Of course this list keeps changing a bit, but here's what I settled on this time:
1.) Wasteland --- Almost always my favorite game of all time. Groundbreaking. Great world, great freedom of choice, make your party AND recruit NPCs, best of both worlds for party based cRPG.
2.) Icewind Dale --- Almost always near the top as well. Create your party, dungeon-crawling, great story and excellent music. Close to the standard for me for cRPGs.
3.) Freedom Force --- Arguably the first great super-hero game, a cRPG with destructable environments, where your characters can pick up cars and lampposts... use the story characters and/or create your own, excellent mod community, Irrational at near it's best (yes, I'm even considering the BioShocks here.)
4.) Alpha Protocol --- This strays from the ideal for me in a few ways, but is still an amazing role-playing game. So much freedom of choice, so much choice & consequence, great story, dialog, characters.
5.) Pools of Darkness --- It's sliding down the list for me over the years, but that's only the fault of what was possible when it came out. The last in a series of four games where you created your own party of 6, and transferred said party through the entire series, watching them grow in power. For it's time, a great story and the SSI Gold Box series are legendary for a reason.
6.) The Walking Dead --- One of the newest games on my list, yet still old enough for me to have considered it long enough to make the list. The great story, narrative voice, characters, voice acting, and choice & consequence have taken adventure games to a new level. With a second season going, I feel confident enough to put this in the list, and even let it jump some old standards!
7.) Vampire - The Masquerade: Bloodlines --- There will be enough praise from others about this game. Read what they say.
8.) Starcraft --- The RTS side is fun, but it is the characters and the story that get me. As long as I don't think too hard about how it is barely a re-skinning of Warhammer 40k, I can focus on the original quality to the ongoing narrative. Like how Halo's minimalistic storytelling can actually be quite compelling, so I feel is Starcraft's.
9.) Dragon Age: Origins --- There is so much that this game does right, and it only falls prey to BioWare's worst game design notions in minor ways. Party based cRPG with an epic story, BioWare's signature great cast of characters and intraparty interactions. My favorite BioWare game (just edging out Mass Effect in a few ways, which both just edge out KotOR) due to setting, party size, and more control over your main character.
10.) Dawn of War --- An excellent RTS, in many ways superior to Starcraft in gameplay and variety of content, right down to originality of source material (stinkeye to Blizzard.) That said, as much as I enjoy the narrative to the Dawn of War (and Dawn of War 2) series, Starcraft's storytelling is superior. And, in many cases, storytelling trumps gameplay for me.
There are so many games that it hurt to leave off this list - like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Fallout: New Vegas, Star Control 2, Marvel Ultimate Alliance and Street Fighter 2... and games that are just too new for me to allow to enter the 'best ever' list yet, like Shadowrun Returns and The Banner Saga. But this is the list I'll present, for now.
EDIT- Also happy to see Gladius getting some love. That was a great, very unique game. The Banner Saga reminds me of it in some (good) ways.
Modifié par MerinTB, 11 février 2014 - 06:14 .