@ OP: I totally agree with you on the whole sexism in games. Female armour has degraded to such a degree that it is completely impracticable and serves only as eye-candy. While games like Dragon Age and Skyrim are guilty of that, at least they give the same amount of attention to female conversation options and relationship choices, say what you like about Elder Scrolls but they have never included traditional gender roles in their games.

I'm going to go out there and suggest Septerra Core. It's a JRPG, 2D, and heavily story based. Your MC is female and one of the few RPGs that has a female only story line. BG2 and NVN have been suggested a lot and there's nothing wrong with those games either. The BG2 romance for females is pretty weak compared to the male version, but other than that the campaign is just as good, SPOILER especially when you go to the Undercity and have to deal with a female dominated Drow civilization. Fallout 1 + 2 have also been suggested a lot and those are very good choices. Conversation is stellar in those games and as a female you will sometimes get special conversation options that you otherwise wouldn't get as a male...they sometimes involve using your sexuality to exploit a male character but that is heavily based in realism :)

As for the Witcher....yeah, that was offensive, but I'm a man and don't know any women who have played it, so even though I'm not positive it was offensive my gut tells me yes. Unfortunately sex sells to the 16-21 American demographic. Maybe that whole abstinence craze in the US has something to do with it...who knows, but teenage boys liking sex while knowing nothing about it is a well established fact. The above mentioned games are aimed at a high age demographic and are therefore less focused on sex to sell them. I wrote a review on Metacritic (under the same name) on the Witcher, it really sums up my feeling on the games industry.

(I know I should have stayed out..... but you should have seen what I HAD written before I forced myself to delete it.)


Well, Parvateshwar

All I can say is that I am glad that your opinions, which you have every right to, have absolutely no bearing whatsoever on what I am and am not allowed to do.

For to know something is offensive.. but not be entirely sure because you aren't offended, is in my opinion a ridiculous thing to write or even think.

Isn't the world wonderful that we are free to opinionate.

The original campaign is rather forgettable, but Hordes of the Underdark is a pretty good expansion. It features even more strong female characters than the original campaign, on top of an engaging story, and a great companion character (Deeken). Hordes of the Underdark follows Shadows of Undertide but it independent of the story in the main game.

Sex sells. Period. It is not a matter of male or female, American or European, 15 year old or 50 year old, sex sells. But selling through sex can be done in many different ways, and I feel like the way The Witcher handled it was rather childish. By the way, the American audience originally got a censored version.
But even though The Witcher handled the sex bit in a rather childish way, the game does have a wide appeal, across genders and cultures. The person who introduced me to the game was a woman. And my sister bought The Witcher 2 on launch, after having played the original game.

Huh? What's that got to do with the US? Divine Divinity is a Belgian game, btw, if I'm not mistaken and the Witcher is Polish, as you know. Or do you think adding the sexism was just a chauvinistic move of those Belgians and Poles because they thought that would appeal to the taste of the 16-21 "American demographic"? They certainly didn't it add it for the enlightened European feminist boys, right? ;)


That sounds pretty biased; did you ever bother to check out some top-rated modules or was that too nerdy for you? Noone in their right mind would suggest NWN for the original campaign but there are very good reasons for recommending it in this thread (and I listed a few of them). Noone claimed it had the best combat systems or graphics or campaign, but it's the most customizable of the D&D games and can be a lot of fun if one manages to get over the prejudices.

As a female gamer, I can say that Arcanum, all the Bioware D&D games (including NWN2 that's not yet GOG-available), and TOEE never put me off by making me want to sigh at "stupid male writer tricks". ;) Oh, and NWN's Shadows of Undrentide has an excellent female NPC companion.

And believe it or not, I actually began to wonder if Two Worlds' developer wasn't trying to make the first RPG to be passed by Saudi Arabia's censors---every woman in the game I've encountered so far, after 40+ hours into the game, except the PC's sister, is severely dressed and there's basically no off-color banter.

Actually that's not a bad reccommendation, it's also pretty close in Divine Divinity gameplay (open-world hack and slash)

It's even used for some VERY good Persistant Worlds.. that was a huge complain against NWN2.. that you couldn't do that out the box.. and even after a whole lot of patching/modding it was still unsuitable for the task. It's the main reason NWN is still popular today, I think if NWN2 had been better designed from the start then it might have taken the place of the first.

I'll second Beyond Good and Evil. Not really an RPG (by my standards) but I think Jade is a good female character. Also, BG&E is an excellent gateway drug into buying all sorts of other genres.

Unfortunately, you'll have to avoid Vampire: Bloodlines (@ DotEMU). I always laugh at the female Malkavian toon b/c it's so ridiculous, along with her second and third armor sets.

EDIT: If you do NWN, might want to avoid the mod 'Dance with Rogues'.

EDIT2: Anyone else noticing GOG edit function is a bit scatter-brained? It's dropping edits.

I did, actually. I've had plenty of fun with the first NWN and it's modules. However, I would never, ever recommend the game to anyone unless he/she is willing to do some modding. And trust me, most people that I know of don't and it IS a kind of 'hardcore gamer' thing to do. The posts before didn't really mention crappiness of the OC and most people who buy the game will only care about that.

AS far as edits go.. it only remembers the first comment.. if you post a second 'edit' within 10 minutes of each other.. the post revert to the original comment and your first edit is forgotten.

Hehehe, yeah, I kind of think the creator likes it rough :-P

If you're genuinely a feminist you probably shouldn't be buying any RPGs that feature humans as they're all terrible in their portrayals of both sexes. I can't help but notice that you don't seem to have any issues with the portrayals of men in RPGs.

Do you really think men and women are equally mis-portrayed in video games? Really?