Game Tunnel's 2008 RPG of the Year Picks

The guys over at Game Tunnel have announced their five picks for last year's best independently developed RPGs. Kivi's Underworld took 5th, Savage 2 took 4th, Avernum 5 took 3rd, Mount & Blade took 2nd, and a lesser known title called The Spirit Engine 2 took 1st.
The Spirit Engine 2 is a side-scrolling, pixel graphic, content-heavy piece of awesome.

The game departs from the 3D RPGs of our day and creates a lavishly drawn and animated 2D world that has the depth to go toe to toe with any RPG on the market. It's flat-out beautiful to see in motion, but that's only one of the reasons that the game is such a winner.

Built around a party of 3 characters that you select, The Spirit Engine 2 has a deep story, and there is a lot of it. The amount of text to read in the game would be a chore in most games, but here the dialogues that occur between your characters are just riveting. It's not the kind of text you skip through, and the story that spills out through it all is fascinating to be a part of.

Similar to the text, the battles are also not just something that occurs blindly. There is no grind or unexpected random encounters. Instead, you fight through expected encounters to move to the next area and see your character's skills appropriately increased.