2008 RPG of the Year

Role-Playing Games are some of the most ambitious games that a game developer can undertake, which is all the more reason why this year's of Independently made RPGs stands out.

Born from sweat and tears over many years, they exemplify the passion that often accompanies Indie projects. What's more, these games are some of the best indie games of 2008.

5th Place - Kivi's Underworld

The big "problem" with many RPGs is the investment that they involve. There are in-depth stories and in-depth rules. A standard RPG is not the kind of game that opens its arms to gamers far and wide. They're like an exclusive club: great rewards, high dues.

Kivi's Underworld aims to solve this problem and break the doors of the RPG world wide open to the masses. Instead of playing a dense, time-intensive experience, Kivi offers quick, casual RPG action. Based in the world of Depths of Peril, with all its rich backstory, Kivi's Underworld is a simple game with RPG roots. Each mission has its backstory and its theme, but is designed to be played and solved in about 15 to 30 minutes. There are stat upgrades to collect and power-ups to collect and use, but they're temporary for the level you're on, and not something to lose any sleep over.

Between levels there's the chance to upgrade a few basic statistics that will apply to all the various characters you can unlock in the game. Each un-lockable character has a power you can use during your level. Just enough to provide some variety, but not so much as to be overwhelming.

If you've always wanted something more serious and weighty than your standard casual title, but less long-term and heavy duty than a typical RPG, then Kivi's Underworld is a perfect place to start.

4th Place - Savage 2: A Tortured Soul

Savage 2 is a genre-buster, and a conundrum for best of lists everywhere. The game could claim to be an MMORPG, third-person combat or RTS… but GameTunnel knows it as an RPG.

Savage 2 is one of the more unique game experiences you can find. It's an on-line game that pitches two teams against one-another. With character classes adapted from the world of high-fantasy, players will engage in player versus player direct combat, and this is where the RPG element is strongest in game. As players battle one another, they collect souls, which are used to upgrade attributes as they fight.

However, combat is fast and furious, with players battling more to buy their team leader the time to construct buildings and gather resources and research skills that can be used to augment the fighters in the field.

It's rare to find a game that can blend genres as seamlessly as Savage 2 manages to. It's a smorgasbord of goodness and the kind of action game that RPG fans should really be able to sink their teeth into.

3rd Place - Avernum 5

Avernum 5 is an RPG in the classic fashion. It's essentially the antithesis to our number 5 title, Kivi's Underworld. Whereas Kivi seeks for a fast and easy RPG experience, the Avernum series is a sweeping epic. We're talking hundreds of quests, dozens of hours of gameplay and enough unique choices to make repeated plays very tempting (which rockets your game-time from dozens into the realm of hundreds).

The Avernum series is a throw-back to the time when games were about the experience and the story and not the graphics and the tech that drives them. You won't be blown away by flashy graphics and expensive cinematics, but you'll get a novel's worth of plot and interaction with a very tangible world. Battle is turn-based and varied, with lots of spells and skills and a plethora of enemy tactics to struggle against. While the storyline is mostly linear, there's a variety of ways to solve any problem and the choices you make will most certainly affect your play later on.

Avernum is gaming done right. Fans of the series are no doubt already happily engrossed in the game, but fans of the RPG genre owe it to themselves to try the game out. Spiderweb Software is confident enough in their product that even the demo of the game will give literally hours of play-time.

2nd Place - Mount & Blade

Mount & Blade is another entry for the RPG field that takes the genre into a fresh direction. Mount & Blade is an action-based, historically faithful RPG.

The training missions for the game are deceptively simple. Combat in the game is its largest selling point, but it's just the tip of the iceberg. Combat is third-person and is simple and flexible, using the mouse to aim strikes and place blocks. Mounted combat is something that can be at once frustrating and hugely satisfying (it's pretty hard to nail a footsoldier while astride a mighty warhorse).

But that's not all there is to the game. As soon as you leave the tutorial you find yourself on a surprisingly vast map. You're part of a breathing, realistic, medieval world. There's no real story, you simply are living the life of a warrior. You journey from town to town, taking on missions, battling brigands and perhaps even building up an army to take on the evils of the world.

As you battle, your prowess in the various weapons and skills of the game will expand, and you can shape your hero as you wish. In addition to shaping your character, you have your troops as well. The more men you have to command, the more dynamic battles become, as you issue some basic squad commands to your men. Getting into large-scale medieval battles is hugely fun. Commanding your men from the ramparts as you attempt to fend off enemy siege weapons is a real thrill.

2008 Role-Playing Game of the Year - The Spirit Engine 2

The Spirit Engine 2 is a side-scrolling, pixel graphic, content-heavy piece of awesome.

The game departs from the 3D RPGs of our day and creates a lavishly drawn and animated 2D world that has the depth to go toe to toe with any RPG on the market. It's flat-out beautiful to see in motion, but that's only one of the reasons that the game is such a winner.

Built around a party of 3 characters that you select, The Spirit Engine 2 has a deep story, and there is a lot of it. The amount of text to read in the game would be a chore in most games, but here the dialogues that occur between your characters are just riveting. It's not the kind of text you skip through, and the story that spills out through it all is fascinating to be a part of.

Similar to the text, the battles are also not just something that occurs blindly. There is no grind or unexpected random encounters. Instead, you fight through expected encounters to move to the next area and see your character's skills appropriately increased.

The Spirit Engine 2 features a unique battle system that while at times seems overwhelming, is another place where the game really shines. The variety of actions you can take in a battle is truly prodigious and leads to epic encounters that require precise use of your character's skills in order to overcome enemies that will carefully wear down your party through auto-resurrections and a variety of attacks.

The music is also worth a good mention. It's simply phenomenal. The songs are rich and perfectly fit every situation bringing further life into a world that is already glowingly vibrant.

Overall, even with so many great parts, The Spirit Engine 2 excels by being better than the sum of its parts. Everything flows together beautifully. It's an excellent orchestration that belies its indie roots and dares every player to find some reason not to like it. We couldn't find any and were happy to sing its praises as our 2008 RPG of the year!

Role-Playing Game of the Year Award History

History:
2008 - The Spirit Engine 2
2007 - Depths of Peril
2006 - FastCrawl
2005 - Cute Knight (Kishi Kawaii)
2004 - Anito: Defend a Land Enraged
2003 - Geneforge 2

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By: Michael Scarpelli
Posted: Thursday December 25, 2008