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NeoGAF's Essential RPGs: 2017-2018 edition - Vote open until Oct 13th - Win Free RPGs

kswiston

Member
If we're going to be counting down, can you at least start from 50 to 46, 45 to 40, etc. in each post, instead of 46-50, 40-45? That's rather annoying to read this way...



It really does.

I want the final list to be #1-50 like it typically is, so updates will be added in front of the existing banners. Minor annoyance now, but people continue to look at these threads for years after they go up, based on the view counts.
 

Axass

Member
Chrono Cross went up? I think that its issues are more apparent now than ever. The soundtrack is still amazing though.
 

kswiston

Member
Chrono Cross went up? I think that its issues are more apparent now than ever. The soundtrack is still amazing though.

Chrono Cross is pretty consistent in being in the bottom portion of the list. Kuwabara's thread was the only miss, and even then, it was in the 50s.

It always has a fanbase voting for it.
 

Fou-Lu

Member
I am so glad Chrono Cross is in the top 50. It still deserves to be closer to its older brother, but I can accept this. Super Mario RPG sure sky rocketed though eh?

I continue to love the new banner format, it's beautiful really.
 

Opa-Pa

Member
One day I have to go back to Chrono Cross and actually beat it to see what in the world people hate so much about it.

Out of the 8 hours of so I played it was great, only complaint was character designs, but everything else was nice and system wise it felt far better than CT.

And yeah, FF12 is sad, the recent remaster finally showed me how great that game is.
 

kswiston

Member
Depending on how I am feeling after the Top 50 is complete, I am debating giving the Top 10 titles by underrated votes the banner treatment in a separate section of the OP posts.
 

Luminaire

Member
Depending on how I am feeling after the Top 50 is complete, I am debating giving the Top 10 titles by underrated votes the banner treatment in a separate section of the OP posts.

I think that would be pretty neat. If they're underrated, they've never been on the lists before, right? Maybe just fill in the "Best" and "Worst" boxes with an Top 10 Underrated box or somethin'?
 

Firemind

Member
I thought the fanbase has mellowed down on XII over the years because of how shallow the story is, how terrible Vaan is, how the actual battles are braindead and how dumb it is to miss the best items if you open certain chests.

Granted I don't follow the FF thread.
 

Opa-Pa

Member
I'm liking the presentation of the games wonderful. Love how much flavor those quotes add!

I thought the fanbase has mellowed down on XII over the years because of how shallow the story is, how terrible Vaan is, how the actual battles are braindead and how dumb it is to miss the best items if you open certain chests.

Granted I don't follow the FF thread.

You could make one of these for nearly every FF game out there, to be honest. And I find those common complaints about the combat pretty reductive and even ignorant unless it comes from people who brute force their way through the game... In which case they're still silly, obviously.
 

Surfside

Banned
One day I have to go back to Chrono Cross and actually beat it to see what in the world people hate so much about it.

Out of the 8 hours of so I played it was great, only complaint was character designs, but everything else was nice and system wise it felt far better than CT.

I loved its look at the time and its music is amazing.
But i played it for 25 hours or so and so many characters got introduced, that i had no real connection to. Also i didn't really understand the plot. But i hear from its fans that it all comes together in the end. Just didn't have the patience to see it through.
 

Fou-Lu

Member
You could make one of these for nearly every FF game out there, to be honest. And I find those common complaints about the combat pretty reductive and even ignorant unless it comes from people who brute force their way through the game... In which case they're still silly, obviously.

More like every piece of media ever.

FFXII is flawed (it's debatable what those flaws are and how numerous they may be), but for a lot of people its highs more than make up for those flaws. As far as I feel about it? I personally think that despite the weak ending it has some of the best writing in the series and overall the story is a great one. Vaan is actually a good character, but he probably shouldn't have been treated as the 'main'. Oh and the combat is some of the best in RPG history. Don't even get me started on the world building, characters, artstyle, OST, etc.

Every game on my list could have been an FF title if I had thought about them too much.
 

kswiston

Member
If I avoid repeating Xenoblade Chronicles X, this is what the Top 10 underrated list looks like:

Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magic Obscura
Dark Souls II
Terranigma
Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey
Shadow Hearts: Covenant
Final Fantasy XIV
Lost Odyssey
Might & Magic VI: The Mandate of Heaven
Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War
 

MoonFrog

Member
That's a cool idea with the point of highlighting something as under-rated being a call for more people to give it attention. Hope there ends up being room!
 

FiveSide

Banned
I'm surprised to see FFXII at it's lowest spot considering the remake should have kept it in people's minds.

I think this happened with FFX as well the year that remaster came out. Really bizarre, I agree.

I am so glad Chrono Cross is in the top 50. It still deserves to be closer to its older brother, but I can accept this.

I'm glad it cracked Top 50 as well. Trigger is such an excellent, polished game, definitely "essential," but Cross is so unique. There really isn't too much like it, maybe Baten Kaitos based on what I've heard (unfortunately I haven't played them).

If I avoid repeating Xenoblade Chronicles X, this is what the Top 10 underrated list looks like:

Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magic Obscura
Dark Souls II
Terranigma
Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey
Shadow Hearts: Covenant
Final Fantasy XIV
Lost Odyssey
Might & Magic VI: The Mandate of Heaven
Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War

If you have the time/space/inclination, that'd be awesome if these guys could get banners, for the most part this is a fantastic set of games that don't usually get much notice. Especially Shadow Hearts: Covenant.

EDIT: Man, DQ8 was #12 at one point...DQ and Suikoden seem to drop further every year, kind of a bummer.
 

kswiston

Member
I have updated the 10 banners posted to include a quote for each game. I am going to try and get 50 different quotes from 50 different posters. We'll see how feasible that ends up being, but I want to highlight some of the many posters who took the time to elaborate on their lists.

If you don't get quoted, that doesn't mean that your personal submission wasn't great! I'm really just using ctrl-F to find the titles that I want. Once I find something that sounds good (from a poster that I haven't used yet), I grab it and move to the next title.

That's a cool idea with the point of highlighting something as under-rated being a call for more people to give it attention. Hope there ends up being room!

If we run out of space, one option would be to have you move your personal list to a later post from you on that first page (I think that you had one or two others). Then I could PM you what I would have put into a 4th opening post, and you could edit it in. There's still plenty of space left in the first of my 3 posts, so it might not even be an issue. I think that the bigger determinate is going to my personal level of burnout.
 

kswiston

Member
Tomorrow, I will finish off the banner explanations, add participant quotes for the titles already present, add the credits section for the plethora of people who have helped out in various ways so far, and hopefully get started on the next set of banners!

I managed to finish everything that I had scheduled for today.

The banner explanation section is more or less finalized. I'm not sure if anyone will read any of that, but if you aren't sure what a part of the game banner is supposed to communicate, look there for an explanation.

The thread credits are in the third opening post of the thread. I think that I covered everything and everyone. If I missed you, it wasn't intentional.


I finally heard back from our first raffle winner. The second name drawn was Morrigan Stark. I will PM her a list of the remaining prizes to choose from. Going forward, I am going to put a 36 hour time limit on claiming a raffle prize. I understand that not everyone lives on NeoGAF, but if every PM exchange took 3 days to happen, I will still be dealing with this raffle in December!


Now that most of the supporting information is done, I should be able to focus on the Top 50 banners. I would like to get #31-40 posted by tomorrow night. We'll see how realistic that ends up being.

For now, here is the second set of runners up, placing #61-70. Three of those titles will be on the underrated list if I end up doing it.

Code:
61	Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance
62	Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magic Obscura
63	Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey
64	The Secret of Mana
65	World of Warcraft
66	Shadow Hearts: Covenant
67	Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga
68	The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
69	Horizon: Zero Dawn
70	Fire Emblem
 

Eolz

Member
Expected Arcanum lower (but wanted it higher) , which is nice, really wanted Strange Journey in the top 50. Oh well :(

Not surprised at Zelda and Horizon being out, most people don't really consider them as RPGs.
 

gngf123

Member
Path of Radiance and Strange Journey both deserve to be way higher than that.

Oh well. At least SJ made the underrated list.
 

Surfside

Banned
Well if Arcanum and Shadow Hearts Covenant manage to get on the underrated top 10 then i'm contend.

Secret of Mana not making it into the top 50 is suprising to me. I would have guessed it at least be in the top 20.
 

Eridani

Member
It feels weird to me that people consider placing in the top 70 to be bad. I'd honestly be thrilled if some of the games I voted for made it that high, but most of them have no chance of even making top 100. Arcanum being this high seems pretty awesome to me.

As for Fire Emblem, I never understood the hate Fates gets. Fire Emblem stories were never particularly good and gameplay wise Fates does some really interesting things.
 

Thud

Member
It feels weird to me that people consider placing in the top 70 to be bad. I'd honestly be thrilled if some of the games I voted for made it that high, but most of them have no chance of even making top 100. Arcanum being this high seems pretty awesome to me.

As for Fire Emblem, I never understood the hate Fates gets. Fire Emblem stories were never particularly good and gameplay wise Fates does some really interesting things.
They were good takes on classical stories.

Story should be a stimulance in RPGs, not an aftertought.
 

Tamanator

Member
They were good takes on classical stories.

Story should be a stimulance in RPGs, not an aftertought.

Exactly. For me personally anyway story is pretty vital when it comes to RPGs. I'd argue that Fire Emblem (GBA) and Genealogy of the Holy War have pretty strong stories as well, even if the latter is full of tropes.
 

Surfside

Banned
I wouldn't say a good main story is required for an rpg to be great. Great character arcs or amazing side storys can be reason enough for one to count it to the genres finest.
 

FiveSide

Banned
Code:
68	[B]The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild[/B]
69	[B]Horizon: Zero Dawn[/B]

LOL

f8325fa191d493e3fdaca02c4890d560.gif


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Surprised World of Warcraft is so low. I wonder if FFXIV did better or worse.

EDIT: Also interesting that TitS is the only entry in the top 50 so far that has actually risen positions. The rest of them have dropped, in some cases from previously very high positions. I wonder if tastes/familiarity are changing, or if that's just how the particular vote came out this year, with no broader generalizations to conclude from it.
 

Dark_castle

Junior Member
LOL

f8325fa191d493e3fdaca02c4890d560.gif


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Surprised World of Warcraft is so low. I wonder if FFXIV did better or worse.

EDIT: Also interesting that TitS is the only entry in the top 50 so far that has actually risen positions. The rest of them have dropped, in some cases from previously very high positions. I wonder if tastes/familiarity are changing, or if that's just how the particular vote came out this year, with no broader generalizations to conclude from it.
The thing with Zelda is that not many people consider it a RPG, thus it doesn't get a lot of votes. And more people consider Horizon to be a RPG, thus it gets more votes.
 

Pellaidh

Neo Member
As someone who voted for Fire Emblem Fates, I'm really surprised by all the hate it seems to be get on GAF. I guess personally, I'll take a game with a 1/10 story but 10/10 gameplay (or the other way around, a game with crap gameplay but amazing story) over a game that's a 7/10 or even an 8/10 in both categories.

But while I can see why some people prefer older (pre 3DS) Fire Emblem games, I really can't understand why so many people seem to rank Awakening so far above Fates. Even if you really hate the story in Conquest, there's still Birthright and Revelation, and I personally didn't think the story there was that much worse than Awakening. They were all just generic and forgettable, with incredibly one note characters.

On the other hand, while Birthright lacks Conquest's amazing map design, it still drastically improves on Awakening's gameplay, mostly by fixing the completely broken pair-up system and at least to some extent nerfing some absurdly broken weapons/abilities/characters to make it harder to solo entire maps with a single character.


Other than that, it's really nice to see Alpha Protocol made top 50. While I didn't think it was quite good enough to make my top 20, it's still a very interesting and unique take on RPGs, and a game that very much deserves some spotlight.
 

Usobuko

Banned
Zelda placing just above Horizon is kinda hilarious because of this forum past tendencies.

As for some games getting lower, NieR automata, Persona 5 etc. are probably new entries that push the old favorites down.
 
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