, so even if some of the biggest names in crpg gaming are moving forward in The indie scene shows no signs of slowing down and as long as there are fans, logic says there will be games and finally we have the developers of the original Divinity Sin, Larian, who did more than anyone else to bring the CRPG genre to the mainstream. without sacrificing any of the quality of the genre along the way and they now have the unique opportunity to take it even further with their upcoming game Baldur's Gate 3 which marks the return of the biggest CRPG series in history.

These are interesting times and there are always those who resort to cynicism, but in my opinion the crpg revival has been an obvious success and I can't wait to see what comes next, maybe I'll even see you there. I hope this video has been useful and interesting. It has been a difficult video to make. make and I'm well aware that there are always more games that could have been included but a line had to be drawn somewhere if some modern trpg isn't on this list then I probably had my reasons but I hope you can forgive me. some absence or the same and if you are one of those people who are not very familiar with the genre, I hope that this video has given you some incentive to try one of these games, as difficult as this video is, it has also been . very fun and hope to see you next time