Say what you will about Might&Magic 8, but in that game you could make a party made up of an undead Archlich, a Vampire, a Minotaur, and a Motherfuckin' kickass Dragon.

Now it's 2014 and in all rpgs i've played there were only stinkin' dwarves, elves and orcs. Those are not fantasy races, they're just humans of different size. I want Centaurs, lizardmen and skellingtons as companions, not just the same tolkien rehash over and over again. And if you're copying Tolkien, at least include the good stuff like Giant Eagles too.

Honestly I don't like mobas very much, but playing Dota 2 is always a blast because there's so many cool and exotic creature syou can play as; that I'd love to see in singleplayer RPGs again (Man, what was the last time you saw a Phoenix or Genie in an rpg?)

TL;DR Is aarklash:legacy any good? and The old times were the best times thread

I guess the exotic creatures are not very liked by the mainstream.

They were extinct by hordes of adventurers. :P

That's one of the things I liked about Planescape: Torment. Your party consisted of some really odd characters (Flying Skull, Githzerai, Tiefling, Succubus, etc.). Same case with Mask of the Betrayer. (a Hagspawn, a Half-Angel and a Rainbow-coloured Bear)

As for Aarklash: Legacy, it's focused almost exclusively on tactical combat and very little elsewhere, so I would hesitate to call it an RPG like the above-mentioned examples.

Or the developers/publishers don't dare / are too lazy to tread out of the beaten tracks. ;)

I definitely agree. I would advise against playing Aarklash Legacy for a role playing experience, it's purely tactical combat but it does it quite well so if you enjoy that it's a good game, might even be great.

They jumped ship to science-fiction.

Just kidding, those races typically suck too, 'specially the rubber forehead aliens of Star Trek.

But, really, they did. Especially the Mass Effect universe.

But that fit the setting.

I'm all for something new and different, but not for just the sake of 'something different'. It needs to make sense in the particular setting or there needs to be a damned good story-based reason. It can be really trite and off-putting if there's oddball races or characters that are available as party members just because it's different, IMO.

Like having a vampire as a party member: there better be a damned good reason it's part of the group and not trying to drain the party. Not just because 'vampires are cool'.

Meh, then take Anachronox, having a party made up of the deathstar, a stripdancer and a yammering old man is much more fun.

Copywritten.

I don't think it would be too difficult. After all, you still have to provide a setting even for the common fantasy races. (Dwarves, Elves, Orcs, etc.). You can't just put those races in the present time and say "LOL Elves of New York!" or "ROFL Dwarves of Athens!" Yes yes, it's easy to ripoff Tolkien, but I do think there are more sources and mythologies to rip off than Tolkien.

True, but I think that's no recent development. The games that allowed you to play or be accompanied by more 'exotic' races were always in the minority compared to the D&D games and D&D inspired games (maybe excluding PS:T). Also, I think there are just as many people or more who'd complain that they can't play elves or dwarves and that they hate to have these alien 'monster' races in their party, that they find it ruins their immersion or suspension of disbelief or whatever. I've recently seen someone complain about Legend of Grimrock because of that, so maybe that one would be to your liking. :)

Well it's got dice rolls, skills and levels, right? That's all the RPG you needed back in the good ol' days. Didn't need none of that modern dialogue thingamajing and those newfangled moral decisions. In seriousness As long as it's got some basic story and some optional quests/dungeons that's all i need to make me happy, some banter between characters really would just be the cherry on top of the cake. I dunno, Mass Effect has the same effect on me it's too much like D&D except the heigths are switched around a bit, Krogan are the orcs, Asari are elves, Turians are dwarves, Quarians and Salarians are both gnomes.

Then there's some non humanoid races that are actually interesting like elcor and hanar, but of course can't have those to play with becuase that'd be actually somehting new in an AAA game.

Oh yeah, as soon as I saw the available races i picked it right up, shame that I actually didn't miss the grid based movement as much as other people, it seems. The main game was already pretty good in terms of characters, sure they were real stereotypes and felt more like parodies of clichès but that's what made them endearing again.

But they completely blew my mind with the expansion, each of those 4 characters was so well written... And the bear was such a fucking boss. In might and Magic undead are considered a "race" so they're not inherently evil, although they do mostly play the role of villains in the series, they even got their own cities and stuff. I'm pretty sure you could run a "good" party with a vampire in it without any NPC freaking out, I'm pretty sure you need to be evil to get the lich though.