Best RPG Game (All Platforms)

[Foodie_Monster]

Vote and Explain Why.

[shadowslayer]

My vote would have to go to Persona 3. The greatest RPG of our time(Mine, Anyway)

The sheer amount of stuff they give you to do in that game is amazing, the whole dating-sim aspect just made it that more fun... in between killing zombies.

Plus, Super Mario RPG didn't come out this year.

[Octocamo]

Wtf, no Two Worlds?

Awards are hard.

[Dungeonbuster]

The Witcher. Deeply customizable gameplay, detailed world, and a fantastic blurring between good and evil that makes it the most "mature" RPG in years. Good choices don't necessarily mean that they're the right ones, everyone tends to act like scum, and the hero is just in it for the coin. Awesome fun taking me back to the days of Fallout and Planescape.

[arefx]

without-a-doubt mass effect.

[Kropotkin]

Despite it being riddled with a trite story Mass Effect was good fun. Even if the dialogue tree was a bit smoke and mirrors like and the warthog like vehicle was a pain to drive and shoot from...hmmmm

[AmazedsatSuma]

Mass effect is the best RPG I played all year, granted it was the only RPG I brought this year >.>

[eswat]

Mass Effect for sure. Just wished it ran as smooth as Eternal Sonata. BioWare really screwed up in the optimization department.

[Ezekiel]

Oh yeah, there's no reason for Mass Effect chugging along like it did other than I think it was a tincy bit rushed out of the door.

Either way, it got my vote.

[SeymourBewty]

Mass Effect for me as well. While it wasn't perfect, and certainly not the greatest story of our time, the graphics, gameplay, and story had me sucked in enough for me to play through it twice, and even think about starting another character!

[Moggraider]

I had some trouble deciding whether Persona 3 or Mass Effect should be RPG of the year. The two are very different games, across two separate generations, so it almost seems unfair to compare them. Mass Effect is a great game, but it has some flaws, so I think in the end I'd give the nod to Persona 3. Everyone else has written plenty about Mass Effect, so I want to gush about the underappreciated Persona 3 anyway.

Persona 3 does great things with the JRPG genre. The battle system adopts the other Shin Megami Tensei games' "press turn" mechanic. That means doing things like exploiting an enemy's weakness grants you an extra turn, while bumbling something, like whiffing an attack, loses you a turn. This makes you think about fighting more strategically than the Final Fantasy games ever would, yet the game is nice enough to still include an auto-battle mechanic for when you want to turn off the old brain. The battles are fast and fun. The characters in your party have some great interactions with each other, so it's never tiring to forge on.

The other important part of the battle system is the equipping of personas. Personas are elemental monsters with unique sets of attacks. You can only have one persona equipped at a time, but you can switch during battle. Each persona has a different level, and you can fuse two or three personas to create a new, different kind, so the whole thing is like Pokemon, except a little more rewarding and, uh, morbid.

The music in the game is great. It's hip electronica with lots of vocal samples. Shoji Meguro has done it again; his soundtracks have been a great part of Nocturne and the Digital Devil Saga games too. The cinematics in the game are excellent. They're beautiful and moody, fitting in well with the gothy theme of the game.

The game is split between battling in a 250-floor dungeon, and being a Japanese high school student. The dialogue is a real strong point of the game. As a student, it's your job to develop friendships with people in different cliques at the school. This gives the many characters in the games plenty of opportunity to show off. They're so funny. Right now, my best friends in the game are a dorky guy in love with his teacher, and a lonely girl who apparently spends her entire life playing an out-of-date MMO. There are tons of other characters all in different situations, and it's funny to see the outcomes of their stories. Plus, you can even get a girlfriend!

The key to tying together the high school social stuff and the battle system is the social link system. Making friends with different characters at the school develops your social link with particular classes of personas, so that when you equip them, they get a stat boost. This effectively makes Persona a deeper RPG than most, because of the game-within-a-game system of being a high school student.

http://moggraider.1up.com

[GenoBaby]

Mass Effect does have it's issues but if you're comparing it to the other nominees there's no question.

[Moggraider]

There's a question. First, there's a question because you don't seem to know the difference between "it's" and "its!" Second, there's a question because Mass Effect's developers overpromised and underdelivered.

The conversation that was shown off in previews was so much more advanced than what the final game has. Conversations could be interrupted and would flow naturally, but the final system was nothing like that.

Mass Effect was also almost like KOTOR light. Bioware's characters haven't been this boring since Baldur's Gate I. Only Wrex was interesting, and the romance plots were underdeveloped. And the sidequests had almost no effort put into them. The facilities you'd go through in a sidequest were interchangeable, and so were the enemies.

The sidequests were dull and I stopped doing them almost outright once I got to the thirteen-hour mark. The sidequest on the moon was what made me stop. I got a cool prestige class reward for doing it, but the task itself was boring, and the designers passed up a great opportunity to inject some personality into the game. You have to take down a Rogue AI, and it doesn't say a word to you? Lame! It could've been spouting literary quotes at you as it set traps, or something. Instead, you just take out some goons and then go to six different rooms filled with computers and blow them up. When the AI dies, it just issues a few binary numbers and sputters out. It didn't even have a voice actor. Weak.

ALSO, the vehicle sections of the game were AWFUL. I hope the 1.1 patch lets you skip the vehicle sections entirely. The physics were bad, the aiming was bad, the vehicle combat was bad, everything!

The economy of the game was also poorly implemented, as was the buying, selling, and inventory. You'd get tons of guns all the time and it was incredibly easy to get the best equipment possible.

Persona 3, in contrast, gets everything right.

[jamespatrick]

Easily The Witcher. Game is very fun and very well made.

[travelin fool]

Mass Effects story was great.

[Moggraider]

It was half as long as it should've been, and it uses the Bioware cliche of "So that's the REAL villain!" And the story is all sci-fi retreads. I admittedly enjoyed the game a lot, but I hope and expect the sequels to be much improved.

[Kuya_Che]

im mostly a ps3 guy but i vote for Eternal Sonata.
deus ex didnt cut it for me and most people too,
for me Mass Effect is just an overhyped/upressed deus ex game with pron.
i think too human will be a much better game than mass effect.
Eternal Sonata has an engaging story that will totally immerse you in a totally enthusiastic fantasy world. Classic RPG elements are present so new and old fans will not be disappointed. In an RPG the story should be the best aspect
Folklore is pretty game but the story is somewhat generic and the gameplay is not as innovative as it seems.

[Moggraider]

Folklore isn't even an RPG. The other nominees should've been Ar Tonelico, the new Wild Arms, Odin Sphere, and Rogue Galaxy.


I really wanted to play Eternal Sonata because it looked like a funner version of Radiata Stories. I also love any game with the soundtrack by Motoi Sakuraba. I heard that the game was being rereleased on the PS3 with an extra character, though, so now I'm waiting for that. If the rerelease doesn't come out in the US I'll be majorly pissed.

[Binjin]

Going to place my vote for Persona 3. Mass Effect was good, but when the story just drags on and puts me to sleep thats when the story just needs to stop and maybe should of been re-written, twice over.

How ever it does feel a little unfair that a game like Mass Effect, that comes out in November is up on the list, it feels to soon, as the new games will almost always overshadow games that came out in the middle of the year.

[Moggraider]

Movies do that too, on purpose, to help themselves get awards.

[RolexDPracer]

Is there really a choice here? A choice; really?

[Moggraider]

Mass Effect is a big budget title and MS funded its ad campaign well, but that doesn't mean it's far and away the best game. It fails stacked against either of the KOTOR games, for example, and most of you guys voting probably haven't even played The Witcher or Persona 3.

[eswat]

There is obviously a choice here. Given Mass Effect's lack of polish (slightly-unintuitive UI, major texture popup, chuggy framerate, combat glitches, etc.) it isn't anywhere near a perfect game, and IMHO doesn't touch KOTOR.

I'm guilty of voting for it because I've only played Mass Effect, Eternal Sonata and very little of The Witcher (tried it out at a friend's place, and it was certainly appealing). From what I've heard, The Witcher and Persona 3 are great games, and I'd weigh them just the same if I played them.

[Foodie_Monster]

Problem with All Games is that most people are interested in mostly a) American games and b) 360 Games.

So Mass Effect becomes almost the "defacto" choice. Personally, I voted Persona 3 because to me it is the best RPG this year. I was very impressed by The Witcher, but sadly haven't payed enough of it.

[Constrict0r]

The Witcher is awesome. If you own a gaming PC and like RPGs, it's the best one that's come out for a long time. Great atmosphere and storyline, choices matter, cool minigames like dice and 'card' collecting.

[Taker_129]

Folklore. Is Trash Effect even an RPG?

[Exquemelin]

If Odin Sphere was on there I might have voted for that but the closest I come to being a fanboy is Bioware. I still think Baulder's Gate 2 is the greatest RPG ever.

[Curtis]

Mass Effect. Not only is the graphics and sound amazing, it's because of character development and storyline! This RPG is the first to feature real, human-like characters than any other RPG's in the gaming world, even Final Fantasy!

[Octocamo]

Mass Effect. Not only is the graphics and sound amazing, it's because of character development and storyline! This RPG is the first to feature real, human-like characters than any other RPG's in the gaming world, even Final Fantasy!


I like how you vote for something that you haven't even played it. Probably haven't even held the case in a store and read the back of it.

[Digital*Firefly]

and most of you guys voting probably haven't even played The Witcher or Persona 3.

Was Persona 3 even released in the US? I can't seem to find it on any retail website (EB, Best Buy, Circuit City, Target, Gamestop).

honestly, most people can't afford to play every game out there, so they have to vote based on what they played.

[eswat]

Was Persona 3 even released in the US? I can't seem to find it on any retail website (EB, Best Buy, Circuit City, Target, Gamestop).

honestly, most people can't afford to play every game out there, so they have to vote based on what they played.
You won't find it in big boxes like Circuit City or Target. EB and Gamestop did sell them. They probably don't list it anymore as Atlus always make limited copies of their games.

[Digital*Firefly]

They're not on EB or Gamestop now.

[Token White Guy]

Folklore. Is Trash Effect even an RPG?

See. No fanboy posts at all?

[feebleflea]

Mass Effect, but Persona 3 was a close 2nd.

[Vizruy]

Mass Effect

[firestarter]

mass effect- this game has been really addicting for me to play ever since i got it from my friend. not many games do that anymore.

[Davidb69]

Mass Effect is awesome, I can't see that losing to anything except a Final Fantasy title.

[specdoTsign]

Persona 3 for sure. It's no fair that a game this good gets passed up. Square-Enix should acquire Atlus.

[kevcon1]

Hmm.. can't seem to find WOW. Looked under Best Multiplayer Experience and Game of The Year (All Platforms) too. Eve Online either. Mass Effect, I guess.

[eswat]

Looks very promising that I might change my vote from Mass Effect to The Witcher.

[Token White Guy]

Looks very promising that I might change my vote from Mass Effect to The Witcher.

You shut your whore mouth!