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So far this gen: Skyrim = Best WRPG. Xenoblade = Best JRPG.

Riposte said:
Are people saying dragons are push-overs playing on Master difficulty? Had to put down the game for school and haven't really gotten the chance to really get into encounters with them.
I'd be surprised if that's the case. I've had some tough fights with them on Adept.
 
Ysiadmihi said:
I honestly cannot tell if you are joking or not.

He's not. Skyrim has some pretty great art, but the actual graphics aren't that great because of the console limitations. You're just not going to be able to pull off amazing graphics with a game that massive on ancient hardware like that.

And yeah, when it snows in Windhelm it looks amazing espeically at night time with all the fires going.
 
The world of Skyrim is vast, beautiful, varied, and encourages exploration. It's not the best, but it gets the job done quite well and I find myself getting sucked into the world itself. Then you run into NPCs and the illusion is destroyed. God, they're ugly. :(
 
ghibli99 said:
The world of Skyrim is vast, beautiful, varied, and encourages exploration. It's not the best, but it gets the job done quite well and I find myself getting sucked into the world itself. Then you run into NPCs and the illusion is destroyed. God, they're ugly. :(

Better watch it or they'll give us more Oblivion or Fallout NPCs.
 
Derrick01 said:
It's a really really really really poor RPG, barely even a RPG at all so we RPG fans hate it. Non RPG fans mostly love it though.


I'm an RPG fan and it was one of my favorite games in 2010. But I though ME1 was a really shitty RPG and enjoyed it as well so go figure.

I haven't played Skyrim yet and won't until next month, but I've really enjoyed going through FO:NV, Radiant Historia, LOH: (its the) TITS, Resonance of Fate, Dark Souls, Deus Ex and Xenoblade. Its a good variety of styles of the genre, the past 12 months have been pretty enjoyable as far as I'm concerned. Not sure any of them have to be "the best" but I like them.
 
ghibli99 said:
The world of Skyrim is vast, beautiful, varied, and encourages exploration. It's not the best, but it gets the job done quite well and I find myself getting sucked into the world itself. Then you run into NPCs and the illusion is destroyed. God, they're ugly. :(

Thats what you get for getting the game day 1 hahahaha sucker wait for mods next time.
 
Ysiadmihi said:
I honestly cannot tell if you are joking or not.
That shot is a bit empty but theres nothing ugly or bland about it. The game may not be a graphical beast but it has had me in aw more than most games Ive played this gen.
 
If Skyrim's performance problems are fixed, then it's in the clear for my GOTY. It's the first Bethesda game I've played on the PS3 in 3 years, and after 20 or so hours of having no problems, the save file problem creeped up. What the shizzle? Fallout 3 didn't have this problem at release.
 
Rhazer Fusion said:
Dark Souls

Not really with Demons Souls out there in the world. There were some smart changes from Demons to Dark mechanically but as far as atmosphere and character/monster design, Demons kicks the shit out of Dark. Dark wouldn't be what it is without Demons Souls and frankly they took a step back in encounter designs and level design.
 
ghibli99 said:
The world of Skyrim is vast, beautiful, varied, and encourages exploration. It's not the best, but it gets the job done quite well and I find myself getting sucked into the world itself. Then you run into NPCs and the illusion is destroyed. God, they're ugly. :(

Skyrim with Witcher 2's NPC's would be amazing.

iQ0bYPguegQnv.bmp


Dem eyes.
 
For a game that's built on giving the player freedom, Skyrim is filled with too many kill and fetch quests where the lack of choices becomes apparent. The unimaginative quest design and accompanying bland writing let down the world design. At this point, I would not even consider it the best WRPG of the year, but it has certainly improved a ton over the lackluster Oblivion. That it has turned out to be closer to Morrowind than Oblivion is my biggest surprise this year.

New Vegas still remains my favorite WRPG in years, thanks to quest design that is head and shoulders above the competition.
 
Speevy said:
I haven't played Xenoblade, but it'd have to be pretty damn revolutionary to beat out Demon's/Dark Souls.


I like Xenoblade, but no, it is not revolutionary in any real sense. But not every game needs to be.


Van Buren said:
filled with too many kill and fetch quests where the lack of choices becomes apparent. The unimaginative quest design and accompanying bland writing let down the world design.

Parts of this sounds like Xenoblade!
 
Van Buren said:
For a game that's built on giving the player freedom, Skyrim is filled with too many kill and fetch quests where the lack of choices becomes apparent. The unimaginative quest design and accompanying bland writing let down the world design. At this point, I would not even consider it the best WRPG of the year, but it has certainly improved a ton over the lackluster Oblivion. That it has turned out to be closer to Morrowind than Oblivion is my biggest surprise this year.

New Vegas still remains my favorite WRPG in years, thanks to quest design that is head and shoulders above the competition.

I mean, I love both games to death but to chide one for kill and fetch quests while heaping praise on the other for the same thing? Very odd. Swap out guns for swords and you basically have the same experience. Kill and fetch quests abound in both, and both have far, far more than just those types of missions.
 
The_Technomancer said:
Yeah, this gen has actually been really strong for RPGs in general, especially when you throw in handhelds like TWEWY and Radiant Historia

My one complaint is that I want some truly creative settings, out of WRPG devs in particular. But Xenoblade and Persona 4 are both great in that regard.

You mean generic fantasy forest isnt good enough for you?
 
WanderingWind said:
Hey, the Witcher 2 had other areas!

Witcher has better variety but its still not that creative a world or setting. Not like the JRPGs he mentioned.

Its better than them though.
 
DoctorWho said:
Lost Odyssey up in this thread for Most Underrated RPG of the forever.
Underrated? It was in the exact same spot Xenoblade is now when it came out. It even sold a lot better since Microsoft isn't cheap (and even sometimes incompetent) with their marketing like Nintendo is for anything that isn't already a big IP.
 
Skyrim is a great game but I like my wrpgs with more roleplaying other than what you use for combat. I'm a lot of hours in and enjoying myself but there's no choice at all in quests and you are not given any chance at all to have a personality. When the omg-hype dies down in a few months my guess is that fallout:nv or witcher 2 will be the general opinion from wrpg-gaf.
 
Xenoblade was really good, a close second to TWEWY for JRPGs that aren't SRPGs.

I don't really play much on the WRPG front, so I'm not going to comment on that.
 
Atomski said:
Darksouls is fun to play and all.. but for an RPG it had like no story.

This statement annoys me for three reasons. First, the "but" after saying the game is fun. "RPG" which is an empty and confusing label to put on any game, let alone creating standards based on that label for an action game. Dark Souls has "like a lot of story", but it had to be discovered by observing what was going on in the game and simply exploring it more.
 
WanderingWind said:
I mean, I love both games to death but to chide one for kill and fetch quests while heaping praise on the other for the same thing? Very odd. Swap out guns for swords and you basically have the same experience. Kill and fetch quests abound in both, and both have far, far more than just those types of missions.

Quest design in New Vegas felt like a revelation to me, with most quests being built around faction interplay, and having a variety of skill checks to complete them. In fact, I'd say it even outclasses the originals in how important the factions are. The quests also progressed gradually, and there was a genuine sense of winning the NPCs over as they gave more and more complicated tasks.

The issue I have with Skyrim's quest design is that the player choices aren't as well thought out. For instance, in the Companion's guild quest, the player is forced to accept a certain fate to have the quest line continue, and is given no option to make the quest progress through other means. There is also the issue of the guild quests progressing too fast, with the player given tasks that the guilds have little reason to entrust to the player. I preferred how Morrowind handled the guild quests. That said, the Thieves guild quests were a lot better in this regard.
 
persona 4,it came out after lost odyssey or vesperia,if for whatever reason it's not counting then demon souls,dark souls is great too but it's just a sequel and doesn't have the same impact demons souls had

xenoblade was fun for 2-3 weeks but i doubt i will replay it in the next 5+ years,it got pretty repetitive after 50+ hours
 
HK-47 said:
Witcher has better variety but its still not that creative a world or setting. Not like the JRPGs he mentioned.

Its better than them though.

Proper execution requires more creativity than anything else.

revolverjgw said:
When it starts snowing in Skyrim, I can fucking FEEL it. The game can be beautiful.

Big meh. As far as I can tell there is absolutely no survival element in Skyrim. If you were in a blizzard like Skyrim's you'd want to find shelter immediately and if you couldn't then you knew you were going to die a slow, chilling death. Makes me not care about the setting much at all. Could be Tamriel or w/e full of speed-tree for all it mattered.
 
WanderingWind said:
I mean, I love both games to death but to chide one for kill and fetch quests while heaping praise on the other for the same thing? Very odd. Swap out guns for swords and you basically have the same experience. Kill and fetch quests abound in both, and both have far, far more than just those types of missions.

I'm inclined to agree. Both of them have quite a lot of bog standard quests, but those are not the ones that really define either game.
 
Riposte said:
Proper execution requires more creativity than anything else.

Well I would argue that Uncharted as a series isn't that original however the execution is what makes the series.
 
WanderingWind said:
I mean, I love both games to death but to chide one for kill and fetch quests while heaping praise on the other for the same thing? Very odd. Swap out guns for swords and you basically have the same experience. Kill and fetch quests abound in both, and both have far, far more than just those types of missions.

I think he is saying NV is more creative and does a better job with its quest overall, despite also having those dreadful filler quests everyone hates so much. Of course, I wont trust anyone's opinion on a sandbox rpg until 6 month down the line when the mods fix things, the OG version is put in it proper place and people arent smoking the hash on the hype train to hyperbole town. And I havent played Skyrim so I cant directly compare yet.
 
Witcher 2 is fucking fantastic.


Dark Souls is very good, but I cant be happy with it right after my save got corrupted just before fighting the last boss.


Dragon Age 2 is just shit. Fucking disaster of a "game". Not as bad as FF XIII but close enough.
 
ghibli99 said:
The world of Skyrim is vast, beautiful, varied, and encourages exploration. It's not the best, but it gets the job done quite well and I find myself getting sucked into the world itself. Then you run into NPCs and the illusion is destroyed. God, they're ugly. :(

yes, this.. fucking this. when i meant ugly, i meant the art direction of NPCs, the environments are awesomely detailed no doubt. but the NPCs looked ugly as heck.

Beam said:
Isn´t the consensus on GAF that Demon Souls>Dark Souls?

this is bullshit, Dark Souls is pretty on par if not better than Demon Souls.
 
Skyrim is amazing but I think the OP is selling short The Witcher 2 for GOTY. For game of the generation? God, who even knows. Dragon Age: Origins was pretty awesome, too.
 
HK-47 said:
And those games have that...so moot point.

Unless you happen to disagree. Degree of execution is a wide spectrum and in terms of aesthetics few rival Witcher 2(in all of gaming. No "RPG" categorization bullshit, since Witcher 2 is an action game a la Batman Arkham series). Witcher 2 manages to capture a cinematic flair which most games dream of and it also manages to make the world feel realer and freer than most open-world games(this combination is somehow possible because it doesn't go the stuff-your-face buffet route of Elder Scrolls games). It may not be set in a high school, but it will show you why you were interested in those types of settings back when you were in high school. Fapping over setting novelty is pretty dull in comparison to appreciating execution. (Not to say I don't like it when a JRPG developer dreams up crazy sci-fi hybrid worlds with nonsense physics. I love it.)

perfectnight said:
The consensus among people who don't know shit. Dark Souls has all the atmosphere, awesome level design and memorable encounters from Demon's Souls + more.

+1. Demon's Souls hasn't been made invalidated by Dark Souls though(which is the case for Skyrim to Oblivion). Demon's Souls also had more manageable online. That aside though...

From the arguments I've heard, it is because they struggled with the second half. They couldn't admit that they fell into the same scrubiness as the reviewers they made fun of fell into with Demon's Souls and Dark Souls. Words like "random" and "unfair" are bound to pop up.
 
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