Know a great RPG?

I wish you wouldn't have said last year :p

If you're into D&D, recent Neverwinter Nights 2 is pretty good, and its expansion (Mask of the Betrayer) even better. The original NWN2 release was pretty iffy, but they patched up the engine to the point where it's a nicely polished game. Plus, there's tons of good user content.

But even so, the best RPGs are really the old Black Isle and BioWare ones. Fallouts, Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale (RPG-lite, those ones), KoTOR..

Thanks, NWN2 and Baldur's gate looks interesting. Which would you say is better or more recent?

Baldur's Gate is an awesome game. And don't rule out the first Neverwinter Nights. It was a real blast to play. Plus there are alot of expansions for the original NWN.

Neverwinter Nights 2 is more recent than the original (obviously) which in turn is more recent than Baldur's Gate. NWN2 is basically your "modern" RPG. It's only 2 years old (released October '06, but Mask of the Betrayer contains even better shinies) and looks pretty and very sharp.

Baldur's Gate is actually pre-D&D3, so you still have THAC0 and backstab multipliers. Baldur's Gate 2 should still look pretty, though. I don't remember its max resolution, but it should still hold up. Baldur's Gate 1 has an awesome story, but it's older still and the resolution doesn't go up that high (though there is a port of it to the BG2 engine, if you dig around a little).

And yes, the original Neverwinter was quite fun. The OC wasn't that engaging, but Hordes of the Underdark was a very fun expansion. Tides of Undrentide was fairly forgettable, other than Deekin

Never played D&D. I'm old enough to have gone to someones house once that played the real D&D but I did not get on that well with it, I did'nt travel on the same logic train as the guy running it.

I ideally want to keep to the last 2/3 years if possible, older games do start to look and feel very dated before that even if you do remember them fondly.

I'll start out with NWN2 if that's the newest, now I just need to find a good digital download for it, I don't suppose its on impluse.

It isn't, but it is on Direct2Ddrive. You can get it in a bundle with Mask of the Betrayer and save some money too, as I recall. MoTB is great, continues into epic levels With a similarly epic feel to the story.

It might also be available on Atari's DL service but I'm not sure, I thought I recalled reading it somewhere..

If you do get it from Direct2Drive, you need to activate each game, it gets screwy if you install MoTB over an unactivated NWN2. So install the game, activate, install MoTB, activate.

World of Warcraft is worth a look if you don't mind subscription based models - it has it's flaws, but you can get a free trail to see if you like it before having to spend anything at all.

For older games nwn was great for mods, but the campaign itself was only average - HotU's campaign was much better however. There are some very good online mods for it though which kept me happy for a number of years. The graphics are fairly dated on it now though

Baldurs gate 2 doesn't suffer graphically quite as much as you'd expect given it's age, since it's not in 3d and as such the graphics from your viewpoint are at least decent (although again, dated by todays standards) - i'd probably say they're slightly below nwn, but not by much.

Jade Empire was very good on the Xbox, so I'd imagine the PC version is just as good if not better (it was released after the xbox, afterall), so give that a go if you want a more (graphically) recent game - it'll probably be starting to show it's wear now, but it's still leaps ahead of nwn in terms of graphics.

You also have KotOR, which is another good RPG. Graphically it's still reasonable as well (IMO).

I haven't played nwn2 (still not sure about it given the uncertain reviews for the main game, I might wait to see if they do a second expansion first), so can't compare the above to it.

Most of the uncertain reviews were warranted at the time, because the engine wasn't optimized very well and there were some issues. Patches did miracles for the game, though. The main game's campaign is better than NWN's, though the ending is a little lacking in awesomeness. Mask of the Betrayer already compares to HotU, since it goes into epic levels and the story for it actually makes me nostalgic for Planescape: Torment - both for the subject matter and the uniqueness.

They do have a second expansion announced, however

All this talk of old RPGs gets me wanting to play Icewind Dale again. LOL

Those games were really fun in their time. It's funny how we look back at games that were considered having incredible graphics at the time and say how they now are not good because of the graphics. I still remember the reviews of Duke Nukem saying how amazing the graphics were.

Icewind Dale was great because you could create just the party you want.. sure that meant no interaction between them, but you were never stuck with specific NPCs

I never played D&D, just the computer games based off of it. So I can understand how they ditched THAC0 and replaced it with something else, what did they do with backstab multipliers? They seemed pretty essential to rogue classes in the Baldur's Gate series.

For that matter, what changed with backstabbing from 3.0->4.0?

As for the topic, NWN2 is pretty good and as Annatar said, MotB makes it a lot better. I'd grab the combined pack if you're really interested, but if not, I'd just wait for the next expansion which is in the works. The only thing I can really knock Obsidian for is how painfully long they take to release patches while still leaving simpler issues broken. I mean, stealth still isn't working properly, is it? And we've waited months now on patch 1.13 which still doesn't address it. Plus the innumerable game mechanics and spells that modders have fixed on their own but still aren't part of official game. And don't even mention the AI, heh.

Rogues now get sneak attack damage added to their normal weapon damage on each flanked attack (basically, any time the target is denied the dex bonus, a rogue gets a sneak attack). Sneak attacks improve based on rogue levels, start at +1d6 and add 1d6 every few levels.

Basically, high level rogues can dish out a lot of damage quickly. There are also prestige classes in NWN2 that grant Hide in Plain Sight, so basically a rogue can guarantee a sneak attack with good Hide/Walk Silently skills when HiPS doesn't fail There's also an epic feat in MoTB that gives rogues the ability to sneak attack creatures immune to critical hits (normally sneak attacks don't work on them) like undead.

I haven't read up on 4.0 so I dunno if the sneak attack system was changed.

The Witcher. The Enhanced Edition is coming out soon, so you might want to wait for that before getting it.

Knights of the Old Republic has already been mentioned, but I'll second it, great game. To be honest just about anything Bioware have done is worth a look at.

Since you liked Vampire Bloodlines, you might enjoy Arcanum, which was made by the same company (Troika, now sadly bust). Again, older, top-down isometric graphics, but still a lot of fun.

The Witcher was kind of a shame. There's a really good game in there, if only they'd left out the grind quests. Plus the final plot twist caught me completely by surprise.

The Baldur's Gate games are old, but have some really nice, distinctive artwork. As such I think they'd still be playable for most people, certainly the second one. And it's worth it. Go for the eyes Boo!

Evil, meet sword. Sword, meet evil!
My brother was a Hackmaster +12!

.. Yeah, I could go on.

Ah, right. Sneak attack damage added to attacks. Having played NWN2 quite a bit, I should have remembered that. Well, thanks regardless Annatar.

And yes, Minsc is God.

Substantially. But then, the whole ruleset is substantially changed. I've seen a lot of pissing and moaning about the new rules and how they're dumbed down/too different/not D&D, etc. etc., but the more I read through the books, the more I'm liking them. They're not perfect (what is?), but I think they're actually well done and better balanced in a lot of ways than the 3.x rules.

If you're a Wizardry fan (as I am) you might want to check out Etrian Odyssey 1 and 2 on the Nintendo DS. They're the best old school party based RPG's since Wiz 8, with all the challenge of the old games plus the requirement to draw your own maps (in game). Very cool.

Divine Divinity
Beyond Divinity

Sacred
Sacred Plus Underworld

Sacred 2 (coming out soon)

Mass Effect (I heard it is good, I tried it but...storywise. i think Halo is more exciting. Because after Halo, Mass Effect is just so predictable.)

There's some truth and some horrible, horrible noob comments in here, but




made me laugh out loud.

I think you're making a HUGE mistake only going for new, shiney looking games. Good games are still good even when old, and some of those older games may not look like you're there, but the developers had a lot more time and money to throw into the game play instead, and it shows.

So yeah, the Baldur's gate games are good, as are NWN 1. I'm about to get 2 but haven't played it yet. The graphics don't look really that much better than 1, though. NWN1 still looks pretty good, IMO, and you have thousands of modules you can play through, many considered better than the original campaigns, and new ones still being made. Plus NWN has features NWN2 still doesn't have.

2 still looks good, however, and has many more races and classes built in, and a good selection of modules to play through as well.

I'll also back up Knights of the Old Republic. Not that new, but still looks quite good, and is the best new Star Wars story to come out in years. Much better than the prequel trilogies, for the most part.

Jade Empire is also good, although it's more of an action RPG. It's also fairly short, but the characters are a ton of fun and it will hook you quite easily. Nothing quite as much fun as slapping my enemies silly with my Iron Palm technique.

Ultima 7.

Oh, you said last YEAR, not last mellenium. My bad.

Whoops, missed the last year bit, well I'll give you a year and a bit.

Well this is a bit depressing, according to GameRankings there were 10 PC RPGs released in the past 12 months. 3 of them were rubbish (Loki, Two Worlds, HellGate:London) - although I didn't play the first two so I'm just going by the reviews there. 4 of them were MMORPGS, meh. 3 of them were Mass Effect, The Witcher, and NWN2 - Mask of the Betrayer.

Have you tried Oblivion yet? Very good game, plus the Shivering Isles expansion is excellent and counters Oblivion's main flaw (bland stock medieval game world).

Oh, and Bioshock, you should play Bioshock. More FPS than RPG.

Gothic 3 is supposed to be good, but honestly I couldn't get into it. The user interface is very poor, makes it a real chore to play.

Seriously though, if you havn't played:

Bladurs gate full series
Icewind dale full set
Masquerade Redemption (the first one with Christoff not really linked to Bloodlines other than universe).

Also Planescape Torment
Both KoToRs
Both Fallouts
Both Divinitys (Divine/Beyond)
All the Neverwinter Nights
All Diablo

Then get them and enjoy the recent history of the RPG (after the REALLY crap grahpics era but before the console era).

If you (anyone) can play them in order of release date you will see the grpahics slowly imporve over time heh. (seriously though, graphics don't mean anything after 30 mins playing your brain fills in the rest).

Not read all posts, so sorry if it's been mentioned. If you want a hack and slash RPG which is similar to the already mentioned Sacred ( good game ) then I would recommend Titan Quest. A good setting, with quite a big scope. Also, the Dungeon Siege Games and expansions were good simple fun too.

Though, I wouldn't class GTA and Mafia as RPGs personally.

One of the best RPG's for me in recent years is the Withcer. I liked how it had a smaller scope than many games, and was confined to a small area of the world it's set in. It made the effects of your choices seem more real.

As for NWN2... I enjoyed the castle based aspects. It added a new feel to the genre. When I got NWN2 I suffered from a low spec machine, but now I've got a much better PC I can replay NWN2 at higher levels, and get much more enjoyment. I'm waiting for the second expansion to be released before going further with the game though.