Pick your character class, choose your weapons and recruit your comrades. We count down the 50 best role-playing games ever made. Pick your character class, choose your weapons and recruit your comrades. We count down the 50 best role-playing games ever made.
By Staff,
Tuesday, 19 December 2017 05:59 GMT
Pick your character class, choose your weapons and recruit your comrades. We count down the 50 best role-playing games ever made.
Nobody is allowed to argue with our list of the 50 best RPGs of all time. We had enough squabbling in the staff meeting, and as for the secret edit wars…! Half of us are still not speaking to the other.
When the dust settled, the blood had been mopped, and everyone had apologised to their fellows, we shook hands and agreed that we’d mined a deep vein of precious truth, the ore that powers our rampaging video game justice machine. We had discovered the 50 best RPGs ever.
These… are those RPGS.
Oh, Secret of Mana: how we love thee. Never had we blown so hard on a worn out SNES cartridge, just to get you working again. With a banner real-time battle system, jaw dropping graphics, and a stellar soundtrack, for some of us, it is one of the greatest games ever. Even though the menu system was overly frustrating at first, and the story was very Japanese for some, it was unique with fun co-op and super smart AI for its time. And finally being granted access to Flammie the dragon? Seeing him fly above a ground rendered in 3D? Being able to ride him? Forget about it. The game was released 20 years ago, and yet it still manages to make us feel all warm and fuzzy inside.
It boggled the mind in 2005 how ArenaNet planned to succeed in the competitive world of MMOs with a game featuring instanced PvP areas, the ability to group and quest with NPCs, and not forcing a subscription on players. It was destined to fail according to some pundits. Well, it didn’t: Guild Wars succeeded and then some. By April 2009,6 million units had been sold. Sequel Guild Wars 2 released in 2012 and set the bar even higher with its updated graphics and gameplay mechanics, a storyline responsive to player actions, dynamic event systems instead of the typical MMO questing, and a persistent world. All of this, and again with no subscription fees. Both were and remain a breath of fresh air in an increasingly stagnant MMO genre and are deserving of unparalleled praise for such innovation.
If you’re just gagging for an unapologetically old school CRPG, but running at a resolution that doesn’t make your modern monitor produce small sounds of disgust and distress, Pillars of Eternity is for you. Obsidian asked the Internet: would you like it if we ignored all that 3D action nonsense and just used a modern engine to make a retro-style RPG in the style of Icewind Dale and Baldur’s Gate? The Internet said, yes please and here is a (then record-breaking) $4 million to do it with. The result is exactly what you’d expect, and probably delight in. Although Obsidian didn’t have a Dungeons & Dragons license, this freed it up to create its own rules, races, perks and feats, plus a unique re-interpretation of fantasy setting tropes.
Sure the battles could be a bit repetitive and the combo system was unforgiving at times, but despite all this, The Legend of Dragoon was damn good game. Why else have there been numerous requests from fans for Sony to release another entry? It was beautiful, the storyline was tight, you could transform into a more powerful form in battle, and multiple use items were peppered across the game for the player to find in order to increase stats. And how many of you actually collected all the stardust, thus acquiring the Vanishing Stone so you could face superboss Magician Faust? Champions, each and every one.
Where do you even start? With Ultima Online, the first really successful graphical MMORPG? With nine core games and a dozen spin-offs? With the huge breadth of talent at the late Origin Systems? Or maybe with the suspected madness of Richard “Lord British” Garriott, who loved the worlds he helped create so much he can’t stop doing author-inserts and appears as a major, recurring NPC? Ultima is pure western fantasy, if not at its finest then certainly at some of its peaks.
In more innocent times Fable felt fresh and funny. An RPG set within a crooked take on the eccentric British, Peter Molyneux’s first attempt at Fable came without all the pretentious bullshit. The difficult choices were always binary so you only ever turn out purely evil or saintly good, but on the way you get to marry, drink and fart like a trooper. If nothing else it’s just bloody good fun. Fable > is probably the best one on balance, but the third one is stuffed with not quite successful ideas that probably made it through Microsoft’s filters thanks to Molyneux’s climb up the executive ranks, and that certainly makes it the most textured and interesting.
Ken Levine may have perfected his gameplay mechanics years after its release, but this survival horror, cyberpunk RPG laid the groundwork for all BioShock games to come. A re-imagining later rewords as a proper sequel to the 1994 PC game, System Shock 2 thrust players into a starship to stop a genetic outbreak. Like its predecessor, it mixed FPS elements with the ability to build up your skills and traits in a formula we came to know as the immersive sim. While it wasn’t deemed a commercial success, it has been credited as the inspiration behind several shooters and other genres with its innovative progression system. Add in the fact this was NOT a game you wanted to play in the dark lest you wet yourself it deserves to be on any “best of” list.
For some of us Level-5 can do no wrong, and Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch proved our opinion of the developer was valid with this breathtakingly lovely DS and PS3 release. Combined with studio Ghibli’s traditional animation style and cutscenes, the player cannot help but be drawn into Oliver’s world as he and the fairy Drippy try to thwart the evil wizard Shadar. It’s a touching story, as Oliver is convinced he can bring his mother Allie back to life and help broken-hearted people affected by Shadar along the way. When he finally confronts the White Witch, we are met with a touchingly bittersweet ending to a fabulous effort by the developers. We expect to add the upcoming sequel to this entry, to be honest.
Ion Storm’s forgotten game, Anachronox is the neglected middle child to bratty Daikatana and smug Deus Ex. Tom Hall’s name is still spoken of in reverent tones whenever fans of this beautiful project gather, and with good reason: Anachronox fronts a beautiful world, a gently good-humoured tone and bitingly good writing. Consigned to cult classic status, it deserved so much more.
If the Ys titles aren’t enough for you to appreciate Nihon Falcom, then you need to get your hands on one of the myriad of The Legend of Heroes titles. Starting life as an action series called Dragon Slayer, after the second entry, Falcom dropped the Dragon Slayer bits altogether to focus on turn-based RPG combat (the main series lived on in other Legends titles). Most people familiar with the series had to import the titles, but thankfully, Falcom, NIS America and XSEED between them have managed to bring a few over in recent years – The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel 2 is the latest and easiest to find in the west. What do you still have a Vita for if not to play JRPGS, anyway?
There are numerous games based on or taking place within JRR Tolkien’s Middle-earth, but thanks to Peter Jackson’s films bringing the lore mainstream, several recent efforts have been worthy to carry the Lord of the Rings name. One of these is the now independent MMORPG Lord of the Rings Online, which still deserves its place on this list despite numerous changes and content droughts over the years. No other game gives you the opportunity to immerse yourself in the lore and lay of the land dreamed up by Tolkien himself. There is nothing more goosebump-inducing than the first time you encounter a ringwraith or gaze upon The Gates of Argonath. LotRO is riddled with enough scenes, landscapes, and storylines from the books to make any Tolkien fan happy, even if just for the virtual tour.
Mistwalker outdid itself with this Wii exclusive from the team that brought us Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey just as a warm up. The Last Story had everything you could want in an RPG: mercenaries, a great story, a simple but unique combat system, and a fantastic soundtrack. It was truly one of the best games ever released for Wii, which makes it hugely frustrating that Nintendo didn’t bother to get it into western hands before the console’s heyday was well and truly over. Mistwalker has been focused on mobile since The Last Story’s release, but has a new console game in the works. Hopefully, Hironobu “Father of Final Fantasy” Sakaguchi has something special up his sleeve and won’t keep fans waiting much longer.
Impossible to talk about RPGs and not mention Dragon Quest, otherwise known as Dragon Warrior thanks to Enix-as-was’s rubbish localisation efforts. Yet another seminal Square Enix series, this one is distinguished by the artistic stylings of Dragon Ball Z creator Akira Toriyama – not to mention an almost static core creative team led by Yuji Horii. Unforgivingly old school and satisfyingly cohesive without becoming stale, the available series to date may have hit its peak with Dragon Quest 9 as the next entry turned into a Japan-exclusive MMO. Luckily, Dragon Quest 11 is coming west in 2018. In the meantime, Dragon Quest-branded Minecraft-clones and Dynasty Warriors spin-offs will have to do.
Not the first MMORPG on the market nor even the most financially successful, but no other online RPG ever caused such as craze as Sony Online Entertainment’s EverQuest. Still going strong 15 years and 20 expansions later, Everquest became synonymous with online addiction, earning itself the well-deserved nickname “EverCrack”. It inspired numerous player meetups, millions of cosplayers, and even led to real-world, offline relationships. Its successor EverQuest 2 accomplished all of this and more when it returned players to Norrath 500 years after The Planes of Power storyline.
If the first entry in the MMO series wasn’t addictive enough, the second release proved it in spades. Fondly known by many early players as “NeverQuest” due to the massive server queues, crashes, and players lining up for respawns, it eventually redeemed itself, giving rise to numerous fanfiction stories and a culture all of its own. A couple of us know people who have left their real-life partners for those met in EverQuest 2. Yeah.
“This sounds a lot like Fallout?” Oh, petal, sit yourself down and learn a little history. If there had never been a Wasteland, there would never have been a Fallout. Brian Fargo didn’t have the Wasteland rights when he founded Interplay, and as a compromise moved on to the Fallout series. You hear that? Fallout was a second best. The original and, if not for the eye-bleeding graphics, still the best, Wasteland is CRPG at an early peak surpassed but never made redundant by the genre’s later flourishing.
Wasteland 2, the crowdfunded sequel, may remind you why you haven’t played classic CRPGs in a decade – or how much you’ve missed them.
Based on a pen-and-paper roleplaying setting that hits its peak in the late 1990s, Vampire: the Masquerade – Bloodlines was the product of the late, great Troika. Despite our love for this developer there’s no denying it let the game out in an absolute rubbish state, but never mind – the fan community took over and is still improving this beloved classic. There really has never been a better exploration of White Wolf’s gorgeous dark world, and with the demise of CCP’s World of Darkness there probably never will be.
Since 1995 the Tales series has been one of the best JRPGs on the market, although we in the west have had to take what little of it Bandai Namco bothered to bring over and jolly well like it. Debuting on the SNES in the golden era of 16-bit JRPGs, Tales of Phantasia was the first of 16 main titles so far ( Tales of Berseria is the latest mothership release), plus multiple spin-off games, audio stories, manga and anime. While most feature different protagonists, all are linked by a tried and true high fantasy setting, a thread of gameplay mechanics, a superior battle system and drop dead gorgeous art style. Created by Yoshiharu Gotanda, what was once a niche series outside of Japan grew in popularity thanks to the vocal praise of importers and efforts of fan translators, who finally raised enough ruckus that Bandai Namco has really stepped up its game in recent years in terms of getting Tales into western hands.
The Xeno series isn’t even a series, technically, but we can trace its right back to 1998 PSOne release Xenogears, with which a crack Square Enix team delivered one of the most thoughtful explorations of the man machine interface to be found in gaming. No sequel was ever produced, but director Tetsuya Takahashi jumped ship for MonolithSoft, which partnered with Bandai Namco for the Xenosaga trilogy on PS2; for legal reasons, it can’t be called a true successor, but it is. Three further episodes were planned, but axed; luckily, MonolithSoft later signed with Nintendo, and produced Xenoblade Chronicles for Wii and Xenoblade Chronicles X for Wii U. Any and all of these games are more than worth your time, but of the modern two, purists will enjoy the Wii game more, while the Wii U game offers a near-flawless open world to explore. (It’s so impressive that Nintendo even asked MonolithSoft to help with Breath of the Wild.) More recent entry Xenoblade Chronicles 2 for Switch hasn’t it the same fires, alas.
If Diablo 3 didn’t scratch that dungeon crawling itch then it’s time to take a trip to Torchlight. Originally the jumping off point for an MMO, Torchlight proved so popular the MMO was axed and a more co-op friendly sequel produced. Some aficionados argue Torchlight 2 has out Diablo-d Diablo. This is where you go if you want to click on things until they explode, raining loot everywhere, and have your adorable pet run back and sell off all your loot so you don’t have to stress about inventory limits. Why don’t all games have that? We lost staff for weeks to this one.
It’s not just the classical Wuxia heroes and traditional Chinese style that makes Jade Empire a great RPG – the game has all the skill we’d expect from a classic BioWare game, after all. But there’s no denying that the attention to detail, the mythical beasts and the heroes who save the land, are elevated by such attention to detail and story crafting. You’ve never come across this type of adventure in a Western RPG before, and you’re unlikely to ever again. Inspired.
It was a disservice for this dungeon crawler to be lambasted by some as being too similar to Diablo 2, because while it shared some of the same gameplay elements, the various effects, time cycles, and ragdoll physics made it a different game. Featuring gods and monsters pulled from Greek mythology, Titan Quest was varied, colorful and most of all, fun. Any gameplay issues which kept one from enjoying their adventure were fixed with the release of the Immortal Throne expansion, and due to the inclusion of a game editor players were blessed with a bevy of user-generated content, such as the excellent Lilith mod – which added a new world and 150 hours worth of gameplay.
Developed by Square for the SNES way back in 1996, this action role-playing title was a first for the Mario series, in that it deviated from platforming gameplay. As players set about to defeat Smithy and restore pieces of the Star Road, the Shigeru Miyamoto produced game would be one of the last Mario titles released for SNES. Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars was lovely with its 3D rendered graphics and lashings of humor, and served as a worthy farewell to a much-loved system.
When we talk about Shadowrun we’re talking about two games; there are quite significant differences between the SNES and Mega Drive releases. In either case, you’re looking at an isometric RPG similar to the original Fallout games, for example, but with a carefully recreated cyberpunk atmosphere. Nothing ever really equalled it, which is why there was such appetite for a corwdfunded modern successor. Shadowrun Returns and its expansions successfully captures the spirit, but can’t recreate the shock and delight of firing up a cartridge-based console and finding a very adult thriller.
Pokemon could almost be considered its own genre, and nothing has ever appeared to rival it. How many times have you bowed to the pressure of “Gotta Catch ‘Em All” now? How many of the 802 species of Pokemon have you caught (not including Mega Evolutions or Pokemon Sun & Moon ‘s new Alola forms)? How many iterations of the game have you owned on how many different handhelds? We bet your walls as a kid were peppered with pictures of the various creatures, and your drawers stacked with Nintendo magazines with these critters gracing the covers.
