Baldurs gate 2 vs Diablo 2 vs Dark Souls vs Chrono Trigger. Wait a minute... ARPGs vs CRPGs vs JRPS?

Channel:

Ye Old Entertainment

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10,800

Published on March 13, 2022 2:45:01 PM ● Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0BqbZsyoPk

Game:

Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn (2000)

Category:

Review

Duration: 16:17

5,513 views

201

Our Baldurs Gate2 review, some of our top tens, but most specially the only two videos we've made on RPGs here on the channel (Grim Dawn and Shadows Awakening), have unintentionally served as epistemic battlegrounds for discussions pertaining the sub-genres within the RPG realms.
We love games like Baldur's Gate II, m and Diablo II in this channel... and we had our of entertainment with games like Dark Souls and Sekiro, we are not sure it's useful to throw them into a sack on account of having been labelled "RPG" by the developer.

Baldur’s Gate II and Diablo II are genre defining games. One only needs to take a look at the slew of games that have tried to imitate them over the course of the years.
You have the Pillars of Eternities, the Pathfinders, the Tyrannys and Zorias one hand. Games that don’t exactly try to hide their source of inspiration and the Titan Quests, the hellgate londons the Grim dawns, Torchlights, fates and adventures of van helsing on the other. And to say that these games “follow the tradition of Diablo II” would be hell of a euphemism.

I think that taxonomies have to be first and foremost useful. And when it comes to games and especially RPGS, they have to help you decide if a certain game is for you or not. Because RPGS are not like one-on-one fighting games… As different as they are they ALL more or less appeal to the same crowd.

I think that, as different as it is from Diablo II, Shadows Awakening could appeal to my friend Eat a lot. But I really don’t think that Dark Souls or Bloodborne would.

On the other hand, Sekiro was never labelled an RPG although it has many RPG mechanics like choosing which skills and disciplines to train and which prosthetics to enhance and how. And I think Sekiro is a game that would appeal to 95% of those who liked the soulsborne games.

So, while equating ARPGs to isometric Diabloesque games may be reductive, I think it is a lot more useful than using the term to throw in every game and its mother that fits the operative definition.

So much so in fact, that nowadays the souls-like tag has become hugely popular. Ant that’s because Dark Souls, whether you like or not… was a genre defining game and there’s a huge crowd out there that are always hunting for games that deliver a similar experience. And just like Titan Quest’s reason to exist seems to be to sate the thirst for more Diablo-II like ARPGS, there’s games like Mortal Shell that seek to do the same with Dark Souls.

Now Elden Ring is out and it is an open world RPG that distills everything that was good about Dark Souls, Bloodborne and Sekiro (well almost everything) and throws in a few new things of its own. And I’m actually curious about what people are going to call its genre in the future. Go figure!

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