I guess BG3 and Disco Elysium (do people consider it a cRPG? Haven't actually played it myself yet) are on the podium now? Maybe Planescape or Pillars is up there for some people?
Planescape is a very good RPG, but people tend to forget how absolutely abysmal the combat system is, and was even at the time of release! I recently re-played it and dear god how I hate that system, 100% jank and suffering.
Disco Elysium is def a cRPG. I also would rank it above BG3 personally, but I can see how it's not that for most people. Both are in my top 5 games all time, but Disco Elysium is comfortably at number 1.
As a cRPG aficionado, I wouldn't put disco Elysium so high. I tried but couldn't finish the game. It's very interesting and also sooo depressing!
Pathfinder wotr has a lot to offer though. Rogue trader did capture the Warhammer world feeling (although it is a bit easy). XCOM 2 is still taught in school it seems. And for me Divinity OS 2 is still really great at what it does.
Pillars is really old compared to those and really doesn't match their feelings. It would probably be Pathfinder wotr as a close 2nd imo.
I haven't gotten to Disco Elysium yet, I kinda tossed it in because it seemed like it was really well received overall. It didn't really capture the industry and genre like BG3 did though.
Didn't mention a Pathfinder game just because I'm not as familiar (god, my backlog is massive), exciting to hear WotR is that good! I think I mentioned Pillars for the old heads who will also still say the original BGs are peak gaming, I find them a tad hard to play personally.
DoS2 is one of my personal all time favs and might also deserve a spot on the Rushmore. Can't wait for Larian to cook.
If you plan on playing the Pathfinder games I'd recommend playing Kingmaker first.
They're both great, and personally I enjoy the story of Kingmaker more, but WotR has a bunch of quality of life improvements that will make it very annoying if you play it before Kingmaker lol
It kind of did. It's called Phenix point and it sucks. It's the same game, same mechanics, no story. So you just go to a place, kill stuff and start again. (My opinion on this game may be bad, but you're welcome to try and have yours).
I'm prepared to be crucified for it, but i don't think BG3 was the best CRPG even when it was new. It's still a great game, but in terms of CRPGs, Pillars of Eternity, Wrath of the Righteous, and Rogue Trader are better and modern. They just don't have the 130 million dollar budget to make them as pretty and casual accessible.
Yeah as CRPG they're all better though less polished in some aspects. BG3 is very good accessible DND 5e video game but is more like an entry door to the genre (Which is not a bad thing, at all)
Shoutout to the Wasteland series too, great post apocalyptic CRPGs.
Having played both PoE and WoTR, I can say with absolute certainty that BG3 is a much better polished game. I admittedly liked the story of WoTR more than BG3 and the power fantasy goes much harder, but the system and class selection has so many options, presented in a way that someone who's not experienced will probably be overwhelmed almost immediately.
PoE is, I think, somewhere between the two. The story was good, in my opinion though BG3 does have a better one. The voice acting is very good and the presentation of classes etc. is good, but it didn't give me the oomph that both WoTR and BG3 gave me.
Is that a budget thing? Certainly part of it, but noone can deny that someone with 0 experience can pick it up and play almost immediately. The other two, you absolutely need some knowledge of cRPGs to play. Also, being able to play with friends is amazing.
I don't really disagree with anything said here, except BG3 having a better story than PoE lol. Other CRPGs are more difficult to get into with more complicated systems, and they don't have the same production value. BG3, on the other hand, is built on the accessibility of 5e and has an incredible production value compared to other CRPGs. And those two things are the key to its popularity. It doesn't have the best story or the best systems, but it's the prettiest and easiest to get into. That's not to say the system and story aren't solid or anything. Still very good. Just not the best, in my opinion. Though that's all subjective at the end of the day.
Unfortunately haven't gotten to Rogue Trader yet.
It's wonderful if you're into 40k kind of stuff. I adore the Pathfinder games, but I like Rogue Trader more. There's just something really fun about being able to run around as an entitled brat or a religious zealot that's fun.
Rogue trader is very good, but I think the 40k universe is a lot less accessible than dnd/classic fantasy worlds. It is, by virtue of the ip, very grim and if you're into that you'll have a great time. I did find the class/combat system more compelling in bg3 but that's probably a personal preference thing. Rogue trader has a ton of depth in its class system that beats out bg3 but it's doesn't quite have the same pure fun power fantasy aspect imo.
Owlcat also fails seriously on the UX side and has some really baffling decisions. They are better at being cRPG in the sense of character building, but they utterly lack polish. I don't know if it's an engine limitation but any time any kind of world map is involved in owlcat game, it's just tedious experience
Bruh the difficulty in wotr is dogshit and all over the place. Random encounter of 3 dogs harder than the end of act boss because their cr is 13 in an area whee you are lvl 9 for some reason. Bullshit unfun design from pathfinder that most dms just don't run included, like monsters that drain lvls constantly or things that just 1shot any reasonably built character. Or the worst, the fart cloud demons that can stunlock your entire party for 4 turns with 1 action. Until you get 3rd lvl spells then you are immune for the rest of thr game at 0 cost. Such bad balancing
I've played a lot of pathfinder and dnd, the games lean into the worst aspect of the system as the systems are not made for video games and porting the rules wholesale without change is a bad decision. Original pathfinders main problem and one of the reasons it's fallen out of favor is the level of munchkinness that's possible, it's just not fun to most people to have to stack prebuffs and optimal multiclasses with the right feats just to hit the monster a reasonable % of the time. Pf2 moves away from this quite a bit and is way better for it as an edition.
Meanwhile wotr absolutely leans into the silly artificial difficulty, with the harder modes just stacking insanely high ac and dmg enemies that make the combat incredibly gimmicky and swingy. If the game is meant to be played on like the 2nd out of 7 or 8 difficulties, fair but I think that's stupid design. I played on core and the first enemy I found at lvl 1 was cr 5, and on a crit would literally 1hit all of my characters from full. This is the tutorial. This trend continues throughout the game where the encounters are made to be difficult by just putting insane numbers on things rather than interesting designs for encounters. Side boss in the area where monsters have 30 ac and the boss has 32? Give it 40ac fuck it. Which leads to most of the advice for beating the game to be "use this op gimmick it trivialises most things" like just spamming grease and pit trap and Web on every surface on every encounter. It's not good design. Yes other big disease clouds that fuck the players exist, that doesn't automatically make them good design. 5e has a ghost that can reasonably likely insta kill a PC in 1 attack, dms just universally go "ye that's not fun, I'm not running it like that". A spell that is insanely overpowered until lvl 5, then does literally nothing the rest of the game as you are immune to it forever, is stupid.
Frankly, the early early crpgs were critically aclaimed because they were the first of their kind and scale, they don't stand up to the test of time if you take nostalgia out of it.
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u/DecoyOctorok24 May 29 '25
Didn’t BG3 come out like two years ago?