And how long do you have to play these games so they mean anything to you ? I played like 45 minutes of Diablo 2, can I check it on my essential games list ?
Dota for 2000 hours
Nah, SMB1 is influential for the entire medium, not just platformers. SMB1 1-1 design school analyses are so common that they're practically a cliché.
And hey, no one is "less of a gamer" if they haven't played a specific game. I've never played Minecraft, because it holds no interest to me but at the same time, I would never argue that it isn't a massively influential game. There are far too many games to play in one lifetime - play what you want.
I don't know enough about RPGs to represent them. I imagine people would say FF7? I think the genre might be too niche to qualify for an essential, but Ill probably get eaten alive for that.
Gothic 1&2
Morrowind
E.Y.E. Divine Cybermancy
UnderRail
Age of Decadence
Divinity Original Sin 1 EE/2
Dark Messiah of Might & Magic
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. SoC/Clear Skies/Call of Pripyat (and Call of Chernobyl to combine all three in an open world)
Been playing games for almost 30 years and haven't played a single one from your list lol.
Halo 1 & 2 for shooters.
Console shooters maybe. But if we're talking essential and significant to the development of the medium, Doom, Quake and then Half Life are much more influential - in that order.
These are essential? I've never even heard of a third of these, and some of the rest are super niche, really hardcore "for genre fans only" kind of games.
Bad list.
Not only have I not played any of these, I've never heard of most of them.
Been playing games for almost 30 years and haven't played a single one from your list lol.
Neverwinter Nights
If there's a game that's close to the benchmark Baldur's Gate has set, it's Neverwinter Nights. The singleplayer experience doesn't hold up to Baldur's Gate, but it makes up for it by having an amazing multiplayer. Sadly, the second game never lived up to my expectations.
Not really.
Some lists are bad because they don't align directly with your own personal tastes.
Some lists are bad because they fail to remotely answer the question. Like when someone asks you about games you absolutely must play and they list some really obscure, hardcore dungeon crawler or space sim that would appeal to about 0.3% of the population.
Popular answers only bois
According to the ESA 2016 report, RPGs were the 3rd best-selling genre of the year, just behind Shooters & Action. Bigger than the Fighting & Racing genres combined. 5 of the Top 20 slots were RPGs - 2 slots for Pokémon, 1 for FFXV, 1 slot for Skyrim, and 1 for Dark Souls 3.
I think it's easy to make the mistake in thinking that RPGs are a niche genre around here, since much of the RPG talk here centers on niche games. It's easy to forget stuff like Skyrim selling over 30 million copies or that Dark Souls 3 broke Namco-Bandai's all-time best launch day record or that Nintendo's second biggest franchise of all-time is centered on an RPG series.
I'll just narrow my list to RPG:s as that's my favorite genré.
Baldur's Gate and Baldur's Gate II
Neverwinter Nights
Divinity - Original Sin
Dragon Age: Origins
Gothic 1&2
Morrowind
E.Y.E. Divine Cybermancy
UnderRail
Age of Decadence
Divinity Original Sin 1 EE/2
Dark Messiah of Might & Magic
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. SoC/Clear Skies/Call of Pripyat (and Call of Chernobyl to combine all three in an open world)
Amnesia write-up
This is silly. Thief, System Shock 2, Thief 2, Deus Ex, Dishonored, Dishonored 2 and Prey is the proper list.Bioshock (then Deux Ex Human Rev, Dishonored and Prey)
Im thinking pure, turn based, stat heavy, traditional RPGs are niche.
Yall being way too niche.
If you never played Baldur's Gate II I don't even want to listen any of your opinions about RPGs.
What if I played it for an hour and find it boring as hell?