Which CRPG do you guys recommend?

[weirddreams_fe]

Recently the CRPG genre really caught my attention, with the downfall of franchises such as Fallout, i saw many people talking about PoE and Tyranny as RPGs that should be followed.

So, with so many games like - Planescape: Torment, Baldur's Gate 1 and 2, PoE, Tyranny and many others i dont know where to start. I'm a little bit afraid to take a wrong aproach with this genre and waste a good experience.

[Armanz]

Planescape Torment is the best CRPG you will ever read. It's excellent in so many ways, but combat is not one of them. It's mostly about reading and making choices and encountering very interesting things and ideas. It's a grander than life experience when playing for the first time, but every bit of combat is a boring chore and newcomers to the genre will likely be overwhelmed by the text.
Baldurs Gate 1 is the ultimate classic but it hasn't aged well. It starts you off as a nobody, every fight is potentially lethal, you can explore very freely for an RPG and it has a lot of subversive character archetypes. Just like Torment I wouldn't recommend it to a newcomer. It's graphics and style(?) haven't aged well.
Baldurs Gate 2 is where it's at. It's bigger, better & louder than its predecessor. It's also more fantastic in scale although it loses the charm of the open world and just traveling through almost empty but charming areas and having a feeling of freedom. It's about epic battles, but don't think the story falls short here. It and part 1 have at times convoluted mechanics though for a newcomer to D&D and at times can be difficult or at least counter-intuitive to understand. Personally, I think you should start with this one. You'd miss a couple hints and whatnot about part 1 but in the end it's not essential to have played p1 first.
Pillars of Eternity is an homage to the Baldurs Gate series, but it's also a great standalone game that doesn't rely on nostalgia. It's system is completely new but very transparent and everything can be easily identified in comparison to the BG series. It has great graphics, great atmosphere, great characters. It has a couple of flaws, but most of those get fixed by it's 2 excellent DLCs. Imho you should play this after BG2 or even start with it.
Tyranny has a great concept but personally too many aspects of combat annoyed me to play it further than a couple hours, so I can't tell you much about it. But even if it turns out to be great I doubt it's better starting material than BG2 or PoE.
Pathfinder Kingmaker I haven't played yet, but from everything I've read so far it's still to bugridden to fully enjoy.

I could go way deeper into analysis at this point but I'd rather know your amount of experience & knowledge of the genre first and your overall gaming preferences.

[oldrocker99]

P:T is indeed the best story in CRPG history. EVER.

[weirddreams_fe]

Originally posted by Armanz:

I could go way deeper into analysis at this point but I'd rather know your amount of experience & knowledge of the genre first and your overall gaming preferences.

First of all thanks for your time to reply.

Well, i really enjoy RPGs but i never touched a CRPG before, for the exception of Neverwinter Nights and Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance (probably not the best of this series but at the time i didn't not know about the praise that BD 1 & 2 had) but i never finished those, i don't even remember the reason why.

So, I've played bunch of rpgs but moslty on console, at the time was easy to have acess to a console game that a PC one. I could list some of my favorite games for you just to mention: Chrono Trigger, Shining Force I & II, Zelda: a link to the past, Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy XII, Vagrant Story, The Witcher 2 & 3, Dark Souls 1,2 & 3, Dragon's Dogma, Fable, Fallout 3, Kingdom Hearts 1, 2 & Birth By Sleep and some more that i don't quite remember now.

So, i do like gameplay mechanics and i don't really care about the difficult if it's fair. But i also enjoy story driven games that helps to keep me interested in unfold the narrative. I don't know if I'm making myself clear, but when i look some video of crpgs it's seems endless, fun and with a deep lore that you can spent days theorizing with your friends about some deep and hidden meaning or something like that.

[svfn]

Dragon's Dogma/Fallout 3 etc these are modern action RPGs with focus on action than actual role playing. although CRPG stands for computer role playing game, which strangely seems to apply to only isometric RPGs nowadays, strange.

i would start with Baldur's Gate 2, which uses the 2nd Edition D&D ruleset. great selection of NPCs that banter, and beautiful environments to explore, story is not that long/endless, and the combat is much better than BG1 imo. much easier to get into than BG1 imo.

Neverwinter Nights 1, Icewind Dale II comes under 3rd Edition ruleset, and the story is not that great compared to BG2/Planescape, but still worth playing. more combat oriented than BG2.

Planescape Torment, Icewind Dale 1, BG1, Fallout 1 & 2 are the older titles, which may be clunkier and harder to get into, but Planescape/FO2 would be my recommendation.

Temple of Elemental Evil is also worth looking into if you prefer turn-based games. quite short and low level cap.

Knights of the old Republic 1 & 2, best played in order, first is a classic Star Wars legends experience, second has a darker tone with some of the best Star Wars writing. both require some patience because the exposition areas are longer than usual.

Mass Effect 123, Dragon Age:Origins and NWN2 Mask of the Betrayer, play these for the story.

[oldrocker99]

Neverwinter Nights has, if you like the game at all (the first adventure is kinda meh, but the second and third are very good), literally thousands of mods, at https://www.neverwintervault.org, from graphics and music, to character creators, to full-blown, multi-part adventures of very high quality. Check out the Hall of Fame.

[weirddreams_fe]

I never really finished Neverwinter might try it again soon.

[UneasyBoosh]

I'm gonna go against others and say not to start with the classics. BG2 is probably one of my faviorite games of all time; however, the combat and systems in the newer games are so much improved the enchanced editions have done alot to help the old games but I would still start with newer games and if you love it that much go back to BG2.

POE is a great game and would be tied with either of the new Divinity games for my recomendation to jump into the genre. Personally I havn't been able to get into the Divinity games but there is no denying with there Overwhelminly positive reviews they are just as good if not better then POE, just... the setting and graphics in POE work for me better personally.

I would watch some video reviews for POE and Divinity Original Sin 2 and pick one of the 2 that looks appealing to you.

[weirddreams_fe]

Originally posted by UneasyBoosh:

I'm gonna go against others and say not to start with the classics. BG2 is probably one of my faviorite games of all time; however, the combat and systems in the newer games are so much improved the enchanced editions have done alot to help the old games but I would still start with newer games and if you love it that much go back to BG2.

I thought the exact same as you just said. I don't care much about graphics and stuff but i have to admit the clunky mechanics and weird gameplay is a kinda of turn off point for me. I've watch some videos of PoE and Tyranny and they look awesome, aparently has some flaws but isn't that much so I think it's a good start point. I also got Divinity Original Sin, i'm planning to play soon.

Thanks for your reply.

[svfn]

Originally posted by Heathen:

Originally posted by UneasyBoosh:

I'm gonna go against others and say not to start with the classics. BG2 is probably one of my faviorite games of all time; however, the combat and systems in the newer games are so much improved the enchanced editions have done alot to help the old games but I would still start with newer games and if you love it that much go back to BG2.

I thought the exact same as you just said. I don't care much about graphics and stuff but i have to admit the clunky mechanics and weird gameplay is a kinda of turn off point for me. I've watch some videos of PoE and Tyranny and they look awesome, aparently has some flaws but isn't that much so I think it's a good start point. I also got Divinity Original Sin, i'm planning to play soon.

Thanks for your reply.

there is no wrong move. but if you are new to the genre, the modern ones will surely be easier to play, like Pillars / Divinity / Tyranny, easier because you don't really have to understand any wierd D&D rules. and it makes it harder for newcomers to go back to older titles once they are used to the modern series.

imo the modern titles don't come close to the quality of old CRPGs, in terms of depth, dialogue, NPC writing and art direction. which is a shame because newer players won't give them a chance due to the age. it's like starting with Witcher 3 will make it hard for you to go back Witcher 1 because of how dated it is. if you want to experience the best of the genre (the games that started the formula that modern games are repeating ad nauseam now), clunky systems should not be a barrier to exploring the old classics.

[Martialis]

One that hasn't been mentioned is Pathfinder: Kingmaker., although perhaps it is one to avoid. I went into it thinking that it would be like the NWN series, which I love, and while the game is unquestionably D&D, there are so many options that it is impossible to play a "normal" difficulty game, and the whole ruleset (or their interpretation of it as a CRPG) seems pretty unbalanced and wonky. I played it briefly at release. Maybe I'll try it again later.

My fav of all time is still NWN2. I really like how it develops the story and draws you into it. The NPCs are great and I like the cutscenes too. I still go back to it every few years or so.

There are MMOs too, if you are into that. DDO is getting long in the tooth, but I enjoyed it. I probably would have enjoyed Neverwinter, but I can't play first person games, or even third person games with mouse look. They just make me too dizzy.

[Paladin]

Originally posted by Martialis:

One that hasn't been mentioned is Pathfinder: Kingmaker., although perhaps it is one to avoid. I went into it thinking that it would be like the NWN series, which I love, and while the game is unquestionably D&D, there are so many options that it is impossible to play a "normal" difficulty game, and the whole ruleset (or their interpretation of it as a CRPG) seems pretty unbalanced and wonky. I played it briefly at release. Maybe I'll try it again later.

My fav of all time is still NWN2. I really like how it develops the story and draws you into it. The NPCs are great and I like the cutscenes too. I still go back to it every few years or so.

There are MMOs too, if you are into that. DDO is getting long in the tooth, but I enjoyed it. I probably would have enjoyed Neverwinter, but I can't play first person games, or even third person games with mouse look. They just make me too dizzy.

I bought and played Pathfinder at launch.

It has a lot of problems and gamebreaking bugs. Or... it had them, at launch.

The devs are working very hard to polish the game and I think it will be fondly remembered alongside the greats already mentioned in this thread in the years to come.

But at the moment, I wouldn't recommend investing too many hours on a playthrough.

But keep it on Whishlist or buy already and wait a few months. It will be a great experience eventually.

[weirddreams_fe]

Originally posted by Martialis:

There are MMOs too, if you are into that.

I played WoW (2008-2012), at the time, for me, was pure gold, but then i lost interest the game went downhill, as some of you may know.

Originally posted by Martialis:

One that hasn't been mentioned is Pathfinder: Kingmaker., although perhaps it is one to avoid.

I never heard about this one, i'll check.

Originally posted by Val Dorminov:

I bought and played Pathfinder at launch.

It has a lot of problems and gamebreaking bugs. Or... it had them, at launch.

The devs are working very hard to polish the game and I think it will be fondly remembered alongside the greats already mentioned in this thread in the years to come.

But at the moment, I wouldn't recommend investing too many hours on a playthrough.

But keep it on Whishlist or buy already and wait a few months. It will be a great experience eventually.

Oh, ok. thanks for the advice. Gamebreaking bugs it's not something that you can ignore. But i'll check nonetheless, it might be good.

[Lock]

Planescape Torment
Baldur's Gate 2
Divinity Original Sin 2

The three best games in the genre, and I'm jealous you get to experience them for the first time.

[weirddreams_fe]

Originally posted by Lock:

Planescape Torment
Baldur's Gate 2
Divinity Original Sin 2

The three best games in the genre, and I'm jealous you get to experience them for the first time.

I know the feel, lol. Baldur's Gate 2 seems to be everyone's favorite.

[oldrocker99]

For those who don't know, Pathfinder is a tabletop game played with Euclidean solid dice. It's a fork of D&D, basically.