Best RPG ever in my view has got to Planescape Torment.  Amazing game with incredibly deep storyline and characters.

Quote from: WaveLightGames;849434Best RPG ever in my view has got to Planescape Torment.  Amazing game with incredibly deep storyline and characters.

I still have the signed poster/pic on my wall.

Darkest Dungeon.

It's a dungeon-crawl, taking place in what I think is a setting based on XIV-XV Europe with Lovecraftian scent all over it. It tells the story of a band of ruffians/adventurers of various professions (ranging from common ruffian, through crusaders and witch hunters to lepers), who descend to various dungeons in hope to find treasures, artifacts, and so on, and so forth.

The game is unforgiving, player characters often die, go mad, give in to fear, catch diseases, starve.... Let's just say that they suffer a lot and return (or flee) to the ground only to heal their bodies and minds and face the dungeons again. Yet, in spite of being cruel, it's not frustrating. Yes, losing all your group of die-hard veterans to fear, once lights go dark isn't easy, but there's no feeling of inferiority about that.

I think it's great game, one of those "easy to learn, hard to master", immersive enough to feature "just one turn more" syndrome. One of its strongest selling points is vague, but interesting setting, one that might serve as good introduction to dark fantasy/horror tabletop role-playing games similar to Warhammer, Lamentations of the Flame Princess, or even Call of Cthulhu (providing the scenario takes place in Dark Ages and PCs' survival is an option).

• Trailer on YT
  
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The Age of Decadence is probably my favorite CRPG of all time.

Also highly recommend
Dark Sun: Shattered Lands  

HBS' Shadowrun games, particularly Shadowrun: Dragonfall.

Criteria:

1) Nothing before 2005, because if you're doing PC gaming and still stuck on those older games, you're probably not really playing on a rig that supports the latest and greatest. And if you are, you'd probably have to run third-party emulators or other tricks to get older games to work. Not snobbery, just probability.

2) Genre matters. Gaming is tribal and not everyone likes all types of PC games. So the only games that matter are the ones in the genre you care about. That may be only a few, it may be all of them.

3) Assume all expansions are part of the title.

4) Game must be currently published in its final form.

FPS Multiplayer - Battlefield 4/Bad Co. 2, Overwatch OR Team Fortress 2

Single Player Action/adventure - Grand Theft Auto V, Red Dead Redemption, Assassins Creed 2, Arkham City, Dishonored

RPG's - Witcher III, Mass Effect (whole series), Elder Scrolls: Skyrim, Dragon Age (whole series), Fallout 3 and 4,

A/RTS - Starcraft 2, Marvel Heroes 2016, Diablo 3, Torchlight 2

MMORTS - DoTA 2, LoL

Tactical Strategy - XCOM 2, Total War: Warhammer

4X Strategy - Civilization IV, Endless Legend, Galactic Civilization III

MMO - /crickets

Casual - Slither.io (it's free!!!!!!)

FPS Multiplayer - PayDay 2.  It's probably the best co-op FPS I've ever seen.  Yes, better than Borderlands.

4X Strategy - Extremely old, but the Space Empires IV/V series for its massive hackability - every aspect of the game is exposed via text config files.  If you want to see how messing with the ground rules of your space setting works, it's a phenomenal tool

Sim - It's a niche, but I've used SimCity and Cities XL to build a natural-seeming city for my super hero campaigns.

This is a REALLY old thread, but hey, it's a sticky, so some might still be reading it.

Divinity Original sin 2
This is a very pretty, very immersive, very detailed Fantasy RPG in the style of Baldur's gate, but better.
I'm really into this and enjoying taking it nice and slow and exploring everywhere.
The environment is really immersive as you can interact with lots of the npcs and just "Stuff" around the place and the environment can be used to your advantage in combat. (oil, water, buildings etc).

Divinity Original Sin,  Enhanced edition
The predecessor to Divinity Original sin 2, I didn't enjoy the version of this previous to "Enhanced edition", it seemed clunky, kinda vague and a pain to play.
Since I've been playing DOS2, I've got back into DOSEE and it's great fun.

Grim Dawn
Good fun, Action Dark Fantasy RPG.  You don't need to think much to play and enjoy this. It moves fast, is quite pretty and good violent fun. Nuff said.

Elder Scrolls Online
A fantasy MMORPG.  It feels like an offline RPG, but online. You don't need to play with anyone, but it's nice to see people running about doing stuff.
It's very pretty for a MMORPG and is generally a lot of fun. I tend to play it if I only have a 30 minutes or an hour to spare.

Everspace
Space combat Roguelike. Imagine Elite Dangerous if it was a fast paced Space roguelike and that's pretty much it.
Good fun for a short space combat romp.
 
Civilization 6
I don't play this as much as I'd like to as I'm pretty busy these days. But if I'm doing an all nighter gaming session, then I'll be playing this.
Resource management and empire building game.

Quote from: JesterRaiin;877307Darkest Dungeon.

It's a dungeon-crawl, taking place in what I think is a setting based on XIV-XV Europe with Lovecraftian scent all over it. It tells the story of a band of ruffians/adventurers of various professions (ranging from common ruffian, through crusaders and witch hunters to lepers), who descend to various dungeons in hope to find treasures, artifacts, and so on, and so forth.

The game is unforgiving, player characters often die, go mad, give in to fear, catch diseases, starve.... Let's just say that they suffer a lot and return (or flee) to the ground only to heal their bodies and minds and face the dungeons again. Yet, in spite of being cruel, it's not frustrating. Yes, losing all your group of die-hard veterans to fear, once lights go dark isn't easy, but there's no feeling of inferiority about that.

I think it's great game, one of those "easy to learn, hard to master", immersive enough to feature "just one turn more" syndrome. One of its strongest selling points is vague, but interesting setting, one that might serve as good introduction to dark fantasy/horror tabletop role-playing games similar to Warhammer, Lamentations of the Flame Princess, or even Call of Cthulhu (providing the scenario takes place in Dark Ages and PCs' survival is an option).

• Trailer on YT
  
• Homepage
  

Is on sale on Steam if folks are interested. Ends Friday.

I don't think I've ever played a game on my personal computer.  Oh wait, there was a pirate one I got on sale years ago that was kind of fun for a while before it got repetitive and boring. Too many dance parties at the colonial governor's mansion and not enough variation in treasures to find and obstacles to overcome. Not sure what it was called, does anyone know?

There were a couple of others that tempted me at Best Buy way back when but then I saw you had to be online and pay to play and it was "interactive" with other players out in cyberspace and I lost interest.

Quote from: daniel_ream;911427Sim - It's a niche, but I've used SimCity and Cities XL to build a natural-seeming city for my super hero campaigns.

I didn't mind Cities XL but the game to play these days in my opinion is Cities Skylines. It's a very pretty game and you can get some nice screenshots. Plus it has Steam Workshop integration.

The original Deus Ex. The revised version is good.

So I fired up DOSBox and have been playing Starflight again. Despite the game being older than some of the forum posters (1986), it still holds up as a well-done open world space sim.

The initial grind of getting your ship upgraded really isn't that bad. Once you're equipped with better engines and systems, you'll be set to leap out into the trackless wastes of space, encountering wormhole fluxes (which speed you along from one point to another), unknown aliens, the lost homeworld of humanity, etc. Hard to believe this was all packed into two 360k diskettes.

My list of RPGs which are in my "all time" list


Planescape: Torment - probably the best
Baldur's Gate I and II - Loved the characters and interaction, good story
Fallout I and II
Pathfinder: Kingmaker
Pillars of Eternity II
Wasteland - my old school favorite from childhood

So far the best RPG series is the Witcher trilogy, imo. Well-written characters, engaging storyline with perfectly balanced grey morality

Quote from: Ghostmaker on June 30, 2020, 08:22:13 AM
So I fired up DOSBox and have been playing Starflight again. Despite the game being older than some of the forum posters (1986), it still holds up as a well-done open world space sim.

The initial grind of getting your ship upgraded really isn't that bad. Once you're equipped with better engines and systems, you'll be set to leap out into the trackless wastes of space, encountering wormhole fluxes (which speed you along from one point to another), unknown aliens, the lost homeworld of humanity, etc. Hard to believe this was all packed into two 360k diskettes.

I absolutely loved Starflight! I liked Elite, but Starflight I played for years! Played them on the C~64 back in the day, along with the PSI 5 TRADING COMPANY! Good times, those ancient games!

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My picks for BEST RPG EVAR:
1980s Phantasie (SSI Pre-Gold Box Series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phantasie
1990s Fallout (Gotta love the LOW INT conversations!) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CPijQ_LLGQ
2000s Mass Effect (Just the first one, however don't let the elevators get you down!) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_Effect
201Xs Nier: Automata & Code Vein (I usually don't go for Action JRPGs, but these two hit that sweet spot for me! Loved them both! Nier was a breath of fresh air, and Code Vein's make-ur-own-Wifu was... inmyinterests *cough* I did not just say that!) 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nier:_Automata
https://youtu.be/CGKY8ApfCxQ

But the best? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mother_%28video_game_series%29