Some of the earliest video games ever were role-playing games. Given the natural ability of computers to crunch stats, and the natural affinity between programmers and Dungeons & Dragons, that's no surprise.
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Since then, the genre has come on in leaps and bounds. Just as the numbers behind the scenes have become more complex, the interfaces above have become prettier and more accessible. The games have diversified into multiple, confusing sub-genres each with their own vocal fan base.
And you can find examples of every kind on Steam. So here are some of the best, just in case you need a suggestion next time you fancy a bit of dungeon delving.
Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition By Beamdog - (£14.99) Let's start than with the title that transformed role-playing games forever. In place of the lumbering, stat-driven games of the past, here was a thing that wove character and story into an epic tapestry. And gave us heart-stopping real time combat with a pause button. In fact, it had even more lumbering stats than most of its predecessors. We just stopped caring because everything else was so wonderful.
The sequel, Baldur's Gate 2, went on to greater critical acclaim and is also on Steam. But my heart stays with the original for its comparative simplicity and naive charm.
Who want and epic plot that span the cosmos when you could be gutting Gnolls at the behest of a mad Ranger with a hamster fixation? Pillars of Eternity By Obsidian Entertainment - (£34.99) Besides, if you really want epic role-playing in the style of Baldur's Gate, you can skip the sequel and pick up this instead. It has the same concepts as the classic Infinity Engine that powered the Baldur's Gate games, but drags everything into the new millennium. That doesn't just mean sharper graphics and richer sound. It means ever more complex interactions between the members of your party and non-player characters. It means a novel fantasy world of astonishing richness and imagination bought to life in vivid detail. It means a lot more strategy and tactics to pause-button combat.
It means a near-bottomless well of potential play hours. Wizardry 8 By Sir-Tech Canada - (£6.99) If you want a glimpse of what role-playing was like before the Infinity Engine, this is the place to find out. Oh sure, it's got the first-person view common to more modern fare.
But after spending several hours poring over stats in the character creation screen you'll come to understand the true meaning of 'old school'. If you can get past that, however, there's a massive, seventy hour game underneath.
Filled with monsters, traps, and even more stat crunching as you level up and kit out your characters. Legend of Grimrock 2 By Almost Human Games - (£17.99) Just as detailed stat crunching was starting to feel obsolete, along came a game called Dungeon Master. It dared to do something different. Rather than watching your party from above as they moved round the map, Dungeon Master let you see the world through their actual eyes. Legend of Grimrock 2 is a love letter to that long-lost title. It eschews modern open world games and goes back to the simple click-move system and grid-based maps that characterised the original.
Then it uses those mechanics to build the biggest, hardest most unfathomable puzzles you may ever encounter in a role-playing game. Forget grinding for stats. This is all about watching your party starve as you stare bleakly at a cryptic riddle intoned by a stone head.
It's more fun that it sounds. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim By Bethesda Game Studios - (£9.99) Those open-world games that grew out of the old first-person dungeon explorers have gone from strength to strength.
The Elder Scrolls series, which sees you free to roam massive and richly detailed fantasy worlds, are the poster child of these titles. And Skyrim is the very best of them. Although there's a plot to follow, you can ignore it and be whatever you want to be. You can collect potion reagents, hunt monsters, or collect cabbages to earn your keep. You'll want to do it thanks to the incredible scenery, the snow blowing off windswept peaks, the sun shining off walls of ice. Wherever you go, and whatever you do, you'll find secrets and wonders.
But we suggest you do pay some attention to the plot, and not get lost in cabbages. Fallout 3 By Bethesda Game Studios - (£9.99) The majority of role-playing games are set in sword and sorcery words.
But there's no reason for that other than conforming to a stereotype. The mechanics work effectively transplanted to any setting. Post-apocalyptic open world title Fallout 3 is perhaps the best proof of that. As the anonymous Vault Dweller, you'll emerge into a blasted world that's at once familiar and yet horribly different. Add in fine mechanics for survival, character building and a smidgen of black humour and you're looking at an all-time classic. The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings By CD Projekt Red - (£14.99) Just as open world settings threatened to overwhelm role-playing games, along came The Witcher 2.
It reminded us how a hub-based world and act-based plot could be far more intimate and compelling than open wandering. Its recent sequel, and critical darling, The Witcher 3 did go open world. But we're sticking with this game. Partly because the newer one requires a beast of a machine to run. Partly because the combat in the older title is harder and more satisfying.
But you won't got far wrong with any game in this franchise. Dark Souls: Prepare To Die Edition By FromSoftware - (£19.99) Gaming is full of people who extol the virtues of Dark Souls in spite of all the things that make it a nightmare. The grueling difficulty level. The punishing and often inescapable set-pieces. The design elements like hiding important save points and making one entire level a deadly poisonous bog.
Here's the thing though: these people are right. Your reward for suffering these torments is the satisfaction of having earned your rewards, of knowing you best something really hard. Plus, Dark Souls is one of the few genre blenders that manages to keep intact almost everything satisfying about its inspiration. It's a fully-fledged action role-playing game with combat like a fighting game. Ignore the naysayers and try it. Bastion By Supergiant Games - (£10.99) If you can't get with the towering challenge represented by Dark Souls, we could forgive you for getting your action RPG fix here instead.
Because while not as unique as the previous entry, Bastion manages to get everything else about the sub-genre just right. The button-mashing and dungeon exploring, the experience gathering and loot collecting all dovetail snugly together. Not that you'd be looking, anyway, as you're carried along on soothing voice of the game's extraordinary event-based narration. It's almost like someone reading you your very own fantasy story, with you as the hero, out loud. Fable - The Lost Chapters By Lionhead Studios - (£6.99) Reaching a bit further back into the mists of action RPG history is Fable.
Given that the genre is now often celebrated for its difficulty, it seems ironic that this was once criticised for its lack of challenge. And the critics were right: it's a title you could play through with one eye closed. What earns it its spot on the list is the sheer joy of the thing. Exuberance peeps out from between every pixel as you slay bandits, explore haunted ruins, and kick chickens.
It's so full of fun, in-jokes, and silly Britishness that playing is like having Peter Molyneux in your front room with a party hat, giving a thumbs up and a cheesy wink. Except a lot less creepy. Torchlight II By Runic Games - (£14.99) It's worth remembering that not all action RPGs are over the shoulder third person.
A little title called Diablo gathered elements from classic Rogue-likes and made a new kind of role-playing game. In which collecting treasure started to feel more like mainlining crack cocaine. None of that series is available on Steam.
Which would have been a shame until Torchlight 2 came along and eclipsed the games that inspired it at a stroke. While Diablo became ever more complex, convoluted, and po-faced, Torchlight 2 returned to simpler joys. Such as clicking on monsters until they explode, then picking through the gore to find what items they dropped. Also all of these games work great on from Fierce PC.
Dungeons of Dredmor By Gaslamp Games, Inc. (£3.49) Speaking of Rogue-likes, they're a genre onto themselves and deserving of their own list. But the majority of them also look and feel a lot like classic role-playing games. Dungeons of Dredmor is perhaps the best of them. It updates the formula of exploring a procedurally generated dungeon turn by turn with some nicer graphics and a healthy dose of humour. Which will leave you laughing right up to the point that permadeath kills your save file hours into the game.
One Way Heroics By Smoking WOLF - (£2.29) It takes something special to stand out amongst all the Rogue-likes on Steam, but one-way heroics has a unique selling point. As you explore the new procedural world the game has made, darkness is eating it from the other end. The result is a bizarre blend of turn-based role playing and the forced scrolling common to old-school platform games. It has other innovations, too, like giving you points to spend on upgrading things for your next run. It might sound odd, but there's nothing else quite like it on all of Steam.
Character customization is an integral part of the MMORPG genre. Being able to create a character that fits a specific persona can help players immerse themselves in the game. Limited customization may not be a deal breaker for everyone, but I know many people who won't even play a game if classes are gender locked or if they can't customize their character in a certain way. Rip video from dvd free mac. winx dvd ripper for mac. Every MMORPG has a character creation menu with some customization, but some games take character creation a bit more seriously. I personally don't think character creation makes or breaks a game, but it can be incredibly fun fiddeling around on a game's character creation menu, especially when there are tons of sliders and customization options. I personally spent over an hour creating the perfect Victoria Secret hottie in and I have no regrets.
Anyway, whether you're looking to fiddle around or genuinely interested in playing games with only the best character creation systems, check out the list below: MMORPGs with Great Character Customization Black Desert Online Normally these lists save the best for the last, but I'm going to go ahead and start this list off strong with what I consider to be the MMORPG with the best character creation system in the world. Black Desert Online is a gorgeous fantasy by the South Korean developer Pearl Abyss. Its character creation system is incredibly in-depth and allows players to customize everything from hair strands to eyeliner in incredible detail. Simply put, Black Desert is the gold standard of character creators in MMOs. Just check out the video above, which starts by showing off the game's character creator. Even if you have no interest in playing Black Desert, the character creator alone makes it worth the download in my opinion. The only downside here is that classes are gender locked.
Perfect World It may be odd to see such an old MMORPG make it to this list, but despite originally launching in 2005 (in China) and 2008 in the West, has an in-depth character creation system that goes above and beyond what most games offer. While most games allow reasonable levels of customization, Perfect World allows players to create absurd looking characters, from tiny heads and huge bodies to characters with glowing pink skin. Obviously players don't NEED to make absurd looking characters, but the fact that the game allows this shows off the extent of the game's customization. Even if you're not looking to make a Frankenstein style character, Perfect World has A LOT of customization sliders for everything from eye size to arm length. This one is a bit of an oldie, as it released back in 2004, but Eve Online still has some of the best customization in any MMO. Even though there are a ton of options, players never really get to see much of their customization, as the game takes place almost exclusively in your ship. Still, if you want to see an awesome character creator at work, check out Eve Online.
Especially since it went free to play in November, 2016. Aion originally launched as a buy to play subscription game by, but later went free to play. Despite originally launching in 2008, Aion still looks quite beautiful even today and features some of the best character customization I've seen in an MMORPG. Just take a look at the video above to see what the game's character creator offers.
Despite never launching in the West officially, the Japanese version of the game is playable by anyone from the West without any IP restrictions. The sci-fi MMORPG from Sega features one of the most in depth character customization systems of any MMO. Interested in checking the game out? Champions Online is a unique game on this list because it's not another fantasy themed MMORPG.
Instead, it's a superhero themed MMORPG, which means players get to create their very own superheroes. The game originally launched back in 2009 as the successor to and one of the game's most prominent features is its in-depth character customization system. Given the nature of superheroes, the developers wanted every player to have a truly 'unique' character. Not only do players get to customize their character's body, but they get to create their own unique costume as well. Blade and Soul originally released in South Korea back in 2012 but didn't launch in the West until early 2016. While the game doesn't offer nearly as much character customization as Black Desert, the game has a lot of sliders to play with.
Blade and Soul also has a unique art style, which makes character models stand out a bit more too. APB Reloaded Although not an MMORPG, features a surprisingly in-depth character creation system. I mean, just take a look at the video above and see for yourself. For those that haven't heard of APB, the game originally launched as simply 'APB All Points Bulletin' with a buy to play model, but after bankruptcy it was acquired by and relaunched as a free to play game and was renamed APB Reloaded. There are obviously many more out there with 'good' character customization, but am I missing any games with 'great' customization?
If so, let me know in the comments below and I'll update this list!