But Skyrim can hardly be called an RPG at all and is largely a hack and slash.

Dark Souls won't make it my next RPG list. That kind of games will never be better than Blizzard's Diablo in my opinion. And Diablo 3 is just around the corner. I still don't know why they think it's innovative? Wasn't Blizzard the Great grandfather of all 3rd Person View hack & slash RPG with Diablo?

I wanted DA 2 to get it

I hate it when people say stuff like this.
I can compare any RPG I want to with another one in terms of RPG mechanics.
Which game has more of it and better detailed RPG mechanics?

For example, in Fallout New Vegas there's branching dialogue, there's action and consequence, there's choices in next to every quest, you can kill every single NPC apart from that robot inside the Gun Runners booth, I can choose to be a pacifist through the entire game and complete it without hurting a single living or mechanic being, I can choose between 13 skills and a multitude of perks to define my character and it has a stat system that matters more than most RPG's nowadays.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution though, it does not have a pacifist route, it does not have the same amount of quests and choices as in New Vegas, you don't get to see the effects of those choices, there are no skills or stats to define Adam only a form of perk system which is higly biased towards combat or hacking, it has branching dialogue but it's a lot more limited in comparison, you can't kill every character you want to and still be able to finish the game.

Both are RPG's but FNV has more and more complex RPG mechanics.

So Dark Souls? Skyrim? FNV? Planescape Torment? Fable? Borderlands?
You can compare any RPG to another one if you want to in terms of which game has by definite rule more complex RPG mechanics.
Whether you like it or not a game that has branching dialogue (and lots of it) is 1+ above a game that does not have it.


Just saying, that "you can't compare X to Y" is a bad argument, cause everything can be compared.

Fair point, Japanese products do well in Japan. Having said, while the Xbox may not be in the same league as Nintendo/Sony's respective consoles, it's still a damn sight more popular than the PC as a gaming platform.

Why this stigma exists is a bit of a mystery. They just don't like PC's for games in Japan.

i can live with this

Skyrim also seems like a non-linear action game with a few RPG elements...

have you played demon or dark souls? its not considered innovative for its combat, the combat is merely considered precise enough to justify the high difficulty of the game, so its usually player error that results in death, not cheap gameplay. tho some players have trouble distinguishing between the two lol.

not to mention diablos are top down left click fests...fun, but NOTHING like the souls games gameplaywise. you are punished severely for rushing in those games.

Morrowind got widespread for the numbers back then. In fact, the most noticeable change in the series is between Morrowind and Daggerfall, not even MW-Skyrim are that alike.

Listen, I've played from Daggerfall to Skyrim, the BG trilogy and [censored]loads of other RPGs, and the only reason to not catter Skyrim in the same genre as the other would be spreadsheets. Skyrim is most obviously the most RPG-like game of the list, maybe alongside with The Witcher 2, which is a damn good game (though I prefer the former). Dark Souls, on the other hand, is closer to God of War or (More likely) Kingdom Hearts, which are more action-adventure games (And that doesen't mean It's not a good game, just not an RPG). Deus Ex ont he other hand is more a shooter, more like an even more action focused Mass Effect.

Witcher 2 is 10 times more an RPG then Skyrim. Deus Ex HR is also more RPG than Skyrim. Skyrim's RPG elements are so thin and simplistic that anyone is at least as correct in saying that Skyrim is not an RPG as anyone who says otherwise. You saying DE HR (or the original DE) is similarly action-oriented to Mass Effect suggests you haven't played it... because that's not true.

That's strange, because theres a whole lot of RPG elements in my game.

I don't seem to recall Diablo & Diablo 2 being very easy either. Yes it is a left click fest but it still requires planning & strategy to get past their levels. I still think Diablo is the Best Hack & Slash Arcade RPG ever produced even with it's linear story telling.

If anything Skyrim and ES is more fun. I find Diablo games seriously challenging & needing all my concentration & focus.

I'd argue that DkS combat system 'is' innovative. There's certainly nothing else quite like it (that I know of) beyond Demon Souls. To me it seems like the bastard child of a coupling between traditional twitch (ie, click to swing) RPG mechanics and 'beat-em-up' mechanics.

It's an almost perfect marriage of East meets West imo. It should be adopted in some form, or at least considered by all Western action RPG developers.

Dark Souls is also innovative with it's subtle storytelling and steep learning curve. We're not used to this sort of challenge in this sort of game. There is a trial and error aspect to it at first, and I appreciate that some people will not like this. Stick with it though and you can learn to be cautious. It then really pays your patience back.

All of this makes it a brilliant and innovative game.

sorry but it annoys me when people have a set perameter for what they consider a rpg and dont share it with the group >.<

i dont find skyrim much more RP then say...dark souls. the main difference is in skyrim its a make your own adventure RP tho your still dovakin, dark souls you RP as a cursed undead. in fact not just the featurs, but certain lack of features (expansive dialogue for example) serve to enhance dark souls for me, while skyrim my chars dialogue options are so sparse and one dimensional it can sometimes detract from my gaming.

for me a rpg is a game where you play the role of a char, what seperates these from say games like halo for me is in halo you dont really get more powerful, in rpg's you start out weak and gain in power, most traditionally with items and levels.

so in my book dark souls is def a rpg, tho a hack and slash rpg, tho even calling it taht is misleading since if you went in hacking and slashing youd just constantly die.

id consider skyrim a hack and slash rpg too since combat is inprecise enough that its just a sloppy affair (still fun mind you) and even with the plethora of quests your options to deal with them is so small i cant consider it a great storytelling rpg. what it does that dark souls doesnt is offer a simulator of sorts.

See, the problem with RPGs is no one can agree on what they actually are. That and the whole 'tis not a true RPG, therefore it is for plebeians' attitude.

For me, it would be either Skyrim or the Witcher 2.

i agree its awesome, tho...i never had a issue playing diablo or diablo 2 difficulty wise, tho i always played a barbarian or a druid /shrug, id even use easter sun mod and pump it to 4x players (so the difficulty would be that of 4 players) and still have a fairly easy time of it.

while some people claim dark souls was easier then demons souls, and this may be true, it certainly was difficult, and every enemy would punish a mistake handily. dark souls a lot of the time was more like...a dueling game, as a player that got anywhere in it tended to try and lure enemies into 1 on 1's. with smart pacing, strafing, timing, and NEVER overextending. i consider the combat between the two games to be like night and day.

What? DS is pretty much nothing like Diablo. Diablo is "isometric". DS is over-the-shoulder. In Diablo you tell your character to do something with a mouse and the rest is down to virtual dice roll; in DS you control the character yourself and it's down to you to parry and dodge(though of course stats also play a role).

Dark Souls is the worst game I've played in years.

Story was poorly told and I felt so disconnected to the point where I couldn't care less.

Very, very linear.

Combat was clunky, boring and extremely slow with very few animations.

Characters had all the personality of a dead rat

Graphics and character models were poor.

Constantly respawning miles away with all enemies reset very nearly tipped my temper over the edge, always hated that in old age games, never had the temperament for it.

Very difficult just for the sake of it and was poorly done.

Therefore Dark Souls is up on my personal list of 'worst ever games' alongside Two Worlds.

Seems like you get flamed a lot though if you hated this game for some reason too.

So how does this make it a better RPG game or more innovative rpg game? These are the same fellas who thought mixing RPG with strategy in Dawn of War 2 series made it a better game. I disagree entirely. Rather than improving the Ai of the opponent to make it more challenging they simply reduced the resources of the player to make it more difficult. It ended of being much less of a game than the original in my opinion. Believe it or not Relic is now doing FPS with the series. A total sell out to the console market.

Oh I have no idea. I'm just saying they're different.

If you're considering playing Darks Souls but don't know whether to take the plunge, read this article:

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-12-29-games-of-2011-dark-souls-article

Good lowdown on how it plays.

Edit: Read paragraph 8 for a scathing opinion on what gaming is becoming. So true imo.

Seriously? If there's one company that 'bought' the GOTY awards from any site, it's Bethesda. Skyrim was so overhyped and worshipped (still is) that people expected it to win every price, and now rage because Dark Souls (or any other game) wins the price.

I own both games, I like Skyrim more because of the open world but my brother likes Dark Souls more because of the challengeing aspect. He thinks that Skyrim is just WoW but singleplayer, and I disagree with that.
The point is that they are both different games and should be treated like that with awards too. Skyrim is an open world RPG, Dark Souls is a dungeon crawler (RPG).

and this PERFECTLY examples what i said. it alienates as much as it draws, some people (like the quoted poster) just dont have the temperment or personality for that type of game. its like me and anything turnbased...i svck at, and i HATE CoD style games, and i LOATHE RTS games.

it doesnt meant there bad games, just that i dont have the temperment/personality for them.

now if people like this quoted poster could see the difference between opinion and fact.

for example, i loved having to dig out the story, made th world so much more mysterious and at the same time believable, everythign isnt just handed to you or explained.

only as linear as you made it to be, tho not nearly as open as skyrim

combat was subperb with very fluid and well done animations, and punished people for overextending better then any combat system ive ever played. not to mention precise as all hell.

agreed on PC, tho, skyrims char isnt exactly full of vinegar itself lol, at least in dark souls its not the main view.

graphics were wonderful and stylized, really set a unique tone for the world

just a example of how the game isnt for you sir, i enjoyed it.

whiel difficulty wasnt done as well as demon souls, it was still done very well, and yes, it was difficult for a challenge to players who wanted it, you obviously didnt, so i wonder why you were intrigued into purchasing it in the first place

but dont worry i wont flame you, just stating that opinions are very different from one another.

tho two worlds was a crappy game, i couldnt help but enjoy it for some reason, i loved the spell system in it tho

Hell, after some pondering I'd give my personal RPG GotY award too... Bastion.
Most immersive experience this year, with continious high quality from beginning to the end.
Closely followed by The Binding of Isaac.

The Witcher 2 did a very good job. Skyrim rates merely good on my list.