The Pro Pinball games.

Patrician 3 and Port Royal 2.

JA2.

Sid Meier's Alpha Cen- oh wait. I meant Master of Orion 2.

To counter the hype:

The Baldur's Gate series is decent but overrated. These games lack the complex quest structure (multiple skill and karmic options, etc) and moral ambiguity found in Fallout. As with most Bioware games, BG and BG2 are *heavily* combat-oriented and *extremely* biased towards "good" alignments: Be (or at least pretend to be) the stalwart hero and be rewarded beyond your wildest dreams, but be anything less and get screwed. The primary replay value of the series is its wide variety of classes (and subclasses, or kits) and a number of recruitable NPC characters from which to choose. Also, there are a large number of mods available for both games.

Arcanum has an interesting setting and story but its character development and gameplay are poorly designed (being unbalanced and almost broken in some respects). It is very combat-oriented but has a quest structure more akin to Fallout. Also, the first character met after the initial cutscenes almost convinced me to stop playing the game... You'll need patience and a high tolerance for sub-par gameplay for this title to bear fruit, but it is interesting nonetheless.

Unfortunately, Fallout and Planescape: Torment have no equals (not even Fallout 2).

For a recommendation outside the RPG genre, Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri (and its Alien Crossfire expansion pack) is one of the most replayable games I've played, but it's not available on GOG at present.

I can't believe no one has mentioned Lords of the Realm 2. It's not that there's a huge amount of variety in how you replay it, it's just something simple you can go back to whenever you feel like a few hours gaming.

For me, Blood

Let's see...

Arcanum
Heroes of Might & Magic 2
Lords of the Realm 2

These three have easily stolen more daylight from me than any other games I can think of. Good times!
Completely agree!

The downloadable maps, many of them very very good, and the downloadable mods too, make for an almost bewildering level of content if you don't mind playing the very good computer skirmish AI, though after you hit a certain skill level you will likely add another or another and another computer opponent on a map.

The replayer add-on made by a third party lets you watch other people's recorded games, which can be huge fun and immensely helpful in exposing you to strategic options you might never have considered, or at least not considered until after playing a very long time.

It adds up to make TA not only the best game I've ever played, but one with plenty of replayability.

Total Annihilation, due to the huge number of user made maps and other additions. Though I already had it in CD form, so my vote goes to Master of Orion 2 (a shame you can't have even more star systems in it, 100-200 would be awesome).

@ Bodkin and @ ddmuse,

I feel the BG series is replayable:

-due to the inviting atmosphere of the game (the storyline is deep enough for me to want to experience it again after a few years from when I played it last, with my favourite joinable NPC's; and I think the game world was very well done)

-due to the different types of protagonist you can have (male, female, different races, different classes & multi-classes)

-due to the different ways to roleplay. I think there's much in the series that can be considered morally ambiguious (I prefer saying "grey area," as to me, ambiguity denotes gullability! Ha! I know we mean the same thing though, so please don't think I'm talking down to you)

-so many different creatures and people to fight, and the plethora of different ways the game has provided for a party can defeat them

-various mods

Ditto all that for the IWD series, though I've yet to play it (though I know it uses much of the same stuff as the BG series).

Of course, to each his own. I recently finished Planescape: Torment, and while I absolutely loved it, I don't think its a game I'll replay in the next few years (mainly b/c of the games I've already bought but have yet to play from GoG here!). I have enough screenshots of it and the book that GoG provides with it for whenever I wanna check back on my playthrough I had.

Two Worlds
Neverwinter Nights
Painkiller

Very very fun i love them and they are always installed on my machine's (dekstop and laptop) with save file sync between them ^_^

Some of the games mentionned here are NOT replayable at all, or not so replayable. It is not because you like a game that you have to mention it in every "advise me" thread. No, BG1, Fallout and Fallout 2, for instance, are NOT replayable. They can be played once - maybe twice (and then not even BG1), certainly not three times while still being interesting for most of us.
Even Planescape Tourment, the best RPG in my opinion, is not very replayable. After one or two playthrough, most of us will shelve it as the few items they "missed" are not worth yet another playthrough.

The only RPGs I know that are highly replayable are NWN, due to the massive amount of user-made content, and maybe, maybe, Arcanum, due to both the massive impact of your build on the gameplay and the sheer amount of comment. I never bothered playing it more than twice myself, but I understand someone would.
Never played BG2, so I cannot comment.


As for the other games mentionned :

Battle Isle I/II/III : Not replayable at all. Actually finishing the 2nd one is a bore, due to repetitive and tedious final missions. The final missions of the 3rd one are "just" repetitive.

HoMM2/HoMM3 : Evidently VERY replayable, especially the third. Same with HoMM4 if you like it. I do.

Settlers 2, Tropico, Lord of the Realms 2 and Tropico 2 : Some replayability, and theorically huge replayability, but as some point the game gets much too repetitive to be played again. Tropico would last longer than the other 3 in my opinion, esp. since in Tropico 2 you have a "forced" path of development. Overall, it really depends on you.

Conquest of the New World : Yes, it is. I don't like the game much but being comparable to Colonization it is.

JA2 : Outstanding game, but after 2 playthrough you won't want to play again, 1.13 or not. UFO/XCOM I and II will last you longer. Much longer.

Blood : Not really. As much as most FPS of the era...

Unreal Tournament : MP, certainly. Single Player gets boring very quickly

Painkiller : It is, due to the sheer amount of fun of the game. The game is really long, though, so it will take quite a long time before you finish it. And THEN there are like 3 expansions...

Total Anniliation : It is - if you like that sort of game.


As for King's Bounty the Legend... uh. No it is not, randomisation of the game or not.

Similarly, once you have finished BG&E, you won't learn anything new when replaying the game.

I couldn't disagree more. We mention BG2 and PS:T not just because we love them, but because they ARE replayable, I've played both at least half a dozen times, BG2 more than that, and these are long, interesting involving games.

This is more so when you consider the scope of the games, a few weeks, or maybe months, on an RPG, vs an hour on another map of an RTS. Don't get me wrong, on my post up there I spoke about some RTS like the OP had asked, and some can be replayed every so often for years. I still play Master of Magic, but would I play it every day for weeks straight? No. BG2 and PS:T I would, and have, again and again.

I guess it comes down to personal preference. HoMM 2 I finished once and couldn't wait to uninstall, but I understand many people find it very replayable. Like you I played Arcanum only twice, but can understand that the potential for replayability is there.

I don't mean to attack you personally, but a lot of us feel there is a lot of replayability in those games. BladeofBG mentioned a lot of reasons for this, and my own personal experience agrees.

Great post, and I couldn't agree more.
I've gone through PS:T and the Fallout series many times and I've never considered myself 'done' with them. This is especially true for Planescape, as there is such a massive amount of content in that game - quests, jokes, hidden references, secret places and dialogue in almost obscene amounts. As for Baldurs Gate 2, like I mentioned in another thread, I've gone through that game 37 times and started it more times than I care to count (or could, I was never good at theoretical maths) and to this day I still occasionally find new quests, or a new way to solve an old one.

Perhaps we simply have different philosophies as regards what makes an RPG attractive.
When I've done every quest and sidequest available in, say, Zelda, I might well consider myself done with that game, at least for a conceivable period of time - But I don't think I could ever think about games like Planescape or Baldur's gate that way. That said, now we're arguing styles of play and, like eros said, preference.

If a game can immerse me in the world through plot, characters and dialogue, then I will likely come back for more. Even if the gameplay is repetitive or, indeed, does not change at all, such as in many old adventure games. Even if I've claimed all the 'items' in a game such as Uncharted, or completed every quest in Fallout - it's not something that, by itself, will keep me from replaying a game.

In the end, I suppose, I guess our opinions simply differ on this matter.
Go play BG2, even if it won't make you change your mind, I'm loathe to let any fan of RPG's get away with not playing it.

Of the games I bought from GoG, probably Arcanum.

But of the GoG games I own, I'd say Master of Magic.

It looks like the question of the replayability of games sometimes comes down to the person, not the games.

I think one way people tremendously limit their gameplay is by only playing campaigns and being uninterested in sandbox play(in those games that have it). This is unloosing a double whammy against oneself.

First, campaign play generally features artificial limits on a player's options or play style during any particular map or chapter or level - timers counting down, unavailable upgrades you've already gotten used to playing with, missing troop types, inability to heal, etc. I often find this style of playing cramped and frustrating. This is like showing you a three legged horse and trying to convince you he's going to win the race. Playing only a campaign may not always expose you to the best a game is capable of. It can, however, needlessly stymie you and show you the worst. At any rate, a campaign doesn't always (to my mind rarely) shows a game at its best.

Second, there is no suspense in a story you already know. Being marched through decisions that are too similar to ones you've already executed on previous playthroughs has limited appeal. Same with rereading and reparticipating in the same story you just got done with. The potential lack of appeal of such a process is very strong.

Sandbox play doesn't have those problems and solves both. There IS no story, just the game at its fullest, with every option and every ability to surprise and challenge.

People judging a game with good sandbox play only by its campaign have played, if anything, half the game they're judging. Sometimes much, much less. And they have barely taken a crack at its replayabiliity yet. That's not really fair to some very good games.