Fable 2 largely was just as good as one with one added bonus… for me at least.
The cutscenes were all done in engine, with all the same rules that the game has.
So running into the final boss fight, I had run out of healing items, so I ate ALL my food and drank ALL my beer and wine before starting the final fight.
Cut scene starts. Villain starts his villiain monologue as villains do. My character proceeds to puke all over his shoes.
The story and engagement. Ultima IV let you talk to literally every NPC in the game, everyone had a name and a job and something to say.
Phantasy Star II was essentially ripped off for Final Fantasy VII to the point where from the minute they introduced Aerith I was like “Well, shit, better not give HER anything I want to keep, she’s dead 1/2 way through the game.” (That was Nei in PSII).
To be clear, those are just the first two off the top of my head, there were other excellent, excellent RPGs.
I really liked the gold box D&D games from SSI - Pool of Radiance, Curse of the Azure Bonds, Secret of the Silver Blades. They don’t hold up well now due to all being turn based RPGs. There is a Steam Collection of ALL of that.
Speaking of, before Fallout, there was Wasteland which has had a modern reboot and sequel. Also a great game that had copy protection built into a story book full of backstory paragraphs.
For JRPGs, it’s hard to go wrong with Suikoden 1 and 2, recently re-released on PS5, drop dead gorgeous RPGs. The Golden Sun games were great too.
I’ve played probably hundreds of RPGs since the start. Disco Elysium isn’t even top 10. It LOOKS great, the writing is dogshit.
I don’t get the love for this game. I’ve been playing CRPGs since Temple of Apshai and I’ve never seen a game where the story and dialog choices appear to have been written by or for people with traumatic brain injury.
So bad that I had to hop on a forum and go “Hey, so, there aren’t any good choices in the dialog tree, did I fuck up my character generation? Should I start over?”
And got “You just don’t get it, man!”
Yeah, I don’t get games where “You want some fuck?” is a valid dialog choice.
It’s slow. Interminably slow. You think you might be prepared for how slow it is, you are not.
Google “Red Dead Redemption 2 slow” if you doubt this.
Second, the controls absolutely suck. Not sure who decided the same button should be either “talk to NPC” or “shoot NPC right in the goddamned head” but that never should have passed play testing.
Again, Google “Red Dead Redemption 2 controls” if you doubt this.
I LOVED RDR1. Played the hell out of that game, was really looking forward to 2.
Then I had to walk through snow for an hour before anything happened.
Got through that godawful opening sequence, got to a bit where we’re going across a prairie, hear a call for help, ride over to talk to an NPC to see what’s going on and shoot them right in the goddamned head instead, prompting a fugitive run.
That’s when I realized I could re-start the game and try again, or just say “fuck it” and cut my losses. I cut my losses. I’m not going to fight bad game design AND the plot.
“One of the things we saw is that gamers are used to, a little bit like DVD, having and owning their games. That’s the consumer shift that needs to happen. They got comfortable not owning their CD collection or DVD collection. That’s a transformation that’s been a bit slower to happen [in games].”
I’m totally OK not owning Ubisoft games… but not in the way they would prefer… Where I hand them money and still don’t own anything.