Community RPG Codex Top 70 PC RPGs (Now with User Reviews!)

[Jools]

Dark Souls? ORLY? Not only a horrible game made unplayable on PC because of uber-retarded controls, but if it qualifies as an RPG, then so do Alan Wake, Tomb Raider and even Sex Villa 3.

 

[Jools]

IGN were late to the party.... but the Skyrim debate is claiming more victims:


http://www.ign.com/boards/threads/top-70-pc-rpg-list-rpg-codex.453990549/

Fan, yes. Fanboy, no. I don't threaten to kill people for not liking Skyrim.

literally every region has a story behind it

GOTY

Skyrim is by far the most immerse game ever made

Just realized that pc lacks almost all the good rpgs.

There be dragons.

As we say these parts, truly you "can't spell ignorance without ign".

 

[felipepepe]

Dark Souls? ORLY? Not only a horrible game made unplayable on PC because of uber-retarded controls, but if it qualifies as an RPG, then so do Alan Wake, Tomb Raider and even Sex Villa 3.

You should have voted for them.

 

[Jools]

Dark Souls? ORLY? Not only a horrible game made unplayable on PC because of uber-retarded controls, but if it qualifies as an RPG, then so do Alan Wake, Tomb Raider and even Sex Villa 3.

You should have voted for them.

Actually I had written an intro to my comment, something along the lines of "I've been off the Codex for some 3 years, and I come back to find Dark Souls in the top 70 RPG list", but I decided to keep it simple. So, I'm afraid I couldn't vote, and yeah, I know that will be used as the main argument against my mini-rant. It's ok.

 

[felipepepe]

No need, if you can't see the difference between Dark Souls and Alan Wake, I think there's nothing to argue.

 

[Darth Roxor]

Yeah, one has guns, the other doesn't.

Both are p shit however

 

[Melcar]

Shit with Guns vs. Shit with no Guns

Which is better and why? Discuss.

 

[Jasede]

I'm starting to become a little bitter; you really have no place here if you're pretty much immune to quality. It's actually a bit shocking to see like 20% of the 'dex shit on Dark Souls. It's no different from calling Oblivion the best game ever or from despising Planescape Torment, Fallout, Dungeon Master, the whole shebang. They are all vastly different but they're also all really well made. I don't know how you somehow manage to not grasp this.

Maybe it's like with me and the Witcher. It might be a good RPG but I just don't like it and nothing will ever change my mind; I've tried to play it again and again.

 

[Excidium]

It's just specially fun to shit on this horrible abomination of a port because of all the annoying fans that treat it as insulting their mother

I will play it when I feel like spending ~$70 on a ps3 controller

 

[StaticSpine]

Dark Souls? ORLY? Not only a horrible game made unplayable on PC because of uber-retarded controls, but if it qualifies as an RPG, then so do Alan Wake, Tomb Raider and even Sex Villa 3.

 

[Darth Roxor]

I'm starting to become a little bitter; you really have no place here if you're pretty much immune to quality. It's actually a bit shocking to see like 20% of the 'dex shit on Dark Souls. It's no different from calling Oblivion the best game ever or from despising Planescape Torment, Fallout, Dungeon Master, the whole shebang. They are all vastly different but they're also all really well made. I don't know how you somehow manage to not grasp this.

Maybe it's like with me and the Witcher. It might be a good RPG but I just don't like it and nothing will ever change my mind; I've tried to play it again and again.

 

[Jools]

I'm starting to become a little bitter; you really have no place here if you're pretty much immune to quality. It's actually a bit shocking to see like 20% of the 'dex shit on Dark Souls. It's no different from calling Oblivion the best game ever or from despising Planescape Torment, Fallout, Dungeon Master, the whole shebang. They are all vastly different but they're also all really well made. I don't know how you somehow manage to not grasp this.

Maybe it's like with me and the Witcher. It might be a good RPG but I just don't like it and nothing will ever change my mind; I've tried to play it again and again.

I'm sorry to contribute to your bitterness, but it's exactly the same bitterness I felt when browsing through the list and upon discovering Dark Souls had made it there. I play a lot of shit, and despite my taste not being 100% codex-aligned, in some cases shit is just shit and everyone agrees with that (after all, there always is a small % of people who will like that shit for whatever reason: there are groups of people here love DA2, Fallout3, whatever. There is a lot of "personal taste factor" involved, and I usually force myself to complete even those gaming experiences that prove the worst to me, if they come as highly recommended. I started playing Dark Souls four or five times. Before every time I would read stuff about how cool it was and whatnot, so every time I'd be really eager to experience this game that everyone, yes even the 'dex, was so fond of. I was like, "S.WAT? The Codex actually approves, even recommends, this mainstream consolefaggy port which smells of popamole miles away? I'll play it until I understand why!". But in the end, it always proved the same dull experience. Maybe it's because I don't have a gamepad, or because I didn't play it on console, but it's just horrible.
The combat controls are meh, camera controls are meh, I usually don't mind dying a lot (I've ground the shit out of hotline miami, broforce, or other games where dying was an integral part of the experience), but Dark Souls manages to piss me off not just at every death, but even when I'm not dying and kicking ass.

If I can understand that some people like the game, and even find it entertaining (in the same way that millions of people enjoy playing football videogames and I don't) I really don't understand the alleged "quality" many people find in this game. Technically, it's mediocre at best. Gameplay-wise, I don't see how it's such an outstanding achievement in game design. I usually get really hooked up with RPGs (although it also applies to games in general) because of either the plot or the character progression, and honestly I can not say either is particularly great in Dark Souls.

In the end, I guess you could ascribe this to the same category as you VS witcher (which, coincidentally, I really like so yeah, I guess I'm confirming your "immune to quality" theory).

 

[Angthoron]

Well, DS might be a great game and all, but the ports for both DS1 and DS2 are an abomination. I guess I could buy a gamepad, and then spend a few weeks getting accustomed to gamepad after not touching it since the NES era, but would it have hurt the dev/port team not to be coding the kb+m controls with their buttcheeks? Was it so hard to let the player customize all of the layouts and bind shit to any button they want? Make the UI a little more functional? I know, I know, these are "minor gripes in the light of a great game", but I didn't have to beat my fingers with a hammer to play Arcanum, Torment or Bloodlines, I didn't have to buy a Kinect to play New Vegas, I didn't have to forget that good control schemes exist.

It's like Obsidian's old camera coding. Fuck, it's like 3D GTA flight controls. Except on the ground. Everyone else does those ports better, how about launching other games and having a look at how a competent controls port is made?

Yeah, I'm somewhat buttsore on the topic - I bought DS1 on Codex recommendations, then, even with the fan patch, ended up ragequitting, then bought DS2 on the promise that of an actual dedicated port team and ended up ragequitting too, not because I'm fighting a particularly challenging opponent that keeps tearing my ass off due to my incompetence, but because the fucking controls fuck fuck fuck. Yeah, I'll get a gamepad and play it some day, but fucking seriously. Imagine D: OS having no UI customization and the mouse being permanently axis-reversed. That'd be fucking amazing.

 

[Jasede]

I will definitely agree that the ports are pretty dreadful, and a decent reason to shit on the game.

The gameplay achievement also might be exaggerated. The combat is tight and weighty for this type of game, but I think the game's bigger achievement lies in atmosphere and mood; I for one consider that one of the most, if not the most important thing in a game. It's why I like PS:T, Fallout and Morrowind: for their distinct, unique moods that are implemented well.

 

[Jools]

[snip] I think the game's bigger achievement lies in atmosphere and mood; I for one consider that one of the most, if not the most important thing in a game. It's why I like PS:T, Fallout and Morrowind: for their distinct, unique moods that are implemented well.

You actually have a point there. The mood/atmosphere, despite being unsupported by a meh plot, was actually coming across as more than decent, but then any further enjoyment of it was heavily crippled by the port-induced rage. Then, there's the question of if and how this game qualifies as an RPG at all, but that's an entirely different can of worms to open...

 

[Rake]

the game's bigger achievement lies in atmosphere and mood; I for one consider that one of the most, if not the most important thing in a game. It's why I like PS:T, Fallout and Morrowind: for their distinct, unique moods that are implemented well.

I agree with this, but if someone dislikes all other aspects of the game, atmosphere alone is kind of moot. I liked Fallout mainly for the same reasons as you did, atmosphere and mood, but i despise Morrowind because that shit is unplayable for me.
So even if someone likes story, characters, atmosphere, mood, you name it; if he can't stand the gameplay at all, it's natural to dislike the game

 

[Crooked Bee]

Yeah, but if you do like the gameplay, then it easily becomes one of the best dungeon-crawler RPGs of all time (like it is for me). Which explains its position on the list.

 

[Rake]

Yeah, but if you do like the gameplay, then it easily becomes one of the best dungeon-crawler RPGs of all time (like it is for me). Which explains its position on the list.

I don't disagree with this.
I think the issue is simple. Dark Souls is a well crafted game, which hits all the goals it aimed to hit. The problem is that for many people, these goals themselves are something worthless, not appealing to them. So they can't appreciate the game,and never will, regardless of it's quality, because the game's premice itself is not something appealing to them.

 

[Cowboy Moment]

It's worth it to have DS in the top 20 if only because it probably has the best ARPG combat system ever. And is one of the few games with good combat in our top20, period. Kind of like how we have JA2, they both only vaguely qualify as RPGs, and make the list because we wish actual RPGs had core gameplay as good as they do.

And frankly, the DS2 port is pretty good, very stable, performs well on shitty hardware, and is mostly bug-free. The craziness of the KBM controls is more down to the fact that the game was made by a quirky console-only Japanese developer, rather than them just not giving a shit. Maybe someday they'll figure out the mysteries of full control remapping.

That said, the game will always play better on a controller, just like FPS always play better with a mouse. Angthoron, have you tried DS1 with the mouse fix? I thought that played pretty decently once you got used to the weird-ish mouse handling. Certainly much better than the default control scheme in DS2.

 

[Angthoron]

That said, the game will always play better on a controller, just like FPS always play better with a mouse. Angthoron, have you tried DS1 with the mouse fix? I thought that played pretty decently once you got used to the weird-ish mouse handling. Certainly much better than the default control scheme in DS2.

Yeah, I tried it with that, still pissed me off. Maybe I did something wrong with it, who knows.

Good point about the genre distinction though - I guess it makes sense. Not used to playing my RPGs with a gamepad, but eh.

 

[Cowboy Moment]

It's more like a slow action game than an RPG, honestly, it has more in common with metroidvanias (especially Symphony of the Night) than dungeon crawlers like Ultima Underworld, imo (sorry Bee-chan). In my case, as someone who last used a gamepad for a friend's N64 back before 2000, and only bought a 360 controller close to the end of 2012, it ended up pushing me towards proper technical action games like Ninja Gaiden or God Hand. To be fair, my first playthrough of DS1 was with KBM, but it was pretty rough. A lot of the game's appeal comes from how good the combat feels, it has a great sense of weight and momentum adequate to a dude in plate armor wielding a greatsword, really good hitboxes (as seen in this famous gif), and follows very consistently applied rules across the whole game. So if it feels like shit because of bad controls, you're not going to enjoy it no matter what.

Just buy a sub $20 Logitech pad if you decide to go that route, they're pretty good for their price, while Excidium withers away, forever searching for the mythical $70 PS3 controller.

 

[Excidium]

while Excidium withers away, forever searching for the mythical $70 PS3 controller.

Suck my dick, that's how much they cost here. Logitech pad's actually more expensive

 

[Cowboy Moment]

while Excidium withers away, forever searching for the mythical $70 PS3 controller.

Suck my dick, that's how much they cost here. Logitech pad's actually more expensive

What bizarre region of thirdworldia would that be? In potato, which already has pretty stupid prices of consumer electronics relative to average wage, a DS3 is nearly 50% more expensive than a Logitech F310. You can even get a wired 360 controller for under $40, although I personally consider it to be shit, and wouldn't recommend.

 

[Excidium]

:ehue:

You can even get a wired 360 controller for under $40, although I personally consider it to be shit, and wouldn't recommend.

Yeah it's the cheapest one here but that fuckin' d-pad, I might as well not have a controller since I'd mainly use it for emulation

 

[Rahdulan]

You can even get a wired 360 controller for under $40, although I personally consider it to be shit, and wouldn't recommend.

It's probably the best investment money-wise if you're looking for a gamepad for your PC, considering almost every console port seems to play ball with the 360 gamepad just fine without any shenanigans. It's just plug n play. Didn't some later revision improve the D-pad quality by actually making it usable?