Recommend me Some Fantasy RPGs That AREN'T in a Medieval Setting

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Oroboros

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Jade Empire- Already mentioned. Set in a fantasy version of ancient china. Pulls it off so well that It *really* makes me sad that 'fantasy china' isn't a setting used more often.

Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines- Fantasy, but set in the modern age. You get to play as a member of one of several vampire clans, and fight other monsters. Highly recommended.

Geneforge- Series of five games with a wholly unique setting. It deals with the implications where magic being used to genetically engineer just about everything in sight-and then those engineered monsters deciding to rebel. Multiple endings in each game and several factions you can join.

I'd recommend Planescape Torment, but it has a fixed protagonist. (although his gender is pretty much the only thing fixed about him)
 

FPLOON

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Corruption of Champions... It's a fantasy RPG all right... *wink wink*

Other than that, I honestly got nothing... All my other recommendations have been said already...
 

Mister K

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OK, in order of me playing them:
1. Jade Empire. A great early-Bioware RPG set in Medieval China (I assume you didn't want to see Medieval EUROPE).

You can't create your character per se, you have to pick one from pre-maid ones BUT in doing so you only pick an appearance and gender, that is it. You play with your stats, fighting styles on your own and your deccisions during the course of the game are your own. One of the cool things about this game is that while you can have only one follower at a time, you can a)switch them at any time and b)change their mode to passive, when they don't fight, but provide certain bonuses (health regen, focus regen, etc.). But it can get a bit button-mashy.

2. Shadowrun: Returns and Shadowrun: Dragonfall. Setting is our world about 150 years in the future. Long story short, portals opened and Earth was flooded with elves, orcs, trolls and dwarfs, who addapted to life here.

You are a Shadowrunner. They are basically guys who you come to when you need "a job done".
Obviously, you can pick any race. Also, they character development system is rather flexible: you don't get to pick class and level up in it, but whenever you complete a quest you get a certain ammount of points which you can use to increase certain parameters, such as charisma, pistols, decking (i.e. hacking), summoning, etc. So if you want to be smooth-talking hacker-gunslinger, be one. If you want to be fire-balls throwing martial artist, be one. Oh, and a tip: it is always recommended to have at least 5 levels of Health. And spoiler free advice for Dragonfall: if you are playing a person who IS NOT sawwy with magic and/or summoning, please DO level up your Health up to 6. It will help later.

3. Arcanum of steamworks and magick obscura. This game I am playing now and I am quite enjoying it. Setting: kind of XVIII-XIX century England/USA.

You traveled on a zeppelin when it gets attacked and crashes. The only survivors are you and a dwarf who dies shortly after, but not before giving you the ring and asking to find a boy.
This game also doesn't have classes, rather you develop certain skills and abilities, which can be divided into neutral, technical and magical. Here is a thing though: the better you are with spells the greater the chance that a pistol will either not work or blow right in your hands, the better you are with tech, the greater is the chance that any magical heals, buffs, etc. will fail on you. So, it would be rather beneficial to decide on your route early on (but why in seven blazes would you want to create another mage in a STEAMPUNK game is beyond me).
Oh, and please mind that every time you level up you get 1 point (unless it's a level that is multiple of 5, when you get 2), which is used to get more stats OR develop your skills OR get more spells/level up in tech disciplines. So there is that. But in the biggest city you can buy tech manual for each discipline which increases your sawwyness in this discipline as long as you have them in inventory. For example, if you have 1 electricity manual, you get +10 in electricity and if you have 2 of them, you get +20.
Also, beauty is a dump stat.
 

Eddie the head

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Well the Elder Scrolls games are set in something analogous to the Roman Empire. Witch by definition makes them not set in a medieval setting. The medieval period being the period after Rome's collapse. So maybe not Skyrim depending on how you want to look at things, but based on your request yeah Elder Scrolls.

Other than straining the definition the only thing I can think of is Torchlight or Torchlight II witch is kinda steampunk I think. Diablo 3 might be considered more victorian then medieval on that note. Look I'm trying but this is a really narrow field.
 

Nazrel

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MASTACHIEFPWN said:
templar1138a said:
Star Wars is not Sci-Fi. Star Wars is best described as space fantasy. Sure, it has plenty of sci-fi elements like faster-than-light travel and interstellar civilization, but the stories are much more focused on individual characters than you typically see in Sci-Fi, which tend to have a lot more commentary on societal trends. Plus the Force is basically magic.
Yes it is, though.
Star wars is a Space Opera, which is a subgenre of Science Fiction. You described a Space Opera- a story that focuses on a set of individuals on a melodramatic adventure; the technology is a secondary point to the story, and it usually takes place in space or in an interstellar environment. Mass Effect is technically a Space Opera. Science Fantasy is an entirely different thing- Science fantasy has like space-castles and knights and dragons attacking spaceships.

Based on your requirements, there is nothing I can recommend to you, from a sci-fi perspective, at least.
No, you are completely wrong.

Science Fantasy need not have anything to do with space-castles and knights and dragons, in fact it rarely does; and while we're at it in general fantasy need not have anything to do with the perverted bastard child of Tolkien known as the "Generic fantasy setting."

Though the line between Science Fiction and Science Fantasy is a vague one; it amounts to the plausibility based on our current understanding of science. If it's plausible Science Fiction if not Fantasy. Rod Sterling defined the difference as "the improbable made possible vs the impossible made probable."

Anything with magic/psychic like powers such as "the force" would definitively fit into fantasy as there is no current such scientific basis for such phenomena.

Though most things called Science Fiction, would technically be Science Fantasy now days because no one cares about the science anymore, and most forms of FTL exist either in gross defiance of the known laws of physics, have no current scientific foundation for existing, or the power consumption would be something along the lines of 9 stars.

The definition of something does shift as science fiction becomes science fact, and fantasy becomes fiction.

P.S. in regards to the thread question; most games I would have recommended have already been mentioned, but here's a upcoming game that might fit your criteria.

http://www.gog.com/game/starcrawlers
http://starcrawlers.com/
 

Lavaeolus

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Nov 17, 2014
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It's hard to decide where to draw the lines of "fantasy", and more importantly where to draw the lines of "medieval". Star Wars is essentially space fantasy, and your own definition of fantasy seems pretty broad itself, but RPGs tend to be very Tolkienesque -- half the earlier ones were directly based on D&D, which knicked a lot of ideas.

I'd give a mention to Morrowind, though it's one you likely know. It's an Elder Scrolls game, but unlike the others takes place in the Dunmer homeland, which is a lot more alien. You've got the swords, the shields, the armour, and even spears, but the land's full of exotic creatures (this [http://img3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20141211235520/elderscrolls/images/2/23/Silt_Strider_by_mage_116.jpg] is the equivalent of Skyrim's horse-driven cart fast travel), Dunmer culture is fairly unique, and houses are being built out of mushroom and crap. Key roleplaying moments come from deciding whether you're more loyal to the Imperial side of things or the ancient traditions of the Dunmer, but on the whole your character rarely speaks and characterization is left to your mind. So, this may not be your kind of thing, it's not too un-medieval, and it's also really pretty antiquated and the early game is hell. Still, could be worth a look.

I trust the Bloodlines you mention playing is the Vampire one? A lot of people are recommending it, though if you've already played it moot point.

Jade Empire is a game that bridges BioWare's KotOR and Mass Effect, essentially. Silent protagonist, you pick between lines of dialogue, there's a morality meter with some more nuance than light-side/dark-side but ultimately tends to be between being a puppy-kicker or a saint. The gameplay itself is sort of like a beat-up, though you get a single companion to take with you and develop different "styles" or abilities. The setting's the main draw. It draws a lot on martial arts and takes place somewhere heavily inspired by ancient China, and plays with some of those ideas like your old master and early on your rival, as well as some overarching ideas like order and harmony.

My own avatar comes from Fallout: New Vegas, and this is where we push the ideas of fantasy. Fallout has a lot of fantastical elements, the robots, the supermutants, the ghouls, ridiculous retrofuture technology, and of course a radioactive wasteland filled with giant scorpions and all other nasties. Nonetheless, your character is a relatively normal person -- they survived a shot to the head and prove essentially a one-man army by the end of it, but that's games for you -- and the core conflict is between two relatively down-to-Earth factions, Caesar's Legion (an anti-technology nod to ancient Rome, though far more rigid and absolutely not multicultural) and the NCR (an attempted recreation of modern day democracy, moreorless, though there are more flaws with them than that might initially suggest). Two factions, however, are far more fantastical, with heavy use of robots with old-school '50s cartoon faces. It also stretches the meaning of "RPG". It has dialogue, speech checks, character creation, karma and faction reputation, a variety of skills, gear, sidequests, some perks you can get on level-ups, and these are all pretty important, but generally the gameplay often feels quite like a regular shooter (though you can run a melee build, or try to use stealth as well, and so on).
 

Arqus_Zed

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templar1138a said:
Snipped to save space.
Jeez, picky much?

Fantasy without medieval setting.
No sci-fi.
No JRPGS.
PC only.
Has to be recent (no Arcanum).
Had to have limited amount of text (no Planescape).
No RPG Maker games.

Have you ever considered the maybe the RPG genre just isn't for you? How about you go give Call of Duty a try instead?

Anyway, top of my hat, ignoring the "I don't like JRPGs because I can't create my own character"-comment, the only games I can think of are Valkyria Chronicles and Sudeki. And even then, Sudeki is more an 'okay' game than a great one.

However, if you wanted to indulge yourself in some awesome RPG goodness without being so close-minded, I would recommend the Shadow Hearts series (or at least the first two). Yes, they're over a decade old, PS2-only and *gasp* JRPGs even! But if you want to take a break from Medieval settings, these games provide just that. They take place right before and during the First World War - with magic, demons and harmonixers of course. Plus, they're one of the few JRPGs where you can breeze through the game without having to grind.

FPLOON said:
Corruption of Champions... It's a fantasy RPG all right... *wink wink*

Other than that, I honestly got nothing... All my other recommendations have been said already...
The fact that I actually know that game disturbs me less than the fact that you're right about it being one of the only other options out there adhering to all the OP's demands.
 

templar1138a

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dangoball said:
Good suggestions, but unfortunately:

I have in fact played TOR. Actually, it's one of my favorites in terms of characterization and roleplaying. Unfortunately, the MMO aspects of it got less and less tolerable, even when I learned how to auto-reject guild and group invites. I finally stopped playing completely when I realized it only allowed me to max out companion character loyalty for one per PC without a subscription. That was the cherry on top of the aggravation that was going through a crafting cycle with my alts every couple of levels so I wouldn't need to do a ridiculous amount of grinding to survive at the non-subscriber XP rate. Sometimes I want to go back to that game, but it's just not worth the MMO parts. And it saddens me that I've come to that conclusion.

I tried Arx Fatalis. I don't remember what exactly turned me off from it, but I think it had something to do with clunky controls.

I've known the Wizardry games since I was a kid (my dad played them since the first). I've beaten Wiz 8. I sometimes want to start a party in Wiz 6 and go through the last three games, but the character creation process before Wiz 8 is terrible.

Still, it's good to know there's a game-length mod for Bloodlines. I'll give that a look. Thanks for the reply that wasn't uselessly criticizing my request.
 

templar1138a

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Metalmacher said:
Dragonball Z Xenoverse takes place in the future, you can make a character of your own, and it has RPG elements. Bam!
Really? I wouldn't think you could make your own character. I'll look into it, thanks.
 

Fieldy409_v1legacy

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Shadowrun! All of the Shadowrun! Orcs and trolls with cybernetic enhancements coming at you with katanas whilst their wizard buddy who learned his magic on the streets throws fireballs at you.

Meanwhile Dragons rule the world by being in charge of the immensely powerful megacorporations and manipulate events to suit their milennia long plans and as magic increases in the world we get ever closer to that point where the horrors can cross over into our reality and kill everyone to usher in another non magical era...
 

Lavaeolus

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templar1138a said:
Still, it's good to know there's a game-length mod for Bloodlines. I'll give that a look. Thanks for the reply that wasn't uselessly criticizing my request.
While the gameplay in "Final Nights" is drastically changed, even without the replacement of all the clans with wholly new ones (and not just reskins), as far as I know the general plot main missions remain the same. Occasionally bosses might be switched out -- the monster at Gallery Noir was entirely different, when I last played it -- but to call it a whole new game is a bit of an exaggeration, and an exaggeration its creators are, naturally, prone to emphasise. Not to insult or undermine the content it does add. It's still a very impressive mod, a real testament to the amount of fan love that's gone into the game.

Similarly, the Unofficial Patches are still being worked on, and at this point create a really different atmosphere for the game by themselves. New "restored" levels/parts of maps added, Toreadors given the ability to actually use Presence in dialogue, chances to gain new non-clan disciplines by talking to Beckett... This does mess with what a "patch" is generally meant to be, but I think this is largely the Plus patch, with the Basic patch being a lot more faithful to the original game. I'd be all up for recommending you replay Bloodlines. Could be interesting, see how things have "changed" since you last did a playthrough.

But then, if given free reign of the world I'd probably start planting Bloodlines flags and posting Bloodlines posters everywhere.