The music ranges from mysterious during exploration to a panicked beat during combat. Hardly anything happens during the middle part of the story, the side characters feel bland, there are lots of plot holes, and the narrative starts feeling like a mess. Your companions feel like actual people you can interact with and listen to, each with their own preferences and perspectives. There are also weapons to collect and upgrade, each of which offer nice little tidbits of lore after you get them to max level. The story in Dragon Age: Origins is long and expansive with many different parts that are all fit together by the finale. For example, if you're really brave, certain other NPCs might give you an extra quest. Some enemies are very aggressive and fast, so a momentary lapse in focus can cause you to restart an area from the beginning. Your world view of the story events and characters expands drastically as you complete each playthrough, playing on your expectations to help you develop a deeper emotional bond with the protagonists and become invested in their plight. Regardless of your methods, you always feel like the dominant force, which makes it all the more satisfying to ruthlessly skewer helpless orcs. What's even better you can read the lore in books found in-game, allowing you to immerse yourself for countless hours. After each successful mission/kill your soldiers will earn experience. Even though you choose a class when creating your character, it only affects your starting equipment. Darkest Dungeon has an almost intoxicating atmosphere created by three main aspects. Additionally, because there is a game master, you can create various role-playing events not possible in a normal campaign. When you finally beat the monster, it's thanks to your skill and effort as a player, which feels both rewarding and gratifying. You have about ten squadmates to choose from, not including DLC characters. The biggest step Monster Hunter World takes is making the franchise more accessible to newcomers, while still retaining the depth and complexity that fans love it for. Every single choice affects how the story progresses, and a bad decision early on can come back to haunt you later. The class system lets players create incredibly varied and unique heroes, like a ranger that can talk to animals and control the weather. You're not just stepping into an arena to fight monsters, you're entering a living and breathing world where monsters go about their daily lives - eating, fighting, hunting, and resting. Based on these you'll select the appropriate soldiers, weapons, and gadgets. For example, if you fight monsters with the Pawns, they'll gradually gain knowledge about the monsters. Fast characters will get a turn first, so a group of fast characters could end a battle without letting enemies retaliate. These type of events considerably add to the immersion, making you truly feel like a hunter that's intruding upon an ecosystem. The experience subverts player's expectations at multiple turns and does some wildly inventive storytelling. Hayes is a Staff Writer for Screen Rant. Conversely a dagger is very fast but it has a horrible reach. You parry, you counter, you roll, and you slash away at the orcs with your sword. All these things add up and it's really exciting watching your soldiers grow into unstoppable killing machines. It takes a lot of patience to not get annoyed with managing all of your items and components. $59.88 : Action Role-Playing, Multiplayer: PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Windows--Path of Exile. Beating this game will almost certainly feel like an achievement. There are the mechanics, the crafting system, and the skill gem system. You can side with the people whom you know will provide the most support in the finale against the darkspawn, but these characters might be irredeemable and reprehensible, so you might not want to help them after all. With the Xbox Series X just around the corner, it's the perfect time to look back on some of the best RPG experiences on the Xbox One. From the mellow flute permeated with ambience and a divine chorus when you travel down a road, to the upbeat strumming of string instruments as you ransack a tavern, to even a ominous orchestra during a confrontation with a dragon. So whenever a lot of legendary items drop all at once it just feels incredibly satisfying. Sometimes when you encounter a specific character or make a specific dialogue choice, the music will change based on the mood you just invoked. The world is packed with fascinating things to discover, and the game does a remarkable job of making its sidequests important. This also includes having enough provisions such as torches and food. When a fight starts it pumps you up by playing Slavic or Celtic beats, and on a heartbreaking scene, it slows down its pace and plays an instrumental that rings even after you close it. One of the more fun parts about this game is managing your squad. If you happen to enjoy doing side quests, you might end up overleveled for the story quests, allowing you to easily power through them. For example, when you're fighting a cyborg with really cool looking armor, you can slice off its arm with a finishing move. Mastering your class specialization and using the radial menu to your advantage gives the combat a lot of strategic depth. This ranges from NPC interactions, elemental spells that can affect the environment, to a cornucopia of in-world items and objects that can taken or moved. While a lot of games without maps and/or waypoints play fine, The Surge may feel too disorientating at times. Related: DOOM Eternal 5-Second Load Time Proves Xbox Series X Next-Gen Power. On top of that, the game master can control NPCs, add quests, and make rule adjustments on the fly. You as the lord of a small settlement will employ these adventurers to clear out the mysterious dungeons surrounding your property. This can be frustrating when trying to find better gear and just adds a lot of clutter to ones inventory as the majority of items found won't be that useful. Their personalities shine through the most during their optional loyalty missions where you help them complete certain personal tasks separate from the main story. Developers have taken great care to make an interesting story, but what really pulls you in is the dialogue and character interactions. If you don't like to perfectly memorize level layouts, the Surge might be annoying to play. Winning battles in D:OS2 is equal amounts of preparation and tactics. This creates an unusual gameplay loop where you hunt monsters, collect their body parts, and use them as materials to craft better gear, allowing you to hunt even stronger monsters. Even if you rush through the story, a single playthrough will last you about 50 hours. This is made worse by the fact that your character progression comes to a grinding halt near the upper 80s of character levels, requiring you to buy insanely expensive items to feel any progression at all. 25 Best Xbox One RPGs You Should Play For those gamers out there that place incredible value in the amount of time a game offers, RPGs are probably your bread and butter. You create a character, pick a skill and just progress through the game while occasionally upgrading your equipment. You can customize the looks, voices, and even names of your soldiers. In Mass Effect 2, you get to choose between options like keeping or destroying inhumane scientific research that could help an entire galactic race, or exposing the dark truth about a squadmates' family for the greater good or keeping it hidden. You confront bandits, skeletons, undersea terrors, pig monsters, and all sorts of otherworldly horrors. There's a staggering amount of builds and skills you can try out in Path of Exile. It can be somewhat distracting if you notice it, but most of the time you won't because it happens in the distance. The romance scenes include characters wearing their undergarments, which ends up looking weird and distracting. Beautiful, soothing melodies with haunting vocals play during more emotional moments. Lustre recommends the best products at their lowest prices – right on Amazon. Vocals in the lore's indescribable language makes the music even more memorable, adding to the ethereal quality of the sound. Practically no other video game in the market uses a similar mechanic, making Dragon's Dogma feel really unique and fun. Even though the frame rate is capped at 30 frames per second it often drops below that.