New online rpg games 2012

Paper Mario. The Big Role-Playing Games of Highlighting our most anticipated RPGs set to launch by the end of this year. By Lucas M. Thomas Posted: 26 May am. With the current generation of consoles coming to a close and the next one just around the corner, the year ahead is shaping up to be one of the most exciting the gaming industry's ever seen — and the quality of the new releases just over the horizon looks better than ever, too.

All this week we've been highlighting some of our favorite upcoming titles scheduled to release before the end of , breaking them down by genre to help you get up to speed on what you'll be playing between today and New Year's Eve. On Monday we kicked things off with the Racing genre. Tuesday we tackled Strategy games. Have you played The Last Story? YES NO. Was this article informative? In This Article. Take charge of a band of mercenaries and journey with them into an epic and cinematic adventure in The Last Story for Wii.

A lot of good ideas were not fully executed, and a lot of bad ideas made customers angry. Still, beyond all that did have an impressive suite of role-playing games across many different systems. That being said, as quality as Guild Wars 2 may be, I still have a hard time caring about its story, or feeling involved in the events of the world. It's one of the best MMOs I've ever played, but at the end of the day it sits at the bottom of a list comprised of mostly single-player experiences.

Maybe Borderlands 2 isn't really an RPG, but it's one of the closest things we have to a first-person-shooter in the genre. It's basically a loot-grind in the spirit of games like Diablo , but it replaces click-click-click with bang-bang-bang. The cell-shaded graphics are wonderful, and the game's humor, while grating to some, left me with the hint of a grin at all times. All in all, Borderlands 2 may not sink you very deep into your character, but between its quests, its endless supply of guns and loot, and its skill-tree system, the game is a lot of fun, especially in small doses.

I know the ending soured this one for many people. For me, I felt the game drifted too far into cut-scene land. But it's still a really top-notch game, and easily the best-looking of the series. While the story suffers compared to the first two games, the combat itself was one of the better cover-shooter experiences I've played. And for all its flaws, Mass Effect 3 does pack an emotional punch in a way that few other RPGs did in Diablo III is yet another controversial game that I had a lot of fun with, right up until the disappointing end and lack of end-game.

The linearity of Blizzard's latest Diablo title is its biggest flaw. Still, I had a lot of fun hack-and-slashing my way through it. I had my gripes along the way, but there's a lot to like about Diablo III even if it's not exactly the game we had hoped for. Hopefully an expansion and some decent PvP come sooner than later, as there's only so long we can keep clicking through the same motions.

Talk about old-school. Legend of Grimrock is a game that hails back to the old first-person dungeon crawlers. It has everything from challenging puzzles to, well, a whole lot of challenging everything. It may be a low-cost, low-budget indie game, but it feels a lot bigger and is sure to tap into that well of nostalgia old-school RPG gamers carry around with them.

For my part, I felt like I was playing Eye of the Beholder again, only in high-definition. I can't help but feel a pang of disappointment that this game didn't launch on the Wii U instead, as the lower-definition of the Wii does make it a bit clunkier looking than it deserves to be. Still, as far as JRPGs go, the game feels fresh and is both fun and thought-provoking, with elements of both action and strategy to keep it humming along.

I also like the fact that the Wii's controls are incidental to the game experience, avoiding any motion gimmicks. Click-and-loot can get old fast, but Torchlight 2 manages to be fun all the way through. The story is every bit as vapid as the story in Diablo III , but the game itself feels much more unique and less linear than Blizzard's much larger and better-selling game.

Torchlight 2 allows for a reasonable amount of character customization, and provides players with a loot system that actually affects gameplay beyond damage-per-second. Each piece of armor, each shield, and each weapon change the way you look and the way the game is played. It's not a perfect game, but it's one of the best action-RPGs to hit digital shelves in a long time. Xenoblade Chronicles is an enormous game and one of the most complex and difficult RPGs of Between a day and night cycle, moving NPCs, a complicated questing and crafting system, and some of the most challenging combat in any RPG out there, Xenoblade takes just about everything from the JRPG genre and turns it on its head.

Interesting, likable characters help bulwark the story which takes place on a world comprised of two massive giants. The big, open world itself is said to be about the size of Japan. While the game at times feels a bit too much like a single-player MMO with its bevy of fetch-quests, it also manages to be far more interesting than any MMO I've played.

And the music is absolutely gorgeous. I probably critiqued Dragon's Dogma more harshly , or at least more thoroughly, than any other RPG I liked in save for maybe Diablo III there were others I disliked so much I had to stop critiquing them entirely, if only for my sanity's sake.

That being said, I also believe that Dragon's Dogma was among the most ambitious and promising titles of The scope of the game is not so huge as Xenoblade. The graphics are not on a par with many of the other games in this list. The game itself takes many good ideas from other gameslike Dark Souls and then layers them into its own suite of innovations.

A wide assortment of weapons, armor, and giant beasts keeps the action fast-paced and exciting at all times. The story is weird and confusing, as are many of the quests, but that only adds to the game's charm. Climbing the back of a cyclops, or gripping tightly to a griffin as you fly up into the air, or changing your character class midway through the game to learn new skills and a new playstyle entirely, all make the game one of the most interesting, deep action-RPGs to come out in a long timethough I will admit, it's a close call between this and Xenoblade.

Now that the title has a Hard Mode it's even better, though Hard Mode really is hard. With the Dark Arisen expansion coming out in a couple months, the exploration of Gransys will continue.

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