Which RPGs surprised you that they're actually great?

[Dedup]

For me it was Pool of Radiance. I was into adventure games back then and didn't really know much about RPGs having only played a couple of basic roguelikes on friends' computers. The only reason I picked it up was because I couldn't play Quest for Glory 2 since I had 2 low density 5 1/4" floppy drives and the game needed either a high density 5 1/4" or a low density 3 1/2" floppy drive. I also had one of the silver box D&D action games which had a flyer with Pool of Radiance and some other SSI games on it. When I saw it in the store I just thought "What the hell. I'll give it a try." At that point in time I hadn't played any pnp RPGs (aside from a terrible homebrew one I made up when I was younger and made my friends play with me) but I did play plenty of gamebooks so I was interested in all the little charts and rules that were in the manual. Once I got playing the game I was immediately hooked. The game was well designed with with fun turn based combat (this was my first party based TB game) and lots of places to explore. Now Pool of Radiance is one of my all time favourite games along with the EGA version of Quest for Glory 1.

 

[markec]

Divine Divinity, I thought it was yet another Diablo clone and the starting dungeon was really bad. But I was pleasantly surprised by it after a slow start and world opening up.

Mass Effect 2, first and third games were shit but the second one was surprisingly fun.

Dink Smallwood, in a sea of shitty freeware on bunch of gaming mag CDs there was one gem.

Rage of Mages, yeah like in 1998 a good game can come out of Russia.

Ascension to the Throne, game from 2007 that looked like its from 1997 and even then it would be called ugly, yet the game itself was pretty damn fun and addictive.

 

[Wizfall]

King of Dragon Pass and Jagged Alliance 2.
Played both game around 2011/12 (and still play J2).
A shame i did not discovered these two games much earlier (or even at release, i would have been crazy back then hehe) but the most amazing thing (and frankly quite both unbelievable and depressing) is that after all these years there are the best game, by a long shot, in their respective genre (kind of "CYOA" for KoDP and stratgic combat for JA2).
I very highly recommend these 2 games to anyone.

I finally decided to give Vampyre a go today, despite my big dislike of FP real time gameplay, as everyone seems to lappreciate it greatly.

 

[Renevent]

Paper Sorcerer - Big fan of blobbers but the black and white art style was a bug turn off. Glad I decided to pick it up anyways, because the game is awesome.

 

[KILLER BEAR]

Wizfall You can change the perspective from 1st to 3rd person by pressing "Z".

 

[Goblino]

Played POR over the summer and fell in love with the GB titles.

OG Wizardry and Might and Magic. Both suprisingly good to pick up and play on my tablet in class. By the way, if you got a tablet with keyboard Dosbox turbo will blow your fucking mind.

Dabbled very briefly in U5. Was surprised to find myself running around in the country til I foundd a castle, snuck onto the top, and got jailed for smarting off to the guard when he told me I could go back down quietly or he could throw me off the rampart. I replied "throw me baby" and found myself locked up with Jerome. I murdered him in his sleep for kicking me out of bed, while I wastrying to sleep off my sentence

Underrail. I don't usually support Early Access projects and I rarely trust hype for unfinished products. Sometime in a gaming rut, I picked it up and was more than pleasantly surprised. It was great being a sneaky crossbow mechanical genius. You'd think most RPGs would have working stealth mechanics, seeing as how almost all rpgs have rogues and scouts.

 

[vmar]

Underrail, I expected something like generic indie garbage with Fallout references, but it ended up being one of my favorite games.

 

[Wayward Son]

OG Wizardry and Might and Magic.

Yep. Same here. I actually only played either on Codex recommendation. I expected an archaic and hard to play game for Wizardry and a Wiz-clone for M&M. Found great times in both.

 

[Deuce Traveler]

There have already been a ton of good suggestions, and I mostly agree with several of the obscure indie games and SSI games people have mentioned already. But for something that has not been mentioned I'm going to go with Sengoku Rance. I love tactical and strategy RPGs since I'm both an RPGer and strategy gamer, but Sengoku Rance is an eroge game and could have just went through the motions to provide a shallow game experience while delivering cheap hentai screen shots. It had no reason to have gameplay and replayability as good as it actually was, with some surprisingly respectable difficulty that made it tough on you until you figured out all the moves available to you. I've probably spent a couple hundred hours on this game, and it drove me to try the others in the series.

 

[Keldryn]

This was a difficult question to answer, as there have been far more times that I've disappointed in an RPG.

So I'd have to say Planescape: Torment. I had really enjoyed Baldur's Gate and was looking forward to BG2, but I wasn't really enthusiastic about Torment. I owned the AD&D Planescape boxed set and was cool and all but didn't really know me away. Fresh off my utter disappointment with Ultima IX, I was looking for a game thatvI hadn't been eagerly anticipating for five years.

So I figured I'd give PS:T a try. Now this game blew me away. Immediately became one of my all time favorites.

 

[Roqua]

I also enjoyed the original ending of ME3 a lot.

I now see why people consider you a retard

Me too. Because I'm not some bandwagon fuckface lemming following the crowd of hipsterism and hivemind metamonkeys unable to do anything or think anything other than hivemind approved actions and thoughts and groupspeak.

Now I hope you see why I like being considered a retard by you all. How awesome do you think the new steam controller is? What is your favorite apple product?

 

[Goblino]

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
"Being a contrarian makes my opinions correct!"

 

[Ninjerk]

Not even Roguey trolls this single-mindedly.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Realms of Arkania HD.

 

[baturinsky]

TES:Arena. I have tried it for the sake of completion, but it turned out to be surprisingly competent. And it has the best level design in series.

 

[Kahr]

Might and Magic X really surprised me. I didn't expected it to be a legit entry in the series.
But instead of french EA just milking the series it was actually a fun game.
Weird. Something must have gone wrong.

 

[laclongquan]

Neverwinter Nights 2 Original Campaign

Motherfuckers around here really like to shit on it for various problems. Sure, problems do exist, but nowhere at the level they are shitting. It's a flawed game with some great parts which also get shat for whatever reason.

And on another hand: NWN2 Storm of Zehyr. Motherfuckers around praise it without mentioning a deeply flaw feature that canbe a gamebreaker for some: A mothefucking 90+subarea loading whenever you get out to the world map. Mother.Fuckers!

There is a reason I always take Codex with a small grain of salt. And Codex street cred is for suckers.

 

[WhiteGuts]

New Vegas

 

[Excidium II]

I really enjoyed Saints Row 4 and was very surprised, since Saints Row 3 was generally p. meh and overly wacky with a weak plot
Saints Row 4 focused more on the RPG elements and was a much better cRPG for it

Partial disagree, SR3 was alright. Also they got rid of the russian and mexican accents in SR4 which is p. lame.

 

[Shape]

I really enjoyed Saints Row 4 and was very surprised, since Saints Row 3 was generally p. meh and overly wacky with a weak plot
Saints Row 4 focused more on the RPG elements and was a much better cRPG for it

Agreed, SR4 was among my biggest positive surprises when it comes to RPGs! The plot kicks off really quickly which is nice for my impatience..

 

[IncendiaryDevice]

I get this with practically every game I try now. Well... every game that I try and I end up liking. Erm... well, ever since games went digital instead of disk I don't even get that disappointed anymore. Oh, this makes no sense, let me explain...

When I started playing PC games I used to purchase them on disc from the shop. I used to have to leave my house(!), travel to town, spend hours walking round and reading countless box backs, sit down with a fag(!) for 10 minutes and think about all my options, and then spend half my weekly wage (part time youth wage etc) on something that had a 75% chance to be something I couldn't get into. Truly learning by being thrown in the deep end.

Older and wiser, I would stop browsing the new game section and spread my bets on the 3 for £10 / 3 for £15 section of slightly older and very older games section. By doing this I found that my failure rate was reduced to somewhere around 60%, with probably 4 out of 10 games proving to be 'worth the effort'.

So my PC game buying brain is long-since hard wired to find the majority of my purchased games to be a huge disappointment, to be utterly amazed and thrilled beyond rationality simply by the basic formula of a) The game actually runs on my computer b) I have played more than 2 hours and I'm still motivated to continue and, finally, c) I've completed the game and am even considering putting it on my shelf of potential replays. For me, this was like finding treasure on the map without there being any Xs marked nor quest compasses nor even zoomed-in map fragments to collect.

Since games have gone pretty much totally digital and I now do most of my shopping in front of the screen at home, I find that instead of reading endless backs of boxes I now plough through reams of on-line information about every game I buy pre-purchase. So much information that I haven't bought a game I haven't managed to finish in over 3 years, blissfully delighted with each example. As if my brain is now being re-trained to expect nothing less than awesome which, worryingly, might lead to a future me being extremely, over-the-toply disappointed when, one day, it will happen, I'll buy some shitty game and not make it past 2 hours, raging as if the world was going to end.

 

[Bohrain]

Probably Morrowind. But honestly I generally read shit about RPG to the extent that I never end up touching stuff that I have low expectations from the start. I feel that the bad aspects of a RPG game usually make it time consuming, which is why I don't want to try things as blindly as with some other genre.

 

[Tigranes]

I am never surprised.

OK, so Underrail was better than I suspected after years of seeing screenshots and previews come up on this site, I underestimated it whereas I was lusting after AOD from the start.

Otherwise this thread seems to be Oblivion fans just crawling out of the woodwork. For fuck's sake, never mind Gothics or whatever, Oblivion's primary strength of 'whoa see that mountain go there' was much weaker than Morrowind except that you had nice rolling hills and grass.

 

[pippin]

Neo Scavenger. For being such a small project with that kind of resources, I'm actually quite surprised how complex it is, and easy to get into at the same time. It's a game I can pick up and play, even though I usually end up losing, but that's another story. Every step is TENSE AS FUCK as well. I'd say it's probably one of the most well realized postapoc-like game worlds I've ever seen.

You will never look at a plastic bag the same way ever again.

 

[Ivan]

looks like it's time to pick up Neo Scavenger