Unfortunately this list is extremely boring, vanilla and mainstream. I'd say it makes us look bad.
You're just too deep in the bubble, allow me to show you what is REALLY mainstream:
Our Top 5 vs
NEOGaf &
IGN lists:
#1- Fallout 1
Was #94 at NG, #34 at IGN.
#2 - PS:T
Was #6 at NG, #13 at IGN.
#3 - Fallout 2
Was #54 at NG, #28 at IGN.
#4 - BG2
Was #9 at NG, #3 at IGN.
#5 - Arcanum
Was fucking #130 at NG, and did not even appear on IGN's list.
It's hard to analyze those lists because they include JRPGs and primarily console RPGs, both were forbidden by the rules of this poll. You'd have to go through and exclude the games that we were not allowed to vote for. Too much work.
I didn't include FO1, FO2, PS:T or Arcanum in my top 25, so I'm not particularly upset by their low ranking. My opinion of those games decreases every year. I kind of want to kick them out of the genre, but it is probably best not to re-ignite the storyfag wars. Too many have suffered already.
Also, Temple of Elemental Evil, Gothic 2 and Jagged Alliance 2 didn't make ANY of both lists as well.
Well, TOEE is a bad game and they probably classified JA2 as a squad based tactics game. We've slowly convinced the Codex that JA2 is an RPG, but most other sites probably only count it as a game with RPG elements, so they leave it off this sort of list.
/V/'s list is the only one that we can compare with ours, since it is also CRPG only. It is basically the same as our list, with a few slight changes in order. TOEE deserves to be called average and JA2 was almost certainly excluded due to the genre issue.
So we are about as monocle as 4chan.
I think it would be very difficult to argue that ... Temple of Elemental Evil ... are actually good games. They're pretty clearly mediocre or "flawed gems" at best.
Wait, what!? This might just be the rye talking, but I'd say it's the best implementation of D&D in a game (with the possible exception of Gold Box stuff if you prefer 1st and 2nd ed). Yeah, maybe they stuck a bit close to the module, including boring-ass walking around Hommlet, but the system they put in there is fantastic.
I included it in my top 25 for idiosyncratic reasons, but TOEE is a pretty bad game. It has a good engine and a good implementation of the D&D ruleset, but the encounter design is bad, which makes the combat more boring than it should be. Additionally, the quests and story are bad, so bad that they fail to provide an adequate motivation to continue exploring the tower. The game is also extremely buggy. Finally, Hommlet is one of the worst starting areas of all time. It's basically three hours of solving problems for peasants... longer on a first playthrough where you don't know where to go.