HStallion said:

I think this is a ridiculous statement considering the absolute plethora of RPG's of all kinds we've been getting from old school CRPG's to JRPG's like Nier Automata to stuff like Darkest Dungeon or the Dishonored games. I mean the amount of RPG's out there is huge from the traditional stuff to the more experimental and not so easily defined.

Click to expand...

TheRedSnifit said:

And what are all these modern CRPGs? Obsidian and Larian give us something once in a blue moon, and that's about it? Fallout 4? Lol. There's nothing wrong with liking these games, but don't pretend there's a ton of variety when 99% of modern ones are action or stealth games with stat systems bolted on.

Click to expand...

TheRedSnifit said:

The fact that you had to name Dishonored as an RPG to pad out your list speaks volumes about the current state of the genre.

And what are all these modern CRPGs? Obsidian and Larian give us something once in a blue moon, and that's about it? Fallout 4? Lol. There's nothing wrong with liking these games, but don't pretend there's a ton of variety when 99% of modern ones are action or stealth games with stat systems bolted on.

Click to expand...

Morrigan Stark said:

Diablo is nothing but min-maxing build and gear for optimal DPS. So much number crunching and it's not an RPG? I don't get it. If anything, Diablo is too much of an RPG, and not enough of an action game.

Click to expand...

TheRedSnifit said:

The fact that you had to name Dishonored as an RPG to pad out your list speaks volumes about the current state of the genre.

And what are all these modern CRPGs? Obsidian and Larian give us something once in a blue moon, and that's about it? Fallout 4? Lol. There's nothing wrong with liking these games, but don't pretend there's a ton of variety when 99% of modern ones are action or stealth games with stat systems bolted on.

Click to expand...

IvorB said:

I dunno, I found some of battles in the early parts of the game quite tricky but then I just explored the whole map so I encountered some stuff that was much higher than me. Or maybe I just suck. To be honest, the hardest part of that game was the obscure quests you need to complete to finish and the constant traps and puzzles.

Perhaps you should play on tactician?

Click to expand...

StrategyFan said:

most "rpgs" dont have roleplaying

most console game(r)s seem to give the rpg label to anything that adds stats / party customization

don't know if it's because of d&d or something, but that's not how gameplay genres work

the genre confusion makes it harder to find games you're looking for, no matter which "side" you're on

Click to expand...

Morrigan Stark said:

I'm not even close to an RPG elitist (if you check my list in the Essentials RPG poll thread, there's only 1 western RPG in my top 10)

Click to expand...

Altairre said:

The three Shadowrun games, the two new Divinity games, Pillars (with the second one not too far off), Tyranny, Wasteland 2 and Torment. That's not a bad list as far as I'm concerned.

Click to expand...

TheRedSnifit said:

The fact that you had to name Dishonored as an RPG to pad out your list speaks volumes about the current state of the genre.

And what are all these modern CRPGs? Obsidian and Larian give us something once in a blue moon, and that's about it? Fallout 4? Lol. There's nothing wrong with liking these games, but don't pretend there's a ton of variety when 99% of modern ones are action or stealth games with stat systems bolted on.

Click to expand...

Arulan said:

Divinity: Original Sin
Divinity: Original Sin 2
Pillars of Eternity
The Age of Decadence
Underrail
Wasteland 2
Torment: Tides of Numenera
The Legend of Grimrock
The Legend of Grimrock 2
Shadowrun Returns
Shadowrun: Dragonfall
Shadowrun: Hong Kong
Battle Brothers
Might & Magic X - Legacy
Tyranny
StarCrawlers
Dungeon Rats
Grimoire : Heralds of the Winged Exemplar
Serpent in the Staglands
Lords of Xulima

I think that's a pretty good list of some of the more noteworthy CRPGs in this recent renaissance.

Click to expand...

HStallion said:

Those are just some of the most well known. There is stuff like the Age of Decadence which is both unique and well made but often flies under a lot of people's radar.

Click to expand...

Morrigan Stark said:

I haven't watched the video yet (at work), but just to address a general sentiment in the thread about "elitism":

It's OK to disagree with Jim, and that doesn't make it "ironic". Just saying.

I'm not even close to an RPG elitist (if you check my list in the Essentials RPG poll thread, there's only 1 western RPG in my top 10), myself, but if the idea is that you can't be displeased with trends of dumbing down what used to be your favourite genre and that makes you a snotty elitist otherwise, well... pish posh.


Diablo is nothing but min-maxing build and gear for optimal DPS. So much number crunching and it's not an RPG? I don't get it. If anything, Diablo is too much of an RPG, and not enough of an action game.


Nothing wrong with being "elitist" then. That's just having standards. If you feel like someone is looking down on you because they have higher standards for their own preferences, you can say that makes them an elitist if you want, but I'd just say it makes you insecure.

Click to expand...

StrategyFan said:

most "rpgs" dont have roleplaying

most console game(r)s seem to give the rpg label to anything that adds stats / party customization

don't know if it's because of d&d or something, but that's not how gameplay genres work

the genre confusion makes it harder to find games you're looking for, no matter which "side" you're on

Click to expand...

Damn Silly said:

Enjoy.

And here's one I made earlier, as a bonus (I made it for myself after watching the video, basically).

Click to expand...

Kthulhu said:

"Final Fantasy and Diablo aren't RPGs" then what the hell are they?

Click to expand...

NoblesseOblige said:

Final Fantasy depends on the entry as they vary from turn-based to action, but ultimately it is a JRPG. Diablo is an Action-RPG hack-and-slash. Typically neither of these are good examples of RPG as they are extremely weak on Role-playing. They only include the '-RPG' particle to convey elements of the genre but are not pure examples of it.

Hope that makes it more clear.

Click to expand...

Some Nobody said:

Given how GAF constantly seems to try and push for diversity, its strange to find myself in a thread where people seem to be actively encouraging gatekeeping as a practice. Oh well.

Click to expand...

Szadek said:

For lack of a better term, I like to call them modern dungeon crawler (as opposed to old school dungeon crawler like Dungeons of Grimrock).
I hope someone else finds a better title for them soon, because it's far from perfect.

Click to expand...

pa22word said:

Oh, personally I don't really know as I've never played the games. I've played a bit of the various clones over the years but never enough of them to form an opinion on them one way or the other. Just always heard from various friends that they don't consider them rpgs at all, but action games in the vein of Gauntlet, which I always thought made sense given the gameplay.

Click to expand...

Kthulhu said:

I wish I knew which game some of these people were referring to.

"Final Fantasy and Diablo aren't RPGs" then what the hell are they?

Click to expand...

Renekton said:

This is still unfair to the companies that make them and the millions who play those games. Sometimes they just design a game that people enjoy. For example, FO4 get lots of flak from RPGers but my friend who seldom games still get happy talking about his painstakingly made power armor museum.

TLDR: don't be angry at devs for making "dumbed down" games, just be happy you have your Larian's and Obsidian's.

Click to expand...

Shari said:

Attention = Revenue. Giving plays means visibility which leads to more Patreon subscribers. I dont think he actively fishes I think his channel thrives on whatever drama is popular atm. On the Zelda subject, having read and had his reviews as an important part of my decision making as with, for example, ACG I think he played down the strength and focused on the quirks deliberately to stir the pot. Not a couple of months before I played and loved yakuza 0 thanks partially to his favorable review which, also in my opinion, did the opposite and praised too much stuff and hid some problems of the game.

I dont have anything against him, I just dont agree with him as I used to and I'm not totally sure he's unbiased by his popularity. Not trying to convince anybody I'm right tho.

Click to expand...

TheRedSnifit said:

The fact that you had to name Dishonored as an RPG to pad out your list speaks volumes about the current state of the genre.

And what are all these modern CRPGs? Obsidian and Larian give us something once in a blue moon, and that's about it? Fallout 4? Lol. There's nothing wrong with liking these games, but don't pretend there's a ton of variety when 99% of modern ones are action or stealth games with stat systems bolted on.

Click to expand...

SatelliteOfLove said:

Was waiting for this.

Before I go further, note the phrasing on this last sentence I bolded for later.

Some of us react well to that ugly decade in the wilderness for grognard-ass CRPGs, waiting for good, crunchy, involved ones to pop up (then the studio behind them to collapse or get put on DLC for some AAA or whatnot), before kickstarter and Gen 8 helped us out of the Publisher Ghetto.

Others are like the one Jim is mocking: bitter, backwards-looking, elitist, who also got helped out of the Publisher Ghetto by the same kickstarters.

But here's the thing to bring it back to that particular phrasing: "just be happy". That lowbrow is default, that it is the standard, the evolved form, an "ours", and that the original form is scraps.

It's an amazing thing, you see, that the more numerous and more advantaged avaricious RPG fans decry the less numerous, less advantaged, yet equally avaricious from atop a moral pillar like this. "There but for the grace of God go thee"

Click to expand...

Orb said:

Ive already said what I think an elitist is and yeah I think there is something wrong with that and it's pretty shitty.

Click to expand...

Morrigan Stark said:

But... Diablo has no action skill check whatsoever. At least Diablo 3 (I only played very little of the first two because I found the click spam to be utterly boring). In Diablo 3, you hold R2 (and sometimes mash X to refill the mana spent by holding R2) and sometimes move around (you barely dodge ever, despite a dodge button on consoles), and often, not even, you can just stay there and hold the button. You will win if your gear/stats are stronger than the mobs, otherwise you'll die. Basically it's just a numbers/DPS game, not an action game at all.

If to win at a game, you only need to win the numbers check, and not the action skill check, how is that an action game? Maybe it's not an RPG (or a tr00 RPG) but it sure as shit isn't much of an action game.

Click to expand...

Karak said:

I never reviewed Zelda? Haven't even done a video on it? Or did you mean something else. Sorry Just saw the comment.

Click to expand...

pa22word said:

Are you a console gamer by chance? Not being an asshole, but it's an important distinction that the term "action game" and it's lineage varies vastly in the long term lineage between the PC and consoles. While in today's terms Diablo wouldn't be considered an action game in the days where you have console type action platformers and beat em up type games releasing all the time between the two platforms, in the olden days this wasn't really the case at all and the term "action" meant something very different. Again, it's more of an anachronism these days but (and I may be wrong, as noted above I've never gotten into them) Diablo was considered an action game because its systems were geared entirely around combat delivery and game design that fed back into solely the combat, and not "role playing" in the traditional sense at all. Going back to my previous posts, think of something like RE4 in the same context: RE4 is very systems heavy on the back end where you build and balance Leon around either a power approach or a DPS type build. Sure the implementation is drastically simpler than Diablo, but the end result is largely the same: the systems serve to reinforce the combat. This is really at the end of the day no different from the mechanical delivery from Diablo on the backend, just the frontend of the game's design differs in how it engages with the player. I guess a better example is probably borderlands, which is basically Diablo wrapped in a shooters clothing. The moment to moment gameplay is more uh, directly stimulating but the actual systems governing it are entirely wrapped around the loot and statistics governing what you are seeing more than your actions on the screen. Sure it's flashier, but the end result is still largely the same.

Click to expand...

Shari said:

I just brought your name cause you are among the reviewers I trust to help my decision making about games.

Thanks to you I played PREY on release when I had no intention to buy, you convinced me and its to me the sleeper of the year.

Probably you didn't understand as it was poorly written, sorry about that.

Click to expand...

Mister Saturn said:

Fun fact: Diablo began development as a turn-based RPG because the Blizzard North guys were fans of dungeon crawls like Rogue and Moria.

Click to expand...

AndersK said:

I swear, RPGs are the Metal of gaming. You can always count on an argument about what genre something is. Its hilarious.

With regards to the video, Jim is mocking the grognards who have to resort to that kind of rethoric to debase other people for liking stuff like FO4 more than New Vegas or the isometric entries. I sure as fuck don’t get it, but i’d have to be fairly sad to think less of them in such a manner. I mean, RPG CODEX is a great site with some amazing reviews and editorials, but the amount of salty bitterness to pour out of that place defies meaning.

Click to expand...

pa22word said:

That's really interesting. Reminds me of Halo going from an RTS to what we all know today. I bet it's a really crazy story how the game went from a turn based RPG into what amounts to Gauntlet with heavy systems interaction and how that influenced design going forward.

Click to expand...

SatelliteOfLove said:

Was waiting for this.

Before I go further, note the phrasing on this last sentence I bolded for later.

Some of us react well to that ugly decade in the wilderness for grognard-ass CRPGs, waiting for good, crunchy, involved ones to pop up (then the studio behind them to collapse or get put on DLC for some AAA or whatnot), before kickstarter and Gen 8 helped us out of the Publisher Ghetto.

Others are like the one Jim is mocking: bitter, backwards-looking, elitist, who also got helped out of the Publisher Ghetto by the same kickstarters.

But here's the thing to bring it back to that particular phrasing: "just be happy". That lowbrow is default, that it is the standard, the evolved form, an "ours", and that the original form is scraps.

It's an amazing thing, you see, that the more numerous and more advantaged avaricious RPG fans decry the less numerous, less advantaged, yet equally avaricious from atop a moral pillar like this. "There but for the grace of God go thee"

Click to expand...