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OU Ariakas

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As much as I love Shadowrun in general and SNES Shadowrun in particular, I find it hard to include any of those old school 'keyword' style RPGs in any best of list.

Bro. It was a great game. It had leveling, quests, magic, gear, and a party system. The story was great as well. It is a Western RPG that stands tall in the category for its time period. I am sure a ton of people would put FF IV (III) from the SNES on their list of all timers, and this one is my super close 2nd RPG for that entire system's catalog.
 

Kirun

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As much as I love Shadowrun in general and SNES Shadowrun in particular, I find it hard to include any of those old school 'keyword' style RPGs in any best of list.
Even the HBS Shadowrun games are better than the SNES stuff. Maybe not Returns, but Dragonfall and Honk Kong definitely were.
 

Kirun

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discussion wolf GIF


I basically played ME3 like this the whole time.
 
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Wombat

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As much as I love Shadowrun in general and SNES Shadowrun in particular, I find it hard to include any of those old school 'keyword' style RPGs in any best of list.
My pen and paper history was AD&D to Shadowrun, with a lot of dawn of internet forum / newsgroup arguing over SR, so its just my personal nostalgia.

Disclaimer: I need to give serious reattempts to Disco, BG3, Divinity, and Witcher 3, all of which fell off due to real life time crunches.
 

Gavinmad

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Even the HBS Shadowrun games are better than the SNES stuff. Maybe not Returns, but Dragonfall and Honk Kong definitely were.
Sure but that's not a fair comparison at all considering how big a hardware gap there is. Both 16 bit Shadowruns are excellent games but they could only do so much with the hardware of the time. That's like saying Wii Sports is better than Pong.
 

...

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What the hell is an RPG now anyway?

I mean that literally - which do you include / exclude out of Mass Effect / Cyberpunk 2077 / Fallout 4? Those characters have wildly different skill sets and narratives based on your choices.

Is it background stats? Because then Grand Theft Auto San Andreas is an RPG.

Is it a level system? Because even most shooters lock weapons and abilities behind levels, whether character or season-pass based. Is Call of Duty 25 an RPG?

Gun to my head, I would say something like
Fallout NV
Cyberpunk 2077
Planescape Torment
Kotor 1
Deus Ex (2000)
Mass Effect 2
Shadowrun SNES
and a ten way tie beyond that.

As far as KOTOR 2 goes, it has some really interesting material in changing your companions based on your choices, and some of the most plausible dark side beliefs, but mechanically and storyline-wise it's a mess, and might literally be the game best suited by a remake (or a timeline with more dev time).
Obviously symphony of the night fits and should be on the list...well i guess it isnt western. poop