Archers!

So I just got done playing Neverwinter Nights 2. I also played quite a bit of NWN1 and the expansions. Time and time again I play games with high fantasy settings and hope that the archer isn't a complete bitch. Time and time again I am disappointed.

An arcane archer should be shooting arrows as if they were the fucking fingers of god, and crushing my enemies like ants. They don't. I was never very satisfied with Fable's archer 'class' either. I honestly can't think of a decent game with a solid archer class that isn't a MMO.

So I'm asking the board here if there are any games of any era where archers aren't worthless.

I've been eyeballing Dark Messiah since it looks pretty good, I've been meaning to play it for a while now, and the Assassin seems to use a bow and arrow quite a bit. Anything else?

I played Oblivion as a stealth archer... It got boring because it was so overpowered. Shoot something, it takes x 8 sneaking damage, it runs around awhile confused and never finds you... it goes into idle guard animation.. repeat.

Theif.

Sedition: Yeah, but that kinda feels like an exploit rather than a valid use of an archers abilities. I should still go back and try Oblivion again, since I don't think I gave it enough of a chance the first time I played.

Dyne: I haven't played and of the Thief games, but I was under the impression that archery wasn't exactly a big part of the game.

The whole "outside of MMOs" thing leaves me baffled as well. Yeah, WoW hunters certainly aren't what I'd call archers, but they kick all kinds of ass with bows. I did like the FFT archers a lot, even if they miss a ton without Concentrate.

The Archer class in FFTA2 is a mediocre stepping-stone class (as are many others), but the Sniper (still bow based) and the Assassin (uses swords or bows) are both really strong classes in the game.

The Amazon in Diablo 2 can be all sorts of ranged mass murder in bow spec.

You didn't have hard classes in FFXII, but I remember my Fran being pretty beastly with a bow, and assume you could even further spec a character to that purpose (mine was support).

In Disgaea using archers (and other range units) could get crazy since they allowed you to extend you combos on a single target beyond the gathered adjacent units, and had some very damaging skills.

edit: Oh yeah, Champions of Norrath, a low-profile dungeon crawler on PS2, had a nutty archer class (Rangers), that could stack crit and damage until they pretty much one-shot anything in the game at range...which of course ultimately makes it no fun.

The Ranger class in Guild Wars is a hell of a lot of fun. Some completely badass trapping skills mixed up with some high damage ranged attacks makes for good times.

Speccing as Ranger/Monk makes you almost invincible.

The archer in King of Dragons was pretty dope.

The wizard was too much of a pussy, so archer was the way to go if you wanted a long-range dude.

Crossbow in Heretic?

i liked the archers in final tantasy tactics advance a lot. the skills where they would stop a character from acting or moving were very usefull. i think they had a charm skill as well? been a while since i played it.