I love RPGs. If there could only be one genre of games in the entire universe I would pick RPGs.
I remember playing my first RPG on the Commodore 64. It was called
Mars Saga, and at the time it seemed awesome, but it's probably an awful game.
I don't think I actually ever finished
Mars Saga, but it got me hooked on the genre. I think I was about 10 or 12 at the time that I played it.
Later on in life, when I had an Amiga 500, I played
Battletech: The Crescent Hawk's Inception.
This was FASA's first computer game based on the Battletech univerese, and it's still one of my favorite games. There's a direct sequel that I might try and hunt down and play at some point.
Another RPG I played on the Amiga was
Buck Rogers: Countdown to Doomsday.
It had tons of irrelevant skills like singing and befriending animals, but it was a fun little sci-fi mmo.
I can guarantee that no one else on earth started playing RPGs with these games. You probably got started with
Final Fantasy,
Baldur's Gate, or
Knights of the Old Republic. I started off weird, but I think it really shaped my taste in RPGs.
Since I got a PC around 2004, I've played a slew of RPGs including
Knights of the Old Republic,
The Witcher,
Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines, Dragon Age: Origins, Mass Effect, Oblivion, Morrowind, Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, and others that probably worth mentioning.
My favorites are
Dragon Age: Origins,
Morrowind, and
The Witcher 2. I like my RPGs to be big. If I hear a game has over 40 hours worth of content, it makes me excited. I like exploring, I like crafting, and I like to be a part of the world. I like customizing my character, and finding bad-ass armor and weapons. I like burning things with fire. I love the lore and the back-stories. The more content the better. I have sunk over 150 hours into Oblivion, and I don't feel anywhere near done with that game.
I want to actually finish up all the old classic games like
Baldur's Gate 1 and 2, the
Icewind Dale series, and
Planescape Torment. I've picked them all up off from gog.com and I'm slowly plodding my way through them, and I'm enjoying every moment of it.
While I am talking about RPGs, let me mention two that I hate real quick.
Dragon Age 2 was awful. The story was a disjointed collection of mini-quests that lacked an overall goal. The combat was some crazy jacked up hybrid of strategy and action. It was a bad hack and slash, and a bad tactics game combined. Enemies would appear out of nowhere in waves, which made planning ahead impossible in any combat situation. It was a pathetic shadow of Origins, and I recommend that everyone just pretend that it didn't happen.
Mass Effect 2 was dumb. The loyalty quests we're the center point of the game, and it didn't have the same epic story that the first one did. I liked the combat from the first game, and they changed it be more like a shooter. The first one was definitely slower and more tactical, and I like that type of pacing in a game. The orange score screens after every mission made me want to stab my eyes out. I have replayed one, and I will probably keep on playing it, but I don't think I'll ever replay two.
Both of these games were good games made by Bioware, and then EA bought them, and now they are junk. I think that it's because the sequels were made faster and they were made for a broader audience. Good RPGs are definitely more of a niche market, and trying to make one that sells 10 million copies means that you have to make it less of an RPG. This doesn't mean that an RPG can't be successful. Dragon Age: Origins sold around four million copies, and I would call that a success.
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