2011 Rpg Goty

Post your opinions of the RPG games you've played this year.

Witcher 2: GOTY winner for me (So far)
Time: 50 Hours (Multiple endings/choices)
Combat: Sword fighting, dodging, rolling, traps, potions are the best I've seen in any RPG to date.
Questing/Story: The chapter 2 having two different quest lines was a great idea. Best replay value of any single player game for me so far. The most engrossing and compelling so far in my time of playing RPG games (recent). Every quest, even the side quests furthered my appreciation for the story line. And I was actually interested in the conspiracy of Assassin of Kings and the mystery of Geralt's missing time and dreams.
Visual/Sound: No question the best. The level of detail on the textures, the colors and post-processing are astonishing. I usually hate sun glare in games, but in Witcher 2 it's almost photo-realistic. The way the rays filter through the forest surprised me when I first saw it. POM was features, lots of 3D textures. The colors were vibrant, and the flames and smoke were 2nd to none. The voice acting was good.
Decision Making: This is where Witcher 2 shines. I decided who lived and died. No one died unless I wanted the to die. Every decision in this game had consequences and CD Projekt respected me enough as a gamer to make them.
Overall: So far this gets my GOTY for RPG. For me, I began to enjoy playing these RPG games for the story, the quests. Witcher 2 is the best in that regard for me.

Skyrim: Runner up (Work in Progress)
Time: I know this will be most time spent. My guess at least 60-100 hours.
Combat: Hack and slash. The melee is awful. I do not like it at all. The random kill shots are also annoying, they look very out of place and disrupt the flow of combat. The destruction magic combat is the best though. I enjoy playing as mage, dual wielding spells was a great idea. Moving freely as casting spells also enjoyable.
Questing/Story: The quests and dungeons are great. The main story line so far is very much lacking and uninteresting. Overall this game hasn't offered me anything that pulls me in or captivates my attention like Witcher 2 does. It's very easy for me to log off from Skyrim as there is no I wonder what will happen next feeling.
Visual/Sound: Voice acting decent enough. Visually the game is a mix. The design, textures, weather, landscapes and vegetation are all great. Skyrim overall has a great atmospheric feel to it. But the detail of textures is not as high as I'd expect for a PC release. The bloom/HDR was much overdone. There are odd performance issues where framerate just drops randomnly. All the textures are 2D and flat. Hair doesn't appear and flow as it should. Though materials look nice, and they do not look plasticky.
Decision Making: So far in Skyrim is lacking. So far the only decisions I've come across is whether I do it or not. No consequences for it really. Just whatever I feel like, whim. I foresee decision making in this game not having much impact in the main quest line, the decision I make will have a more overall impact on who my character is. Will be an interesting experience.
Overall: This game so far is runner up. It's a work in progress so my opinion may change at a later time. My biggest issue with Skyrim is nothing really compels me to want to stay in game. After finishing a quest or a dungeon, I want to log off. Had enough for the time being.

DA2:
Time: Completed in 30 hours.
Combat: Arcade
Questing / Story: Fetch quests, going to the same locations repeatedly, most of the quests seem very random. Main quest line has no consequences, result is always the same. Didn't matter what I decided.
Visual/Sound: Voice acting is top notch, the best of 2011 RPGs. Visually it was unappealing. The character and armor all looked very odd, the proportions were weird. Very cartoonie, but the textures were not cel shaded or like WoW, so it looks out of place. The textures were all flat. Repeated textures was just unappealing. Level of detail very poor. Materials in this game are all very plasticky looking.
Decision Making: Who cares. Result is the same. Doesn't matter.
Overall: Disappointing. I think DA2 has more similarities with movies than it does with other RPG games.

Deus Ex: HR (Last)
Time: Ongoing (5 hours)
Combat: Terrible. Gunplay is terrible. The takedowns are all pre-scripted moves. Switching between 3rd person and first person while stealthing is very annoying. Controls for cover system also cumbersome.
Visually/Sound: All very good. Voice acting was find. Visually liked it, very CG anime like.
Story/Quests: Disappointing. All ripped from Ghost in the Shell. Except Ghost in the Shell conspiracy over augmentation, especially neural augmentations in GITS was so much superior than Deus Ex:HR. Even visually the game seemed to be ripped from GITS. The helicopters and designs, the augmentations, are very much GITS ripped.
Decision Making: Haven't encountered anything yet and about half way through the game.
Overall: Not interesting. I've already seen every GITS movie and series multiple times. I don't need to see a game with a different title with nothing original and seemingly everything ripped from Japanese cyber anime, is just disappointing.

 

I'm surprised you ranked Dragon Age II above Deus Ex.

 

When RPG and general GotY awards are announced, Skyrim will get more than the Witcher 2 purely on lineage and studio size, but they should both go home with at least a couple. If Skyrim didn't get one, how would they release the GotY edition in 8-12 months?

 

i havent played those games yet but ive played their predecessors.
just like you, i want a more structured storyline so i will get witcher 2 before skyrim.
elder scrolls games appeal more to classical rpg purists where you can go on your own and find quests and such. in fact, i found the sidequests of oblivion more endearing than the main quest.
oh da2 i played. good game but pales in comparison to me2. also i think its not in the same league as skyrim and tw2.
deus ex i havent played yet but from what ive seen in forums its a love it or hate it kinda thing.

 

im also a litlle more partial to tw2 since they support pc.

 

Not here to discuss what bloggers from IGN, Gamespot think. I'm asking you to post your opinion.

GOTY awards should be decided by gamers anyway, not bloggers. Especially bloggers who review all their games on consoles...

 

1. Skyrim for me and i ve been posting around it for few days already.
2. Then Deus Ex
3. Then Witcher2

Witcher 2 is WAY too linear. Its linear like nothing else, if you think about it you dont have ANY choice there pretty much, you cant even choose weapon for the most part, there is just best in slot and for all. Even Deus Ex has bigger world and more options, more things to explore, hidden stuff, some backstories etc. Another major thing that let witcher down — its lack of optimisation, i couldnt play it for the first month even on completely lowest settings, which prolly killed a lot of the hype as well.

 

As a huge RPG fan, witcher 2 wins my vote for RPG GOTY too, definitely one of the best RPG I have played in years.

The story and lots of elements of game like violence, romance, story telling, language etc, are fashioned in very mature ways, all major characters have a very deep connection to something of the great interest, you can only learn some of their intriguing motives as the story progresses, and at some point of the game some of their cunning truly shocked me way beyond my expectation. I used to think DA:O had great character designs, but compared to Witcher 2's characters, they are way too simple-minded and shallow, heck even the romance of DA:O/DA2 was done at teenager-level in comparison.

And to those who think the game is too linear? The game has multiple choices you can choose from at ALMOST EVERY QUEST except those monster contracts, at the end of chapter 1 the game splits into two totally different paths, after which you will be doing completely different quests in completely different places. Some of the choices are really hard to made(pretty much like in real life), like being a great lover to save a woman you love or being a patriot and save a child that your country's future hinges upon, or like handing over an injustice-driven hatred infused criminal to the unjust "authority" or help her escape in hope of gaining something in return.

As for gameplay, it's pretty challenging and fun, it's not a game you hack-slash everything and steamroll your way to the end, you have make use of everything like traps, signs, bombs, potions etc, almost everything to make out alive, especially on higher difficulties, combined with constant dodge, parry, riposte with your sword, I have hell loads of fun playing.

About graphics, there isn't much about to say about it because it's currently THE BEST LOOKING RPG up to date, and it's miles of ahead of any RPG graphically, pure and simple, truly stunning and gorgeous.

Edit: on a side note, DA2 shouldn't be even on the list, it's a mass disappointment as a sequel of an amazingly well made game.

 

If you've only played DXHR for 5 hours, you aren't halfway through the game.

I don't see how anyone can think that DA2 is better than DXHR. They should have just called it Dragon Age: Kirkwall. You literally just run around a city (that isn't even that big) doing errands for people.

 

Dark Souls is my RPG GOTY. Great atmosphere, best combat system I've ever played, difficult, freedom to build/play/explore, single player with great multiplayer aspects if you want to use them, only problem is that its only on consoles. I could go on and on. I'm currently 25 hours into skyrim and I loved the witcher 2 but the combat in dark souls is so much better. It is so much tighter and satisfying than skyrim'ss combat and offers way more flexibility of combat styles than the witcher 2.

 

Interesting. I wish Dark Souls was available on PC.

But let's keep it to PC since we are a notebookreview forum.

I think this will be a great thread for anyone looking for a RPG to play from 2011 if they haven't yet, or looking to give someone a RPG PC game for Christmas as well.

 

Skyrim and DA2 are the only ones I have played so far and between those two it is Skyrim hands down.

TW2 looks really good and I enjoyed the first Witcher so I will definitely be spending some time with it once my new gaming rig finally arrives. Playing on an E6500 right now and that just wont do it any justice. Looking at screenshots of TW2 it will easily beat Skyrim in terms of graphics. Also, if the combat is as good as or better than The Witcher it will have my vote there as well. My guess is that the thing that will put it second on my list instead of first will be the limitedness of the story. Yes, there are choices and different endings, but it still doesn't allow you to go anywhere and do anything. Like Trvelbug mentioned there are some RPG players that prefer the open sandbox go anywhere do anything type of games like TES is known for. I am one of those types of gamers so I'm sure my vote would go to Skyrim. Unless it really disappoints me, which I doubt, I will still very much enjoy TW2 just like I did the first one. Just not as much as the huge open world of Skyrim.

 

2011 has been an amazing year for RPG's. I didn't buy a single one released in 2010 but this year so far I have dark souls, skyrim, and the witcher 2. All 3 are masterpieces and if any one of them had been released in 2010 they would have been my rpg goty easily. Whats great is that all 3 are different enough that I have not gotten bored playing any of them. I haven't even purchased Deus Ex yet but its different enough from the other 3 that I'm sure I will enjoy it when I have time. Now if only Diablo 3 and Guild Wars 2 had not been pushed back to 2012...

 

Skyrim no doubt. Only thing TW2 has over all of them is the graphics, the plot was ok. The only part of the plot that stands out and continues to stand out to me was the background story of Geralt the rest just felt like filler to a bigger picture.

 

Yeah, just being facetious. I haven't played any of them yet and probably won't for at least a couple years (heck, Oblivion, The Witcher, and even Deus Ex: Invisible War are still on my to-do list).

From what I've heard about them, though, I would probably end up ranking them in the following order for the following reasons:

1 - Skyrim - I'm of the school that prefers open-world, follow-your-own-path gameplay over a hand-holding story. Not that linear games can't be enjoyed, but I prefer to explore if it's possible.

2 - The Witcher 2 - See above, mostly, but my little experience of The Witcher so far (8-10 hours I think) was pretty underwhelming. I really didn't like the "time your clicks" style of fighting - it's too gimmicky, reminds me of action sequences in Indigo Prophecy or the God of War games. I hate, hate, hate 'push X to not die' in games, so anything that reminds me of that style is nuts in my book. In the end, combat just felt like a gimmick with clear right and wrong fighting style and weapon choices for different enemies and a series of clicking buttons to achieve results that in real life don't have anything to do with clicking buttons. I guess that mostly comes down to the fact that in-depth melee combat is really difficult to recreate with current gaming technology, so what we get instead is a lot of pretty animations along with a challenging but arbitrary control scheme.

3 - DA2 - I had fun playing Mass Effect, but it's a mixture of linear segments and irrelevant, shallow side quests so it doesn't really stand out in the end. I imagine that being from the same developer the Dragon Age games would probably feel the same to me, and I hear that DA2 is the worse of the two by far, so bad form. Also, is it just me, or did anybody else have to hold in a chuckle a couple years ago at the notion that a AAA game with an enormous budget was given such a sophomoric name as "Dragon Age"? I like to imagine that a nine year-old was behind that one.

Irrelevant - Deus Ex - Human Revolution - I'm a huge fan of Deus Ex from way back when, and it definitely gave me faith in the concept of a hybrid FPS-RPG, but not only do I not have any experience to know whether or not this is a worthy successor, but Deus Ex doesn't deliver anything like the experience even of other FPS-RPGs like, say, Fallout 3. Yes, it's an RPG by technical definitions, but really it's a different kind of game so I don't have any interest in comparing it to the more traditional RPGs above.

 

While, unfortunately, I haven't been able to beat TW2 yet, or play Skyrim, I'm pretty sure Skyrim will win RPG GOTY 2011 hands down.

I say this because the Witcher has a generally small following, while Bethseda games, specifically TES series, tend have a sort of cult following and have way more publicity attached to them than smaller developers/pusblishers.

Even is Skryim was terrible the die hard TES fans would follow it to the game's grave, but if the Witcher 2 had only been mediocre everyone would have wrote it off as an awful, or decent at best, game.

 

Just wanted to say, do yourself a favor and skip Invisible War. It sucks.

 

You should have made a poll.

 

Thought about it, but I thought there is probably an RPG out there I didn't play or know about that someone else loved the most for 2011.

Plus it's more of people to do a quick blog of why they thought one game was GOTY for them and compare it to other competing games.

 

Simple solution: list the four you listed, and then put a fifth category of "other (specify)". Given that Deus Ex, Skyrim, and TW2 are options, very few people will vote for "other." (And nobody will vote for DA2, I'm sure).

 

1. The Witcher II
2. Deus Ex
3 Skyrim

Dragon Age 2 ? You've got to be kidding...................right ?

 

Well, theres like 2 RPG of the years, for console and for PC.

Console race is between Skyrim and darksouls
PC race is between Witcher 2 and Skyrim.

I wish Witcher 2 would win just on the basis of how great CDprojektRed is as a developing studio. They are hard supporters of PC gaming, really put the most work and dedication to the games they make as well as their customers and fan base. Look at the recent patch 2.0...free for what other companies would charge at least 10 dollars. Anyways, this isn't about the games themselves, Im just a big fanboy of CDprojektred


On a more interesting note, worst PC RPG of the year?

1. Fable 3 by a HUGE margin. This game has to be one of the worst RPGS ever made, EVER.

 

I think I still have to hand it to DA2 (granted I've never played any of the Fable series). It's like they said "welp, Dragon Age was a resounding success, so let's change everything and slap Dragon Age II on the front of the box!" The only thing I thought was an improvement was the quickbar combat stuff, but the actual combat, which basically consisted of hitting bad guys to pieces, was pretty crappy.

 

Skyrim /thread

Witcher 2 was great but Skyrim is Skyrim

 

Dragon 2 made a few improves, abeit taking a few - many steps back depending on your view. I thought that combat was funner mainly because of the new inter-class synergies which made the planning and leveling up something huge to look forward to. Though combat on the whole was dragged down by the uninspiring enemies throughout the game, too much mob, too many grunts made it seem like a hack and slash game. Shame, because the tactically side of combat was quite deep, just nothing challenging to use it on.

Even though Dragon age 2 was bad, it had content..at least 15-20 hours of solid content. Fable 3 had maybe 1.5-2.

 

Going to have to say Skyrim... It is inevitable as that is what all the reviewers and aggregate majority will say.

Personally, I have a soft-spot for Deus EX: HR to be GotY over Skyrim as Deus Ex was pretty good in its own right.

Witcher 2 is impressive but it is still going to be outclassed from the longer, more-famous IP's of Deus Ex and TES.

Dragon Age 2 was a huge disappointment and doubt will win GotY.

 

Deus Ex deserves it for sure. I'm a huge elder scrolls fan, but that was the best experience I've had since Mask of the Betrayer.

 

I can say with all certainty that Skyrim with be GotY, the sheer number of people playing it over games like MW3 surprised me and 95/100 on Metacritic doesn't hurt either .

Another thing I can say for sure is that it will get so much better with age as Oblivion did. The modding community will work on it to polish out the crap that Bethesda managed to leave behind and add quest lines that will likely double the playtime.

I jokingly said to a friend how amazing it would be if they could port Cyrodiil into Skyrim .