Early 2000/2010's RPGs

This is probably a normie answer, but I loved Morrowind when it came out. Very unique atmosphere. The combat is shit, but I really enjoyed everything else in it.

Second for Arcanum Morrowind.

If you haven't heard of it, let me give you a great introduction:


Seriously though, go through the man's content, a lot of his "reviews" apply here.
 
Knights of The Old Republic 2:

A game near and dear to my heart. Word to the wise, install "The Sith Lords Restored Content Mod."

KotOR II had a trouble development and release. The mod (or series of mods if you so choose) implements planned, but unfinished parts of the game.

The writing of the game is a masterclass in how to do the RPG Genre and Star Wars in general.

Here's disclaimer however: If you are no fan of Star Wars, or have a very bare level of knowledge on the lore, then this game might not be for you (yet).

If you are in the aforementioned camp of not knowing a heck of a lot of Star Wars (understandable), do yourself a favor and play the first game "Knight of the Old Republic" first. KotOR II poignancy stands on the shoulders of the first game's world-building.

I could sperg about the game all day, I better stop here.
en.wikipedia.org
Pathologic - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
en.wikipedia.org

Find a good translation, that is a requirement. Otherwise, it is incomprehensible most of the time. And I do not mean that in a good way.
 
Ok, I'm looking for recommendations. I just logged about 70 hours into Vampire The Masquerade:Bloodlines and I have been having a blast. I'm looking for more games like this, I've already played the Witcher series and Dragon age. Not just story based RPGs but stuff that either is from the 2000/2010's or has that same feeling. I don't care about story genre that much, just RPG-ness and charm.

Deus Ex was already mentioned but that game was the blueprint for Bloodlines in many ways, with an "open world" that's really just smaller hubs. It's still a great game, it genuinely holds up. Maybe check out Deus Ex: Invisible War, you might be one of the mutants that enjoys that game. The newer Deus Ex(Human Revolution, 2011) was pretty good and it might be the closest to Bloodlines just because it has more characters and dialogue trees, the previous games were more sparse in that area.

So check out Human Revolution.
 
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I'll recommend the Fire emblem series, especially 6 and 7 if you can find the english patched version of 6.

6 is what I'd call an "under-polished" game; its main story is conveyed rather generically and you need to force character interaction to get development out of your goons, but it's incredibly fun and deceptively difficult. Balancing between the game's 50+ characters might be an issue to you if you mind that only 5 of them are constantly worthwhile.

7 is what I'd call an "over-polished" game; they essentially balanced 6's gameplay & systems to the point where the game is despicably, insidiously easy for anyone who's even looked at 6. And while the story is a lot more interesting, the character interaction system that they carried over from 6 is a lot more hit-or-miss, and makes a fair amount of the characters you might like come across as flat or stupid.

There's also the fact that a third of 7 is a literal hand-holding tutorial that can't be skipped until you beat the game once, whereas the first arc or so of 6 plays out like a tutorial but isn't babying. Most people recommend playing 7 before 6, both for this reason and because 7 is a prequel of 6.
 
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FFTA is a good game but a game very easily broken by just keeping a field of archers and black mages with Marche serving as a blocker to make sure the enemy doesnt reach your long range units. What are your views on Disgaea?

Disgaea is far too grindy. I wish that wasn't the case because it has a really fun combat system, likable characters, beautiful sprites, and what seemed like an interesting story.

I don't think I'd really call FFTA or Disgaea RPGs, though. Are they RPGs? I thought they were turn based tactics games in league with games like Fire Emblem. I realize the term "RPG" has a pretty loose definition, but it just doesn't seem like tactics games should be in that category.
 
If you want the RPGiest RPGs I'd go for either Planescape Torment or Fallout 2. They're a bit earlier than what you're looking for, but I've yet to play any other RPG that comes anywhere near those two games. Fallout 2 ruined the genre for me because it was the only game I played where the developers pretty much thought of everything. You could talk your way past all situations, extort people, drive them to suicide. Hell, you can literally kill kids and sell your friends into slavery in between becoming a pornstar and a boxing champ. The devs were so fucking anal that your dialog/ speech options change depending on your charisma, intelligence and sobriety level.

P.S. I'll give another +1 to both Arcanum and Deus Ex. Arcanum was made by some of the same people that worked on Fallout 2 and also has amazing amounts of freedom. IIRC it even had a day and night cycle. I remember having to break into shops at night while the owners where asleep.
 
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Knights of The Old Republic 2:
Assuming you ever get the fucking thing to work.

I've tried five different "I swear to God this works!" methods to start it, only to have it tell me to go fuck myself.
 
Assuming you ever get the fucking thing to work.

I've tried five different "I swear to God this works!" methods to start it, only to have it tell me to go fuck myself.

I have the GOG version and a standard Win10 install and haven't had any issues, sorry. I still have the disk and USB rip floating around somewhere, but those are probably lost to time.
 
Disgaea is far too grindy. I wish that wasn't the case because it has a really fun combat system, likable characters, beautiful sprites, and what seemed like an interesting story.

I don't think I'd really call FFTA or Disgaea RPGs, though. Are they RPGs? I thought they were turn based tactics games in league with games like Fire Emblem. I realize the term "RPG" has a pretty loose definition, but it just doesn't seem like tactics games should be in that category.

They're usually all lumped into a sub-genre known as SRPG, or Strategy RPG, because they focus more on tactical chess-ish gameplay which is vastly different for many people vs the more traditional turned based gameplay of say traditional Final Fantasy.

They're still rpgs with rpg mechanics, especially Disgaea because Disgaea has a lot of rpg-ish elements and a lot of minmaxing you could do and a postgame longer then the main game itself, it just isn't very open. Fire Emblem is an rpg because of the obvious rpg stuff + the heavy story focus of most games, though the rpg gameplay has been growing over the years with stuff like Awakening giving you a lot of customization options for your army. Disgaea has a "story", but besides the first one out of the 4 I've played the stories are all pretty whatever unless you like the meta humor. Final Fantasy Tactics, the original, is also very very story heavy with a big political edge and it has the job system that started in the early FF games.

In general, SRPGS are sort of a sub-genre in of themselves, but most would call them rpgs to some extent. I guess it depends on what you define as rpg, but to me if FF is an rpg so is Fire emblem and especially FFTactics.
 
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If you want the RPGiest RPGs I'd go for either Planescape Torment or Fallout 2. They're a bit earlier than what you're looking for, but I've yet to play any other RPG that comes anywhere near those two games. Fallout 2 ruined the genre for me because it was the only game I played where the developers pretty much thought of everything. You could talk your way past all situations, extort people, drive them to suicide. Hell, you can literally kill kids and sell your friends into slavery in between becoming a pornstar and a boxing champ. The devs were so fucking anal that your dialog/ speech options change depending on your charisma, intelligence and sobriety level.

P.S. I'll give another +1 to both Arcanum and Deus Ex. Arcanum was made by some of the same people that worked on Fallout 2 and also has amazing amounts of freedom. IIRC it even had a day and night cycle. I remember having to break into shops at night while the owners where asleep.
+1 to Planescape Torment, the best RPG I've ever played. Skip the enhanced edition on GOG and get the original so you can patch the fuck out of it and restore the cut content.
 
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Gothic 1 & 2 are some good early 2000 RPG games made by the Germans (and also beloved by the Russians and Poles). While you can't create the look of your character, you can choose which faction to join early on which pretty much helps determine what build you're going for. Combat does look rather bland but it does stand out to its American contemporary that was Morrowind. The differences between Gothic 1 and 2 is that the former has you thrown into a prison colony that's mostly a sausage party where you try to escape while the latter has you go into the outside world beyond the prison colony where you have to deal with dragons leading the evil forces. 2 also has graphics that were greatly improved from the first, and with its add-on (which makes everything jacked in stats, among other things), you get an experience that will pretty much tell one to shut up when they say Dark Souls is the hardest RPG.

Gothic 3 is another good one though it's different in how it handles combat in that it plays more like its contemporary, Oblivion. Unlike the previous 2 games, the story doesn't trickle down to a single path since joining one faction can lead to it having its own ending. The world of the game is big and while it's not like Oblivion due to having a set character and no adventures after finishing the main quest, it has replayability in giving away different endings depending on which faction you choose to kill off and which important NPC you choose to follow. It took fan-patches to make the game stable though.

I'll second @ShittyRecolor in bringing up Wizardry 8. Unlike its contemporaries that were Ultima and Might & Magic, Wizardry ended with a good game. If one doesn't mind turn-based combat with trying out the various combinations of races and classes, it'll be a fun experience. There's also a PS2 Wizardry game known as Wizardry: Tale of the Forsaken Land. It plays more like the original Wizardry games with an emphasis on "friendship" which in the case of the game is the trust built among party members. Higher trust leads to better special moves and attacks that can really make a difference in a fight.

All these games, sans the PS2 Wizardry game, can be bought on Steam or GOG.
 
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I liked Nightmare of Druaga. No clue if it emulates worth a fuck, it's a Mysterious Dungeon game with the Tower of Druaga license attached. Played it a lot at work on my PS2 back in the day.
Especially if there's a mod the restores the Berserk content

I also hear Metal Max is very much a JRPG series where you can bypass the story and just have fun

And I’m shocked nobody’s mentioned Soulsbornes, none of them really require you to interact with story either (except maybe Sekiro and Demon’s Souls) and aside from Bloodborne and Demon’s Souls, they’re all on PC, including Nioh
Wasn't there some Berserk game for the Dreamcast?
 
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+1 to Arcanum, Wizardry 8 and Morrowind. I enjoyed FFTA, definitely one of the best GBA games but I don't know if I'd recommend it. It's way too easy and the law system is really annoying. Disgaea is good too if you enjoy grinding, finding creative ways to break a game and have a couple of hundreds hours of free time.

Personal recommendations:

GBA: Sword of Mana. It's my favorite game for the system but looking at it objectively I have to say it's pretty flawed. It's too easy, has missable sidequests, many of which involve grinding monsters, which will leave you severely overleveled, has more simplified mechanics than the classic Seiken Densetsu games and the introductory cutscene is like 30 minutes long and I hate it. On the plus side it looks great, probably the prettiest game on the console, has some really cool character and enemy designs, an interesting story and setting and the gameplay isn't too bad.

PC: Dungeon Siege. It's not a very good game and despite that I really enjoyed it. The combat and the RPG mechanics are very simplistic and the plot is cliched. What I like so much about it is that it really feels like a journey as you travel from one side of the realm to the nest in some very varied and increasingly cool locations (except the final one, the final stage is a bit of a letdown) and I loved the gameplay loop of exploring the wilds and delving dungeons for a couple of hours and then stopping at a town to upgrade the equipment of your 8 characters and restock before you restart the journey.

Oh sweatie, you have no idea how broken the game can get.
I remember using a Dual-Wielding Paladin and killing everything including bosses in one hit.
 
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Yeah, putting your meat shields up front so ranged characters can attack is what you're supposed to do. Dual wielding paladins, assassins with concentrate, gunners with concentrate and ultima attack, firebreathing Templars, summoners with red magic, and Morphers with ridiculous stats. You can have a lot of fun. Ffta2 was more balanced but less fun (although it added in Oracle shenanigans)
 
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