Looking for hardcore rpgs

90% of new games i play are complete crap because they r too easy and unoriginal. They r all same with different textures.

The only really good modern rpgs ive played are baldurs gate series, risen 1, last remnant and witcher 1.

I like these games for many induvidual reaseons but in the end they r all quite hardcore. Are there any more rpgs out there that dont hold ur hand?

Of course the game you recommend must be avaliable on steam since i only play steam games.

 

Dark Souls. That is all.

 

Witcher 2 (it must have)

 

Yeah i already played it and it was great i did however like the first one better.

As for Darksouls il probably get it, looks promising

 

Dark Souls is pretty hardcore, the learning curve is steep.

 

Yeah, about Dark Souls.. Hardcore - check. RPG - ummmm..... fine, it has some elements, I guess. Hardcore RPG, though? Nope. You might as well say Deus Ex is a hardcore RPG in that regard.

Risen 1 is considered one of the more lousy RPGs, but if you like this type of games, Divinity 2 is quite fun to play, and may be considered hardcore enough.

So is the Drakensang series, but I found that bit more bland, even though there's nothing wrong with the games themselves.

Alpha Protocol, if you can get past the horrible hacking mini-games, is definitely a diamond in the rough, so give that a go.

STALKER is pretty tough and might be considered RPG like.

There's Arx Fatalis, which is very cool and has an excellent dismemberment model and magic system and you really can't say it is easy or unoriginal.

I'm now playing Morrowind with a huge set of mod packs and Oblivion with graphical and balancing mods (OOO, among them) and both of them can hardly be considered easy in any shape or form, as I'm having my behind handed to me regularly in both of them. Modded Oblivion is especially considered quite a challenge after the walk in the park that is Skyrim.

I'll try to think of a few more.

Edit: A lot of people liked Neverwinter Nights 2, said it is very good, but I was never able to get past the first tutorial, got bored to death for some reason, and I gave it quite a few retries. Maybe I'll try again soon enough.

 

Dark souls, prepare to die edition... fitting title. I was surprised by how hard it was after reading reviews. I though people were just complaining and whining. Enjoy the torture!

 

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Considered by who? I understand why the cod Kids dont like it. I will check out divinity 2 for sure.

I played and finished it and enjoyed it very much

Yeah i just installed staller clear sky and will give it a go tonight.

I only played vanilla oblivion of the elder scrolls series and i hated every bit of it.

I already finishen nwn2 and it was awesome. The start is a little slow though.

 

By most of the industry, actually. Go ahead and like it, but Risen 1 is not a good game, and that's not coming from a 'cod kid'. Anyway, to each his own.

Do give Divinity 2 a go, a very nice game.

I'm playing a heavily modded Oblivion right now, it is a very hardcore and interesting experience, much more than I remembered. A real living world with the OOO mod, very RPG-centric. Try and give it another go once you finish your round of RPGs, what do you have to lose?

What about Drakensang? Arx Fatalis?

 

Divinity 2 is great. So is Risen.

I'm currently playing modded Morrowind and it's fantastic. Just grab the MGSO 3.0 and a few other mods and you will be in RPG heaven.

Modded Oblivion is great, too. I'll be playing that when I'm done with Morrowind.

Good luck and have fun!

 

Gothic series + night of the raven

One of the best RPG's out there.

 

Rep for mentioning Arx Fatalis

The same guys who made Arx also made Dishonored, by the way. It's mostly action. But it has it's moments. Some of the quests branch in a way that would make Greg Miller knit his brow real hard, before he'd get a stroke, if he played them. Caught me completely by surprise when I played it, since literally no reviews had mentioned the optional paths, typically comparing it to Thief instead of Arx or Deus Ex.

..Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines by Obsidian is a classic. A real classic. Hard to believe it was published by Activision back then. The first game (Redemption) in the series also is very playable - it was one of the first "modern" looking 3d games that had "modern" 3d, but actually were narrative-driven. Instead of Call of Duty. Extremely good writing, even if you don't have as much dialogue variety as in for example.. Fallout 1 & 2.

Other narrative-driven gems might be.. Death Gate? But then we're probably edging towards adventure games instead... Discworld Noir, Grim Fandango, and so on.

But if that's what people actually like.. Take a look at a game called Primordia. And it's still possible to cheaply pre-order Double Fine's "Broken Age". Coming out halfway into next year. Look out for Transistor by Supergiant as well (the people who made Bastion).

 

Don't think anyone's mentioned Planescape: Torment. It's not on steam, but if you want hardcore rpg - then THAT'S IT

BTW I understand that you're picking steam only games, but this title... well for this one I would turn a blind eye on other requirements

 

Mr. Bob Good Day Sir,

I thought your laptop died? How are you still allowed on these forums? We are watching....watching very closely.

I assume you've already played Fallout 1-3 and New Vegas?

Allow me to suggest something a bit different. Terraria. While it is described as a sandbox/platformer, it really does have some nice RPG elements to it, what with collecting gear, materials to create gear, upgrading health/life, upgrading weapons, etc. Quite a charming little game, and if you enjoy it, you can easily sink a few hundred hours into it. Also, a giant update for the game is coming on 10/1, it's from a developer that listens to fans, and oh yes, it is on steam.

 

I bought a desktop so now am just a poser. Never played any of the Fallout games yet. I might give it a playthrough soon its on my steam list

 

If you are interested in action RPG's/dungeon crawlers in the mold of Diablo, Torchlight and Torchlight II are very good.

 

Stranger Danger! Call an adult!

The fallout games are fun, but i do think you should pick up terraria. I think it would suit you well.

 

Pfft. Proper RPG needs pen and paper. Computer "rpg" games are just adventure games with character development: users are always restricted to whatever game developer has chosen to allow them to do.

 

I already mentioned modded Morrowind, but I wanted to mention a "hardcore" mod for it that makes your character have to eat, drink and sleep. It's called the "Necessities of Morrowind" mod. Very fun mod. It's not too intrusive to your gaming as long as you set the day length at double duration (you get an option of day length in the config process). Then it's a lot of fun. Yes, I actually find it fun that I have to eat and cook foods over a fire and drink water (or alcohol) in an RPG. It just gives you a little more to think about before going on your adventures (do I have enough food and water? Do I need sleep? etc). Pretty cool.

 

Surprises me that Dragon Age: Origins hasn't been mentioned.

If you liked Risen 1, why wouldn't you consider Risen 2? It was on humble I think for a bit, I got it for $1...

And watching gameplay of Darksouls on YT, looks like an action game to me, not RPG.

Though as KLF said, I never feel any computer game to be RPG anyway. Though you won't ever find me playing any pen and paper or card game, ever. No interest at all. But I can agree with him saying what I play in video games is entirely decided by the dev. And when I played Witcher 2, I did not feel that "I" was Geralt. I was going through a narrative written and decided by the devs. Same for any other game that is supposedly role playing.

This isn't taking anything away from these games though. Witcher 2 is still the most fun I had in any game in the past 3 years I would say. Then ME3 (MP though, never touched SP). And for a squad based game, DA:Origins would be the best for me so far.

 

nwn1, kotor 1 and 2

for real hardcore me1, then we have the dissolution with me2 and me3

 

I definitely back ME1 ME2 and ME3 even if they are not hardcore RPG's, they have one of the most fleshed out SF universes and character developments, be it Shepard or the crew .
I also vouch for Fallout the whole series is great, awesome backdrop and universe with a lot of freedom and dark humor .

 

tl;dr - Here is where I simply have to disagree. Well made RPG games distill the best the P&P sessions have to offer with none (or very few) of their low points, making them much more than a viable alternative. Scratch that, PC RPGs actually far surpass the benefits of P&P sessions in terms of pure gameplay. The only things that they still can't imitate is the sense of camaraderie, the inside silly jokes and the smell of pizza, which is something that I'm gladly willing to sacrifice, as I can simply get that without playing a P&P session and just hang out.


Full blah blah mode: P&P sessions can turn sour pretty quickly, where everyone is cranky, bickering among themselves or are just not paying attention at all or not work in unison and everything falls apart.

The way I see it, PC RPGs fall into at least one of three basic functions in good P&P games, and they do those extremely well, since they handle like a very good P&P session where everyone plays nicely and everything falls into place perfectly, which according to my experience, is a very hard to achieve feat most of the time.

1. The narrative side - this is Bioware's area of expertise. In this type of games, the GM is giving his party the illusion of choice in order to guide them into a suspenseful or dramatic plot devices. This is the 'serious' type of games you play with people that stay in character, and good P&P sessions where everything goes according to plan can turn out like a Bioware game. When these P&P sessions go according to plan (and they rarely do, since it requires most the players to be in a specific certain mindset), they can give you a warm and fuzzy feeling at times, but in P&P they can either degrade into an ego filled amateurish theater play where each player attempts to show how much 'in character' they really are on account of other players, or the GM is taking it too far and turn everything into a sappy mush in order to pull the players' heart strings as hard as possible, throwing the gameplay under the bus along the way, which is something Bioware tend to do way too much. Nevertheless, these can be very good, in P&P and in PC.

2. Tactical combat - this is where the old Fallout 1+2, BG1+2 and the like fall into. These type of games are geared more towards the munchkin/by the numbers P&P sessions, where rule advocates argue about whether that fireball causes 5d6 or 4d6+6 based on the clothes the enemy is wearing, how old is the rug and the angle of the sun is rather than actually play. In these games the narrative, although can be a good one like in Planescape: Torment, takes somewhat of a back seat in favor of rules, XP and tactics. I like those type of P&P games the least of all and in turn, I like those type of PC RPGs least of all as well, but they sure have their place and Black Isle sure excelled at those.

3. Freedom of choice, playing the character - this is advertised as one of the main premises of P&P sessions, but it just doesn't work in reality, since none of us are mind readers and cannot exactly know what the GM intends to do and very few of us can actually think like our character does, since we're not mages/sword experts/computer master hackers etc. Attempting to create these games in P&P causes the game to fall apart, where the party splits and splinters and in turn, one group of players continue on the path the GM intended and gets more of his or her attention while the other group(s) are biding their time doing 'comic relief' in the local tavern/space bar, or just let their characters work on something like writing a letter, brew a potion, practicing combat moves, hack the terminal and the like while the players go and eat pizza or watch TV. Enter Bethesda, the mastermind of this niche and my all time favorite company.

These games actually allow you to play your character when the player is away eating a pizza, allowing you to actually choose what to play, how and when, lose the plot line, pick new ones along the way and return to the main plot line at will. Not even the best GM can handle such a game session for a prolonged period of time and I doubt there's a player that can keep up that way as well, let alone a party of them. In these games, the narrative doesn't just take a back seat, it flies out the window, since the player constantly breaks immersion and runs after the next thing he fancies, concentrating on actually living his or her character's life. Some RPG players feel this is too much of a compromise and get bored by this type gameplay but I think this is something that no other P&P session can actually give me, regardless of how well it goes, and losing some sappy narrative along the way in the process is meager price to pay.

 

i will give dragon age a try as well, and i will give risen 2 a try

there has also been many other great suggestions that i will try

Now am playing stalker clear sky, overlord 1 and risen 1. Having a hard time getting into clear sky as i play all my games with a controller lol

 

You could also try something a bit different, granted it is not a proper RPG, but some of the RP elements are definitely there .
If you never had a chance to play the Arma 2 mod DayZ, this gives you the chance to play it as it pretty much was during the first few weeks, before everyone started killing on sight, and the COD kids and hackers arrived, you basically RP as who you want to be, but must stay in character at all times, and yeah there is no random death match here .
But yeah if you never played DayZ I really recommend it, there never was a game quite like it, and with this sort of scope, this game changes you .

DayZRP.com

 

in my opinion planescape is not sooo difficult (not like dark souls) but for me it's the best rpg ever made, even better than baldur's gate...
so if you like rpg you HAVE to play planescape torment... idk if it has compatibility issues with windows 8 or 7

 

The thing about pen and paper role-playing is that you always need a brilliant and very adaptable game-master. To end up in a situation where you are actually roleplaying, rather than throwing dice and beating monsters.

So honestly, I think good video-games - not just narrative-driven ones - can replace that very easily. I'm not a huge fan of first-person zombie shooters. But immersion and story-telling happens in people's brains, not on the screen. So I can't discount it as a vehicle for it.

Besides - what you really get sometimes is world-class gamemasters conducting a story for you. Bioware had those when they wrote Mass Effect 1 (&2 to some extent). Dungeon Siege 3 is a great example of that - this is written by people who have been playing and still play role-playing games (Avellone and Sawyer). And what that game really is (apart from a fun co-op game) is a series of stories they have refined, as game-masters, for years. So you're really being given a unique opportunity to see a story being done here - by a game-master on a level that you're likely never going to see in person. If nothing else, it's uniquely good inspiration for when playing role-playing games later on.

 

That's the thing though it isn't a first person zombie shooter, the zombies are secondary (if even that), it is first and foremost a social experiment, and since it is modded from Arma 2 it doesn't have much in common with a FPS anyways, it is way to clunky and slow to be considered one, it is a simulation game, a 225km2 open world, where you must scavenge for food, water, guns, ammo, vehicles, medical supplies, communicate (via mic) with other survivors etc, you can either team up with other survivors or lone wolf it, the added RP element only adds to the experience, different clans, so clan feuds, clan bases, settlements, player run radio stations and a bunch of other cool stuff .

Chernarus Live Radio! [September 16th Broadcast]

 

Do you feel like a level 8 Mage when you're rolling dice and listening to some GM drone on about a killer jelly hitting you for d+12 damage?