RPG Codex GOTY 2018

Arulan · Jan 21, 2019

I always find these results interesting, and thought I'd share it. I also find the voting methodology a lot more interesting, as it doesn't simply favor the most popular games.

RPG Codex GOTY 2018

The Results

* Follow the link for Remake/Port and DLCs/Expansion results.

Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire for instance was the second most played game here, but the somewhat divisive scores caused it to rank lower than it would have otherwise.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance is one my favorite games of last year. I believe it to be one of the strongest open-world games since Fallout: New Vegas, and yet it's largely ignored on ResetEra. For as much discussion as there has been regarding Red Dead Redemption 2's failure to marry the open-world design to that of the mission design, Kingdom Come: Deliverance excels at it.

Frankly, a lot of these games are simply ignored on ResetEra, and It's good to see them being recognized here.

Deleted member 14377 · Jan 21, 2019

Kingdom Come's racist ass, Nazi developer ass doesn't deserve any attention and should continued to be ignored. Congrats to the other games though

Deleted member 29682 · Jan 21, 2019

Kenshi getting recognition somewhere at least.

JimJamJones · Jan 21, 2019

Glad Kenshi got some love - bought it the end of last month and definitely love it.

Massicot · Jan 21, 2019

I definitely think that Pathfinder:Kingmaker is a great, underlooked game, but it was also severely broken at launch to the point where the main game was not able to be completed and a lot of the kingdom management aspects were severely out of tune.

It could definitely end up being one of my favorites of 2019 once I replay it with all of the DLC (and more importantly, fixes) in place.

Deleted member 249 · Jan 21, 2019

Surprised by how much they loved Dragon Quest 11.
RPG Codex is a trashfire site, though, and deserves no consideration from us.

Deleted member 14377 · Jan 21, 2019

Brian Damage said:
Kenshi getting some recognition somewhere at least.

JimJamJones said:
Glad Kenshi got some love - bought it the end of last month and definitely love it.

Kenshi is fun, a true sandbox RPG. I was was following slave traders and beating up bandits with them, then a bandit broke my leg and they left me and I died in the middle of nowhere lol

ara · Jan 21, 2019

That's a solid number one pick. Think I saw like one or two posters here vote it in addition to me.

'3y Kingdom · Jan 21, 2019

Arulan said:
Kingdom Come: Deliverance is one my favorite games of last year. I believe it to be one of the strongest open-world games since Fallout: New Vegas, and yet it's largely ignored on this ResetEra.

There's a reason for that. If you were thorough about investigating this you should've already realized why.

Hella · Jan 21, 2019

Yeah, Kingdom Come is ignored for a reason. Ain't got no time for that garbo.

Though other than that, as a list of "RPG or RPG adjacent" games it's a pretty good representation of 2018. Only big omission I can think of is Divinity: Original Sin - Definitive Edition, probably excluded because it's a rerelease.

But yeah. Shoutout to Kenshi and Star Traders--they are the definition of hidden gems. (Pathfinder too, but I haven't played it yet.) And I dunno if y'all are aware but there's a defacto Kenshi OT for y'all to share your adventures in.

Aeana · Jan 21, 2019

I feel like the only person who loved The Bard's Tale 4. I didn't play it until after several large updates -- in November. I really liked it a lot, though. Definitely my favorite soundtrack of the year.

JD3Nine · Jan 21, 2019

That's a pretty solid list IMO. I haven't played Pathfinder yet but I'm planning on it. Also, Kenshi is probably next up for me because the game sounds ridiculous.

Silvergun-Blue · Jan 21, 2019

Phantom Thief said:
Surprised by how much they loved Dragon Quest 11.
RPG Codex is a trashfire site, though, and deserves no consideration from us.

Is this the site that basically devolved into anti-semitic vitriol?

Nairume · Jan 21, 2019

Aeana said:
I feel like the only person who loved The Bard's Tale 4. I didn't play it until after several large updates -- in November. I really liked it a lot, though. Definitely my favorite soundtrack of the year.

I had to pass on it when it first came out, and now I'm only waiting until I finish my replay of the original trilogy before jumping to 4. I'm really looking forward to finally getting to it.

Mr.Deadshot · Jan 21, 2019

Pillars of Eternity 2 might even be better than the first one. I am only ~25 hours in but voted it #02 on my GOTY list. Such a fantastic game.

Deleted member 249 · Jan 21, 2019

Silvergun-Blue said:
Is this the site that basically devolved into anti-semitic vitriol?

Yeah, it's a site filled with 4chan style edgelords/alt-righters/GGers. There's a reason why they have no issues highlighting Kingdom Come Deliverance.

Truant · Jan 21, 2019

Kingdom Come is fantastic, shame about the stuff with the creative director.

Schopenhauer · Jan 21, 2019

Aeana said:
I feel like the only person who loved The Bard's Tale 4. I didn't play it until after several large updates -- in November. I really liked it a lot, though. Definitely my favorite soundtrack of the year.

YES, the OST is amazing. I make a habit of listening to it regularly.

Probably also the biggest reason I made it as far into the game as I did. Loved it and the puzzles, not so much anything else.

Sinder · Jan 21, 2019

Kingdom Come fucking blows even if you somehow forget its a GamerGate product. The people on this forum who sing its praises are completely suspect.

Trace · Jan 21, 2019

Truant said:
Kingdom Come is fantastic, shame about the stuff with the creative director.

Pretty much. I absolutely love their environmental design.

ShadowSwordmaster · Jan 21, 2019

People need to play Pathfinder: Kingmaker.

KorrZ · Jan 21, 2019

Pathfinder Kingmaker is so good, it and D:OS2 are by far the best two games to come out of the CRPG renaissance.

Mikebison · Jan 21, 2019

Phantom Thief said:
Yeah, it's a site filled with 4chan style edgelords/alt-righters/GGers. There's a reason why they have no issues highlighting Kingdom Come Deliverance.

I mean, people who love RPGs seem to really dig what they game went for. I haven't played it myself. But it's no surprise a site dedicated to RPGs likes it. Doesn't mean that everyone who likes that game is a massive nazi. 99% of people who played it won't be aware at all of the drama surrounding that guy.

I really need to check out Pathfinder. Really seems like my jam.

Taruranto · Jan 21, 2019

Silvergun-Blue said:
Is this the site that basically devolved into anti-semitic vitriol?

It basically took a turn for the worse a couple of years ago and became /pol/ lite. Before that it was edgy, but bearable. Kinda like an "anything goes" site.

Their opinions are still solid and generally their politics don't leak into the articles (But sometimes they do, see the PoE2 reviews).

Rodjer · Jan 21, 2019

KCD is one of the finest RPGs out there, 2nd place is more than deserved

Deleted member 249 · Jan 21, 2019

Mikebison said:
I mean, people who love RPGs seem to really dig what they game went for. I haven't played it myself. But it's no surprise a site dedicated to RPGs likes it. Doesn't mean that everyone who likes that game is a massive nazi. 99% of people who played it won't be aware at all of the drama surrounding that guy.

I really need to check out Pathfinder. Really seems like my jam.

I'm not saying everyone who likes KCD is a neo-Nazi. As an RPG fan, there's a lot about it that interests me.
I am saying that most people on RPGC is a neo-Nazi, and they like KCD, an incidence that isn't coincidental.

Deleted member 29682 · Jan 21, 2019

Taruranto said:
(But sometimes they do, see the PoE2 reviews)

I'm afraid to ask, but what did they object to?

Aaron D. · Jan 21, 2019

Hella said:
Shoutout to Kenshi and Star Traders--they are the definition of hidden gems.

Yup yup.

Star Traders was my GOTY.

Stoze · Jan 21, 2019

Arulan said:
Kingdom Come: Deliverance is one my favorite games of last year. I believe it to be one of the strongest open-world games since Fallout: New Vegas, and yet it's largely ignored on ResetEra. For as much discussion as there has been regarding Red Dead Redemption 2's failure to marry the open-world design to that of the mission design, Kingdom Come: Deliverance excels at it.

Uh, the Kingdom Come OT on here was huge, with over 5000 posts.

FreezePeach · Jan 21, 2019

Frecklestein said:
Kingdom Come's racist ass, Nazi developer ass doesn't deserve any attention and should continued to be ignored. Congrats to the other games though

It's a perfect fit for the codex.

Arulan · Jan 21, 2019

Frecklestein said:
Kingdom Come's racist ass, Nazi developer ass doesn't deserve any attention and should continued to be ignored. Congrats to the other games though

'3y Kingdom said:
There's a reason for that. If you were thorough about investigating this you should've already realized why.

Personally, I don't find that relevant to the discussion of the quality of the game. Having played it, I didn't find any obvious agenda being pushed besides representing early 15th century Bohemia, warts and all.

Sinder said:
Kingdom Come fucking blows even if you somehow forget its a GamerGate product. The people on this forum who sing its praises are completely suspect.

Bullshit. The simulation of the world and the logical choices you can make from that are incredible. It's one of those very rare games where you can think of a logical solution to a problem, and the game has accounted for that. I could go on for hours, but this isn't the time. I will share this story that highlights one of my favorite moments that was made possible by that care to the simulation of the world. There are some spoilers.

On my search for Timmy, I was confronted with bandits from the Camp, but I managed to convince them that I'd heard he was holed up in Rattay. This was bullshit of course. They left one of their own to watch me just in case, but once the rest were long gone, I threw him in a ditch.

I found Timmy and learned what he knew about the location of the camp, despite him being drunk at the time. I was supposed to return to Sir Radzig and inform him of what I had learned, but I decided to take care of a few things first. I returned to Rattay, and continued in the life of Henry.

A day or two had passed since then. This is where it gets interesting. I was in Rattay, and decided to stop by the tavern for a game of dice. As I'm about to enter I see something odd. Two bandits are sitting at a table, and across from them is... the leader of the group who confronted me behind the windmill! They're here, where I had convinced them to go. I decide to wait up upon the hill to the upper castle and see what they do. It was already pretty late ~11PM, and they'd have to close up the tavern soon.

Eventually the two bandits started to leave. I lost track of where the leader had gone, but I decided to follow these two. I keep my distance to make sure they don't see me. As they're walking out of Rattay, and in the direction of the miller, I have the brief thought that maybe they had found out where I lived, and were on their way to find me. But no, they continued up north. I continue to follow behind them (walking) for hours, in total an entire day of in-game time. I didn't have much food on me, so I'm having to look around for mushrooms to keep me from starving. Luckily I was well-rested at the start.

It doesn't take long for me to realize where these bandits are heading. We're at Rovna now, and beginning to go north in the woods.

At at least two points along the path, there is a Cuman warrior watching over the road. I had to find a way to sneak around without losing sight of the bandits.

Eventually this leads right to the Camp!

This attention to detail, and the logical consistency of the world led to one of the best experiences I've had with the game. It wasn't led to by quest markers, or even much of a formal quest to speak of. It just happened to be the logical outcome of a previous action that I had taken, and me being aware of the context to follow them all this way.

Deleted member 14377 · Jan 21, 2019

Arulan said:
Personally, I don't find that relevant to the discussion of the quality of the game. Having played it, I didn't find any obvious agenda being pushed besides representing early 15th century Bohemia, warts and all.

Bullshit. The simulation of the world and the logical choices you can make from that are incredible. It's one of those very rare games where you think of a logical solution to a problem, and the game has accounted for that. I could go on for hours, but this isn't the time. I will share this story that highlights one of my favorite moments that was made possible by that care to the simulation of the world. There are some spoilers.

On my search for Timmy, I was confronted with bandits from the Camp, but I managed to convince them that I'd heard he was holed up in Rattay. This was bullshit of course. They left one of their own to watch me just in case, but once the rest were long gone, I threw him in a ditch.

I found Timmy and learned what he knew about the location of the camp, despite him being drunk at the time. I was supposed to return to Sir Radzig and inform him of what I had learned, but I decided to take care of a few things first. I returned to Rattay, and continued in the life of Henry.

A day or two had passed since then. This is where it gets interesting. I was in Rattay, and decided to stop by the tavern for a game of dice. As I'm about to enter I see something odd. Two bandits are sitting at a table, and across from them is... the leader of the group who confronted me behind the windmill! They're here, where I had convinced them to go. I decide to wait up upon the hill to the upper castle and see what they do. It was already pretty late ~11PM, and they'd have to close up the tavern soon.

Eventually the two bandits started to leave. I lost track of where the leader had gone, but I decided to follow these two. I keep my distance to make sure they don't see me. As they're walking out of Rattay, and in the direction of the miller, I have the brief thought that maybe they had found out where I lived, and were on their way to find me. But no, they continued up north. I continue to follow behind them (walking) for hours, in total an entire day of in-game time. I didn't have much food on me, so I'm having to look around for mushrooms to keep me from starving. Luckily I was well-rested at the start.

It doesn't take long for me to realize where these bandits are heading. We're at Rovna now, and beginning to go north in the woods.

At at least two points along the path, there is a Cuman warrior watching over the road. I had to find a way to sneak around without losing sight of the bandits.

Eventually this leads right to the Camp!

This attention to detail, and the logical consistency of the world led to one of the best experiences I've had with the game. It wasn't led to by quest markers, or even much of a formal quest to speak of. It just happened to be the logical outcome of a previous action that I had taken, and me being aware of the context to follow them all this way.

It's actually quite relevant due to the fact that they money he makes off of this product goes towards his pocket, which allows him to have larger reach and a bigger stage to spout his shit (i.e; Notch). And this situation is better than the Minecraft one, because Notch didn't out himself as a shitheel until after it all took off and he made billions, this piece of work is mouthing off and supporting shit before potentially making "fuck you" money. So I'd rather potentially nip this Nazi in bud, thanks.

Not a fan of the whole, separate the art from the artist deal.

Dandy · Jan 21, 2019

Taruranto said:
It basically took a turn for the worse a couple of years ago and became /pol/ lite. Before that it was edgy, but bearable. Kinda like an "anything goes" site.

A couple? I remember going there in the Neverwinter Nights days(early 2000s) and it being a cesspool of homophobia and misogyny.

Aters · Jan 21, 2019

DQXI? That doesn't sound like the RPG codex I know

tekomandor · Jan 21, 2019

Frecklestein said:
Kingdom Come's racist ass, Nazi developer ass doesn't deserve any attention and should continued to be ignored. Congrats to the other games though

He'd fit in perfectly on RPG Codex, then.

Aarglefarg · Jan 21, 2019

Aters said:
DQXI? That doesn't sound like the RPG codex I know

It had a Windows release and looks like Sugiyama would be a plus for them.

(That said, DQ11 was my number 1 game last year)

Deleted member 1759 · Jan 21, 2019

Sinder said:
Kingdom Come fucking blows even if you somehow forget its a GamerGate product. The people on this forum who sing its praises are completely suspect.

It's a pretty good RPG ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

johancruijff · Jan 21, 2019

I need to play Atom

'3y Kingdom · Jan 21, 2019

Arulan said:
Personally, I don't find that relevant to the discussion of the quality of the game. Having played it, I didn't find any obvious agenda being pushed besides representing early 15th century Bohemia, warts and all.

After you failed to find the obvious reason why the game wasn't generally praised here, I'm hesitant to accept your impressions over those of detailed reviews suggesting the opposite.

Arulan · Jan 21, 2019

I should really check out Ghost of a Tale too. Not many people played it, but it had the highest positive votes at 94%.

Interested Observer · Jan 21, 2019

Massicot said:
I definitely think that Pathfinder:Kingmaker is a great, underlooked game, but it was also severely broken at launch to the point where the main game was not able to be completed and a lot of the kingdom management aspects were severely out of tune.

It could definitely end up being one of my favorites of 2019 once I replay it with all of the DLC (and more importantly, fixes) in place.

Is this the reason for the very mixed reviews? Is it fixed or at least in the process of being so?

Anyway added everything I don't own to my Steam wishlist, guess I'll pick some of them up over the course of the year. Had never heard of several of the games.

Deleted member 46948 · Jan 21, 2019

Sinder said:
Kingdom Come fucking blows even if you somehow forget its a GamerGate product. The people on this forum who sing its praises are completely suspect.

You would be hard pressed to find someone who dislikes Daniel Vávra and everything his ignorant, racist, GamerGating ass stands for more passionately than yours truly.

But I still have to admit KCD is a genuinely good game, with potential to be great, even.
Of course, Warhorse still don't deserve your money, at least not until they stop being fine with that douchebag being their mouthpiece.

Azzanadra · Jan 21, 2019

Sinder said:
Kingdom Come fucking blows even if you somehow forget its a GamerGate product. The people on this forum who sing its praises are completely suspect.

I like the idea of the game, but its not executed wekk. I was looking forward to it for years, and the concept of a medieval immersive sim sounds fantastic- but the reality is that it was janky and unpolished. I managed to have some fun with it with the 20 hours I played, but I have no desire to go back and finish the game.

Ladioss · Jan 21, 2019

Loved Kingdom Come's sandbox approach to an historical RPG/sim and open-ended quests, I had lots of fun exploring that little piece of medieval Bohemia.

I'm surprised The Bard's Tale IV didn't score higher, IMO it's one of the best recent blobbers we have had on PC since M&MX and the Grimrock duology.

Arulan said:
I should really check out Ghost of a Tale too. Not many people played it, but it had the highest positive votes at 94%.

Absolutely lovely game - especially when it morphes into an adventure/investigation game. Its only drawback is the world being really small, but given the size of the team...

texhnolyze · Jan 21, 2019

I've played and finished 7 out of those 10 games. I liked them all.

Massicot · Jan 21, 2019

Interested Observer said:
Is this the reason for the very mixed reviews? Is it fixed or at least in the process of being so?

Anyway added everything I don't own to my Steam wishlist, guess I'll pick some of them up over the course of the year. Had never heard of several of the games.

It's definitely a factor in the reviews, yea. I'm not sure about the current state, they've put a LOT of work into it, but the Steam forums for the game suggest there's still some work left to do on that front. This is out of my ass, but I'd guess it would score ~1.5 points higher on average if it had a far more typical allotment of bugs/issues at launch.

Budi · Jan 21, 2019

I think I saw a great thread about Kenshi here recently. Should give a chance to Pathfinder now that it's been fixed. Probably will check out Kingdom Come at some point too.

Aeana said:
I feel like the only person who loved The Bard's Tale 4. I didn't play it until after several large updates -- in November. I really liked it a lot, though. Definitely my favorite soundtrack of the year.

Should give that a go too, I'm a fan of Inxile but just not big fan of dungeon crawlers.

Deleted member 1759 · Jan 21, 2019

Arulan said:
I should really check out Ghost of a Tale too. Not many people played it, but it had the highest positive votes at 93%.

You definitely should. It's a lovely game with great visuals. It's not perfect but it's still worth its price. My thoughts on it from back when it got out of Early Access

Flips said:
I enjoyed my time with it but it has some flaws which became more apparent the further I progressed in the game. Graphics and art style are gorgeous and the performance is good as well. The story was solid and well written and it really is a shame that the game didn't get voice acting. Too bad that the ending was somewhat underwhelming. The gameplay is fun in the beginning but becomes a bit too repetitive. I liked the idea that you have to disguise to get different dialogue options/to solve a quests but then again the search for the different parts was a bit of a chore. And it had a lot of bugs. Nothing game breaking but I had to reload or restart several times, so it pays off to save quite often.

The bug thing should be fixed by now, though.

KainXVIII · Jan 21, 2019

Solid list, surprised about Ghost of a Tale (i thought it was action/adventure with stealth elements)

OhSatan · Jan 21, 2019

I just can't see the RPG in Monster Hunter and coming from the codex legit baffles me.

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