I wish you wouldn't have said last year

If you're into D&D, recent Neverwinter Nights 2 is pretty good, and its expansion (Mask of the Betrayer) even better. The original NWN2 release was pretty iffy, but they patched up the engine to the point where it's a nicely polished game. Plus, there's tons of good user content.

But even so, the best RPGs are really the old Black Isle and BioWare ones. Fallouts, Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale (RPG-lite, those ones), KoTOR..

Baldur's Gate is an awesome game. And don't rule out the first Neverwinter Nights. It was a real blast to play. Plus there are alot of expansions for the original NWN.

Never played D&D. I'm old enough to have gone to someones house once that played the real D&D but I did not get on that well with it, I did'nt travel on the same logic train as the guy running it.

I ideally want to keep to the last 2/3 years if possible, older games do start to look and feel very dated before that even if you do remember them fondly.

I'll start out with NWN2 if that's the newest, now I just need to find a good digital download for it, I don't suppose its on impluse.

World of Warcraft is worth a look if you don't mind subscription based models - it has it's flaws, but you can get a free trail to see if you like it before having to spend anything at all.

For older games nwn was great for mods, but the campaign itself was only average - HotU's campaign was much better however. There are some very good online mods for it though which kept me happy for a number of years. The graphics are fairly dated on it now though

Baldurs gate 2 doesn't suffer graphically quite as much as you'd expect given it's age, since it's not in 3d and as such the graphics from your viewpoint are at least decent (although again, dated by todays standards) - i'd probably say they're slightly below nwn, but not by much.

Jade Empire was very good on the Xbox, so I'd imagine the PC version is just as good if not better (it was released after the xbox, afterall), so give that a go if you want a more (graphically) recent game - it'll probably be starting to show it's wear now, but it's still leaps ahead of nwn in terms of graphics.

You also have KotOR, which is another good RPG. Graphically it's still reasonable as well (IMO).

I haven't played nwn2 (still not sure about it given the uncertain reviews for the main game, I might wait to see if they do a second expansion first), so can't compare the above to it.

All this talk of old RPGs gets me wanting to play Icewind Dale again. LOL

Those games were really fun in their time. It's funny how we look back at games that were considered having incredible graphics at the time and say how they now are not good because of the graphics. I still remember the reviews of Duke Nukem saying how amazing the graphics were.

I never played D&D, just the computer games based off of it. So I can understand how they ditched THAC0 and replaced it with something else, what did they do with backstab multipliers? They seemed pretty essential to rogue classes in the Baldur's Gate series.

For that matter, what changed with backstabbing from 3.0->4.0?

As for the topic, NWN2 is pretty good and as Annatar said, MotB makes it a lot better. I'd grab the combined pack if you're really interested, but if not, I'd just wait for the next expansion which is in the works. The only thing I can really knock Obsidian for is how painfully long they take to release patches while still leaving simpler issues broken. I mean, stealth still isn't working properly, is it? And we've waited months now on patch 1.13 which still doesn't address it. Plus the innumerable game mechanics and spells that modders have fixed on their own but still aren't part of official game. And don't even mention the AI, heh.

The Witcher. The Enhanced Edition is coming out soon, so you might want to wait for that before getting it.

Evil, meet sword. Sword, meet evil!
My brother was a Hackmaster +12!

.. Yeah, I could go on.

Substantially. But then, the whole ruleset is substantially changed. I've seen a lot of pissing and moaning about the new rules and how they're dumbed down/too different/not D&D, etc. etc., but the more I read through the books, the more I'm liking them. They're not perfect (what is?), but I think they're actually well done and better balanced in a lot of ways than the 3.x rules.

Divine Divinity
Beyond Divinity

Sacred
Sacred Plus Underworld

Sacred 2 (coming out soon)

Mass Effect (I heard it is good, I tried it but...storywise. i think Halo is more exciting. Because after Halo, Mass Effect is just so predictable.)

I think you're making a HUGE mistake only going for new, shiney looking games. Good games are still good even when old, and some of those older games may not look like you're there, but the developers had a lot more time and money to throw into the game play instead, and it shows.

So yeah, the Baldur's gate games are good, as are NWN 1. I'm about to get 2 but haven't played it yet. The graphics don't look really that much better than 1, though. NWN1 still looks pretty good, IMO, and you have thousands of modules you can play through, many considered better than the original campaigns, and new ones still being made. Plus NWN has features NWN2 still doesn't have.

2 still looks good, however, and has many more races and classes built in, and a good selection of modules to play through as well.

I'll also back up Knights of the Old Republic. Not that new, but still looks quite good, and is the best new Star Wars story to come out in years. Much better than the prequel trilogies, for the most part.

Jade Empire is also good, although it's more of an action RPG. It's also fairly short, but the characters are a ton of fun and it will hook you quite easily. Nothing quite as much fun as slapping my enemies silly with my Iron Palm technique.

Whoops, missed the last year bit, well I'll give you a year and a bit.

Well this is a bit depressing, according to GameRankings there were 10 PC RPGs released in the past 12 months. 3 of them were rubbish (Loki, Two Worlds, HellGate:London) - although I didn't play the first two so I'm just going by the reviews there. 4 of them were MMORPGS, meh. 3 of them were Mass Effect, The Witcher, and NWN2 - Mask of the Betrayer.

Have you tried Oblivion yet? Very good game, plus the Shivering Isles expansion is excellent and counters Oblivion's main flaw (bland stock medieval game world).

Oh, and Bioshock, you should play Bioshock. More FPS than RPG.

Gothic 3 is supposed to be good, but honestly I couldn't get into it. The user interface is very poor, makes it a real chore to play.

Not read all posts, so sorry if it's been mentioned. If you want a hack and slash RPG which is similar to the already mentioned Sacred ( good game ) then I would recommend Titan Quest. A good setting, with quite a big scope. Also, the Dungeon Siege Games and expansions were good simple fun too.

Though, I wouldn't class GTA and Mafia as RPGs personally.

One of the best RPG's for me in recent years is the Withcer. I liked how it had a smaller scope than many games, and was confined to a small area of the world it's set in. It made the effects of your choices seem more real.

As for NWN2... I enjoyed the castle based aspects. It added a new feel to the genre. When I got NWN2 I suffered from a low spec machine, but now I've got a much better PC I can replay NWN2 at higher levels, and get much more enjoyment. I'm waiting for the second expansion to be released before going further with the game though.