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Editors' Choices
For the past few years, RPGamer has given out a handful of miscellaneous awards. This year we highlight our top publisher, the game most RPGamer staff members played, and the title most of us stuck with till the end.
Publisher of the Year
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In fairness to some of the other publishers out there, things were a little closer this year, but Atlus USA comes away as our Publisher of the Year for the second year in a row. This year Atlus has graced us with fourteen unique RPGs, such as Class of Heroes, Crimson Gem Saga, Legacy of Ys: Books I & II, My World, My Way, Super Robot Taisen OG Saga: Endless Frontier, and The Dark Spire. These titles aren't even all the company laboriously took the effort to bring; those are just a sampling of the ones that didn't win awards here. Atlus is also responsible for Demon's Souls, Knights in the Nightmare, Shin Megami Tensei: Persona, and Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor.
Again, it's not just the games that has us in love with Atlus USA, it's the people behind the curtain that make it special. The PR duo of Aram Jabbari (AtlusARAM) and Crystal Murray have gone above and beyond to ensure that not only the media is kept in the loop about all of the fun to be had, but both help run the Atlus Faithful fan program. This love for the fans, along with consistent Spoils packed into their games, makes Atlus USA an easy company to love.
Most Played
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When BioWare makes a game, RPGamers start drooling. There's no getting around this: the company has built such a great name for itself over the past two decades that it's hard not to. But few have managed to propagate a mass-drooling frenzy in the way Dragon Age: Origins has. Announced over five years ago and described as a spiritual successor to one of BioWare's earliest and most successful franchises, Baldur's Gate, the game had everything needed to snag new and long-time fans of BioWare's signature RPG formula. And that was before Electronic Arts began its hefty marketing campaign. With TV spots, web ads, and new previews and impressions hitting the internet almost daily for the last few months leading to its release, EA made sure that everyone and their mother knew about the game well before it hit store shelves. It should come as no surprise, then, that Dragon Age: Origins was the single most-played game by RPGamer's staff. If only all great games could get that kind of mass market attention.
Most Completed
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While a great RPG can pull you in immediately and keep you hooked for hours, it can take patience and resolve to actually make it to the end of one. It speaks volumes of praise, then, for Dragon Quest V: Hand of the Heavenly Bride that more RPGamer staff members saw its credits scroll last year than any other 2009 RPG, beating out titles that were shorter and those that were started by more people. The pacing, balance, length, and storytelling were spot on in a series that's not necessarily known for those strengths. It stayed fun, kept us engaged — married, even — and we wanted to continue bashing monsters just as much as we wanted to see the emotional plot to its conclusion. There was never any plot or battle down time in a game that succeeded at making you care about its characters, be they humans or monsters. Dragon Quest V is often called the best in the series, and we certainly found it to be the hardest to quit once you start.
by Glenn Wilson, Michael Cunningham, Adriaan den Ouden
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