Since then i played my share of RPGs. I would like to share what RPG gameplay elements i like most, most of these elements are present in today's RPGs but some are better implemented than others, for example, there is more crafting in Terraria than talking...
I will not be talking about RPG elements in MMORPGs. The Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games i have played for more than two hours are Realm of the Mad God, Path of Exile and Maple Story, Path of Exile being the most recent.
Smash
Its not a skill if it does not look awesome on you.
Smashing and other character class related skills are always a warm welcome for me in RPGs, i loved them specially in Diablo 2′s Barbarian character class where i can whirl around at monsters while dual wielding two legendary swords, and who does not like the jump skill? i do not know why but isometric RPGs did not have characters who can jump by default, but i think Nox made their characters jump and that was a great game too. Recently the skill or special attack that i like is the melee attack of the Borderlands 2 Gunzerker character class where killing in close range gives more experience points. So i do not think class specific skills will be gone anytime soon, check out the awesome skill tree Path to Exile has created and you will see what i mean. While on the topic of smashing, think game developers should add class specific animations when smashing crates and chests and other smashables, looting and smashing seems to be a un-removeable part of Action RPGs.
Hack
It is not everyday that when you kill a rat, gold coins pop out from its belly.
I do not know where hacking started in video RPGs but you can rarely see characters hacking at monsters, melee attacks are more of slashing and dashing with a pointed weapon. Yes i think melee animation still is a great factor for me when playing RPGs. Many turn-based rogue-likes seem to dispense with attack animations, i think it is ok, but if they would just add an attack animation to their game, it would instantly look 20% cooler. it would be like the board game Chewbacca and C3P0 played on the Millennium Falcon in the Star Wars: A New Hope Movie.
Loot
Looting is not for everyone, NPC's do not do it.
The first game i played that had me smash, break, and loot anything that might have something in it was Diablo, and then Diablo 2 and its expansion, and then Baldur’s Gate 2 and its expansion, and then Torchlight and then Torchlight 2. I am not sure why looting caught on mostly with action RPGs when it is certainly a negative way to acquire stuff, in Baldur’s Gate 2, you can actually ransack homes if you are skilled enough to not get caught. In a zombie apocalypse game, or like that certain TV show about dead people walking, i think it would make sense, dead people would leave many of their stuff stashed or lying around the house. but dungeons that are completely inhabited by evil monsters that want only to kill and eat, there is little reason for evil minions to stash gold in oak barrels or swallow gold so they can just blow up with it when the Hero hacks them to death. In Terraria, you can craft most of the items so there is almost no point in looting, but still i take whatever i want when i see it, like a stone statue for example, just because it might look good in the Merchant’s home. I even loot my own gravestone in Terraria, can you call that looting? And in the upcoming game Starbound, there is the promise of many glorious loot-filled worlds. I like looting, because, as Borderlands 2 put it, there is better loot to be had in opening crates and containers than killing to get better gear.
Talk
Sometimes, talk is not cheap
Although not all RPGs have great NPC conversations, one game i have played stands out, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. That game made you want to talk to everybody that you can be able to talk to. Most of the better games that i have played that had good conversation scripts were adventure games, maybe the next rpg game they make, they should hire the adventure game writers to create the npc interaction dialogue to make it interesting. Diablo 2 is a great rpg game but had forgettable npc dialogue, I also played Act I of Diablo 3 and it still is the same flat dialogue, the npc sound like they are just reading from a script.
Craft
Two small blocks of dirt make a bigger block of dirt
Crafting seems like a mechanic that has taken off in recent years, maybe because of the success of minecraft and terraria, but i think the genre that has been using crafting mechanics for a long time are adventure games like The Secret of Monkey Island, where you combine unlikely items into a usuefull piece to solve a puzzle. In RPG games you can craft items more than once and also combine the crafted items with other crafted items to make something completely new. I first encountered item crafting in Diablo 2 where i heavily used the transmutation cube to create higher quality gems and potions. These days terraria and minecraft has lots of content to be crafted and it also makes alot of sense because a golden armor should not be dropped by a blue gelatinous blob when it dies. Unless it has previously consumed a knight wearing a golden armor, but that is another story in another game.
Get Those Legendary RPG games
and start your adventure today
What else do i like to do in Roleplaying Games? Explore, Buy, Sell, Cast Spells, Conjure Elementals, Heal myself magically everytime an enemy takes damage, Etcetera Etcetera. With games like Skyrim and Torchlight were there is an active community of Modders always adding new things and gameplay into the games, you will never be short of new content.
For Great Classic roleplaying games that are free, head over to Abandonia.com
For Good old RPGs from DOS and Windows 9x era, head over to GOG.com
For Newer games, get it from Steam, Amazon or the Mac Appstore, some of the new RPG games are also sold at GOG.com
But do not limit yourself to those sites, some great RPG games are also sold on the developer's website that are not available for purchase at online game shops, all you need to do is research.
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