RPGDot 2003 Awards: Biggest RPG Disappointment
RPGDot Team, 2004-01-13

The last couple of weeks you could vote for the best RPGs and MMORPGs that have been released in 2003. Not us but you the player decide who receives the RPGDot 2003 Awards in the various categories. We thank all those who entered their votes and helped us in making it possible to select the best games of 2003.

Biggest RPG Disappointment
Some games we play are worse than we ever anticipated, some are exactly what we expected and some take us by surprise. This award is for the games that were not as expected and can be considered as a disappointment.

The winner: Lionheart - Legacy of the Crusader
Much has been written about Lionheart - Legacy of the Crusader. With an updated Fallout-SPECIAL system and Black Isle Studios behind developer Reflexive, what could possibly go wrong? And thus fans around the world eagerly awaiting Lionheart, one might say, they over hyped it.

The game starts out quite nice anyway, with a large city ( Barcelona ) full of quests and stories. But after that, Lionheart becomes a simple hack'n'slash feast. Little to no story anymore, and, what was accepted due to story and gameplay in Barcelona now became an annoyance as well: Not up-to-date graphics and other technical flaws..

verall, it seems, that Lionheart could have well used another 6 months in development to make it a classic like Baldur's Gate 2. But then again, in 2004 everybody would have slain it for its aged graphics.

(Garrett)

Runner Up: Greyhawk: The Temple of Elemental Evil
I know some people were dissappointed with Temple despite (or even because of) the great combat system. I read some of the most negative reviews declaring it to be an 'elitist' game that you needed to know the rules of D&D inside out to play. I read how it had less story than Diablo 1 (um. No.). I read how much the quests sucked (they did).
I experienced some of the more annoying bugs personally. All of this adds up to place Temple firmly into second biggest dissappointment of the year. I admit, I was a little disheartened myself by the lack of story until I decided to put aside my prejudices against heavy combat games and enjoy it for what it was. Hopefully Troika will take the collective concerns and integrate them into the great foundation that Temple laid. Troika, you've proven it is possible to have a computer game nearly identical to the pen and paper game and we know you can spin a fun story and interesting world. Please make the two meet.

(EverythingXen)

Second Runner Up: Pirates of the Caribbean
At first there was Sea Dogs, a nice, but not great Pirate RPG by Russian developer Akella, published by Bethesda (Elder Scrolls). Then Akella worked on Sea Dogs for more than 2 years already, the game was looking good and promised to fix all the flaws of the original Sea Dogs.

So far so good. Then, this March, Disney signed Bethesda to make the video game for the movie Pirates of the Caribbean, so the game was renamed overnight and from then on the game was rushed to the July release date of the movie, resulting in an unpolished game, a diamond in the rough.

But, who would blame Bethesda or Akella for taking this chance really? The deal certainly was worth both its money and the reputation gained by it. But we do blame Bethesda , Akella or Disney (whoever was responsible) for not releasing any patch to the game, especially, as Akella did patch the native Russian version of the game. What a great game this could have been, if it wasn't becoming a movie game.

(Garrett)

The Numbers
To make it complete we now give you the top 10 as voted by our visitors:

And 16,8 % of those who participated were unable to select one of the games.

We, the RPGDot team also voted to create our own top 5:

Our top 4 holds the same games as the list of our visitors, although in a different order. but we also have KotOR on 5, which isn't even in the top 10 of votes from our visitors.

Note that percentages are rounded to the nearest number.

Overview of all awards on RPGDot
 Best Sound
 Best Graphics
 Best Atmosphere
 Biggest Surprise
 Biggest Disappointment
 Most Anticipated
 Dream Game
 Best RPG/RPG-Strategy Expansion
 Best Non-RPG
 Best RPG-Strategy
 Best RPG

Overview of all awards on MMORPGDot
 Best Sound
 Best Graphics
 Best Atmosphere
 Biggest Surprise
 Biggest Disappointment
 Most Anticipated
 Best Expansion
 Best MMORPG