SlumlordThanatos said:
Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 2.
Mostly it was because it was unfinished and a lot of content was cut. Obsidian also didn't quite get to end the game the way she wanted to due to time constraints. That being said, the game is a brilliant, brutal deconstruction of the Star Wars universe that is easily in my personal Top 5.
Also one of my favourites. Not only was it a deconstruction of the Star Wars universe, but it also served as a wider commentary on RPGs and RPG tropes in general.
Others:
Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines - I cannot NOT mention this, seeing as it's my favourite game, and all. It's
still be best vampire game as well as being the best Vampire game. It has great atmosphere, great voice acting, great and colourful characters. A really distilled World of Darkness feel that it captures the universe quite well without trying to overdo it. Moreover, the mechanics are interesting and rather distinct...even, when they shouldn't be - you get XP by doing quests, not by just randomly killing people. And a lot of the quests have several approaches to them - talking, sneaking, killing everybody - choice is yours. And this is where flaws do show up - towards the end of the game this starts to break down and there are more fight-y levels with less of a leeway. It's also what shows how engaging the rest of the game is, as the fight-y parts are the ones that are more boring than the rest of the game. There are also quite a lot of bugs and problems with the game that have plagued it from the beginning and some even persist today after literally years of fan made fixes. The Unofficial Patch [http://www.patches-scrolls.de/patch/4647/7/72004] is now at version 9.4 and has fixed most of the things that could be fixed -
Wesp5 (current owner and lead of the UP) has said that he expects version 9.5 to be the last one released.
Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura - also one of my favourite games. Incidentally, also made by Troika games - the ones who were responsible for Bloodlines. It's an older title that is top down and...the UI is not as good as it could have been, let's say - it's a product of its time. That's not actually its problem, though - the UI works, it's just a bit obtuse in places. No, the game has problems with crashing, some bugs that persist even through it's own unofficial patch [http://terra-arcanum.com/drog/dest/uap.html] but also there are some problems with mechanics that are a bit outdated[footnote]for example, weapons break. Sure, they also do so in other games, but not with such frequency. There is a section in the game where you go in some caves and there is quite a lot of monsters there that wear out your weapons quite fast. It's quite a notorious quest since the lack of proper weapons makes it such a slog - not helped by the fact that the area is quite long as well. Best advice for there is to fill inventories with pipes and bats and other cheap weapons and just keep swapping them as they get destroyed.[/footnote] or broken[footnote]easy example - max out your Dexterity and you become a god. More dex gieves you more action points in battle and the more action points you have, the sooner you act. Capping an attribute gives you an extra bonus - for dex, that's more AP! You can literally start a combat and murder everything before they have a chance to react.[/footnote]. However, beyond those lies a
beautiful game - the setting is quite distinct, even if a bit derivative - it's more or less D&D during the industrial revolution. Necromancer can travel in steam trains, half-ogres fly planes, and so on. I find it quite fascinating as it mixes the fantastic, the traditional magic and the steampunk. The gameplay allows for quite a lot of agency to the player - you can do various quests in various ways, you can also focus on technology or magick. You even have the freedom of killing everybody in the game
and still finishing it. You don't like somebody who gives you a quest instead of revealing the information you need? Murder them right then and there, use Black Necromancy to summon and bind their soul and just command them to give you the information you need. The story itself I also find to be a masterfully told - follows the "chosen one" but also subverts expectations and throws a lot of murky situations for a game that has a good/evil meter[footnote]on a separate note: just look at it! [http://vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net/arcanum/images/7/7a/Zanalurin.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20140619044106] It's the thing on the left hand side. It's an actual meter! I love how it's represented
[/footnote].
Arx Fatalis: you may find a pattern emerges here. This game is also one of my favourites. And yeah, it's flawed. It seems I like games...that have an "r" in the name. Or maybe that are flawed yet have a lot to show despite it. One of the two. At any rate - Arx Fatalis is the first game by Arkane Studios, the ones who later created Dishonored. The game's story is a bit cliche where you play an amnesiac and there is a big evil that's about to destroy the world, also there are goblins and ogres and medieval level tech. Aside from those there are some bugs, some things that need more poilish, and some later quests are harder than they need to be only because it's not obvious what/how to go about them. Still, at any rate, the game has one of the best magic systems that I've played with - you cast spells by drawing runes on the screen. Different rune combinations give you different spells - Aam (Create) + Yok (Fire) lights up torches, Aam + Taar (Projectile) shoots a magic missle, Aam + Yok + Taar throws a fire ball. The combinations make sense, even if not all permutations are covered. You can pre-cast a limited number of spells and then just release them when you feel like it, like in combat. You could cast in combat but you have to manage it while avoiding getting your face being bashed in. It also just
feels better to be a mage, as opposed to many other games - characters with high intelligence get to cast more complex spells (which consist of more runes) and can pre-cast more spells. Aside from the, frankly, brilliant magic system, the game offers multiple approaches to many situations and an interesting setting and story - it's all set in tunnels underground, since the sun of the planet stopped working and plunged the surface into bitter cosmic cold, hence why everybody fled underground. As I said, the story is a bit cliche with the big bad being the god of destruction trying to...well, destroy the world once and for all and your task being to stop that from happening. However, the world is fleshed out with the various factions doing their own things, races having their own interests, as well as a lot of NPCs having their own things to do and also, for its time it was amazing, but some had schedules! You'd go to the smith only to find that he has closed down his shop to go home and sleep. Quite cool.
