Any roleplaying game recommendations?

[Eluvianii]

Ok, I should be specific here. I don't mean the RPG genre. I love those games, they're my favorite but that's not necessarily what I'm looking for here. I mean games where you can roleplay your character, you know, just become them for a while.

Elder Scrolls games are great for this. Starting a new game in Morrowind and completely ignoring the main quest while I go around leveling up, joining guilds, doing random missions and getting into places I know I won't get out alive from is a really fun experience, but I'm looking for something more, idk, interaction-focused? Something where leveling up your persuasion is more important than your long sword skill.

There's this little (actually massive but looks can deceive) game called Academagia. It has a notable lack of graphics and it's extremely unfriendly to new players but I found the concept really fun. You customize a character, not visually but the character itself (home town, star sign, childhood experiences, motivations, goals, etc) and then you are thrown into a magic school where the gameplay basically consists of managing a schedule and making skill checks. It has next to no dialogue but the descriptions make everything feel like you're living your own story. You choose how to spend your day, you can attend classes or ignore them completely, you can train skills from the cremton that are available, you can try and improve your relationship with characters and form your own little group (there are like 80 so even that is customizable), and among that there are also a lot of events that pop up randomly, like "While you were walking through the garden you saw a kid getting eaten by a tree. What do you want to do?" which, being random but well designed, help making the game feel more alive. The story literally is mostly shaped by your character and the way you play it, and these events, so you probably get a completely original story every playthrough. As I said, really fun concept.

However, I recently found out this is the first of a 5-game series and the second one never came out. So now I'm just dreading that moment when the game says "See you next year" and that's the end.

So I tried to see if there are more games to fill this really specific niche where you quite literally shape the story through your character but I'm finding next to nothing. Do you guys know anything with a similar concept?

[cassiegoh]

Maybe GTA?

[Marukka]

How about Disco Elysium? It's a roleplaying game in which you are a detective and supposed to solve a murder. If and how you do this is entirely up to you. The freedom in choice is truly remarkable and you can play and level the character any way you like.

Another game that comes to mind is Wierd West. It is promised to be a roleplaying game in which every thing you can think of doing is possible and will feature a permadeath system making every decision count. It is sceduled to release in march, so it might not be as great as advertised or be of interest for you.

[Bort]

On 11/20/2020 at 6:34 AM, Eluvianii said:

Ok, I should be specific here. I don't mean the RPG genre. I love those games, they're my favorite but that's not necessarily what I'm looking for here. I mean games where you can roleplay your character, you know, just become them for a while.

Not much opportunity for roleplaying in the world due to being alone, but for a good escape from reality game, try Subnautica. You're the sole survivor in a starship crash, and you've got to explore, build stuff, and find out what happened, and what to do about it. Practically entirely open world, with very few prompts, and fantastic scenery.

Edited February 2, 2022 by Bort