Top 11 Video Game RPGs

THIS ONE GONES TO ELEVEN

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It is almost impossible to argue for greatness. Creating a standard inevitably involves things that are difficult to quantify, such as “influence” or “importance,” or weighting things like sales that don’t have a direct relationship to quality (if you would like to argue this point, think about what sort of books sell best). It’s much easier to go with the subjective “favorite,” backed up by justification on why it is so.

Consider this a “favorite” list with the added goal of listing games that I think people interested in RPGs would enjoy, as well as games that I personally really love. I’m not trying to make a list of landmark titles, but enjoyable games that still hold up. Choosing 10 is hard because, realistically, the list could be much longer – say 50 games – and still have many “honorable mentions” that could be argued belong on it (even when picking favorites). It’s a rich set of genres with a long history. And so, I’m going to 11, as is the tradition of all guitar players.

Keep in mind, too, that the definition of “role-playing game” is fluid and has fuzzy boundaries. Pokémon and Zelda might qualify as well as Dark Souls if definitions are stretched far enough; on the other hand, games like Mass Effect would be excluded by applying too strict a definition. For me, a role-playing game is one that allows the player some amount of freedom of choice in exploration or the outcome of events and emphasizes character definitions, stats, and their growth and strategic use. How a character is defined and how it is used is part of the gameplay somewhere. This means that JRPGs are RPGs, as are MMORPGs, action RPGs, CRPGs, tactical RPGs, etc. Merely having RPG elements in another genre (like an action game) does not make an RPG for me in this discussion. Thus, if you want to get into the argument, Final Fantasy XVI is not truly an RPG but an action game with nominal stats.

11. Fire Emblem Awakening – 3DS

This was a title I picked up for the 3DS in the waning years of the handheld’s life cycle, and it instantly got me hooked with its tactical RPG gameplay, class and skill system, and its support system, which allowed certain characters to have children that would join your army (with skills inherited from mom and dad). It was interesting on the micro, macro, and meta level, and the story held everything together and even justified a rather odd gameplay choice—children joining your army via time travel. Aesthetically, it is generally good (though the characters have no feet for some reason), and it introduces a gaggle of favorite characters from the series, like Lucina, Chrom, Robin, and everyone’s favorite waifu, Tharja. The 3D effects look good, but it’s a game that would benefit from a remaster in HD and a re-release as it is still locked on the 3DS.

For people interested in the Fire Emblem series, it is a great first game to play and arguably saved the series from death.

10. Final Fantasy Tactics – PS1, later PSP, mobile and modern hardware

When people discuss what is the best Final Fantasy game, Tactics often enters the discussion, though it isn’t a mainline game. Its tactical gameplay and graphical presentation are derived from Ogre Tactics for the SNES (though you can play the PSP version now on modern consoles), which was also headed by FFT director Yasumi Matsuno. It’s an odd duck for Final Fantasy, but it inspired its own series and even ties in loosely with Final Fantasy XII.

The game merges a deep tactical combat system with a class system at the macro level that encourages developing all the characters. The graphics have their own unique design language alien to Final Fantasy at release, but that stylized look has aged reasonably well, considering the game originally released on the PS1. The characters have large bodies and minimized noses. They are drawn as sprites on a 3D battlefield which the player can observe from many angles to determine actions. Play proceeds in turns, and positioning is key to survival.

There is also a great story that frames all the action, with compelling characters and some very interesting revelations for those who persist. I won’t say more, but it all works well, even with the pseudo-Shakespearian style of writing present in the English versions.

There are two versions – the original PS1 game and the “War of the Lions” remaster for the PSP. If you are buying on a modern system, the latter is what you are going to get, and while that is my favorite version because of its added content, the PS1 version is much more balanced and frankly looks better if you can play on a CRT or use a proper filter.

I consider it the best Final Fantasy game of that era and perhaps the best ever.

9. Mass Effect 1 – Xbox360 (originally), PC, PS4/5/Xbox Series X (legendary edition)

For me, the best game of the Mass Effect series will always be the first. It’s the only one with a truly great story, and its narrative presentation is flawless. The art and music are on point and still hold up. The character designs are iconic, and the voice acting is great. The environments, though often sparse with lots of re-used resources, nevertheless feel alien and very futuristic. The game oozes style in a way the sequels do not, and this includes the optional film grain filter (which I always turned on).

The gameplay is far better than the follow-ups, which opted for a traditional ammo system for guns rather than the BattleTech-like heat system in the first game, which made battles proceed in much more interesting ways. Building characters and teams provides lots of interesting combat options, and your characters actually wear the armor you give them.

The now famous paragon/renegade moral system provides a good path for role-playing – are you a lawful hero or a renegade doing what is necessary to save the galaxy? Your choices, though they don’t change the ending, do change how things proceed, and when presented with a choice, it usually feels weighty, including the death of a cast member. The story is what really shines through this. It has a great central conflict, a great cast of characters to accomplish it, and a few twists along the way. The final battle is the best in the series and one of the best final levels in any science fiction game.

8. Golden Sun and Golden Sun: The Lost Age - Gameboy Advance

I’m lumping these games together because they were meant to be one game and constitute two halves of a single story – in fact, the ending of the first game was surprising and perplexing because it isn’t an ending at all, and fans were forced to wait a few years to get the rest. I forgive it because the second game, The Lost Age, was so good and incorporated all the characters and items from the first game.

Golden Sun is a game that does not care that it is on a handheld and delivers one of the best JRPG experiences of all time. It has beautiful 2D-pixel graphics in the tradition of Final Fantasy VI, Star Ocean, and Chrono Trigger and also has rendered 3D sprites for battles. This gives the game both a retro and timeless feel. It would fit right in with the classics for the SNES or Genesis but with even higher music fidelity. The music in both games is awesome, composed by Motoi Sakuraba, and it stands up with Nobuo Uematsu or Koichi Sugiyama’s classic scores. I can hear it in my head right now.

The gameplay will be familiar to any classic Final Fantasy fan, with turn-based battles and a magic system called “synergy” that is used to fight monsters and solve environmental puzzles. The interesting addition is the cute little djinns: spirits or monsters that can be attached to characters to change their available magic, increase their stats, or even change their class. The djinn can be unleashed in battles to do damage and cause special effects, which can change your class mid-battle, and those unleashed djinn can then be used for Final Fantasy-style summons that do massive elemental damage. It’s a very fun system to interact with, and your hint of the day is to give Isaac three fire djinn and three wind djinn and give Garet three earth and three wind djinn. Enjoy your ninja power!

7. Skyrim – PC, Xbox 360 and PS3 (originally), all modern platforms (special edition)

There isn’t much to say about Skyrim that hasn’t already been said. Inevitably, when a new “open world” RPG comes out it sparks discussions about Skyrim. While it isn’t my favorite Elder Scrolls game, I believe that nothing has done its style as well as Skyrim since its release. Fourteen years on, the game is still relevant. Its influence has been disastrous only because Skyrim was so good that other developers started adding its elements into their own games rather than looking at the game as a whole to understand its greatness or trying to be original with their own products.

Five games (technically more because there was Battlespire and Redguard) deep in the series, Skyrim has a lot to draw on. The world has deep lore that makes everything seem older and more alive. The mood of the game remains exceptional. It is, at times, exciting, scary, or relaxed. The score by Jeremy Soule might be the best video game soundtrack of all time, and his aphorismic mood pieces enhance every feeling of the game immensely. It is aesthetically unified and also environmentally diverse, gesturing always toward the epic even when not quite reaching it. The world is a joy to explore.

The action-focused gameplay is easy to get into. The light RPG menus are beginner-friendly and don’t require a lot of systems understanding to use and make your character more powerful. There are also deep enough systems that an experienced player can have fun exploiting and mastering the game. Mostly, though, it’s a lot of fun to just get out and play.

Skyrim is also what I call the ideal game because of the modding scene, which would not be what it is without the base game being a lot of fun. The game, with a little effort, can be made to look just as good or better (considering the core environmental design) than most modern games. Gameplay can be altered or overhauled. There are entire additional games that have been programmed as mods, such as Enderal. The game just doesn’t seem to run out.

It’s even the best implementation of VR, and its promise going back to the 90s. That’s a crazy claim to make: the best VR game came out before any of the modern headsets, but it’s true. Skyrim VR lets you do what the medium always promised: explore another reality.

6. Final Fantasy IV – SNES (original), PS1, PSP, GBA, Nintendo DS (3D remake) modern systems (pixel remaster and 3D remake ports)

This list would be very easy to crowd with Final Fantasy games. I’m a big fan of the series, both old school and modern, but there is one entry that I have more nostalgia for than any other, and I believe that nostalgia is earned.

Final Fantasy IV, which was originally released in the United States as Final Fantasy II (the numbering is off because not all games were released in the West) for the Super Nintendo, is in many ways the peak of the gameplay, story, and aesthetics established by the original and games like Dragon Quest (originally Dragon Warrior in the West). For anyone interested in classic JRPGs, Final Fantasy IV is the best place to start.

Gameplay sees the introduction of the Active Time Battle or ATB system, a variation on standard turn-based RPG battles through the introduction of a time mechanic that causes different characters and enemies to act at different times and gives the battles more pressure than before. The party make-up changes throughout the game to go along with the story, providing the variety of combat options that the job system did in Final Fantasy III. This interaction between the gameplay and story even gets into character development territory, as the main character, Cecil, begins the game as a Dark Knight and then becomes a Paladin as he morally improves.

The story is a major strength of the game. You have a strong central conflict, a great antagonist in the form of Golbez right from the beginning, and a great growth arc for the main character. The story takes the player through many set pieces, and the exploration of the map is carefully managed so that areas unlock in time with each section of the plot. It has an epic conclusion worthy of the pulps, too. My favorite version is for the PSP.

5. Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic – Xbox (original), PC, mobile, Switch.

Bioware had the option of making a game that was an adaptation of Attack of the Clones or using their Star Wars license to tell a story in an older time period. The decision to go with the latter was brilliant. It gave the game the perfect mix of beloved Star Wars visual designs while telling a fresh story with new characters that could go in any direction. This first entry was so strong it spawned an entire additional sub-setting for Star Wars, including a sequel and an MMORPG. I think of all the Star Wars games I have played, KOTOR feels the most like Star Wars while drawing the least from the movies.

Gameplay is an adaptation of D20 or Dungeons and Dragons style gameplay, which Bioware used in Neverwinter Nights and Baldur’s Gate. The environment can be freely explored in real-time, but time can be paused to issue a series of actions like attacks or spells, then resumed to see how combat plays out. There are strategic as well as tactical elements, and there is a robust DnD style leveling system with lots of choices, and these options become expanded through the game’s story as the player character becomes a Jedi.

There is a strong interaction between the story and gameplay in the form of a dark side/light side point system where you can gain points in one of the other through various decisions. Being either a dark Jedi or a light Jedi unlocks new gameplay options (like force lightning) and changes the final ending of the game.

The story, once again, is superb and would be a worthy book or movie plot even with the “collect the map” video game setup (which J.J. Abrams shamelessly used in The Force Awakens) and the use of amnesia. The characters are memorable and likable, and it is in KOTOR that we get to know the best droid in all of Star Wars: the hilarious HK-47. He should always be in your party if for no other reason than his dialogue.

4. Dragon Age: Origins (PC, PS3, Xbox 360)

I consider Dragon Age: Origins to be the swansong of “good Bioware,” as after this 2009 release the quality that the company had been known for began to seriously decline. Origins was an amazing capstone to the 2000s, though, and is worth playing even today. It doesn’t try to reinvent the wheel in terms of gameplay, art, or story but to make use of every tool to maximum effect. It’s a gritty, dark fantasy with plenty of blood and a fair bit of sex (though no actual nudity), sure to please modern fans of the genre.

It once again utilizes a variation of the D20 system found in previous games and would be the last from the firm to do so. Character creation is robust, taking the form of several “origins” that change the opening sequence of the game and have story consequences later. This gives the game a lot of replay value as each origin will expose new things about the setting and unlock new possibilities for the conclusion of the story. Combat is more tactical than in previous games, making great use of terrain, height, and enemy strategy. Choosing your party and outfitting the characters can drastically change what is possible to do, and various subclasses can be unlocked through gameplay and role-playing choices.

Characters react to player choices in a variety of ways, including turning on the main character or abandoning the party in response to particular actions. The party rests around a campfire where you can talk to characters, hear backstories, or try your hand at romance. The gamified reputation system is quite a fun macro element, but its effects on how the story proceeds are more fun still.

The plot is a standard fantasy plot: stop the darkspawn. You have to build an army to do so, which requires visiting a variety of locations with their own conflicts in the kingdom of Ferelden. Each area has its own plot, with a critical decision to be made at the conclusion. This affects what units you see fighting with you during the final battle, which was a nice touch, even if it didn’t affect final outcomes very much. The fact that the game gave so many options for its conclusion is commendable and again ups the replay value.

It’s sad what the series has become, but that shouldn’t stop you from enjoying the first entry, which stands on its own as a complete and satisfying story with a deep, well-thought-out dark fantasy setting.

3. Oblivion (PC, Xbox 360, PS3)

Those who know me know this one was coming. Oblivion is a special game that straddles a lot of lines. It’s easy to get into yet has deep systems for those who want to use them. It was released early enough in the lifecycle of the Xbox360 era to be revolutionary while also benefiting from the power design language of the PS2. It uses the visual language of classic high fantasy like Lord of the Rings without being too derivative. The music is evocative and beautiful without making itself obtrusive. The combat is fun, easy to understand, and highly variable, yet it can be very challenging as the game progresses. Magic is very useful, but it is hard to break the game. Gear is plentiful but unique.

The biggest strength of the game by far is the freedom to explore the world. Because of its leveling system (often maligned), content always matches player level, which allows you, more than any other game, to go anywhere you want and do anything with very few limitations. You won’t accidentally encounter a monster that one-shots you, but everywhere you go, there will likely be a challenge of some sort.

The leveling system is where most people get hung up because, like Morrowind, it’s not your standard “get experience, level up, get powerful” system. Rather, it is about raising skills by using them, which also raises stats slowly. In Oblivion, because the content is leveled to the player, that can create problems with certain classes (and especially custom classes) where a limited set of skills causes the player to have low relative stats. I’ve made several leveling guides to help people understand how to manage it.

I’m personally a big fan of the leveling system. It is hard to master it, but for detail-oriented people like me, it’s thoroughly engrossing. At the same time, you don’t have to efficiently level to enjoy the game or clear all of the content. The first time I played, I didn’t know what I was doing, and I ended up being an archer with no endurance who had to kite enemies around. It was fun and challenging, but on later playthroughs, I enjoyed making my character as an all-around powerhouse. You have the option either way with Oblivion.

The other big strength is the quests, which are the best of any Elder Scrolls game. While Morrowind’s guild quests were mostly “fetch this” and “kill this fellow,” Oblivion seeks to tell a story with each quest chain, village, or town, usually with weighty narrative conclusions and challenging final encounters. Skyrim also does this well, but not as well as its forerunner. The main quest (featuring Sean Bean) is excellent, but the guild quests are where you really feel like you are role-playing. The Dark Brotherhood has you murder, yes, but in stealthy and often difficult-to-manage ways, contrasted with the rather simple killings of the Morag Tong in Morrowind. The Thieves Guild has the most epic final quest of the game—the heist of the century—and you are rewarded with some of the most unique and powerful items in the game.

The art, too, I love. Cyrodil is idyllic but disturbed by demonic invasion. There are vampires hiding out in dark cities, and goblins infest the city sewers. The music is calm and serene, making the game feel homey, while the opening of oblivion gates feels like a real disturbance. It all works together so well.

Mods, too are capable of delivering a very modern visual or gameplay experience, which has allowed for Oblivion to remain relevant for a very long time indeed.

2. Morrowind – PC, Xbox

Morrowind is the Elder Scrolls for people who really love RPG systems and weird, wild lore. It was a technical achievement at release, like all Elder Scrolls games, but like Skyrim and Oblivion, it has grown over the years due to community mods. The dangerous land of Vvardenfell, just a portion of Morrowind, has now been expanded due to community efforts. Every part of Morrowind’s graphics has been upgraded or replaced through modding, and there is even a new open-source client, OpenMW, that brings in things like HDR lighting to further enhance the experience.

All this effort exists because the core game is truly great on its own. Morrowind was the best game I played in 2022, some 20 years after release, because of its core design and the great enhancements mods have made. Where the graphics were originally rough and gestural, now they are rendered in stark detail. Where lighting was simple but effective in 2002, it is now deeply immersive and atmospheric, but that lighting wouldn’t matter a lick if the towns and dungeons weren’t worth exploring to begin with.

Morrowind has the best central story of any Elder Scrolls game and the weirdest setting. The hand-crafted world feels alive and compelling, and NPCs, since they aren’t voiced, are capable of having long, detailed conversations that steep the player in the strange land of Morrowind’s culture and religion. There are many factions, all with a long history. Books can be read that flesh out the setting and provide hours of entertainment on their own – an element that would continue to be used to great effect in later games.

Morrowind, while in many ways the deepest of the Elder Scrolls game, is also the least beginner-friendly. The leveling system is somewhat opaque, and character creation is important if you don’t want to die to mud crabs at level 1. So, while I love the leveling system, I do recommend new players consult a brief quickstart guide and bookmark an online map (UESP’s map is the best), knowing that most new players will not have the physical manual or the world map that shipped with the game in 2002. Your skills matter a lot in Morrowind, to the point where you will be unable to cast a spell or even hit an enemy without sufficient skill in that magic school or weapon category.

Personally, I love the leveling system, which is easier to master than Oblivion simply because you can buy lots of training to fill out your unassigned skills and get those +5 attribute bonuses at level up. Gold is plentiful once you learn to play, and honestly the game becomes trivial after a while, but all that power is satisfying when you start the game by getting owned by rats and crabs. You’ll find ways to fly across the map, instantly kill enemies, or walk past them while invisible, and you’ll enchant items so powerful that only truly bugged enemies will present any challenge. That’s a fun apex to reach, though.

Morrowind also provides the right kind of friction for an exploration game. There is cheap and easy fast travel, but it mostly goes to cities and temples, and you have to remember what boats go where, for example. There are no quest markers, and you have to read your journal (no regular quest log) and pay attention to dialogue for directions to find what you seek. You’ll spend a lot of time walking places, which gives you the opportunity to take in the scenery, enjoy the music, and think about what you are doing. It’s an RPG experience for people who want to imagine what it’s like to be a wandering adventurer. It’s not for everyone, but for those who love it, no other game has come close in two decades. Incredible.

1. World of Warcraft (Vanilla) - PC

World of Warcraft is not just the best MMO ever; it is the best RPG ever made. More than that—it is the best videogame ever released. I can state this with only a small caveat: you had to play the game between 2004 and 2009 (roughly the second expansion) to get the full effect.

WoW was a very special game for a special time. High-speed internet was still a mostly novel experience, and online games were unknown to most people. It was the peak of the MMORPG craze but also the harbinger of its doom. Its massive financial success was a huge part of the inspiration for “live service” games that nearly ruined the medium in the 2010s, but it was, on its own, worth the money and then some. After Wow, you couldn’t release an MMO that was grind without the fun. Every game that was out in 2004 was crushed by 2005, with only a few survivors of the “old style” of MMO, like Everquest and Final Fantasy XI (both of which are still running live servers).

What made WoW great could be an essay unto itself. But briefly, it was a game that allowed the player to do an awful lot without getting bored. Crafting, questing, and dungeons were all robust and improved with each patch. All of them encouraged player interaction, yet much of the game could be played solo, which was rather new for MMOs. The world was dangerous and challenging, and therefore stimulating, and the world was full of new people to meet, befriend, and even kill. Whenever you logged in, you always felt like there was something to do, someone to talk to, or something else to explore. It wasn’t easy, but it wasn’t impossible, and there was a lot of satisfaction that could come from overcoming the challenges out in the world or in a dungeon.

Leveling was a long-term experience on release, and getting level 60 felt like an epic accomplishment. After that, the game itself seemed to “level up,” and the player could enter the raiding experience and everything that went with it, such as large guilds, which were more than teams. Often, they were a kind of second family. PVP servers amplified these feelings, where the guild was your family, the faction, your army. The battlegrounds (introduced later on) amplified the war fantasy. Most of this persisted through the first few expansions, and undoubtedly, the scene became more competitive and skilled in arenas, but it was never as fun.

There are certain experiences that stay with you – the first time you killed someone of the opposite faction, the first time you cleared a dungeon like Deadmines, or a raid like Onyxia – but it was the overall feeling that made it such a compelling experience. It wasn’t balanced. It wasn’t even properly finished at release, but that improved the experience in many ways. It made things more challenging, more engaging.

One can certainly emulate Vanilla with modern classic servers, but it can’t quite be the same. A game like that is only filled with noobs once. Jumping in with expert players won’t yield the same amount of fun. The game can’t ever be as exciting as it was 20 years ago because there are so many other options for online games, including the retail version of WoW, that weren’t there in 2004. Most consoles didn’t even hook up to the internet when the game was released.

Still, I recommend a vanilla leveling experience on official or private servers for those who are curious and weren’t there. You might get a good glimpse at what was such a phenomenon it got its own South Park episode and changed the face of gaming forever.

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