Kirk Hamilton- "We here at Kotaku have been having a lot of fun with rankings lately, from Halo to Grand Theft Auto to Final Fantasy to Pokémon. And now, it's time to rank the big daddy of single-player RPGs: The Elder Scrolls series."
Replaying Skyrim after 13 years is a reminder of the progress made in western RPGs over the last decade, but also what's been lost.
RPGs are often huge, sprawling endeavours. With limited playtime, we have to choose wisely, so here's the best western RPGs available today.
"I started playing games yesterday" the List... Meh!
How about a few RPGs that deserve some love instead?
1 - Alpha Protocol - Now on GOG
2 - else Heart.Break()
3 - Shadowrun Trilogy
4 - Wasteland 2
5 - UnderRail
6 - Tyranny
7 - Torment: Tides of Numenera
And for a bonus game that flew under the radar:
8 - Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden
Not only glorious jank, but the idea that the story can completely change depending on what you do, or say, or side with, makes it one of the most forward thinking games ever. The amount of story permutation is the equivalent of a Hitman level but in Story Form. And it wasn't just that the story changed, no, it was that you met completely new characters, or missed them, depending on your choices. Made Mass Effect feel static in comparison.
Alpha Protocol was absolutely glorious, indeed. And it was, and still is, more Next Gen than most anything out there these days. In this regard at least.
Pity.
A new Partner Spotlight Sale is now live on the Switch eShop, including Skyrim, lowest price ever for Bomb Rush Cyberfunk, and more.
Skyrim is my fav out of 3,4,5. as I haven't played the earlier ones
It's gotta be Daggerfall for me. In Oblivion, there are about five factions/guilds you can join. In Daggerfall, there are a lot. There are about ten seperate knight orders in Daggerfall and that's just one guild. Not to mention various other political factions, vampire bloodlines, temples, witch covens etc.
Not to mention you can turn into a vampire, a werewolf and a werehog. You could also own houses (which you can have the option to protect from burglary), a horse, a pulling cart for your equipment, even though you can be attacked while traveling and a ship.
Thousands of towns, villages, fortresses, dungeons to explore. Quests that you do with certain factions have either positive or negative reactions from NPCs of friendly or rival factions. There's a bank system where you can safely deposit your gold, get a credit line, get a one year or three year loan for larger purchases. You could smuggle drugs. There's a law system in Daggerfall and you could be put on trial in court. You could get an eavesdropping ability. Character customization is more detailed than later iterations. Daggerfall's map being the size of Great Britain.
Not saying it was a perfect game by any means, as it does have glitches but wowsers. The level of ambition is staggering. It's just a bit of a shame that the later titles have had these things taken out. Probably due to the amount of investment required just to do graphics these days.
I need to get round to playing Morrowind, bought it on steam months ago, tested it for an hour or so, need to get back to it and play it through.
I stopped reading after seeing what #2 was. Although, it's quite fitting considering that Skyrim is shit. Definitely the worst in the series.
Daggerfall was a mess when it came out and took a long time to gte fixed if it ever was fixed. The Towns were lumpy and not very distinct from one another. Most of them felt randomly generated. I think Morrowind was overall probably the best one but Oblivion and Skyrim are still good stuff even if they have eben simplified and dumbed down a bit. I never played Arena though and did not care much for stuff like Redguard (more or less and action game) or Battlespyre (a diablo-esque sort of roguelike stylegame)