Official 2023 HQ RPG VOTING!!!

[rusty_shackleford]

Lads & Lemons,

You have had up to two years to play and digest the RPGs that released in 2023. It is time to decide which of those games was the least terrible.

How it works:

• You get 3 votes, each being able to assigned to a separate game. Not all votes must be spent.
• To be able to vote, you must have a post count of at least 15. Attempts to vote using alts will result in harsh penalties.
• The poll will run for 30 days from the creation date of this thread.
• You may freely change your vote until the poll ends.
• All votes are hidden until the poll ends.

Game criteria:

• Release date means the full game released in English that year. If a game was released prior but available in English in 2023, then it is considered a 2023 game for our purposes. Unofficial translations do not count.
• Games that are so-called 'total conversions' — games made using an existing game's engine, are fine. Examples from prior years include Archolos, Enderal, Fallout Sonora, and so on.
• Only RPGs will be included, games that have lite RPG elements were first on the chopping block to be excluded when I was adding games.
• It must have released on PC.

► Games that were excluded

Curious why a game you like wasn't on the list? Check here, or ask in the thread.
The odds of a game being included on a list are directly related to how 'RPG' it is, and how busy the release year is. A game that qualifies one year may not have qualified in another year.
I had briefly considered raising the number of entries from 30, but decided against it — 30 is a nice number, I like working within constraints.

• Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew — Not an RPG despite being advertised as such.
• Showgunners — Not an RPG, it's a tacticool game with RPG elements.
• Six Ages 2: Lights Going Out — Not an RPG.
• Forspoken — Not an RPG, action game with RPG elements. It got pushed off to make room for a real RPG.
• ???JRPG??? — Not an expert on JRPGs, I consulted with weebs to make sure they got some representation on here.
• ???Chinese RPG??? — Not an expert. I included a couple popular ones.
• Soulsloppa — It probably leans too heavily into the action side without enough RPG.
• Deckbuilder — Nah.
• DLC for game X — Scroll up and read

[rusty_shackleford]

@Adventurer

The games were shuffled randomly to attempt to remove any bias in ordering.

[Vergil]

whoa another game of the year poll for BG3 to win!

[rusty_shackleford]

whoa another game of the year poll for BG3 to win!

The original intention was to always do the GOTY polls a year lagged.

[J1M]

Would advocate that Diablo 4 be removed but I doubt it could win anyway.

[TKVNC]

Diablo 4 numba wan

[Gunnar]

I haven’t played any of the games on the list. Skimming through, mostly not interested in the ones I recognize but there are some I’ve never heard of.

[logincrash]

I only played peak normalfag slop (Starfield, Hogwarts Legacy, BG3) and of those I could only vote for BG3 in clear conscience. Even with all of its aggressive progressive faggotroonigger propaganda, it's at the very least an engaging and fun to play RPG.
Also, Hogwarts Legacy does not belong on this list at all. It unironically closer to Forspoken gameplay-wise and is more of a Soulslike than an RPG. Even fucking Starfield is more of an RPG and it's the latest most streamlined (i.e. dumbed down for fucking retards) slop that modern Bethesda shat out on our collective plate.

[Nooneatall]

None of my hentai games are on the list

[Wretch]

Hogwartz legacy made trannies big mad so it’s definitely got my vote.

[Tweed]

I guess I'll vote for the three games I actually played

[Lord of Riva]

Hogwartz legacy made trannies big mad so it’s definitely got my vote.

It however it also comntains a tranny *and* rowling is a raving feminist, it's a deal with the devil.

[rusty_shackleford]

I haven’t played any of the games on the list. Skimming through, mostly not interested in the ones I recognize but there are some I’ve never heard of.

Give Caves of Lore a try?

[Gunnar]

I haven’t played any of the games on the list. Skimming through, mostly not interested in the ones I recognize but there are some I’ve never heard of.

Give Caves of Lore a try?

Thanks for the recommendation. I have heard some good things about it and will check it out.

[rusty_shackleford]

I haven’t played any of the games on the list. Skimming through, mostly not interested in the ones I recognize but there are some I’ve never heard of.

Give Caves of Lore a try?

Thanks for the recommendation. I have heard some good things about it and will check it out.

@Kalarion did a review, dev posted in the thread at the time
viewtopic.php?t=578-review-caves-of-lore

[MrTwinkls]

So many games on the list that i haven't heard of to play later. Updated my journal.

[Valter]

I guess I'll vote for the three games I actually played

real

[Val the Moofia Boss]

The only game on the list I played was Trails into Reverie, so I voted for that. Sunk 230 hours into it. Overall really liked it. The main story is much more enjoyable to go through than your average Trails game, in which you are often meandering around catching up on hundreds of NPCs and doing several sidequests with nothing urgent happening until the last 10-15 hours. In Reverie's main story, the story has tension a few hours in, there are no side quests (there ocassionally optional cryptid bosses) to dilute the experience, and you are limited in how many areas are available at a time, which cuts down tremendously on talking to NPCs. I liked the Rean and C routes, and several really climatic scenes. The tournament daydream was neat. Soundtrack was overall very good with several great tracks. I enjoyed playing the game on Abyss difficulty where I really had to pay attention during battles, and my positioning mattered. There were some neat monster designs. PC port is great as usual.




Downsides: Crossbell infects yet another Trails game, with the same detestable cast and setting and the same tiresome "we gotta liberate Crossbell!" plot. Lloyd route is awful. Infuriating historical revisionism and treatment of Erebonia. Everybody being buddy buddy with each other even though they are from different countries and organizations with bad blood and have good reasons to dislike or be wary of each other. Most of the Daydreams are mediocre fluff that do not provide a satisfactory conclusion for old subplots, expand the setting, or establish interesting future plot hooks like the doors in Trails in the Sky the 3rd did. Some English lolcowlization shenagains going on, and some mediocre voice lines. Two female characters are dubbed by men.

[Breathe]

Talk about a bad year. The only games on the list I was planning on playing were Diablo 4, Moonring, and Lunacid, but since I haven't even played those I'll abstain from voting.

[Wretch]

The only game on the list I played was Trails into Reverie, so I voted for that. Sunk 230 hours into it. Overall really liked it. The main story is much more enjoyable to go through than your average Trails game, in which you are often meandering around catching up on hundreds of NPCs and doing several sidequests with nothing urgent happening until the last 10-15 hours. In Reverie's main story, the story has tension a few hours in, there are no side quests (there ocassionally optional cryptid bosses) to dilute the experience, and you are limited in how many areas are available at a time, which cuts down tremendously on talking to NPCs. I liked the Rean and C routes, and several really climatic scenes. The tournament daydream was neat. Soundtrack was overall very good with several great tracks. I enjoyed playing the game on Abyss difficulty where I really had to pay attention during battles, and my positioning mattered. There were some neat monster designs. PC port is great as usual.




Downsides: Crossbell infects yet another Trails game, with the same detestable cast and setting and the same tiresome "we gotta liberate Crossbell!" plot. Lloyd route is awful. Infuriating historical revisionism and treatment of Erebonia. Everybody being buddy buddy with each other even though they are from different countries and organizations with bad blood and have good reasons to dislike or be wary of each other. Most of the Daydreams are mediocre fluff that do not provide a satisfactory conclusion for old subplots, expand the setting, or establish interesting future plot hooks like the doors in Trails in the Sky the 3rd did. Some English lolcowlization shenagains going on, and some mediocre voice lines. Two female characters are dubbed by men.

Have you played the jak trilogy?

[rusty_shackleford]

Talk about a bad year.

I'll have to disagree, it was definitely one of the better years in recent memory overall.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Have you played the jak trilogy?

No. I think there was a Jak and Daxter playstation demo display at a Walmart and I moved a character around a bit. Or it might have been Ratchet, or some other game.

[Wretch]

Have you played the jak trilogy?

No. I think there was a Jak and Daxter playstation demo display at a Walmart and I moved a character around a bit. Or it might have been Ratchet, or some other game.

I so badly want you to play them and make some review posts. You can play then first two easily on pc with opengoal now and the third can be emulated on pscx or w/e it is called.

[DagothGeas5]

I only played Hogwarts Legacy and "Baldur's Gate 3" from the list, and would not vote for neither of them, so I will abstain as I have not played the others.
Looking forward to which game will win!

[Dorateen]

Voted Legends of Amberland: The Song of Trees

[Havitner]

I have not played a single one of those games.

[Silver]

HL, Lies of P and BG3 from me. All votes are of various levels of sentiment, really.

Truthfully, I haven't played Lies of P myself yet, but I enjoyed everything that I saw on streams and vids. From what little I know about the dev team as well, it also seemed like this game was truly a project of love and passion from people who cared about delivering a game, not a bunch of propaganda.

And speaking of propaganda... while both HL and BG3 are laced with it, I still managed to have fun in both of those games. Even simply flying in pretty environment of HL brought me lots of childlike joy and BG3 had a solid gameplay core to it that was still very fun, despite the existence of horrid Act 3.
More so, BG3 has a special level of sentiment for me: after getting severely butthurt with all the outrageous DEI, it then pushed me into researching mods and led me into finding this jolly place full of very interesting people.

[fkirenicus]

There's nothing here about DragQueen Age: The Vergil?

[Oyster Sauce]

There's nothing here about DragQueen Age: The Vergil?

2023

[fkirenicus]

There's nothing here about DragQueen Age: The Vergil?

2023

Seriously, I couldn't wait ONE WHOLE YEAR for that joke.