What's the best RPG game?

[valdir]

JRPGs are still not RPGs. Or something along those lines.

 

I'm not sure which one is "best" but the one I had the most fun with is Baldur's Gate.

 

Best RPG ever is tough, since I probably haven't played it :blush:

 

~Val

[Slaiv]

The following people are wrong:

tyjet3

valdir

 

If a game is called a Japanese Role Playing Game, then do you suggest it's not a role playing game?

 

A game doesn't have to be nonlinear to be an RPG. You guys all have your definitions screwed up.

 

There's no set definition for an RPG. There're Japanese RPGs, American RPGs, Pen and Paper, etc...

 

American RPGs tend to lean more towards adventure OR heavily pen and paper based.

 

If you need to know what a pen&paper RPG is, go look up Dungeons and Dragons.

 

ANY Final Fantasy (excluding 11)

Sword of Mana and other Manas

Crono Trigger and Cross

 

Without those, 99% of the American population wouldn't even know what the term RPG means.

[valdir]

Some people fail to recognize sarcasm over the internet.

 

Also, you overestimate the effect Final Fantasy and Co. has had. Dungeons and Dragons had a much bigger effect on what people define as a role-playing game.

 

But yes, tyjet. You are wrong.

 

However, the definition of a role-playing game has been lost in time. By the sound of it, EVERY game is a ROLE playing game, since you play some sort of role in every game.

 

~Valdir :blink:

[Peregrine]

A game doesn't have to be nonlinear to be an RPG. You guys all have your definitions screwed up.

 

Yes it does. At best, a linear "rpg" is a roll-playing game. Part of the definition of role-playing involves creating a character and deciding their personality, actions, and having the story/world reflect those choices. Take away that and you've got at best an action game with a few tactics options, and at worst, a somewhat interactive movie.

 

In simple terms:

 

Fixed characters and storyline =/= rpg.

 

 

The Final Fantasy series are not true rpgs (and not even close to the best rpg!). DiabloI/II are not true rpgs. Get the point?

 

ANY Final Fantasy (excluding 11)

Sword of Mana and other Manas

Crono Trigger and Cross

 

Without those, 99% of the American population wouldn't even know what the term RPG means.

 

You're joking, right? Pen and paper rpgs had made the term known before any of those games even existed.

[Kaningutten]

Yes it does. At best, a linear "rpg" is a roll-playing game. Part of the definition of role-playing involves creating a character and deciding their personality, actions, and having the story/world reflect those choices. Take away that and you've got at best an action game with a few tactics options, and at worst, a somewhat interactive movie.

 

Yes, Yes, YES! I fully agree! Role-Playing, in the correct meaning of the words, is close to to non-existant in many games which are called RPG's by their makers! And as for japanese rpg's; I haven't played many, in fact Sudeki was the first in years. But Sudeki was not RPG, it was an action/adventure! And that's how I feel about most/all jRPG's.

[valdir]

I agree with what Peregrine said, as he said the words I could not think of at the time.

 

Console RPGs tend to be interactive movies, rather than video games. It's mainly going from cutscene to cutscene with battles and mini-games in between.

 

However some of these "interactive movies" are good (Final Fantasy 6 and Chrono Trigger are the only two worth mentioning IMO).

 

Once again, thanks to Peregrine for saying what I didn't. :whistling:

 

~Val

[hyperk3]

Whoever said that all games are like role playing games, that kinda makes sense, a game in which you take the role as somebody, not a "make your own adventure" game. I can't say EVERY game, but most games you at least have a choice on something. A game wouldn't be a game with decisions you have to make, if you are saying that these games do not have you playing any role in the story, the game would be EXACTLY the same for every person who "plays" it. It would literally be a movie, not a game. it just depends on which game you play for how much freedom you have in that role.

 

but hey, i'm no exspert, just speaking my mind. its my 2 cents here.(why 2 cents anyways??)

[CecilofLore]

As a person who had his start playing such pen and paper RPGs like D&D, I tend to agree that they are really the only true RPGS. The whole game is based on the way you want it to be. If you want to go on a killing rampage and destroy everything that stands in you way, you can. To me, a true RPG should reflect how you would react to certain situations. There have been few RPGs that I have played that envoked that kind of feeling in me. D&D is an oldy, but still clearly a head above the rest. ^_^

[Switch]

I played the demo on some cd I got with a game and, HOO-BOY, did it come across as corny.

 

There is no way in hell that you can get a good idea of the plot/story by playing a 20 min. long demo.

 

That's like buying a book, open it at a random location in the middle, read the page, and try to determine whether it's a good book....

I have to agree here... please people don't judge FF when you haven't even played it properly.

 

[/OT]

[thanateros]

The final fantasy series, though it believes itself to be a RPG because of it's turn based system in combat isn't in fact an RPG in the traditional sense. You don't get to choose your characters, they're given to you. There's no such thing as alignment in most PC or console RPG's, another rather important element to RPGing because a character's alignment is a representative of the personality YOU choose to place upon that character.

 

Morrowind is different because the game creators made it so freeform that you can choose what you want to do and furthermore have a choice in the method in which you execute those actions. Final Fantasy is what I would consider a Linear Role Playing Game because the player can only opperate within an extremely limited field of options in terms of how you get things done. Also, your actions, in Final Fantasy and like LRPG's will always, 100% of the time have you reach the same conclusion, regardless of the method in which you execute them.

 

PC and Console RPG's will never match the magnitude of freeform that traditional table-top RPG's enjoy, simply because in that setting, you aren't dealing within a programed world with a designated set of rules that the character, no matter how creative the game makers were, must opperate within.

 

People should reevaluate what their conception of the definition of a PC RPG is; although Morrowind is still a fantastic game that raises the standard for what PC RPGing should be, there is still a long way to go before I would consider PC or console games RPG's. Just because it has a leveling system or a turned based style of combat does not mean a game qualifies as an RPG.