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HoloDust 3 days ago
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LegitHyperbole said:
HoloDust said:

I was just pulling your leg, mate, sorry if it sounded a bit out of order.

But you do have habit of obsessing over some game and then proclaiming it GOAT, especially in RPG subgenres, without playing cult classics from them or fully understanding said genre.

Leg pulled and not broken. TW3 has been special to me since the week it released, it has me for a thousand hours and two thousand more watching content on it. I don't push and "pseudo RPG's" often though. 

You can check the top 50 list in my sig, I only gush about that, that is really great. I can't think of any other "questionable" RPG's though? Maybe Sekiro and Fromsoft games? but DOS 1 and 2 which are very clearly RPGs. I remember that time I went full hog on Stellar Blade here but that's a DMC/GoW style game. 

Now I wonder, if the new GoW games are RPG's or not.

Witcher 3 is a good game from my POV, it's just not very good as RPG - you're playing predefined character, with mostly predefined history, relationships, profession and with very limited moral bounds, and how you progress Geralt mechanically through the game doesn't make much difference in how he behaves and interacts with the world and world with him. Sure, you make narrative choices, but that is not exclusive to RPGs. Strip away its RPG mechanics and not much is really lost.

This is why a lot of RPG enthusiast don't consider it RPG at all. I always tend to say that for me it sits right on the fence between action-RPG and action-adventure, with very thin RPG mechanics, but fairly good narrative choices - from my POV, it's the game against which all these new breed of pseudo RPGs can be tested to decide on which side of the fence they sit at (or at least lean more toward). Though, ultimately, I think, just like there are Rouge-lites, which borrow some mechanics from Rouge, maybe it's about time for Narrative RPG-lites to get their official label. Because, if you view something like Witcher, it will always be under heavy scrutiny from strictly RPG point of view, although it's great as narrative action-adventure with some of RPG mechanics.

As for DOS 1/2, yes, they are RPGs - they're just not as good as actual macrocosmic world CRPGs (like Utlimas, Fallout 1/2, Arcanum or Age of Decadence), but pretty great as microcosmic theme park mega-dungeon crawlers (just like BG3).

P.S. As Witcher aficionado, you should really play The Dawn of Bloodwalker - looking it strictly mechanically as an action RPG it's better than Witcher 3 (though nowhere near as good as proper action RPGs), but it suffers from undercooked world and not as strong writing, areas in which Witcher 3 is really great.