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Get those horses looking nice and crisp with the best gaming monitors available today. There are few games that get medieval combat right, and fewer still that add a strategic, army-building component. The metagame of alliance-making, marriage, looting, and economics underpinning these battles makes Warband a satisfying game of gathering goods, enemies, and friendship. We loved BioWare's original Neverwinter Nights from and especially its expansions , but as a single-player experience, Neverwinter Nights 2 was in a class all of its own.

Whereas the original had a fairly weak main campaign that mainly seemed aimed at showing what the DM kit was capable of, Obsidian Entertainment managed to equal and arguably outdo BioWare's storytelling prowess in the sequel when it took over the helm. The whole affair brimmed with humor, and companions such as the raucous dwarf Khelgar Ironfist still have few rivals in personality nine years later. And the quality just kept coming. Shades of The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past reveal themselves in the masterful Shadow of the Betrayer expansion's focus on two halves of the same world, but Obsidian skillfully uses that familiar framework to deliver an unforgettable commentary on religion.

Few games are as staunchly open-world—and unforgiving—as Gothic 2. The first time we played it, we left town in the wrong direction and immediately met monsters many levels higher than us, and died horribly. Lesson learned. It sounds like Gothic 2 is too punishing, but we love the way it forces us to learn our way through its world. Pick a direction and run. A random chat with an NPC will lead you to a far-off dungeon, searching for a legendary relic. You could be picking berries on the side of a mountain and discover a dragon.

Oops, accidental dragon fight. Some on the PC Gamer team keep a modded-up Skyrim install handy, just in case they feel like adventure. The sequel to the marvellous Pillars of Eternity ventures to the archipelago of Deadfire. You, and your party of adventurers, need to pursue a rampaging god, but to reach it you first you need to learn to sail the high seas aboard The Defiant.

On the ocean you can explore and can plunder enemy vessels for loot, which you can then use to upgrade your ship. When you dock at a port the game switches back to classic top-down cRPG view and you're treated to elaborate and beautifully rendered locations.

Designer Paul Neurath originally conceived of a dungeon simulator that would turn traditional role-playing conventions on their head. Called Underworld, he and his team, the future Looking Glass Studios, built a game that rewarded real-world thinking to solve puzzles and please NPCs. Ultima developer Origin Systems was so impressed by the three-dimensional engine you could look up and down!

Characters that are normally enemies are friends in Underworld, and we love that you may not be able to tell. Underworld was a technological marvel in , but while the graphics are dated, the feeling of exploring the Stygian Abyss is just as exciting today. Divinity was a Kickstarter success story that still somehow took us by surprise. Larian designed encounters thinking that someone could always disagree, or ruin things for you, or even kill the NPC you need to talk to—meaning that quests have to be solvable in unorthodox ways.

The writing in Divinity is consistently top-notch. Alliances are made, then broken, then remade in the aftermath. Choices you think are good just turn out to betray other characters. The end result is possibly the most nuanced take on The Force in the entire Star Wars Expanded Universe, and definitely its most complex villains. A fan-made mod opens in new tab restores much of that content, including a droid planet, and fixes lots of outstanding bugs, showing yet again that PC gamers will work hard to maintain their favorite games.

Release date: Developer: Troika Steam opens in new tab. The endgame includes some particularly sloggy dungeons, but no other game truly drops you into a Vampire world. This is truly a cult classic of an RPG, and the fanbase has been patching and improving the game ever since release.

Vampire: The Masquerade—Bloodlines 2 is currently in development. Read everything we know about it in preparation for what could be another addition to this list in Release date: Developer: Blizzard Battle.

Adding all this to the already-tremendous feeling of wiping out hordes of baddies with a well-timed ability change, RoS is the defining action RPG for us.

Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura was astoundingly buggy when it came out, and many of its battles were as laughably imbalanced as its title. Patches and mods have alleviated some of that pain over the years, but even then they weren't powerful enough to hide what a great mix of fantasy and steampunkery thrived under its surface. That assessment holds up.

Arcanum was dark 'n' gritty before some such tendencies became all the rage, and its character creator allowed players to create everything from gnome gamblers who brandish self-explanatory Tesla-guns to outcast orcs lugging along rusty maces. Toss in non-linear progression and multiple solutions for quests, and you've got a winner that holds up 14 years later.

It also adds much of the humor that we loved from the classic games: How can you not appreciate a game that gives you a nuclear grenade launcher? It makes the game harder, but also more rewarding. Name any similar-looking RPG made in the past five years, and chances are good Dark Souls will be named as an inspiration for its design. Still, Dark Souls 3 proves that no one does it quite so well as From Software. The spark of originality that was so compelling in Dark Souls 1 isn't quite as apparent here, the second sequel in just five years, but what remains is an impeccably designed combat-heavy RPG.

It's far more responsive than its predecessors, demanding faster action and reaction without sacrificing the deliberate play Dark Souls popularized. Button mashing will get you nowhere but dead. Dark Souls 3 is the most approachable in the series thanks to frequent warp points, simplified online co-op and beautiful and hideous art that beckons you to explore every nook and corner.

No game series manages to reward you so profoundly for scrutinizing its lore and unfurling its secrets, and Dark Souls 3's faster, tighter controls and animation make it the most fun Souls game to play.

The epic scale of The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings is remarkable, but it's the power of choice in an unrelentingly ugly world that makes it unforgettable. Moral ambiguity has never been so powerfully presented: the decisions you make actually matter, and the outcomes are often unforeseeable and rarely as good as you'd hope.

One of the most impressive things about The Witcher 2 is the way it blends two very distinct experiences. Early in the game, Geralt must make a choice that will take him down one of two separate paths, each offering a completely different perspective on the game's events. If you want to see it all, you'll have to play it twice—and there's more than enough to make it a worthwhile effort.

You might expect all your toil and trouble to eventually lead to a just and happy ending for all, but it won't.

Geralt isn't a hero; he's really not much more than a bystander, trying to protect what little he has from the chaos that surrounds him.

His quest is entirely personal, driven forward by a colorful, occasionally bizarre and surprisingly believable cast of characters that really brings the game alive. Geralt works alone, but he feels more like "one among many" than the savior-protagonists of other party-based RPGs. It's a fantastic and well-told tale, layered over very solid mechanical underpinnings: A flexible character development system, glorious eye candy, intense combat and more than enough secondary content to camouflage its very linear nature.

It's dark, it's dirty, it's sometimes flat-out depressing—and it's brilliant. Ferelden evokes much of the Forgotten Realms without feeling like a rehash, and your relationship with your team has that old BioWare magic. The darkspawn feel like the kind of world-consuming threat that demands our attention, even if most of them are faceless hunks of evil for us to cut down. We love how Dragon Age treats magic in its world, in particular the quests that force us to choose how to best handle abominations, the result of a renegade mage succombing to demonic possession.

That loneliness is key because Shock 2 is all about taking things away from you. Think twice before you walk into that radiated room. But the biggest thing Irrational takes away, right at the halfway mark of the game, is hope. Irrational made games where the environment is the central character, and here, that character is the Von Braun. It creaks and moans as you pad quietly down its corridors. Every door you open yelps.

Its security systems attack you as if you hurt their feelings. Some play through with all guns blazing, but the psionics skills balance well with combat, and Tech skills open new areas later in the game. The Guardian was one of the most terrifying things our young minds had ever encountered. His massive stone face emerging from the screen, with his actual, real-life voice taunting us, both tempting us to play more and horrifying us.

It was a technological marvel at the time, but Ultima 7 stands the test of time because of the interactivity of Britannia. This is without a doubt the best installment of one of the most legendary RPG franchises ever. Do you want to run in the firefight, guns blazing, or do you want to sneak around and flank? Do you want to snipe?

Or maybe you want to hack some terminals and get droid reinforcement? Graphically, you might brush this game off as being a lazy RPG maker game with not much to it, but one of the main points of this RPG is to not judge a book by its cover. This is a game that takes heavy inspiration from the Mother series, or Earthbound , as it was called in North America, but takes it to a level beyond those already subversive RPGs. Without spoiling much, it is pretty much impossible to have not heard of Undertale and not also hear about how it breaks the fourth wall to incredible effect.

It has become the inspiration for many games that do similar things, but none of them succeed quite as will as this charming RPG. Set in the world of the Underground, Undertale stars a human in a world of monsters. These monsters, however, are not all evil creatures. In fact, nearly all of them are quirky, fun, funny, and endearing characters both in and out of battle.

That is the main choice you make in Undertale , and a huge reason to replay the game, but far from the only trick it has up its sleeve. If you somehow dodged all the spoilers this game has, enjoy turn-based RPGs with charming character writing, and like a story that has a strong chance of pulling hard on your heart strings, take a trip or two through Undertale.

Path of Exile There are only so many times we can play and replay Diablo 2, even with the remastered version, and even Diablo 3 has been stagnant for a while now. The fourth game is promised but with no clear window of when it will actually come.

Thankfully, another game picked up right where that series left off but turned it into a living game that, at this point, is almost overflowing with content. Path of Exile started out as a simple clone but with a firm understanding of the action RPG systems, loot economy, and multiplayer fun that made the Diablo games so popular.

It started out a little light on content during the beta period, but over the years it has become a huge game that introduces new expansions multiple times a year. The Diablo comparisons are obvious from the moment you see Path of Exile. The perspective is an identical isometric view and sends you off into a variety of randomly generated zones to complete quests, find loot, and kill hundreds of monsters.

The hub zones, known as encampments, are almost MMO in nature, but unless you team up with a party, each time you go out into the world proper it will be a fully instanced area.

There are seven classes to pick from, and each has a skill tree so big they might as well be called forests at this point. Plus, consider all the gear, upgrades, and leagues that cycle in for unique challenges and rewards, and you have a game that almost makes you relieved Diablo 4 is so far away. Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire is Obsidian firing on all cylinders.

The first game was a Kickstarter darling for players, and the team got a chance to show that, given time and budget, they can make one of the best RPGs out there. The sequel continues on where the first left off, kicking you out onto the high seas in a more pirate-style adventure.

The ship is more than just a vessel, though, and adds in a new layer of mechanics to this already deep RPG. Gameplay wise, anyone who is a fan of the Infinity Engine games will feel right at home, but the story and setting are uncharted lands for all.

If you know Obsidian games, then you have an expectation when it comes to the writing and quests in their games. Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire somehow might be their most impressive game in both regards. With any RPG, you need to learn a ton of new terms, names, alliances — basically a new language.

What Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire does so intelligently is give little refreshers on specific terms in the text so you can get a quick refresher on what it is and why it is important. Fallout 3 did do a lot right, but Fallout: New Vegas brought it home with a much richer role-playing experience, more interesting and thought-provoking quests and characters, and a world that felt so real despite being set in the post-apocalypse Nevada desert.

For older games, PC players get the unique advantage of being able to easily mod titles. Since Fallout: New Vegas was made in such a short time, a lot of rough edges had to be overlooked to focus on the core experience and get the game out the door. Even without mods, the world and quests you will experience in this wasteland and the way you can influence them, all delivered through great writing, is still worth playing.

Dues Ex has spawned many sequels and even more spiritual ones, but only a handful of those even come close to achieving the level of systems and reactivity this game allows you to manipulate. Want to be sneaky? Find a vent or stack some garbage to reach a high ledge. Want to smooth talk your way in? Give it a shot. If you, like many of us, were burned by Cyberpunk , Dues Ex is the dynamic, dystopian, conspiracy filled sci-fi RPG you deserve.

Well, as long as you can look past the admittedly ugly graphics and fairly dated and clunky controls, anyway. And this is a story you will get invested in, being full of politics, philosophical concepts of humanity, and conspiracies. Weekend Deal Offer ends 8 Aug am. Free Weekend Play for free until 8 Aug am. Narrow By Tag Adventure 7, Indie 7, Singleplayer 6, Action 5, Fantasy 4, Casual 3, Strategy 3, Story Rich 3, Action RPG 2, Pixel Graphics 2, Anime 2, Recommended Specials. See All Specials.

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