r/rpg_gamers

I’ve had the game on my library for at least 2 years now and every time i tried to immerse myself in it, i couldn’t get past the first 10/15 minutes. I always thought it was the same boring “go from here to there” missions.
For the Last couple days I’ve been feeling a little “game fatigue”, not finding something that appeals to me, so i decided to give The Witcher 3 a final chance.

It clicked immediately. I don’t know if it was my attention to the story or the overall phase of my life, where im starting to enjoy slower paced, story heavy games, but I’m completely obsessed.

This might be the greatest RPG ever made.

Avowed: The Beige-and-Pink Celebration of Nothing

Avowed is what happens when you take an RPG, run it through the Unreal Engine Slop Factory, sprinkle in some mushrooms because apparently the world needs to be pink now, and then spend several years desperately insisting there is something profound underneath it all.

There really isn’t.

The biggest problem with Avowed is how shallow it feels. Everything looks like it was assembled from the same collection of Unreal Engine assets: brown rocks, grey ruins, vaguely dramatic lighting, conveniently placed fog, and environments that seem designed primarily to demonstrate that the engine can render surfaces. Then someone apparently discovered the color pink and decided mushrooms were the solution. Lots and lots of mushrooms. Because nothing says sophisticated fantasy worldbuilding quite like aggressively pink fungus.

And then there’s the story.

Good lord, the story.

It is remarkably difficult to make a narrative feel this long when there is so little actual story in it. The entire plot could be explained in under a minute, yet Avowed somehow manages to stretch that minute into a full-length game through endless conversations, exposition, walking around, and characters explaining things that nobody desperately needed explained in the first place.

The dialogue doesn’t help. It has that painfully manufactured Gen-Z-erpy-derpy quality where everyone sounds like they were written by someone who desperately wants to prove that fantasy characters can be “quirky.” Instead of sounding like people living in an actual fantasy world, they often sound like contemporary Twitter users who accidentally wandered onto a medieval cosplay set.

It makes taking anything seriously almost impossible.

And that’s the real problem with the writing: everything feels infantile. Characters constantly have to announce their personalities, explain their motivations, wink at the player, or deliver some supposedly clever line that feels less like dialogue and more like a writer congratulating themselves for having written dialogue.

Naturally, the obligatory contemporary ideological wish-fulfillment is sprinkled throughout as well. Characters feel less like believable inhabitants of a fantasy setting and more like a collection of modern archetypes carefully assembled to satisfy whatever the current diversity checklist happens to be. It doesn’t make the world feel more diverse or interesting; it makes the seams showing in the writing even more obvious.

And visually? Good luck finding a character who looks genuinely memorable or attractive.

Nearly everyone looks like they just finished dropping out of art school and are now waiting outside a coffee shop to explain their unfinished thesis about gendered mushrooms. There is, admittedly, one NPC who actually looks good, so congratulations to whoever designed that character. Unfortunately, one attractive NPC in an entire game is less a triumph of character design and more an archaeological discovery.

The irony is that Avowed clearly wants to present itself as this mature, sprawling fantasy RPG. But beneath the colorful mushrooms, endless dialogue and carefully curated quirkiness, there isn’t enough substance to justify the presentation.

It’s not offensively bad.

That’s almost worse.

It’s aggressively mediocre.

A game so determined to be meaningful, progressive, witty and colorful that it somehow ends up feeling like a long-running corporate workshop exercise titled “How Can We Make Fantasy Feel Contemporary?”

The answer, apparently, was:

Pink mushrooms.

And somehow that still wasn’t enough.

Hello Everyone! Recently I have been craving a game in hopefully an ARPG fashion (thought ill take just about anything atp) where im using holy magic or feel like an angel. I simply love that power fantasy and I just cannot seem to find or be able to think of anything that will give me that effect. Does anyone have any suggestions?

I genuinely don't understand the hate that rue valley keeps getting. I just finished the game and it was amazing. I go online to see how others take it and end up seeing so many negative reviews here.

I had an amazing time playing Rue Valley, especially as a person who has gone through the same cycle of mental health problems that the main character had.

I found that the game genuinely showed the horror of a self propagating cycle of hopelessness as well as the attitude of someone with no motivation. I genuinely felt so seen with some of the games dialogue.

Also Mike Smith, as Dr. Finck, holy his voice was so soothing. Other voices were phenomenal too.

I understand most of the issues come from the way the game explains the time loop, or rather the lack thereof, but genuinely I think people misunderstand that this is a game about psychological trauma and healing first and the time loop itself second. In fact I'm pretty sure the time loop itself was an allegory to the ways people in depressive spirals sometimes go into their own imagination to take a break from reality. I did this myself before I started therapy, so this made me so much more seen.

I wholeheartedly love this game and would recommend anyone who wants to try this out to not look at it like any run of the mill RPG, but one where your 'stats' are purely charisma based and will only affect the flavour of words spoken rather than consequences seen. So if you are searching for a game where your stats affect the world around in any way other than in conversation than this game is not for you.

A lot of RPGs have things like food, sleeping, weather, injuries or camping, but they’re often either very light flavour systems or optional difficulty modifiers.

I’ve always liked the idea of survival mechanics being part of the role-playing itself.

For example, preparing for a journey could mean thinking about food, equipment, shelter and weather rather than just checking whether your level is high enough. An injury could affect how you approach the next few encounters instead of disappearing after drinking a potion. Camping could be an actual decision about where and when to stop rather than just a button that restores everything.

At the same time, I can see why these systems often get simplified. If eating just means clicking on bread every ten minutes, it isn’t really adding anything to the RPG.

So what survival element do you think RPGs are currently missing or underusing?

And are there any RPGs where you think survival mechanics genuinely improved the role-playing rather than just adding maintenance?

I'm trying to narrow down the absolute Best of modern PlayStation role-playing into a tight list, strictly on games released for the PS4 and PS5. We all know the obvious heavy-hitters like Elden Ring, The Witcher 3, Baldur's Gate 3, or Persona 5 Royal, but how would you fill out the rest of your list? What are your personal essentials that everyone needs to play?
Drop your lists or your top 3 must-plays below! Edit\* Couldn’t get into elder ring, even reading the awesome reviews it got idk

Like in the title , im looking for rpgs or action rpg that are fairly long and let me play as a female main character.

Of course i already played all the bethesda and obsidian games.

Im fine with whatever as long as it lets me customize a charactrer or dosnt lock me into a romance path.

Preferably a first person rpg but im fine with it being crpg as well

From crpgs i played; tyranny,pillars,wasteland, all owlcat games. bg3.

From the top of my head.

Which JRPG would you say has the most depth of strategy needed to succeed.

I haven't played a ton of JRPG, but in a lot of them I've noticed theres more of an illusion of strategy than it actually being required. For example a lot of games seem to have a ton of items and combat mechanics, but 90% of them are useless and usually "hit hard spam potions" to some degree wins, and more interesting strategies they present just fall flat, like status conditions and stuff

I really enjoyed SMT 5 because of all the different elements and interactions with them, in addition to the fact that buffs, debuffs, and status conditions actually make a different and are usually required to some degree for harder combat

I get that the majority of traditional JRPG are story based games, and depth of strategy takes a back seat to the experience, but I figured I would ask to see where the discussion goes. I already play a lot of TRPG and other strategy games, im really more interesting in knowing which more traditional JRPG will scratch the strategy itch in the JRPG package

I can’t stop thinking about Wu-Tang: Rise of the Deceiver as its’ animation style changes the game for video game styles.

But with a lack of news, I feel like playing a video game that makes me feel like I’m not just watching, but playing Spider-Verse to keep me satisfied.

Does anybody know any games with this kind of stylized animation?

I have been a huge fan of RPG games ever since I played Pokemon Blue on my Gameboy Color.

I love Final Fantasy and Fallout.

Until recently I had really only played late 90s/2000s games.

Lately I've gotten more into retro gaming and have been playing more games from that era. I played FFVI for the first time and absolutely LOVED it.

I then tried playing Ultima IV and.....just could not get into it. The mechanics just feel too antiquated and not intuitive.

Is there a good game I can play that is a little older than FFVI but has more slightly more modern mechanics than Ultima IV? My goal is to sort of expose myself to some of these older games so that Ultima IV doesn't feel like as big of a leap.

Alternatively, is there a good QoL mod for Ultima IV that modernizes it?

I’m looking for something interesting and fresh after playing RPGs for decades. A bit bored of the standard protagonist, the classic DND system is great, but I’ve played pretty much all the standard classes a lot at this point. 

I’m looking for something where your character is something else, ideally different enough from the norm that it impacts all the npc interactions in the game. Old school games like Planescape Torment come to mind, or playing a low intelligence character in the old Fallout games, you could see how every NPC interaction was different because of your strange player character.

In most RPGs your identity changes what equipment you use and very little else, maybe you get some unique opening sequence or something, but a warrior and a mage still walk into the same tavern and pick from the same three dialogue options for the most part. I'm hungry for games where who your character actually is reshapes how you engage with the entire world. I would be fine with no character creator or starting options as long as the protagonist is interesting.

I’ll mention some games I’ve played that did this right. Loved how Disco Elysium did it, you're an alcoholic detective with a broken mind and the game does a great job of reacting to that and reflecting it. You really feel like you are seeing the world from his perspective, and the NPCs treat you as you would expect. Citizen Sleeper puts you in the body of an escaped android worker just trying to survive on a decaying space station. And it really feels as bleak and hopeless as the premise implies.

I’m wondering what I should play next. Since Disco was so good I’m thinking about Esoteric Ebb, heard good things about it. The protagonist seems pretty fun (An incompetent cleric) but I’m not sure how generic the setting will feel since it's pretty much standard fantasy. Looking at these disco-like games I also ran into Hollow Home. Looks pretty unique, you play a kid stuck in a demolished city in Ukraine. It’s based on true events so that’s pretty interesting, and I don’t really know of any other RPG where you play a child so that sounds cool, since combat and intimidation are probably not going to be an option here I’m wondering how most situations in the game will play out, will give it a shot when it comes out.

I’m looking for more suggestions along these lines, open to trying pretty much anything, I would even be willing to play some flawed or janky games as long as they give me an interesting unique experience.

I saw screenshots of game like Ultima Underworld, Eye of the Beholder or Shining In The Darkness. I don't know why but I really liked the interface and want to play this kind of game. The examples I cited are retro gaming but I'm also very interested in modern games. I have no experience with crpg except ff7 once. I prefer easy games, but playing with a solution doesn't bother me. I'm curious about different and unique gameplay but I'm not looking for real-time action and deck building. I play on PC.