by Xem » Sat May 26, 2012 11:40 am
Although I've played a lot of great RPGs, there are a few that stand out to me as memorable, and in some ways timeless, despite aging graphics and.. other technical difficulties.
Planescape: Torment would easily top my list. It's easily one of the most involved RPGs I've ever played. The interaction between characters was extremely intricate and well written. It was always interesting to explore the new dialog options and get to know each character, rather than picking them based purely on their skill. A lot of people are turned off by the vast amounts of reading that you do, but I found it more appealing than off-putting. The dialog, even with minor NPCs was almost always interesting, and often times bizarre and macabre.
The grim, dark nature of the game was really unique. Aside from Diablo, there weren't really a whole lot of games that carried such a dark story, and while Diablo was fun, it wasn't exactly notable for its in-depth writing and plot. The world itself had a bizarre feeling to it. It wasn't a generic fantasy setting, but more relative to more abstract concepts, like something you might read about in a Lovecraft story.
The graphics at the time were pretty amazing, and even today they still look nice. It played in a very similar manner to Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale and other related titles, though the camera was a lot closer to the action. I remember the game being pretty buggy upon launch, which to me was its only downfall, but I'm sure it has been patched since then.
..also, who doesn't love a game that allows you to purchase an item such as "baby oil", which according to its description, is made from the tears of a mewling mortal baby?
Diablo was one of the first computer games I ever played. I was immediately addicted, and as a child it got me so pumped up that I ended up mowing lawns and cleaning out chicken coops for everyone within a 10 mile radius so that I could earn enough money to buy the sequel.
There was something extremely satisfying about playing this game. Every time you hit something, the gory death animations would soothe my lust for conquest, but only long enough for me to click on the next Fallen or Zombie that happened to be in the path of my cleaving axe. The violent, morbid imagery constantly reminded you that each floor that you descended was taking you one step closer to hell itself.
I never got to play multiplayer on the original, which from what I'm told was incredibly amusing to incredibly frustrating, but single player was more than enough to keep my interest. I always enjoyed finding and reading the different tomes lying around for the (sadly) minimal amount of lore they were establishing. Although there really wasn't a whole lot to read, each tome was incredibly well written, and really emphasized on the despair aspect of the game.
While I admittedly enjoyed the second game much more than the first, due to a wider variety of class archetypes, diverse landscape and slightly more involved story, the first still holds a pretty special place in my heart. It's the game that set in motion a series of awesomeness.
I'd comment on Diablo 3, but because of my low-quality internet, I can't actually play it. From what I did play while out and about on public wifi, it was amazing.
Final Fantasy 3 or 6 is a pretty confusing game. I think SquareEnix has finally resolved the confusion by setting it at a firm number 6, but title aside, it's easily my favorite Final Fantasy.
Generally, I don't like Final Fantasy. The earlier games were a bit bland for me, as they consisted of fairly standard heroes teaming up to stop a fairly generic villain, and then later on they became more emotionally exaggerated than a 15 year old's Facebook status update. I always felt that, while FF6 did have its share of "wow, get over it" moments, it had a more steady grasp on the concept of characters emoting, rather than just having characters over-react or needlessly and excessively be depressed. The story was good, maybe not great, but it really was the characters that drove this game. The villain is arguably one of the most memorable RPG villains of all time. He was strange, and entirely psychotic. Looking back, it's kind of hard for me to believe that SquareEnix (or Squaresoft, then) actually made him. Character interaction was also pretty interesting, and I always enjoyed the little side-track stuff that happened along the way throughout the game. Like the ghost train. Loves me some ghost train.
Aside from the main villain, there's a frequent, eight tentacle'd, inky antagonist that keeps showing up. While he isn't particularly difficult to defeat, it's great comical relief in an otherwise serious toned game.
SPOILER ALERT: I'm sure by now, anyone that would be interested in this game has probably already played it, given it's had two (that I know of) re-releases since its initial launch. But just in case, spoiler alert.
One thing that really sold me on this game was towards the end. You're on your way to stop Kefka, and I figured my first time through, this was the end of the game. I was wrong. If you don't play your cards right, one of your characters will actually die (Shadow, NOOOO!!!), and additionally, no matter how well you do, you will always be too late, and the world itself is essentially ended. I love dark twists like that, where the good guys can't always save the world, and this was one that left my mouth agape my first time through. I genuinely believed that I had done something wrong, or poorly. I didn't have internet back then, so there was no way to look it up. I just had to struggle onward through the rest of the game with a sense of guilt for not saving the world in time.
Neverwinter Nights is the second AD&D game on my list. It's not on here because of the outstanding story or character interaction, though. Don't get me wrong, the main campaign is fine. It's fairly standard, and some of the quests feel a little tedious, but overall it's worth a play through. The expansions added a lot to it, I thought, and easily exceeded just the vanilla campaign (I was particularly fond of the Hordes of the Underdark).
This game's main appeal was its community, and the encouragement for people to make their own mods, scenarios and dedicated servers. A lot of the high-end player made worlds were often much more enjoyable than the solo game (even if you ran it on multiplayer). Some of them had really in-depth crafting systems, and truly massive worlds. It was like an MMO you only had to pay once for, and if you didn't like the game you were in or got bored, there was always something else as an alternative.
The campaign editor was simplified so that even those of us with no programming or modding experience could easily design our own campaigns and scenarios. This simplification of something that, with enough time, could become something very complex is what really appealed to me. Ultimately, looking back, I think I spent far more time designing my own world than I did playing in it.
Those are my main picks as far as RPGs. There have been some within more recent years that are also worth mentioning; Fallout 3, Skyrim and Mass Effect, as well as other games that I haven't played in so long that it's hard for me to remember why I loved them so much (mainly Arcanum.)
. Having said that it's all my own fault why I hate it and not the games.
. I got a copy of FF8 and was loving it, I played it and played it, and played it some more. I was great at the card game and had most of the characters well and truly levelled up, I just finished the third disc when disaster struck........ my copied fourth disc did not work 
. So first I tried buying another copy, still didn't work so I finally gave in and bought an official copy to my horror the save game wasn't compatible with the official version so I'd put in all those hours for nothing. I couldn't bear to do the whole thing again so my love affair with FF ended right there 
.
I play yugioh 
