A review of every major CRPG from the last ten years

[Music] one of my favorite trends in gaming over the last decade is how many genres once considered dead have been given new life by the growth of the indie scene leading to a rampant retro revival old is the new new and as the true value of nostalgia started to sink in developers have looked to cash in their chips with throwback titles spiritual successors and an ever expanding catalogue of remakes remasters and reboots not every game that's come out of this has lived up to its potential but it's hard not to appreciate the diversity this has brought particularly for anyone whose tastes tend more towards titles from the past and far from turning into some frankenstein horror story most of these revivals have provided plenty of reasons to celebrate like classic first person shooters whose fans have got their hands on a lot of high quality doom likes in recent years that might now be more like doom than doom and certainly go some way to providing relief from years of a call of duty dominated fps markets or metroidvania fans long used to being shown the cold schroder by both metroid and bania who have suddenly found themselves spoilt for choice in fact so plentiful is the metroidvania harvest that fans have stopped worrying about the important matters of old like when will the next could metroidvania be released and have instead resorted to arguing about things that don't even matter like whether metroidvania is actually a good name for the genre and then there are those still nostalgic for the good old days of the nes and super nintendo who now have enough pixelated homages to last until approximately the next ice age all in all it's a good time to be stuck in the past which is pretty handy because the present sure isn't providing much to be hopeful about but of all these genres now boldly walking where plenty have walked before none are greater than the r p g you might be asking yourself why rpgs are the greatest but you shouldn't because i don't have an answer i just like rpgs and thought it sounded like a dramatic thing to say which is good enough for me i mean i'm not going to sit here arguing about why one genre is better than another but what i am going to do is to provide a review of every major crpg released in the last 10 years complete with comparisons between games and references to the classics of old all to provide a useful and comprehensive guide to the genre designed for both experienced and inexperienced players alike i don't speak to other people very often but if i did one thing i assume they'd say is what crpg is right for me and that my imaginary friend is a good question rpgs are long and not everyone has time to play everything and many gamer boys and girls were too young to experience the crpg genre in its glory days and so may not have any idea where to start or maybe instead you're an older fan with a higher pedigree of rpg knowledge who just wants to know how certain newer titles stack up to their inspirations and that and more are things that this guide will cover but before we can get to the meat and potatoes of this appetizing discussion we need to tackle the endlessly frustrating yet obligatory topic of defining what the hell is a crpg for this we'll need to go on a little tangential history lesson but don't worry stick with me and all will be explained so you may have noticed a sneaky little letter c crept into the discussion while you weren't looking and it's this c that causes all the problems most people know the term rpg it's an acronym that stands for role-playing game what exactly is a role-playing game isn't very well defined but that doesn't matter too much because most people have enough familiarity with the term to intrinsically have a good idea of what is and isn't an rpg however as a label rpg is broad and over time different things have started to branch off from it leading to subcategories like j rpg a rpg and c rpg so crpg is a type of rpg one branch of an easy to recognize tree and therefore the key to defining it is as simple as looking a little closer at what the c stands for except it's not you see hard to imagine as it may be there was once a time when video games didn't exist and people had to participate in other hobbies as a means of entertainment with popular pastimes including playing outside listening to the radio or beating your wife these dark ages didn't last forever but before video games really had a chance to take off a bunch of nerds got together in a basement and invented dungeons and dragons while less popular than slapping your spouse and also at times a good deal more controversial dungeons and dragons along with other role-playing games still became very popular and so these role-playing games that pre-dated their video game counterparts had a big influence on certain early video games like ultima or wizardry which both drew heavily on the pre-existing role-playing games for inspiration as an rpg in video game format was different than a traditional role-playing game a term was needed to differentiate between the two which is where crpg comes from it means computer role playing game as opposed to what was at the time normal role-playing games i.e non-computer role-playing games which are also known as pen and paper tabletop or traditional role-playing games take your pick of which term you like because each has its own problems none of which we are going to concern ourselves with today what's more important is that these are different to video game rpgs and so the term crpg makes sense we can follow this logic to conclude that all video game rpgs are c rpgs simple right wrong because while this was once true it's not really the case anymore as it turns out logic and labels aren't always best buddies and over time the meaning of crpg has morphed into something more specific this is because as role-playing video games evolved several subcategories came into existence examples include japanese rpgs action rpgs dungeon crawl rpgs and so on these subcategories are easy to define but as video games as a medium grew in popularity the term c rpg and rpg came to be used interchangeably as a name for role playing video games with the c often being dropped because it was usually easy to understand whether someone is talking about a video game or tabletop through context alone at the same time role-playing video games also moved further and further from their traditional pen and paper roots there were two big causes of this the first was diablo which successfully married traditional rpg elements with action gameplay in an unholy matrimony that proved wildly popular with both fans and future developers fast forward to a decade later and there was a new expectation for role-playing video games to have action combat to avoid being considered outdated and antiquated so this move from gameplay inspired by stats and dices as seen in traditional role-playing experiences towards gameplay focused on action as seen in many other video games was the first big departure for the genre the second was the move from pcs to consoles spearheaded by the once grand champions of the crpg bioware with knights of the old republic who were accompanied by other developers that likewise wanted to cash in on the growing console market this move brought with it streamlining and casualization of the genre as game design was forced to shift to appeal to console players and console hardware at the end of the 90s western rpgs were a pc focus genre and almost every big rpg was a pc exclusive by the end of the 2000s every big rpg was released on consoles as well and the idea of designing a major rpg specifically for a pc audience as a pc exclusive was unheard of so in terms of gameplay and design philosophy role-playing video games changed and this was mirrored by a noticeable shift in perspective and i don't mean that of the audience i mean literally the perspective of these games changed from the classic isometric or near-isometric top-down view of many older rpgs to over-the-shoulder third-person perspectives with freely controllable cameras in summary there was a clear difference between the classic rpgs of the late 90s such as boulder's gates fallout and planescape torment with the more modern rpgs such as skyrim mass effect or the witcher 3. rpgs had changed and so the term crpg started to take on a new meaning which was that it was used to differentiate the old rpgs from the new this distinction wasn't an exact science when exactly did all rpgs stop being crpgs who knows what games counts as crpgs and which are only rpgs who cares the point is we finally got there crpgs are old rpgs the classics those more traditional in design often with a top-down perspective and mostly released only on pc simple right still wrong because things get more complicated again with the crpg revival sometimes referred to as the crpg renaissance if you fancy sounding a little more pretentious this is what happened in the 2010s with the ascendancy of the new crowdfunding platform kickstarter where veteran rpg developers with recognizable names like brian fargo chris avalon and josh sawyer were wheeled out of whatever storage room they were kept in and forced at gunpoint to record kickstarter pitches asking fans for money so they can make rpgs great again but they weren't just making any old rpgs oh no they were making c rpgs emphasis on the sea rpg's inspired by the classics old school in design pc focused unashamed of their reliance on stats often marketed directly as spiritual successors to older titles and with not an action combat system in sight after a 10-year hiatus crpgs were back which meant crpg no longer meant old rpg because now there were new crpgs and so at long last we have arrived at our destination crpg used to mean computer rpg and was a term used to differentiate video game rpgs from traditional non-video game rpgs over time it came to be used as a term to specifically refer to older video game rpgs because rpgs started to change however in more recent years crpg has come to refer to both older rpgs and modern rpgs that are similar in design to those older examples and crpg should be thought of as a subcategory of rpg if you want you can think of crpgs as classic rpgs because while that's not what the c stands for that description would make a lot of sense and that's it we did it we defined what a crpg is hooray was this long painful explanation worth it who knows am i slowly losing my sanity who cares the point is we can finally move on to the real topic of this video and hopefully i will never ever have to define crpg again and so on to the reviews there'll be no spoilers in this video and i'll try to look at both the positives and negatives of each game covered at the end of the video there'll be a conclusion focused on comparisons and recommendations the order of the games will be chronological based on first release with games from the same series grouped together for the sake of simplicity and with all that said let's get started shadowrun is a cyberpunk pen and paper role-playing game first adapted into video game form on the super nintendo and then brought back 20 years later as a faithful turn-based crpg as with the majority of the games we'll be looking at this was facilitated by kickstarter and shadowrun returns is notable as the first crpg that came out of the kickstarter boom as it was released in mid-2013 shadowrun returns was followed up by two sequels dragonfall in 2014 and hong kong in 2015. all three games are built on the same engine and share many similarities the most obvious of which is the setting this is one of shadowrun's biggest draws although not as common as fantasy there are still several cyberpunk traditional role-playing games and shadowrun is the most popular by a long way on the surface it has all the staples you might expect from a cyberpunk rpg out of control corporations boundary pushing cybernetics shadowy conspiracy theories you know the deal but shadowrun then takes a plunge into the unexpected by taking a big handful of classic fantasy tropes like dwarves elves dragons and magic and then throws them all into the mix as well making for one great big melting pot of cliche that goes so far it starts to develop a flavor that's distinctly original that urban fantasy side to shadowrun is what gives it its own feel and that's one of these game's biggest draws cyberpunk rpgs are already a rarity and shadowrun's unique take on the setting has proved popular with fans although personally i'm not sure how much the fantasy elements add to the setting a setting isn't better just because it adds more things and part of the appeal of cyberpunk is its degree of plausibility that it's a near future setting that feels possible and adding magic and dragons conflicts with that but even if that side of the setting doesn't appeal to me i'm probably in the minority with that opinion and these games are able to take advantage of the pen and paper rpg's rich lore and fleshed out world the same can be said about the game's mechanics which are a mostly faithful recreation this means there's a larger focus on individual skills rather than preset classes and a high degree of flexibility in how you build your character that means there's a range of weapon skills alongside several types of magic and some more tech based options the more unique of which allow you to fight using remote controlled drones or hack into a traversible 3d matrix to battle with advanced security systems combat is turn based with a large focus on cover and percentage hit chance making it outwardly very similar to xcom although all actions are governed by a single pool of ap or action points liking classic fallouts or many other rpgs and as you progress through the game you'll start to accumulate a decent range of skills spells and items opening up more options for you to flex your tactical muscles overall combat comes across as very serviceable although it rarely goes far beyond that being reliably good but rarely great and the same could be said about the presentation there's no voice acting in these games but otherwise the graphics aren't bad having a clean but stylish appearance that works well one thing that does make the shadowrun game stand out more is how stripped down they are compared to many of their crpg peers from the simplistic and tablet friendly ui to the mission and hub based structure the games are built around to the short but to the point overall length one big weakness of the rpg genre is that games can be so heavy on information that it can confuse frustrate or just bore players they involve too many numbers and too many different systems combined with large worlds and slow plots as far as crpgs go the shadowrun games are by contrast one of the few examples of the genre that doesn't feel any more complicated than it needs to be even something like loot a staple in most rpgs is restricted to just being upgrades you can buy in a shop and equip before missions it will depend on your perspective whether this is a good thing or not many people like crpgs for their complexity but this does mean that the shadowrun games could be a good entry point to the genre for inexperienced players and even if some of the fat has been trimmed the shadowrun games still retain much of the core features that you'd expect in an rpg including frequent skill checks missions with multiple solutions and branching story choices the final thing to be aware of about these games is that there is a big jumping quality from the first game to the second so much so that players should strongly consider skipping shadow run returns altogether and moving straight to dragonfall there aren't any story reasons why you need to play these games in order and not only does dragon fall have a much better main story which focuses on what might be the settings most interesting inhabitants dragons it also has a full set of fleshed out and well-written companions in shadowrun returns you play as one character and then bring some goons along with you to missions which is one streamlined too far dragonfall's party members instead add a lot more personality to the experience and unless you're sure you want to play all three games skipping returns and going straight to dragonfall makes a lot of sense there is always the third game hong kong which sits in the middle of the three in terms of quality for anyone that wants more shadow run after finishing dragon fall so the best thing about the shadowrun games are the setting and the streamlined approach to rpg design which is something that might appeal both to inexperienced players as well as anyone with less free time on their hands who still wants to be able to finish a good rpg the main weakness of the games is their simplicity which could easily be too simple for some as well as an overall lackluster first game if cyberpunk's your thing dragonfall at least is well worth checking out in exile entertainment sequel to the 1988 post-apocalyptic classic was one of the first big stories to come from kickstarter wasteland was the predecessor and father figure to fallout and after bethesda bought the fallout ip in the early 2000s and took the series in a different direction to the original games it left an isometric fallout shaped hole in the rpg market and older fans of the series never really forgot about this and then many years later along comes wasteland 2 on kickstarter accompanied by several big name x fallout developers and with it the dream of a faithful fallout 3 the game fans always wanted but never got was reignited it should come as little surprise that the kickstarter for wasteland 2 broke records but it also found itself with very big shoes to fill it didn't just need to be the spiritual successor to two of the most beloved crpgs ever made it also had to prove the superiority of the old-school rpg design to the world this was the original fallout vs bethesda fallout grudge match people had longed for and wasteland 2 found itself as the people's champion being expected to step into the ring with a goliath hopes and expectations would likely play a big role in how one perceives wasteland 2. we are now 6 years after its release and even though a sequel is right around the corner it's still pretty obvious that this game wasn't the fabled fallout killer some might have prophesized that doesn't mean it's not a good game but for some good wasn't good enough despite this wasteland 2 still delivered a lot of what it originally promised it is an old-school post-apocalyptic crpg with lots of stats and lots of choices the influence of fallout can be quite noticeable particularly in some of the less important details like how you can inspect parts of the environment with right click to get a text description of your surroundings or how you traverse the world map in other ways however wasteland 2 feels like its own thing the best difference is probably how you create a party of four characters at the beginning instead of just one not only does this allow you to build a more diverse team that can take advantage of a vast range of different skills it also means wasteland 2 improves upon the older fallouts in at least one aspect the combat fallout features a turn-based battle system but you only control a single character meaning encounters always remain fairly simplistic wasteland 2 gives you total control of your entire party which can be increased up to a maximum of seven members and this adds some much appreciated depth to an otherwise fairly straightforward combat system on the other hand the setting doesn't do a lot to differentiate itself it would be unfair to criticize wasteland setting for being too similar to fallout because wasteland originally came first that said there isn't much about this world that feels very unique in wasteland 2 every place you go to seems to have its own wacky post-apocalyptic story for you to uncover individually these stories can be enjoyable one location has a group of self-destructing monks who worship an undetonated nuclear bomb another has a society where being polite is held as the highest virtue and is enforced through brutal violence other locations have warring tribes or mutated wildlife or murderous robots and each is fine but they never come together to make a very interesting whole there's a weakness to the world building where each location comes with its own problem for the player to solve but in the end each location feels like it only exists to be a problem and despite how much personality individual places or factions can have there's no sense that the world itself has much of an identity it doesn't help that the player's own faction the desert rangers whose quest to sort out the wasteland make up the main focus of the storyline are completely uninteresting although if you do persist with the game you'll find the second half to be much more engaging narratively than the first persisting with wasteland 2 can be a little tough however as this game is slow you spend lots of time walking across zones or across the world map npcs you talk to have a lot to say maybe a bit too much combat encounters can take a while to play out due to the turn-based nature combined with a large number of participants and managing your many characters inventories takes its toll some questionable design decisions also don't help like how skill checks are percentage based that can be tried multiple times leading to each one potentially taking a lot longer than it should despite this the speed you progress has been helped greatly by many quality of life improvements made by the director's cut edition of the game and yet despite these numerous changes it's still hard to deny that wasteland 2 has a bit of a pacing problem but if you don't mind taking your time with it you'll find wasteland 2 to be a big deep sprawling rpg of occasionally mixed quality but with a good core combat system and an even better character skill system that you get to explore in a lot of depth thanks to the large party size presentation wise wasteland 2 also looks pretty good although the top-down camera perspective doesn't feel angled enough meaning you can see very little in front of you unless you zoom all the way out at which point you won't be able to appreciate much about the graphics anyway voice acting is a bit better though with plenty of voice lines and overall wasteland 2 is a good old-school rpg but struggled in some part because for many expectations were sky high the experience has also been greatly improved by the director's cut edition and if you're looking for an rpg with lots of depth and lots of content and you aren't put off by a slow pace then wasteland 2 is a solid choice [Music] divinity original sin and its sequel might be the most successful of all games in this video like several others larry and studios were quick to jump aboard the kickstarter hype train but they did so with a lot less fanfare than some of the other adopters despite this with the decade drawn to a close larian are looking a lot like the new crpg king after being chosen for the prestigious role of developing the next baldur's gate game and having achieved sales figures that most other isometric rpgs can only dream of and it's hard to say that success is undeserved where so many crpgs of recent years stuck closely to their inspirations original sin instead seemed content to go in its own direction by placing a larger focus on the world and its interactivity in this game every item is a physical object that can be picked up and moved this is then combined with a large range of environmental effects that can be mixed and matched and combined and contrasted to provide a variety of different results this interaction is a big part of both the combat as well as puzzle solving you can electrify water freeze blood puddles explode poison clouds or ignite freshly placed oil spills and things don't always go as anticipated maybe your pyromancy spells got a little too out of control so you conjure up a rain cloud to put the fire out but now you created a cloud of steam and lost visibility so instead you freeze these newly formed puzzles so anyone who tries to close in on you has to cross ice and risk falling over the only problem is you aren't the only one moving pieces on this chessboard and enemies cause their own carnage this is all just a hypothetical example but a lot of the fun in this game is in these types of interactions and the unpredictability they bring the core of divinity original sins combat is like many other rpgs being turn-based with actions costing ap yet the focus on combining effects creates a controlled chaos that offers far more freedom than other games while also rewarding creativity and experimentation this also means there's not such a large focus on hip percentage or lucky crits as while still present dice rolls come across as distinctly secondary to strategy it's a hugely successful system and while individual fights are slow original sin also has a quality over quantity approach to its encounter design ensuring a high degree of variability and few fights that feel like filler outside of combat the puzzles are also generally well done because the world is so interactive it makes the experience more immersive and just as in the midst of battle these interactions reward you for trying things out and thinking for yourself and if original sin's unique formula is fun on your own the option to bring a friend and play through the entire game co-op stretches the entertainment even further while slow turn-based combat may not sound like a good fit for co-op due to all the down time players have waiting for their turn the interactive approach of original sins combat works heavily in its favor here by providing players plenty of reason to communicate and discuss strategies amongst themselves there's nothing like having a friend along to share your successes and not successes because while things can be interesting when you're on your own and something goes wrong with a friend these moments are an experience co-op in crpgs isn't an unheard of feature it was possible in boulder's gate after all but it is still unusual this feature alone makes the original sim game stand out and as the only co-op games in this video it makes it a pretty obvious recommendation if co-op is what you're after but you still might be wondering how well corp works in regards to the story the answer to that is not as well as with the combat but it still works it might be a problem if players have different play styles for example if one player wants to read everything while the other is more of a skipper then someone might have to compromise but if you can work things like that out between you there's no reason you can't both enjoy the story and each game is written to allow for co-op with both players able to share the role of main character as well as the resulting decision making as for the story itself it takes a much more light-hearted approach than most other rpgs with plenty of humor and a certain whimsical charm that doesn't always hit its mark but still has a strong sense of personality the main story of the first game still feels pretty weak but this is one area the sequels made big improvements by having much better pacing stronger characters and a more interesting driving force pushing you forward original sin 2 also improves the world design with more interesting locations some of the other changes original sin 2 makes however are less successful like how initiative has been changed in order to force the turn order to alternate between players and enemies which adds little while simultaneously greatly devalues the initiative stats another example is the new armor system which reduces the effectiveness of both crowd control and environmental effects and while this is a logical change that helps balance the experience it can also feel like it diminishes some of the fun factor and uniqueness that made the game stand out to begin with but the experience isn't hurt all that much overall the combat in divinity original sin was already so good but even a couple of changes that may not have been for the better still leave the game with much better combat than most both original sin 1 and 2 are great games and great rpgs in terms of accessibility they strike a good balance by being games that could easily be enjoyed by someone less experienced to the genre but which still have plenty of depth particularly in the way in which they reward players who think for themselves in terms of presentation these games are also better than most with good graphics a high level of polish and full voice acting something which is unusual in such a text heavy genre a lot of modern crpgs are quite low budget and that might be a turn off for some but divinity original sin and even more so its sequel don't feel that way at all all in all i would recommend both of these games to anyone who's a fan of the genre and if you aren't very experienced with crpgs and are wondering where to start there may not be a safer bet than this there are a few rpgs remembered as fondly by fans as those made on bioware's infinity engine which produced the likes of baldur's gate ice windale and planescape torment and so just as with wasteland 2 a few months earlier when veteran rpg studio obsidian entertainment turned to crowdfunding to make the spiritual successor to these classics expectations were likewise sky high and kickstarter records broken in fact the then titled project eternity became the highest funded video game in kickstarter history and with obsidian's track records the faith fans had in them was unsurprising as with wasteland 2 before it however a lot of the reaction to pillars of eternity revolved around how much was expected from it in terms of appearance pillars of eternity certainly looks the part the isometric pre-rendered backgrounds of the old infinity engine rpgs already looked good and so pillars of eternity's high resolution take on this style manages to look both classical and appealing the sequel looks even better with some higher fidelity character models as well as improved particle effects and lighting look under the surface however and you'll start to find more differences between pillars and the games that inspired it but even then it's still a mostly faithful take on a modern infinity engine game one thing this means is that for the first time in this video combat is not turn based instead it's what's commonly referred to as real time with pause if you don't know what this is then the clue is in the name it's a gameplay system where combat happens in real time but the player can freely pause at any moment to micromanage their party members by adjusting positioning or manually selecting spells or abilities if you don't take advantage of the ability to pause then combat will happen fast probably far too fast and you won't be able to effectively utilize the tools at your disposal if you do pause often however you might start to find the options to micromanage a plentiful possibly too plentiful and you might find yourself overwhelmed but there is a distinct appeal to a combat system that gives you a lot of options and then leaves it up to you how much you want to take advantage of them it means you can speed through easy fights and then when the going gets tough you can painstakingly plan your every move and it's that level of complete control but so satisfying as someone who grew up playing these types of games this is a combat system i love but i might be in the minority as many rpg fans prefer turn-based systems it's also not a combat system that is very new player friendly because while in turn based combat actions happen one at a time making them easy to follow as you can clearly see what's happening and what this causes as a result in real time with paws actions instead happen quickly and simultaneously making them hard to keep track of so real time with pause is a faster paced but messier alternative and if you've never played a real time with pause game before then pillars of eternity might actually be a good starting point due to a number of changes and tweaks made by obsidian in an attempt to modernize and improve the experience it's within these changes however the pillars of eternity might start to lose favor with some older crpg fans because even if there are no individual changes that radically alter the experience the net result still alters the overall feel of the game where the older infinity engine games could come across as slightly uneven pillars takes a more measured and safe approach but by losing some of the sharp edges it might also lose a bit of the excitement this is not just because some of the small changes made to combat itself but also because those old infinity engine games were based directly on the dungeons and dragons rule set whereas while pillars takes inspiration from dnd it still uses its own purpose-built systems that put a larger focus on balance for example in d one point of strength can make a big difference in a character's effectiveness and this approach can heavily reward clever min maxing however in pillars every stat increase brings a flat improvement that by comparison has a much smaller impact which approach you prefer is a question of preference but it's within this kind of minutiae that you start to understand why some older fans were disappointed by the changes pillars of eternity made as for the setting it also takes heavy inspiration from d d and while this flavor of familiar fantasy can be seen as nostalgic it could also be seen as a bit generic from the enemy types to the classes and races you choose from in character creation or the woodlands and towns you go through as you travel the examples of anything truly original are few and far between pillars of eternity 2 goes some way to remedy this by swapping the medieval europe-style forests to a pirate and colonial-themed set of islands and this change comes along with a much more interesting overworld but does a lot to make exploration actually exciting as well as a slightly less impressive pirate ship for you to pilot and upgrade you can also fight with this ship but the less said about this feature the better the stories of these games focus on the idea that souls are physical things whose essence is what facilitates the cycle of life and death as well as magic pillars of eternity takes itself very seriously possibly to a fault but there's still a valid attempt to move beyond a more typical high fantasy story by introducing concepts of theology and philosophy and pillars deserves at least some respect for treating its audience like adults the downside to this is that the story can seem slow and dense with heavy amounts of exposition particularly at the start of the game where the large amounts of lore dumped in the player's lap might successfully fill in the details of the world but failed to establish any reason for the player to actually care if you do follow the story to its conclusion then there is narrative payoff at the end but the story still might struggle to ever get players invested enough in the first place and while the first game does finish strong the sequel then meanders about aimlessly leaving everything important to a yet to be announced third game that may not even end up being made pillars of eternity 2 does improve with its factions which were particularly forgettable in the first game but this alongside the improved setting makes the lackluster main story in many ways even more disappointing still at its best pillars of eternity does manage to feel quite epic the games are heavy on content the law is expansive the character building allows plenty of options with lots of interesting builds and the sequel takes this even further by adding multi-classing plus in addition to the normal dungeons and side quests there's also stronghold management in the first game which becomes ship management in the second and the large scale of the games is matched by a consistent level of polish with plenty of high quality voice acting in the first game and the sequel going even further by having fully voiced dialogue pillars of eternity firmly represents the old but new philosophy to crpg design and while it doesn't always manage to take the best from both worlds its attempt to synergize these two camps still often comes close there's always a risk that by trying to appeal to both modern and older audiences you end up not going far enough to please either but i can respect pillars of eternity for making an earnest effort to improve on his inspiration even if i don't think it was fully successful play this game if you don't mind real time with pause combat and are looking for something polished made by a very small team over a very long period of time age of decadence isn't like the other games that have been featured so far in this video there's no kickstarter or veteran rpg developers or long dead franchise waiting to be rebooted behind this title just one outspoken guy dissatisfied with the direction of the rpg genre who decided to back his words up with actions and age of decadence is the result you can probably tell by the graphics that this game isn't much to look at and that might be because development started in 2004 but the overwhelmingly brown color palette and bland ui might not be doing it any favors either don't expect anything as fancy as voice acting with this one get past the visuals and presentation however and you'll find an rpg that does many of the things an rpg should do at a higher level than you might be used to things like offering choice or replayability or having impactful character builds and so on it starts with character creation where creating a non-combat character is treated as just as viable as anything else and this commitment to player freedom then continues once the game gets underway because despite gently pushing you towards one of the various paths to progress the main story everything else is left completely up to you with multiple factions you can choose to work with or against as you try to move up in the world and work out what is actually going on that question is an important one and it isn't as easy to work out as it might sound age of decadence takes place in a sort of post-apocalyptic world in the middle of a sort of alternative roman empire whose once great civilization is slowly withering away it's a fantasy setting with almost no fancy elements where remnants of the past dot the landscape except those remnants seem to feature some level of technology but not some super advanced or alien technology no instead it's technology the player might be familiar with but which the world's inhabitants have only a minimal level of understanding you can listen to a law master talk about commanding fire elementals to bless or and realize the thing this law master is doing isn't any kind of magic he's operating a smelter even though he doesn't really understand how it works it's that mix of mysticism with real world knowledge and how the players understanding can be different to the in-game characters which makes the world building really effective and adds a lot of intrigue and mystery to the setting the main story itself isn't quite as good but the way it unravels bit by bit and only as a result of the player putting things together themselves is still very interesting as for combat it's once more turn-based with ap with you controlling a single character this can make big battles feel quite uninvolved as you spend the vast majority of them watching other characters take their turns with your own impact on the battle often feeling quite limited single combat isn't that much better as although there are different attacks you can perform and consumables to use this still isn't the most complex battle system and if group battles aren't very engaging and 1vs1 fights are simplistic it's probably safe to say that combat isn't really this game's strong point but what age of decadence does do well is make you appreciate your character's abilities in battle if you decide to play as a combat focused character it feels good to be able to hold your own in combat and to know that when push comes to shove you're more than capable of hitting back hard meanwhile if you play as a less combat focused character victory in battle can't be taken for granted and so you'll be grateful for every fight you get out of alive you'll also start being careful about what fights you get into just like in real life whether you engage in combating age of decadence is nearly always down to player choice and learning to walk away is a very valuable lesson it's also the case that other npcs might not be so eager to see things come to blows which makes a lot of sense because generally speaking fighting to the death is dangerous and so not everyone wants to gamble with their life this is something that seems blindingly obvious yet so few games actually follow this logic which makes age of decadence's more realistic approach feel remarkable where age of decadence is most successful however is how it forces players that want to be good at combat to have to commit to that path which means missing out on other things and those other things are important for example a combat focused character might not be able to understand all that much about the storyline or might struggle with situations that require a careful choice of words which there are lots of it's this approach to rpg design that makes age of decadence so replayable while also being so rewarding you can't do everything you can't even come close and so your character builds and the choices you make matter a lot more than in most other rpgs ultimately however age of decadence's design philosophy can feel superior to the game that's been built on top of it this is a game that shows its low budget in more ways than one and it lacks that amazing storyline or a really enjoyable combat system that it feels like it needs to carry it all the way to greatness it's also a game that comes with a healthy side of frustration you can easily find yourself in an unwinnable fight and sometimes loading an earlier save might not be enough for example if you start the imperial guard questline in the first town you'll end up in a series of missions that will take you into harder and harder battles with no way to go somewhere else and improve your character in between if you get stuck of course this is only the first town and you can always start over age of decadence is quite short but it makes up for this in terms of replayability it's also a game that doesn't waste the player's time with no filler fights and the ability to fast travel even to locations on your current map sometimes it takes this approach a little too far with quests skipping you straight into conversations with the next npc which makes the game feel overly small and closer to an interactive choose your own adventure game than an immersive rpg but this is a more minor gripe and what the developers have achieved on what is obviously a very limited budget is still impressive i'd recommend age of decadence to anyone who has an interest in good rpg design or anyone that highly values choice and consequence or replayability less experienced rpg players should probably skip this one however and as impressive as age of decadence can be you should also know that there are more well-rounded games out there not content for age of decadence to take all the indie underdog crpg glory under ale released a few months later and showed for the second time that year that big budget and good graphics aren't everything underrail is a brutal post-apocalyptic turn-based rpg that takes heavy inspiration from fallout it's also the name of the vast network of interconnected rail lines and cave systems that the game takes place in and this is where humanity now lives after the surface was rendered uninhabitable in most other post-apocalyptic games an explanation of what the hell happened to the world is the very first thing you witness that's how every fallout game old and new begins as well as wasteland and atom rpg and even the usually cryptic age of decadence begins by giving you some sort of explanation underrail gives you nothing those questions of what happened and why are something you'll have to work for by building up connections and exploring secrets and even then easy to understand answers are hard to come by this isn't the only way the setting sets itself apart however in underrail humans have been living underground for a while and enough time has passed for groups to have risen fallen been resurrected and fallen again but the secrets of the old world are still out there sometimes hiding in forgotten corners or sitting around in crumbling dive bars i'm a big fan of this world there's enough factions and politics to make it feel big and believable while it's depictions of struggling societies clinging to survival feels suitably dystopian and yet it's also weird in a way that always leaves you wanting to see more compared to other post nuclear wastelands that can start to feel overly similar under rails under rail feels more unique and memorable exploring this setting is a big part of the game and that focus on exploration is different to a lot of other crpgs the world in underrail is large and there's no quest markers or minimap to tell you where to go instead you're left to rely on descriptions given by npcs as well as the occasional signpost and an optional compass and while this is simple enough in the beginning caves once you get past the early game the world really opens up there's always the metro system if you just want to get around but leaving the beaten track to see what's out there can be a lot of fun and providing you use the oddity experience system instead of the classic system it's also very rewarding the oddity xp system is something recommended by the developers and most players and it changes the way you acquire experience points from killing enemies to being acquired through finding the large number of in-game oddities which are random items found on corpses containers or just in some of the less frequented corners of the underrail the purpose of this system was to allow players to level at a similar rate regardless of play style but on top of this it also manages to feel a lot more exciting and rewarding than a more traditional system would with the only downside being but you're heavily incentivized to search through the many containers you encounter just in case an oddity is lurking within which can be a little time consuming underrail can be a time consuming game in general and you'll be doing a lot of walking as you travel around this world one very important thing to note is you can increase the out of combat game speed by pressing the plus key which can save you a lot of time in the long run but you'll still be walking around a lot because quests don't hold the player's hand and solutions aren't always very obvious the quest design does do a good job at providing multiple solutions and this is shown most clearly in the dungeon design where there is nearly always multiple paths through these non-linear locations that frequently feature ways to take advantage of your various skills like lock picking stealth and hacking and yet despite how important these skills are made to feel there's always at least some kind of alternative solution that can be found for a character that lacks these abilities and that brings me to the character building one of underrail's best features while in many other rpgs there's an attempt to make all builds feel viable and to present different options as equal that's not what underrail is about instead the game's high difficulty heavily encourages min maxing and all good builds are built around careful synergies it's often recommended for new players to follow a guide for their first character and while this isn't strictly necessary you should still be aware that a weak build can run into trouble and might lead you to feel like you need to start over there's a big difficulty spike at the end of the early game the dreaded depot a which seems deliberately designed to put your build for its paces as a general rule if you get through this location you're gonna be okay if not then it might be time to go back to the drawing board and start over but at least this is early enough to not feel too frustrating and having already done the beginning sections once before you can easily speed through a second time if needed as for combat itself it's also very good while many other turn-based games where you only control a single character can feel overly simplistic underrail succeeds by turning its damage numbers up so high that small changes in strategy can still have big impacts death comes hard and fast for both you and your enemies and you'll be quick saving and quick loading a lot but fights are also short enough for doing one encounter multiple times doesn't feel like a waste of time instead fights feel like mini puzzles for you to figure out you'll be forced to take advantage of things like careful use of line of sight to keep you out of harm's way for one extra turn or baiting enemies into narrow areas to set up devastating grenades or pre-prepared traps it also makes gear very important and there's a lot of satisfaction in seeing all the little pieces fall into place as your character build and equipment come together to turn you into a killing machine underrail also has a very detailed crafting system which while initially confusing looking at you energy shields is still very good and might be one of the most in-depth crafting systems you'll find in an rpg so underrail might be lacking in graphics and voice acting but it is still a great game just one final word of warning be careful with the game's last area once you're dropped in you can't go back out and this area is absolutely brutal not only is it full of hostile environmental effects and even more hostile hostiles it also has some of the most complicated quests i've ever seen in an rpg one of these is so hard that even using a wiki and an external helper tool i still struggled with understanding it and while this is optional there's also non-optional quests that have you finding big lists of in-game items that are spread all over the map and would be very difficult to complete without at least some wikipedia assistance but underrail seems to like putting the player through hell and i can only think of one other rpg that put me through quite as much pain but still kept me playing until the very end if abusive relationships aren't what you're looking for in your rpg waifu under el chan might not be for you but make no mistake this is one of the best games in this video and one of the greatest modern crpgs it's just also one of the hardest to recommend it's the kind of game journalists would call the dark souls of crpgs and really if underrail isn't your thing that's totally understandable this is an old school rpg with old school difficulty but for the right player is amazing but if you're not the right player don't say i didn't warn you about what you're getting yourself into [Music] as the second modern crpg to be released by obsidian entertainment 2016's tyranny is a bit like pillars of eternity's little brother it's a shorter lower budget game in a different but still fantasy setting with real time with pause combat there are however a number of key differences and if pillars were sometimes guilty of playing it a bit too safe then tyranny is a game that's at least more willing to take risks the first of which is that you play as the bad guys at least you're meant to and that was the game's big marketing pitch in the world of tyranny the immensely powerful evil overlord kiros is coming to the end of his complete conquest of the known world and you play as one of his enforcers tasked with stamping out one little last drop of resistance there's a lot of freedom in how you go about this role particularly in regards to which factions you work with and this is ultimately one of the best things about the game the vastly different factions and the routes they open up make for plenty of narrative reason to replay tyranny which is good because it's not an especially long game there's also a lot about this main story that's interesting the premise is unique the writing often good and the cast of supporting characters especially those who might end up opposing you can be very memorable as a large focus is placed on navigating the moral dilemmas of tyranny's world the setting's morality ends up being much more involved than most other rpgs and as one of the main draws of a role-playing game is role-playing itself having a setup designed to ask more questions of the player and make them think more carefully about their responses is a real strength unfortunately the game ends very abruptly and it can feel like just as your journey is really starting to pull you in it starts coming to a close as a result tyranny's story can end up feeling a little less satisfying than pillars of eternity despite being more interesting in many ways tyranny is aided by one very useful improvement over pillars of eternity however which is the addition of a mid text glossary that shows you what words mean if you hover your mouse over them this helps tackle pillars exposition problem by making keeping up with a large range of names and terminology easier for players while also allowing the writers to avoid the need for npcs to over explain all the world's details to the player there are other ways however where tyranny is clearly inferior to obsidian's earlier efforts the most important being the combat although tyranny reuses the same real time with pause system seen before you now only have four characters to control instead of six with less involved character building and vastly inferior enemy variety this is something that could already be a slight weakness in pillars and in a shorter game should be less of a problem but tyranny is awful in this regard with only a few different types of enemies which means there is very little variation to the encounters you'll face there's also a difficulty problem where act 1 feels suitably balanced but everything after is far too easy and in terms of dungeons the game basically has just one that it lazily repeats multiple times the spell system is a little more promising as it allows you to create spells yourself but while interesting in theory in practice this system is far too easy to take advantage of just by using simple things like aoe and it ultimately leads to little actual variety tyranny doesn't even look much better than obsidian's previous efforts as while the backgrounds are still great and character models still good at the distance the ui is distinctly less pleasing to the eye and the use of 3d character portraits feels like a big step down there's still a decent amount of voice acting but in most ways tyranny really does feel like a lower budget alternative to pillars and it's a shame that the game which was so much more experimental and original was in many ways given a much lower chance of success it's also much shorter and while this could be seen as a positive for some this is still an rpg that asks you to learn its systems and become invested in its world and when the experience comes to a close not long after it feels like it really gets going that's a problem there is narrative reason to replay tyranny but unfortunately the gameplay might struggle to hold your interest for even a single playthrough if you care more about story than gameplay and the idea of playing as a representative of an evil empire sounds appealing then tyranny is still well worth checking out i don't think it's a better game than pillars of eternity but it's undeniably more interesting and makes you wonder what could have been if the budget and development duration of these two games had been reversed [Music] torment tides of numenera makes up the final of the kickstarter big three where wasteland 2 was a spiritual successor to fallout and pillars of eternity a follow-up to baldur's gate torment tides of numenera was to be the successor of an even harder act to follow the 1999 rpg masterpiece planescape torment so much of that game's appeal was connected to its world but as the planescape setting has been all but discontinued inexile entertainment had to look elsewhere for the canvas to base their game upon the setting they ended up with was numenera a science fantasy role playing setting that could be just as weird as planescape but this meant however that in exile we're in a strange position as the question of how to make a successor to planescape torment doesn't have an obvious answer that wasn't the case for those games inspired by fallout or baldur's gate fallout is its post-apocalyptic setting and boulder's gate followed a classic high fantasy epic adventure formula that could be easily replicated but what about planescape torment it's a game where the gameplay was the most forgettable aspect and where a large part of the setting's appeal was that there was nothing else quite like it planescape torment was a dialogue heavy philosophical introspective tale of an amnesiac immortal who spends the game learning about his past lives and the end result turned out far better than it had any right to be so how do you go about capturing that magic for a second time the answer according to tides of numenera is to copy as much as possible and so tides is a dialogue heavy philosophical introspective tale of a sort of amnesiac immortal who spends the game learning about your past lives and yet the end result just isn't the same maybe the reason for that is because tides copy so much that it loses that sense of originality in the process but it could also be because planescape torment might have actually been good despite some of its features not because of them take the large amounts of writing in both games you'll spend much of your time in dialogue reading through static text boxes but planescape torment story wasn't necessarily good because of all this reading you could just as easily argue its story was good despite how text heavy it was and the neverending text boxes entitled numenera just don't feel very engaging the writing isn't bad but it makes no attempt at brevity and there isn't even much humor or action to break things up sometimes it feels like the writers were writing for the sake of writing which is fine for someone who wants to read for the enjoyment of reading but is not necessarily the best approach in a video game two tides of numenera's credit it's skill system which allows you to spend one of three pools of rechargeable attribute points to increase your chances in skill checks does work quite well and makes some attempt to bridge that gap between reading and gameplay but other than this feature there isn't really much to make the endless conversations interesting much like planescape the setting is very weird but it might actually be too weird to the point where the various concepts and people you encounter struggled to come together to make an interesting or cohesive whole in a lot of ways the way everything's weird feels like the settings main identity and that can leave it feeling a bit empty there's also a risk that when everything is weird nothing is weird as weirdness becomes normalized but tides is successful at being like its inspiration even if it's not as successful at being as interesting as its inspiration it's the main storyline that is the most surprising similarity however as many of its concepts and themes are almost the same as planescapes and yet this similarity feels much more like an obvious weakness rather than a strength because it means something that once felt unique is now predictable and familiar it is still philosophical it tackles its subject matter with maturity and it includes interesting ideas but the impact it has on the player just doesn't feel the same and there might be parts of planescape torment you can't just copy the comparison between the two games is harsh but due to the nature of the game it's impossible to avoid and even when you look at tide of numenera's better qualities like its companions it's still hard not to compare them to the incredibly strong cast of characters in planescape torment and see tides as once more an inferior clone one part of the game which might be better is combat which was always planescape's weakest aspect but the turn-based combat in tides still isn't that good it's not that bad and it's not the main focus of the game but it's still not very interesting and overall i remember the weak combat in planescape torment much more fondly because it was part of an experience i was more invested in and so it's difficult to find positive things to say about this game planescape torment made me feel many things but the main thing i felt during my time with tides of numenera was boredom i wish the developers hadn't tried as hard to make this game so similar to planescape torment and had instead focused more on doing their own thing but i completely understand why they didn't there's an irony to all this which is that i think those who may appreciate tides of numenera the most are actually those who have never played planescape torment to begin with because they'll have an easier time enjoying tides as its own thing it should also be considered that this game is very story focused and while the story and setting did little for me this is something that can be heavily affected by personal taste if this story does resonate more strongly with you the experience could be much more positive still i'd recommend tides of numenera only to those who care much more about story than gameplay and aren't put off by large quantities of reading [Music] with pathfinder king maker we move into the second wave of kickstarter rpgs and if king maker is any indication that second wave might be better than the first gone is a lot of that unknown factor and the wild hype that came with it when kickstarter was brand new replaced instead by more sensible pitches to a fan base that has a better understanding of what it is that money will go to and yet despite this pathfinder king maker may do a better job than any game featured so far at capturing that original kickstarter ideal of new versions of old games that fans know they want but the publishers wouldn't be on board with pathfinder king maker is an old-school isometric rpg with real time with pause combat that takes heavy inspiration from the original boulder's gate where baldur's gate adapted advanced dungeons and dragons into video game form to great success kingmaker instead adapts dnd's not so distant cousin pathfinder which itself was originally an offshoot of d d 3.5 edition pathfinder king maker goes even further however by opting to adapt a pre-existing adventure module that is the king maker module instead of creating an entirely new campaign from scratch the result is a game that is for better or worse very faithful to its source material this means character creation with an intimidatingly large selection of options that can lead to loads of interesting character builds but can also confuse new players unfamiliar with either pathfinder or dungeons and dragons and your experience with character creation might give you a good idea of what the rest of the game will be like king maker is big being full of different enemies different locations and different rules and modifiers the result is a game that can easily overwhelm its audience as with no dungeon master to help you through the experience the learning curve can seem steep and frustration can follow as a result this game expects you to learn a lot but doesn't always do a good job at teaching the player information still this does mean the game has a lot of depth different enemies present different challenges and might require different approaches to overcome an infamous example from kingmaker's early game was a cave that contained spider swarms which can't be hurt by conventional weaponry as swarms in pathfinder are considered too small to be hit by normal attacks this resulted in many players getting absolutely decimated by a little swarm of spiders with few people really understanding why but it's in this kind of complexity that king maker manages to stay interesting over its long run time and by the way my god does this game have a long run time a lot of rpgs are big but king maker is something else with a single playthrough easily taking over 100 hours and that's before the addition of dlc over the course of your immense journey you'll begin as a low-level adventurer and work your way up to be the ruler of a newly created kingdom with an almost never-ending list of problems this has you swept from one disaster to another as your character slowly rises in power in that satisfying way that dungeons and dragons and similar experiences are so very good at creating neither the story nor the very traditional fantasy setting are hugely original but it's an easy narrative to feel invested in as it's so directly focused on your own character it's a more interesting approach than most rpgs where you instead travel around solving everyone else's problems before fitting in some obligatory world saving and calling it a day king maker instead has you working to help yourself and with so much going wrong you really do have to work for your land and glory this overriding story arc is accompanied by a surprisingly detailed although also quite time consuming kingdom management part of the game where you'll allocate resources and assign advisors to tackle the problems you can't get to yourself this kingdom management can be really interesting although as it's not the main appeal of the game you might find the large amount of time and effort it can require to be something that gets in the way of your enjoyment rather than increases it still most of your time will be spent traveling the lands and adventuring there are plenty of side quests to complete plenty of loot to discover and plenty of dungeons to crawl through that often lock you inside so as to force you to manage your resources carefully in a way that many other rpgs have tried to do but have always failed out with their execution king maker's dungeons instead can present a real challenge and i love this game it provides an experience that can be uneven but so were all of those games which inspired this new wave of crpgs and that unevenness isn't inherently bad sometimes it's what makes the game exciting and while balance can be good it can also sometimes be worth sacrificing and that's what pathfinder king maker does the result is a big beautiful mess of an rpg that i wouldn't want any other way if pillars of eternity was a modernized version of baldur's gate then pathfinder king maker is simply a modern version of it it doesn't try as hard to change or improve on the originals formula and it's arguably a better game as a result particularly for those who wanted a spiritual successor that maintained the original spirit at release kingmaker was plagued with bugs but over time the developers seem to have worked hard to slay their very own spider swarm and now the game is much closer to the level you would expect it's still not likely to be the most polished rpg in this video but for what isn't a very large studio alcat games have delivered a game with a very respectable level of presentation that can easily hold its own with the bigger names of the crpg era pathfinder king maker is a great rpg for anyone looking for an old-school experience full of depth as long as you don't mind dealing with a steep learning curve and occasional moments of frustration [Music] if pathfinder king maker was the more faithful successor to baldi's gate than the bigger budget pillars of eternity then atom rpg is the more faithful successor to fallout than the bigger budget wasteland 2. created by a small russian developer atom rpg could very easily be described as russian fallout and that description would tell you most of what you need to know about this game from the design of the ui to the ambient soundtrack to the skill list or trait now called distinctions this is a game that wears its fallout influence on its sleeve and then waves that sleeve in your face at every opportunity it has going as far as to feature regular references to the fallout series we've jokes about bottle caps as currency or rumors of underground bunkers designed to be experiments on their inhabitants it should come as little surprise then that the setting is a post-apocalypse where the cold war went hot and most of civilization was lost under the resulting nuclear payload as fallout was very american in its iconography geography history and politics atom is instead very russian which isn't a bad change really this does feel like a game made by russians about russians for russians but far from meaning that its appeal is limited to residents of the former soviet union this instead ends up as being one of the main things which makes the game stand out the setting also comes across as quite grounded and surprisingly somber this is not the wacky wasteland of the bethesda fallout but instead feels much closer to the first fallout in terms of tone the setting also doesn't take place very long after the bombs fell and so many residents of his wasteland actually remember their former lives and what the world was like before which makes their understated acceptance of this new reality strike a surprisingly melancholy court speaking to the inhabitants of this game is a big part of atom more so than in the original fallouts and the npcs in this game have an awful lot to say not all of which is that important whether this is a good thing or not is up to you but dialogue is at least well written and it can be nice to speak to other people just so you know that you aren't the only ones suffering in this soviet wasteland because that's also a big part of the atom experience the story revolves around a secret organization named atom that was founded before the war and is now looking to set the world's wrongs right again you are an agent of this organization but before you ever get very far on your mission you'll be mugged and lose all your possessions and it's very likely that this isn't the only time this will happen to you over the course of the game the wasteland is a harsh place and atom will make sure you know this you regularly get robbed conned and extorted and that's just by the wasteland's more friendly inhabitants this commitment to setting and tone is one of the narrative's best assets but in other ways the main story can feel a little unremarkable and there's not a lot that happens in it until the game's conclusion outside of the story everything else is much like fallout that means quests with multiple solutions and good use of skill checks that can also be too vague for their own goods and leave you unsure exactly where you're meant to be going or what you might have missed in a location you've already explored between locations you'll travel across an overworld map which happens a little too slowly considering just how much travelling you'll be doing on this map although i do like how open the map is as it allows more freedom and lets you tackle areas in the order you choose the late game locations are often gated off in some way such as by needing to pay a large fee to access them so atom is able to feature an open structure that subtly protects you from ending up in the places you'll be hopelessly under leveled for the economy also does a good job at making money feel valuable for most of the game's duration and the gear progression in particular feels very satisfying as starting the game with nothing and spending a long time with little will really make you appreciate what you've got when you get it combat is less positive however once more the mantra like fallout applies but fallout's combat was never its strongest feature and atom rpg looks to increase the difficulty without bringing many actual improvements the biggest problem is teammate ai like fallout combat is turn-based and you control a single character but you can be accompanied by several companions and it's those companions that cause the issues you can talk to your teammates out of combat to set their basic strategy but no matter what option i tried i always found their behavior in combat wasn't what i wanted it to be with their actions often making little sense the amount of times companions will choose to move instead of attacking when they have no reason to move is unbelievable and often fights devolve into a series of trial and error as you try desperately to limit your companion's stupid behavior by doing things like standing directly in front of them to block their path and force them to actually attack for once even then fights can be infuriating in one fight my character was hit by friendly fire four different times in a single fight that's me by the way the guy who just got both his arms went off by his teammates yeah thanks guys really appreciate it enemy behavior also has its problems because enemies all seem to be set to attack the closest target that means if you have one melee character like for example your faithful dog then that's who every enemy will attack every time making that melee character absolutely useless later on in the game once enemies get guns i hope you're not someone who gets attached to virtual dogs because this one's going to die more often than a quest mob in an mmo starter area so often in atom rpg i found combat more frustrating than enjoyable and almost every time my complaints would have been solved if you just had the ability to manually control your teammates all the problems of bad ai would then go away and combat would be more active as well as you'd have more decisions to make and less time spent waiting for your turn but you don't control your teammates because that's not how fallout was and in ways like this atom rpg feels like it copies fallout to a fault you have things like needing to manually equip a lockpick to get a bonus from it or an inventory screen that looks just like fallout and is slow to navigate just like fallout and so atom rpg is the most faithful spiritual successor in this video but it's not the best spiritual successor and while certainly not a bad game i did find over the game's quite long playtime that the experience started to drag a bit russian fallout is definitely not a bad thing and you should play this game if that concept sounds appealing but i do hope if team atom ever develop a sequel that you can at least directly control your party members [Music] this collision is the final game to be featured in this video and if your main concern is either writing or story you'll find we've saved the best till last influenced heavily by planescape torment studio zoum's spiritual successor to that classic is a radical departure from tides of numenera in that in most ways it's nothing like the game that inspired it this coliseum setting is a sort of alternate reality that feels much closer to home than the usual fantasy or futuristic setting of other rpgs you play as a detective who's been tasked with investigating a murder in the once great but now not city of reversal or at least that's what your character should be doing if he wasn't busy drinking himself to death to escape his broken heart and broken life you begin the game by waking up with amnesia and then have the long slow process of getting at least some of your [ __ ] together so you can do your supposed job and hopefully either stop your character's cycle of [ __ ] things up or if that's too much to ask at least slow the [ __ ] up rate down a bit all in all it's an absolute joy mixing equal parts tragedy and comedy this game manages to be intriguingly weird when it wants to be weird genuinely funny when it wants to be funny and deeply human when it wants to be human all this is made possible by the consistently clever writing that is far more enjoyable to spend your time reading through than any other rpg in this video and that's what you'll be doing in disco elysium reading because while you do wander around this world at times you'll mostly spend your days talking to its inhabitants about love life politics and occasionally even murder investigations there's no combat in this game at all and disco elysium proves maybe you don't need combat if you can do other things well enough and it does do these things well enough one of the best features disco elysium introduces to the genre is its skill system that distances itself from rpg norms to instead feature a selection of 24 skills designed specifically to fit the game and its setting these include things like logic conceptualization and empathy as well as some less obvious choices like esprit de corps or electrochemistry if some of these don't make much sense initially don't worry they will in time but the real beauty of these skills is how the game uses them like many other rpgs your skills are used to represent your character's aptitudes and in practical terms this happens for a combination of skill checks and dice rolls except unlike other rpgs your skills each have their own personality and will act as voices within your head letting you know their opinion as they talk to you and each other to offer advice or disagree with your actions if these internalized voices sound confusing it's because you haven't seen them in action because in reality they work brilliantly making skill checks and character interactions more interesting while also allowing for greater player expression and replayability because it's your character build that determines which voices are dominant and what things in this world you'll be successful at and that's what a good rpg is all about this go elysium is full of opportunities for role playing and the experience can change greatly depending on your character's skills thanks to these interjecting voices and dice determined skill checks the long stretches of dialogue never feel boring and rather than skill checks just being used to determine whether you can persuade an npc to do what you want them to they instead govern a wide range of different activities from preventing your character from vomiting when inspecting a several day old corpse to nailing a sad karaoke performance that means you can take advantage of quick saving to rig the dice to fall in your favor but disco elysium also makes failing skill checks rarely punishing and also often entertaining encouraging players to let the dice fall where they may and accept the consequences just as they would in a traditional role-playing experience so disco elysium doesn't have to worry about being in the shadow of planescape torment or any other title it does its own thing and it does it well and when comparisons do come they come firstly as a result of the quality of each title rather than any surface level similarity this is a game that shares much of planescape torment appeal however in that both allow you to lose yourself in their worlds as you step into the shoes of a character who has a lot going on in their head but still allows for player expression and both games are also great if there's one area planescape torment pulls in front it's in the strength of its main story and it's thematic cohesion disco elysium's more straightforward murder mystery entertains but doesn't quite reach the same heights despite this this collision still has some of its own incredible moments and anyone who values games for their writing and stories owes it to themselves to play this game because even for those who are not normally a fan of rpgs disco elysium is an experience you shouldn't miss out on so 15 games and 11 reviews later and it's safe to say the crpg genre can be quite diverse featuring games with different budgets different inspirations different combat systems different settings different lengths and different weight placed on narrative compared to gameplay hopefully these reviews have given some insight into those key differences but i still want to make some recommendations based on a few easy to identify criteria so let's talk about spiritual successors if you wanted to make a chart to show where these games take their main inspirations from and where the similarities lie compared to the three big classics it would look something like this and as the chart shows there is competition for each spot and so we come to the completely legitimate and highly prestigious never knows best crpg awards for if i like this game what should i play and to answer that question we have the award for best spiritual successor to boulder's gate which goes to par finds a king maker a huge complicated love letter to its inspiration that keeps the tradition of faithful pen and paper adaptations alive and provides hours and hours of old school adventuring moving on we have the award for best spiritual successor to planescape torment which is this collision an obvious choice but a correct choice and one of the few games that has ever come close to planescape tormenting quality of writing and in scratching that same unique narrative itch next up the award for best spiritual successor to fallout which goes to uh i don't know i guess that's why this isn't a real award show but really this one is harder of the three contenders under ale is my favorite and in many ways i think the best but it also has the least in common with fallout and it's the hardest to recommend to other players meanwhile atom rpg is clearly the most similar being faithful at times to a fault but it was also the one i ended up enjoying the least wasteland 2 then feels like a happy medium being in the middle in terms of both similarity and quality and also probably being the best starting point for those who want a fallout like experience and may be less familiar with crpgs so take your pick in accordance with your preference we're all winners here at the never knows best show except you [ __ ] you and finally our last awards the highly coveted never knows best best entry point to the crpg genre which goes to divinity original sin while pillars of eternity deserves mention by virtue of being a polished experience that makes for a good entry point to real time with paul's gameplay and shadowrun dragonfall also deserves a mention for being streamlined but still good divinity original sins still feels like a clear overall winner with its turn-based gameplay that can be deep but still feels accessible and even more importantly manages to be consistently entertaining both original sin games are very solid overall and make one of the safest choices for someone unsure if crpgs are for them but wanting to give one a try as for which games are my favorite i don't think it matters too much but i'm willing to share anyway in first place would be pathfinder king maker and disco elysium very different games that i love for very different reasons making it hard to pick between them after these would be divinity original sin one and two both very well made games to begin with which i got even more enjoyment from than usual thanks to co-op and in third place would be underrail and pillars of eternity both a little more flawed in my eyes but still with lots of content lots of depth and lots that appeal to my personal tastes and you should keep that last bit in mind personal taste matters and while i have tried to make this video useful and informative to everyone my tastes and biases are at times still going to be reflected in its content no game in this video is truly bad and there's an audience out there for each of them if something sounds like it might be for you don't let my opinion put you off it's always better to make up your own mind believe in yourself we all have our own tastes and you should be proud of yours even if they are worse than mine and hey maybe one day you can make your own ultimate crpg guide complete with arrogant fake awards and indulgent self-reflections all i ask is you play some good crpgs do it for me lastly though we need to talk about the crpg genre itself it's been almost 10 years since the first kickstarter rpgs made their pitches to the world igniting fans hopes and dreams of revisiting a past fondly remembered and of reviving a genre that always seemed to deserve better and this story seems in some ways to be coming to an end or at least the first act is the two biggest names in the kickstarter rpg boom were obsidian and in exile both developers originally talked at great lengths about the freedom kickstarter afforded them and of their desire to make those old-school rpgs they always wanted to develop but which publishers never allowed them to and now years later both studios have traded away all that affirmation freedom to be owned by one of the biggest publishers in the industry microsoft whether either studio will ever make a crpg again is unknown and this twist in the narrative suggests maybe the crpg revival wasn't as successful as some hoped it would be and yet as the years have went on some smaller studios have made names for themselves with but a fraction of the budget that those better known rpg developers had to work with and so the dream of the crpg genre continuing into the future in their hands seems alive and well stiggy and software have already produced an expansion to underrail and a sequel seems inevitable age of decadence's developers are well underway on the next project colony ship alcat's next pathfinder game seems release sometime in 2012 and i don't know what zam will be working on next but the world will surely be watching closely as disco elysium went on to receive huge amounts of success in both awards and sales and who says there aren't more developers out there working hard on their own titles so even if some of the bigger names in the crpg game are moving on the indie scene isn't showing any signs of slowing down and as long as there are fans logic says there'll be games and then finally we have divinity original sin developers larian who did more than any other to take the crpg genre mainstream without sacrificing any of the genre's quality on the way and who now have the unique opportunity to take that even further with their next game baldur's gate 3 that marks the return of the biggest crpg series in history these are interesting times and there are always those who turn to cynicism but in my opinion the crpg revival has been an obvious success and i can't wait to see what comes next maybe i'll even see you there [Music] i hope this video has been both useful and interesting it's been a difficult video to make and i'm well aware that there are always more games that could have been included but a line had to be drawn somewhere if any modern trpg isn't on this list then i probably had my reasons for why but i hope you can forgive any absences or the same and if you are one of those people who aren't very familiar with the genre i hope this video has provided some incentive for you to give one of these games a try regardless as difficult as this video was it's also been a lot of fun and i look forward to seeing you in the next one

Channel: NeverKnowsBest

Views: 585,088

Rating: 4.9113274 out of 5

Keywords: rpg, crpg, best crpg, best rpg, best rpgs, rpg guide, crpg guide, best crpgs, top ten rpgs, top ten crpgs, best modern rpgs

Id: 4P4xJ34dmqQ

Length: 96min 32sec (5792 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 31 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/hollowXvictory]

It breaks my heart Tyranny will never see a sequel. I more or less agreed with everything he said in the video. One of the problems he didn't mention was that it didn't properly set expectations. The world in Tyranny is huge, and you start on this tiny corner of the map. Many players thought they would confront Kyros but the game never got that far. If the game had a subtitle such as "Tyranny: Reconquest of the Tiers", the game would have been much better received. Unfortunately since it is a commercial failure we will likely not see a RPG that focuses on evil characters for a long time.

[u/Modern_Erasmus]

A good and very ambitious vid with some interesting takes, though I definitely disagree with some of them.

Particularly, I think Underrail and Age of Decadence get off a bit too lightly despite being hardcore to a level that actively eschews accessibility, entertainment, and even just fun. They bring the strong quest design and roleplaying of the classics, but unnecessarily bring and even increase the level of jank attached to it.

The Obsidian games also got a bit of a short stick imo, especially Tyranny. Deadfire really didn't get enough credit for the uniqueness of its setting and how well executed it was in general, while Tyranny's sheer novelty, replayability, and harsh consequence were mostly brushed over. In a lot of ways, I think Tyranny is a much better version of the kind of rpg Decadence and Underrail tried to be: just as much depth and choice, but without the unnecessary jank and frustration that makes you feel like you're shoving your hands into a blender.

[u/Hatfullofsky]

Went in with a bit of a critical perspective, but actually agree on almost all major points. I think he was a bit overly critical of a few games (especially Tyranny) and I am kind of sad he didn't get to include Wasteland 3 (which is really good) but agree with the general conclusions.

[u/Ryuran27]

Age of Decadence was a very unique experience to me, I was able to make a playthrough were I didn't have to fight a single battle. I bribed and conned my way to the top of the Commercium, it was amazing how I could do that without dirtying my hands, I didn't invest any point on battle stats so I had to avoid it though whatever means.

In the end I got soft locked out of the game though, because the way I had to avoid a certain battle was through a skill I had not leveled up enough. Maybe I missed some other way, but after trying for a while I gave up.

My conclusion is that the game has some really good ideas but the overall execution is a little bit rough, I enjoyed my time and it left a me a memorable experience but I still wish it wasn't so rough around the edges.

Edit: I would like to add that I though Tides of Numera would provide a similar experience. I was wrong, although I still thinks it's a fine game, just not what I was expecting...

[u/DYMAXIONman]

Not my favorite of the bunch, but Pillars 2 was extremely good. Very fun setting, very fun side content, and great exploration.

It also fixed most of the problems the first game had.

[u/Grooveh_Baby]

I’m finally building a gaming PC at the end of the year & I can’t wait to finally play all these CRPG’s I missed in the last decade or so. Most of them played pretty poorly on console so I’m glad I waited to properly experience them.

[u/astarsearcher]

I would love a game that is just the first part of Tyranny but cranked up 100x. Decisions that change things, interact with each other, and build a story. Cut out the clicking to move your character around a map looking for interactables; dramatically reduce the inventory management; just focus on player agency in a widely branching story.

[u/[deleted]]

Underrail ist still the only RPG I put over 300 hours into, the turn based combat is addicting and few other games have such good build variety.

[u/project2501]

Guessing this vids pretty spoilery?