What are DLPers favourite works? Be it movie, books, comics, manga, anime, video games and more.

My absolute favourite is The Kingkiller Chronicls series by Patrick Rothfuss, I absolutely love them. I also love the LOTR movies (and books, but less), Dragon Age, The Witcher (games only, never read the books) and Record of Lodoss War. I also enjoyed the Inherirance Circle, Skyrim. I also love Conan in all medias, except the movies, but I don't know if Swords and Sandals fit inside HF, but if you're okay then talk about it too!

 

Dragon Age, possibly because it's the first RPG I ever played. It was an impulse purchase of the 'hey, this looks cool' variety where I went in completely blind and just devoured the setting and the story. Forty hours later, the Archdemon was dead and I was unbelievably sad the game didn't have any more of the world for me to explore. Unlike many RPGs, it hasn't lost that magic when revisited.

 

Wow, almost the same story as me. Never played a RPG, then one day I recieved a shitty racing game as agift and decided to exchange it, I almost got Fallout NV, but since it was a tad more expensive, I gave up. Soon, I was hooked. Got 5 playthroughs in both PC and PS3 (PC is far, far better with the mods).

 

Hmm, Book of the New Sun wouldn't really count as high fantasy, would it?

If not that, then Earthsea. I have very fond memories of reading those books when I was still in 3rd grade elementary. Moorcock's Elric is a close second.

As far as video games are concerned, Planescape Torment or Dark Sun. Really hard to decided which one I love more, though Dark Sun I discovered first because I played those two games made back in the '90s by SSI.

 

Record of Loddoss Wars for a classic High Fantasy series. Most of the other Fantasy series I like are not High Fantasy, but tend to sword and sorcery, or Game of Thrones-style low Fantasy.

 

My favourite Tolkien works are probably The Silmarillion and The Children of Húrin. I prefer them both over The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, although I like those well enough, too.

Rothfuss's Kingkiller Chronicles is awesome, as well as Sanderson's Stormlight Archives and Mistborn trilogy. I've just started reading Gemmel's Drenai Series, and it's pretty cool so far. When I was a teenager I really liked Robin Hobb's Farseer Trilogy, but I suspect it would be too angsty for me nowadays. I've currently read one book of Jordan's Wheel of Time series and found it pretty enjoyable, but I've heard... mixed things about how it progresses in later books. We'll see.

I still have a lot of high fantasy series sitting on my bookshelf waiting for me to get to them. Eventually I will, but for now that about covers it.

As for films, Schwarzenegger's Conan is all that is good in the world.

Pan's Labyrinth is also awesome, though I'm not sure if that counts as high fantasy.

And finally, games... Elder Scrolls. Enough said.

 

I like Tolkien and Earthsea, and generally appreciate anything that has detailed world building. In a sense, sometimes I can spend more time on the appendices for the Lord of the Ring than rereading parts of the story.

Regarding games, I love the Elder Scrolls series and Planescape: Torment.

 

This series and Tolkein LOTR would be my top two.

 

Final Fantasy 1. I remember racing home to see how far I could push my party before dinner (I was in grade school). FF6 is my favourite of all time, but it's more steampunk/magipunk.

LOTR movies are high on my list, but I find the books a chore. Don't really read fantasy much, outside contemporary urban; I was always more of a sci-fi guy (Asimov, Clark, etc.).

 

Baldur's Gate 2. I remember picking it up from a beaten up old box in the back of a gamestop. Had no idea what it was, but it had a skull surrounded by tears on the front, and it looked awesome.

And it was. Some of the best characters I've ever seen (Minsc and Irenicus really stand out), some great gameplay, amazing story. It's been what I've measured every other video game against since, and most come up short.

As far as books, Wheel of Time is the definition of High Fantasy to me.

 

Raymond Feist and JRR Tolkien are my High Fantasy "go-to" authors.

There's others, but those two top the list.

 

Final Fantasy 9 also borderlines on Steampunk, I guess... But I fucking love it. Lord of the Rings. Some of the Belgarion books. It got real repetitive, real fast, but while the magic lasted, it was glorious.

Other than that, I just haven't read all that much High Fantasy. I love the genre, especially in movies and series, but there just aren't any good ones.

 

The Dragonrealm Series, by Richard A. Knaak is one of my favourites. Namely, The Shrouded Realm. Amazing book. Also, The Hobbit by Tolkien is highly enjoyable read.

However, the best fantasy world I've ever seen is World of Warcraft. I think that nothing can best it.

 

GO FOR THE EYES BOO! GO FOR THE EYES!

what's not to like about miniature giant space hamsters? They really, really, don't make games like they used to, because this series was awesome.

 

Dragon Age. Wheel of Time. Lord of the Rings. Saga of Recluse (though I'm not sure if that's hi-fa or sci-fa sometimes). First Law. Codex Alera. All the Drizzt stories. Chronicles of Narnia. The original Dragonlance books. All of David Gemell's stuff. The Witcher series. Skyrim. ASOIAF. Warcraft (up until Frozen Throne, with smatterings of appreciation for stuff in the WOW series). Warhammer Fantasy. Legend of the Five Rings. Arthurian myths. Discworld. The Dresden Files.

Been meaning to pick up the Spellsong Cycle, heard that's supposed to be really good.

 

Lodoss War all the way. I still rewatch the terrible/awesome anime every couple years.

 

Middle-Earth is probably my favorite.

Elder Scrolls is definitely up there. There's some things that bother me when it comes to the higher-end lore I guess (though I've gotten over some of them), but even so it's a very creative setting.

I think the Dragon Age setting has a lot of potential, and we'll see if Inquisition helps it along there. As it stands, I like it a lot more than D&D. Or at least Forgotten Realms, based on what I've seen and know of it. I can't really speak for the other D&D settings. I've heard it compared to Warhammer Fantasy too, but I can't speak for that either.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, I do not like A Song of Ice and Fire and I'm sick of the dicksucking it gets. I think The Witcher handles so-called dark fantasy a lot better, and I wish it got a big high-budget HBO TV series over ASoIaF.

I hesitate to put The Wheel of Time down, because while it has a lot of good ideas there's so much dumb shit that gets in the way of it.

Seeing the Kingkiller books here reminds me that I have to re-read them. I liked them as I read them but looking back there's a lot of things that kind of annoy me, especially in the second book.

 

Was beginning to think there was something wrong with me. Simply do not enjoy Game of Thrones. The wife likes it, but I had issues with the story-telling in the first two episodes, things that just felt forced to me, and gave up.

 

Oh, I know. The second half of tthe book, specially the Admer was painful. Kvvotthe and tthe sex goddess was kinda sttupid and wasted lots of time, but I could understand it, simce it was Kvothes first supernatural experience, annd wha teenager would go explore when you have the Sex Goddess waiting for you, plus, it gave us the Ctaeth and Kvothe discovering her, that led to one of his most badass moments.

But the Adem, how I hate them, I thought Tolken's elf were Sues, I thought Eragon's elfs were annoying and preachy, but Ademre is worse. They are perfect, tthey know more than tthe University, they are the greatest warriors, they are Communism, Fem! power!, Plato's Republic and Sparta all together in one civilisation that was mixed perfectly. And of course they practicise free love, and separate love from sex, they are not barbarians. Of course, Kvothe, mega genius, could never win any argument against any of them, even when he is compared to aa cheap and disease ridden dockside whore, and music is akin to having a Nu Metal fan in the family. Sorry for the rant, but Mary Suetopias and preachy characters annoy me to no end.

And worse, we got nothing from them, except someone that Kvothe can suck offf. Oh, nd their language is uber awesome that our stupid brain coulddd never match. Sorry, I finished.

They are one of the main reasons I don't read Wheel of Time, from what I heard, all books have that in spades, without Rothfuss womderful prose.

 

Yeah, I hated the Adem as well. Completely contrary to basically every civilization encountered in the real world in terms of sexual relations, hierarchical structure, emotional expression and communication, etc. , with the only exception given as 'lol, culture.'

Normal people don't communicate with hand expressions, they communicate with verbal language and body language. That's not a cultural trait, that's almost certainly a biological human trait.


One of the more hilarious parts is that the mention that female Adem are better fighters than the male Adem, even though males are stronger. No. There's a reason we have seperate male/female sports for literally everything.


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My favorite high fantasy world is "Wizard of Earthsea." The writing and the world mesh together so well. They seem dreamlike and magical, and they're filled with offhand references that really reinforce the worldbuilding.