Top RPGs of All Time? I Can’t Say…

Posted by Rampant Coyote on September 12, 2012

IGN is releasing a multi-part article about the Top 100 RPGs of All Time, which caused the inevitable lashback and arguments. Which is exactly what these kinds of lists are supposed to do, I think. If they serve no other purpose, causing discussion (often heated) about classic computer and console RPGs is a wonderful thing. Many people responded by publishing their own personal lists of favorites. IGN isn’t done yet, and I’ve got my own arguments about the relative placement of certain games, I don’t think I’m going to heap criticism on it now, or when it is complete.

Actually, it’s a pretty good opportunity for me to find out about some games that I’m missing from my collection, and see if I can correct that.

One of the “duh” realizations that I’ve made over the last few years of being an RPG developer is that people play CRPGs for different reasons. The tactical decision-making on a personal, per-character level that I love so much is tiresome to many players, and while almost everybody loves a good story, the importance of the story to players relative to other game aspects (like choosing your own path through the game rather than following a fixed storyline) may vary quite a bit.  What this boils down is there’s no optimal design for RPGs – every single element is a compromise, a calculated risk of losing some of your audience in an effort to grow it elsewhere – to delight one subset at the risk of boring another. There’s simply no objective way to rate them.

Case in point: For some reason I really enjoyed the indie title Knights of the Chalice more than the bigger-budget game that inspired it, the Temple of Elemental Evil. Maybe it’s because the latter game crashed on me too often and left a bad taste in my mouth. I don’t know. On paper, ToEE was a far more comprehensive and interesting (not to mention prettier) game.  Maybe Knights‘ simpler graphics made it easier to calculate positions, or it offered a cleaner subset of gameplay, or it simply got rid of some of the more frustrating “make-work” of its predecessor. I’d have to play both of ’em again to analyze it.

Similarly – I don’t know why I could never get past the first eight to ten hours of Final Fantasy XII. But it marked the “final” Final Fantasy for me. It was technically excellent, highly polished, and… boring. It sent me back to re-playing 6, 7, and 8.

And then, as a lone dude who spent more time making games than playing them, I have some pretty major gaps in my experience – which I seek to fill, but with an ever-increasing load of new, indie, and re-available classic games filling my hard drive, I can’t even pretend to keep up. I’ve been much more of a PC gamer than a console gamer, though I have favorites amongst both types of games (and, as I’ve stated before,  western / eastern / console / computer RPGs are really much more of a mish-mash than they were during the 1990s). But a lot of those glaring gaps are where console games should be.  I think the point I got stuck on in Chrono Trigger was a little action sequence that was perhaps impossible to beat on my emulator, I dunno, but as a result I never finished it and it has never made my list of favorites. SHOCK! But as I keep playing old classics now for the first time (like Anachronox) and newer games (Inquisitor is waiting patiently on my hard drive for me to run it for the first time…), my own list keeps changing. And I can’t really say if Ultima VII is for sure my favorite anymore, until I really get around to giving them (2 games + 2 expansions) a full playthrough again. Though I suspect they’d still be in my top 5.

My enjoyment of some games just really depends upon my mood and preferences at the time. I never really fell in love with Morrowind the way I did its predecessors or successors, yet I think if I started playing it again today you might not hear from me again for several weeks. Others – well, while so much of Vampire the Masquerade: Redemption was done just wrong, I’ve played through it twice and greatly enjoyed it… if only for the excellent mood and story. And apparently I have a thing for purple exposition.

And it would depend on my audience. If I was trying to show a new gamer the “best” RPGs to play today, I might omit some of my all-time favorites for the sake of easing them into it with more modern titles. If I wanted to show someone historical high-points throughout the history of the genre, I’d be reaching back to games like Wizardry 1 and Ultima IV. For other would-be RPG designers, I’d have quite a list of games I feel every RPG-creator ought to play (and a few more that I am told I should play).

The bottom line is that we’ve got an amazing legacy in this genre of games, regardless of how you rate or rank them, which continues to grow at a very healthy rate – particularly now that indies have moved in with conviction. I don’t care if you hated one of my favorites (well, okay, I may care a little), but let’s keep talking about them!

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