So, this will be a little different, just slightly. Basically, there's no top five or top 10 or top anything, just list whatever RPGs you think are the best with two pros and one con for each. I'll start off:

• Baldur's Gate II -- Very rich world, great characters and dialog, terrible combat( I prefer turn-based)


• Fallout 1 -- Amazing writing, great atmosphere, terrible combat(I like turn-based, this ain't it)


• Divinity: Original Sin -- Unique atmosphere and world, great dialog and writing, some quest glitches


• Skyrim -- Cool locations, open-ended sandbox, horrible writing and characters


• Morrowind -- Great open-ended sandbox, in-depth story and characters, combat was awful.

It seems like I can only think of cRPGs. I need more JRPGs in my life. I was thinking about trying the Persona series. Anyway, what are your selections?

Planescape, Deus Ex (1), and tbh... Kotor (a little dated, but I played it before BG actually... plus I'm a big SW fan)

Morrowind

Oblivion

Skyrim

Fallout 3

Deus Ex

KotOR 1

Neverwinter Nights 1

Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn

Vampire: The Redemption - Bloodlines

Games that had a big impact on me: Oblivion, Mass Effect, Fallout 3, Inquisition and Ego Draconis. Spent loads of time in each and they all had their own impact. I'm trying to think of something more profound and less vague, but meh, that'll have to do.

Crystalis on NES was the first cRPG I played and took a lot of my free time. Great story, difficult fights, and the bad part... hmmm.. I can't think of one. It's been a long, long time since I played it.

D&D, Traveller, Champions. Though tabletop RPGs, they're much more flexible than any cRPG. And that very flexibility is what makes them great.

KotOR 1 and 2. I like the story and being a Jedi. The second one was especially cool in that I could convert any of my companions into Jedi, too (or Sith). These games also allowed the player to play evil, not just "ignore the main quest." The combat is a little "clunky", but workable. Great party game, where the PC has others to help them out and each with their own cool story lines.

Neverwinter Nights 1. Not quite D&D 3.0, but close enough to help me feel like I was playing D&D. Very long playtime. Start in the city of Neverwinter, go to Port Last, head to Luskan, then finish up in a totally new area (forget the name of it right now). Had a great plot twist that caught me totally off-guard when I first ran into it. Good party game, as in, the PC can have a party to help them out. Combat was frustrating. I'd set up a choke point and my party would, through the programming, move about and totally ruin my strategy.

Morrowind. The dialogue was the best part for me. It did not slant any responses so I could use my imagination to say exactly what I wanted, how I wanted. Many think this "encyclopedic" for the simple fact that the words were the same (subject categories), no matter who you talked to, but that was what made it great for me. Open world where nearly anywhere was accessible right from the get-go. It also had the caveat that you could also die easily if you went somewhere you weren't ready for yet. I appreciated the "written directions" in lieu of compass pointers in later games. I actually made great use of my paper map that came with the game. I went through three of them Also, every NPC could be killed, giving us total freedom, though it could break the game/quests. Like you said, the combat was atrocious, but I liked the RNG factor of it. That was just not presented to the players well at all.

See, I liked Kotor because I was a Sith. That was unthinkable to me, growing up. It was the first game of it's kind (afaik) that let me dabble in that. Besides the TIE Fighter stuff, but that's not exactly roleplaying.

Well lets see:

Ys series.

For Zelda games my favorite is A Link to the Past and A Link Between Worlds.

For Final Fantasy: IV,VI,VII and X.

Morrowind

Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time

KotOR & KotOR2: The Sith Lords

Oblivion

Skyrim

Fallout3/New Vegas

Vampire- The Masquerade: Bloodlines

My list is mostly pen and paper RPGs -

Runequest: deep lore, great system with a good balance between complexity and playability

Pendragon: setting, good system for encouraging you to do what the character would do rather than what you would do, without taking away your control of the character

Call of Cthulhu: setting, simple quick rules, good mechanics for stuff like madness

Vampire the Masquerade: deep lore, simple but flexible game mechanics

And 1 CRPG:

Morrowind: originality of setting and depth of lore, character freedom, well-paced MQ

Hey, folks, don't forget the second part of the question:

Oh poo. I never was very good at making it to the end of a sentence: no wonder I don't do much reading these days. I need coffee and Ritalin.

Er okay, then; to reprise:

• Oblivion: pros: vast amount of exploration and really nice setting; cons: poorly implemented levelling.
• Mass Effect: pros: adventure and mystery, and for me, what I'd really wanted Doom 3 to be (yeah I know, I was kinda playing the wrong game in that case; cons: locker-room hell.
• Fallout 3: pros: Oblivion with guns, getting me into the '50s retro-futurism vibe; cons: crashing.
• Inquisition: pros: interesting characters, immersive world and lore; cons: fetch quests.
• Ego Draconis: pros: Kirill Pokrovsky's soundtrack, ludicrous sense of humour; cons: too short.

I also can't help noticing that three of my nominations use what's basically the same engine. I seem to like the look and feel of the wobbly old Gamebryo system.

Of the RPGs that I have played all the way through or extensively/a fair amount of (no particular order):

TESI: Arena

-Two pros: dungeons sizes that are just right and I get to explore all of the provinces of Tamriel, albeit only with random or procedural generation

-One con: no joinable factions

TESII: Daggerfall

-Two pros: the cities are more realistically sized and the scope of the game-world

-One con: the many, many bugs and glitches

TESIII: Morrowind

-Two pros: the incredible world-building and the variety of spells

-One con: the heavy-handed success/fail of the dice roll mechanic

TESIV: Oblivion

-Two pros: interesting to explore and charming

-One con: the enemy level-scaling

TESV: Skyrim

-Two pros: gorgeous landscape and intriguing lore

-One con: the length of the faction quest-lines

TES: Online (although I haven't played a whole lot)

-Two pros: you can go to some of every province of Tamriel and a look at a previously largely unexplored time in Tamrielic history

-One con: not too big a fan of the skill list

Runescape (the old-school RS, as in the mid-2000s version; never played the really old-school version though)

-Two pros: insane amount of content and incredible fun

-One con: very grind-y

I have made some progress in Planescape: Torment and I have some other RPGs like Divine Divinity and Beyond Divinity still to play, so these may make it on the list eventually.

My favourite games have no cons

Heres an attempt:

Runequest: Sheer depth of the games background and lore intimidated a lot of new players who were used to games where they could just decide they were a dwarf fighter and soon be playing

Pendragon: Not much scope if you didn't want to be a knight, although a good referee and some of the supplements could alleviate that

Call of Cthulhu: Depending on the referee and players party wipeout was always a strong possibility

VtM: White Wolf Publishing really milked the player with endless supplements containing a lot of waffle as well as some good stuff

Morrowind: No climbing

Here are my pros 'n' cons:

I adore the Netimmerse / Gamebryo / Creation engine. It's perfectly suited to Bethesda's open-world, non-linear games and I hope they continue to upgrade it for many years to come.

• Daggerfall -- Huge game world and interesting main quest but very buggy.
• Morrowind -- Nice explorable game world and interesting lore, but at start you walk so slow and miss everything.
• VtM: Bloodlines -- Awesome dialogue writing and voice acting, but again, very buggy (fortunately 1.2 fixed the most serious stuff and plenty of fanfixes been fixing other stuff.
• Chrono Cross -- Amazing soundtrack and very diverse well written cast, but the story is a bit bonkers.
• Suikoden II -- Wonderful story and soundtrack but, uhh, I don't know. The game is flawless, well, the European version is

And 3 of my nominations were made by the same company, Chaosium.

The 80s were truly a golden age for tabletop gaming. Happily its undergoing a bit of a renaissance atm although the driving force is boardgames and card games rather than rpgs.

The best rpgs i have ever had the pleasure of playing goes something like this in no particular order:

Final Fantasy XII - probably my all time fave rpg overall, Brilliant art direction and world but average story.

Skyrim - The most immersive game experience i have ever experienced. Brilliant music from Jeremy Soule and satisfying combat but no attributes is disappointing.

Oblivion - When i want to relax and unwind, Cyrodiil is the place i turn to. perfect soundtrack (Soule's best work imo), amazing guilds but flawed leveling system.

Fallout 3/New Vegas - Love them both equally and they both have their strengths and weaknesses. F3 has great exploration and amazing atmosphere but

mediocre writing. New Vegas has more role playing options and brilliant writing but rather poor exploration IMO.

Final Fantasy XIII - Never understood the hate, great combat system, amazing art direction/graphics but admittedly very linear for first 12 chapters.

Fire Emblem Awakening - Incredibly addicting. Great characters and good story but quite average map designs compared to POR/RD

Pokemon HG/SS - Easily the best Pokemon games ever made and it's not even debatable imo. The pinnacle in Pokemon sprite design, top notch music but story is kinda weak.

It actually happened, I found a fellow fan of XII! That game is seriously underrated.

Kudos for not hating XIII either, I also really don't understand the overwhelming hate. Especially since it's not more linear by heaps and bounds than almost all previous FF games, they just had a way of tricking you into thinking they aren't that linear, while XIII's narrative made it very obvious.

1. Skyrim

2. Morrowind

3. Fallout 4

4. ? Zelda - Ocarina of Time (if this counts as an rpg. Or is it an Action / Adventure?)

5. Fable 2

6. Witcher 2

Final Fantasy 7 is my favorite of all time. No other game in my 40+ years of gaming has stirred my emotions like that game did. I cannot praise it highly enough.


Edit:ok, ok I'll put in pros and cons!


Pro: awesome story.

Fantastic soundtrack


Con: random combat got annoying at times.

OK, here it goes...


Skyrim

Morrowind

Oblivion

Fire Emblem Fates

Final fantasy (for the NES)

Fallout 1

Fallout 2

Baldur's gate

Xenoblade Chronicles X

Rim world (not sure if this really counts as an RPG but whatever)


Whew, that was hard to decide

Cool! I just wanted to see why people like the games they do. It's interesting