This Year:
The Witcher - This is probably the best and most mature Western RPG to come along in years which delivers an excellent story and a wealth of options of how to play the game and how you impact the world around you. But because it's not running on Unreal Engine 3 or some other fancy engine few people are paying attention to it....which is ironic since despite running on a years-old engine The Witcher is still one of the best looking games this year.
Neverwinter Nights: Mask of the Betrayer - Another underrated RPG release this year.
Past Five Years:
Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines - Prior to The Witcher, this pretty much tied with KOTOR as the best Western RPG in the past 5 years, and in terms of atmosphere I think it beats out KOTOR.
Beyond Good & Evil - If Ubisoft were really serious about putting out "Nintendo-like" quality on the Wii, this is the first franchise they would resurrect, since BG&E managed to be the kind of calibur of Action Adventure that only the Zelda titles seem to reach. I'd like to see Ubisoft put their money where their mouth is and give this game the sequel it deserves.
Mafia - This game should have gotten the attention and acclaim that GTA did, since it took the GTA formula and fused it with an excellent and compelling narrative. At least we are getting a sequel.
Tribes Vengeance - A really great single player campaign with an excellent story from the same development team that made BioShock. Too bad Tribes fans turned their backs on it due to the multiplayer.
No One Lives Forever 2 - One of the most original and unique games in a genre that usually relies on graphics and cliche settings.
Eternal Darkness - Silicon Knights released this gem back in 2002, too bad it was pretty much ignored at retail, cause they (or anyone else for that matter) has yet to release a survival horror game of this calibur.
Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords - Yeah, you're reading right...I think KOTOR II is underrated. This game is treated as the bastard child of Star Wars games, while KOTOR is held as the end all be all of RPG gaming. Sure, the rushed endgame and lack of an ending sucked in KOTOR II, but as the same time, for me personally the first half of KOTOR II has a deeper and more compelling storyline then the entirety of the first KOTOR. Sure, it all fell apart at the end, but overall it certainly had me examing the path of good and evil, light and dark, and it's consequences far more then KOTOR.
Psychonauts - This one is iffy, cause I always see it mentioned in forums....sometimes I think if half the people who mentioned it in forums as being underrated actually bought the game at release I think it would have had decent sales.
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