Undertale turns nearly every RPG trope in existence on its head, while simultaneously feeling good as an RPG — a truly incredible feat. Ni no Kuni: Wratch of the White Witch follows the adventures of Oliver and his companions, who include an oddball fairy named Drippy, as Oliver tries to save his mother.
Its unique combat system paired well with a Pokemon-like creature collection element, while its world brimmed with fantastic sights and sounds. It even let players export their characters into later games in the series, another precursor of things to come. Dragon Quest VIII is considered by many fans to be among the best entries in the series, which is saying something for a franchise this popular.
This was back in the height of cartoonish, cel-shaded graphics, but even then this game stood out for its gorgeously rendered world. It also managed to be less complex than some of its predecessors, eschewing a complicated job system, which many players — weary of convoluted systems in contemporary RPGs — found refreshing.
In an era when many of the most popular games, including all the best Super Nintendo games, were still telling their entire stories through text boxes, Lunar: Eternal Blue was ahead of its time with not just all those cutscenes but over an hour of voiced dialogue, all thanks to the Sega CD format.
It eschewed the turn-based combat of the previous games in favor of more action-oriented gameplay, and more importantly its impressive network features let players from all over the world connect and play with each other, with innovative communication options including unique emoji and other symbols. It also featured voice acting for the first time in the series, not to mention being remembered for its jazzy soundtrack by composers Yoshino Aoki and Akari Kaida.
It was also renowned for its animated scenes and stellar localization, and launched a sequel and multiple additional remakes. A relatively complex class system and extensive backgrounds for each character helped make the game distinct, while its grid-based combat system made Shining Force II ahead of its time. With fantastic graphics, a deep turn-based combat system, and puzzle-based gameplay that pushed the boundaries of what RPGs could do outside of combat, Golden Sun was a landmark.
And the fact that it was all on the tiny Game Boy Advance was even more to its credit. A large part of that was its lack of random battles in dungeons, a huge advancement that made Lufia II way ahead of its time. It even had a randomly generated dungeon, the floor Ancient Cave, another feature of modern games that had yet to reach prominence at that time. Those elements combined with devious puzzles and an engrossing plot, earn Lufia II a spot on the list. Following Yuri Lowell and his guild Brave Vesperia, Tales of Vesperia also featured an engrossing story involving abuse of Blastia energy that threatens the very planet.
But the original will always be remembered for its impressive at the time! As a sequel to the original Shadow Hearts set in the chaos of the first world war, Shadow Hearts: Covenant is one of the best alternate-history RPGs out there. The unique Judgment Ring made combat exciting, while new additions to the series like the Crest Magic system provided significant advancements over the original.
Some wonky localization and dialogue issues only added to its charm. It was even criticized on its original release for its outdated graphics. Thanks to an involved combat and magic system, a solid story set 1, years after Phantasy Star II, and themes dealing with global climate catastrophe, it remains more than relevant today. Practically every one of its characters has become an iconic hero or villain, and its legacy is immeasurable.
Stardew Valley captured hearts by feeling like a throwback to a simpler time in gaming, combining all the best bits of classic home-and-hearth games like Harvest Moon and Animal Crossing. It singlehandedly breathed new life into the genre with its polished presentation, deep farming systems, and remarkable freedom.
At heart, Persona 5 is a game about shaking off the chains of contemporary society. Oh, sure, it's got some exciting turn-based combat, too, but nothing else about it leaves a mark on your soul quite like its leaps from hobnobbing around a Tokyo high school to venturing inside the dungeons of wayward adults and physically battling their personal demons. There's so much here, whether it's dungeons with hidden rooms or branching paths, or weighty modern themes centering on suicide and drug use.
Its intimate explorations of multiple characters also make it an intensely personal story, and one that shouldn't be missed. JRPGs were in a bit of a funk at the beginning of this decade, but few games sent them surging back to relevance quite like Xenoblade Chronicles. There's just so much to love about it, whether it's the sprawling open world with its many surprises to discover, the likeable cast of characters, the thrilling action combat, or a day and night cycle that caused enemies to grow stronger after the sun went down.
Toss in the stellar soundtrack, and that's a recipe for a game that should be popular for years to come. BioWare first made its name with fantasy RPGs, and Dragon Age: Origins marked a generally triumphant update to its tradition of pause-based combat mechanics and party micromanagement.
But its chief strength was its grim setting in a dark fantasy world that married the high fantasy of The Lord of the Rings with the low fantasy of A Song of Ice and Fire, where elves are treated like trash and magic brought with it terrible prices. It's also a character-driven game in true BioWare fashion, with the standout performance coming from Claudia Black as the role of the witch Morrigan.
One of the most appealing aspects of Persona 3 is the way it jumps between what passes through the real world and fantasy, and it pulls it off while being effortlessly cool. The narrative follows a high school student whose extracurricular activities partly involve fighting creatures that gnaw on human minds during the "Dark Hour," and he's surrounding by memorable characters who aid him in this task.
Its greatest legacy, though, is the first appearance of the Social Links system, which lets the player level personas the manifestation of one's inner self while doing normal-world activities as well as by fighting monsters. Grandia II was one of the Sega Dreamcast's standout RPGs, delivering fantastic graphics for the system and the time and a good, twisty tale about a world still suffering from the effects of a battle between two gods from thousands of years ago.
The battle system was the chief standout, though, as it took the familiar JRPG turn-based formula and rejuvenated it by allowing characters to run behind their opponents or fall back after attacking them. And the rockin' battle anthem with its screaming electric guitars playing over this? That was the grandest part. As big as the Dark Souls games are today, it's still pretty easy to find players who've never even heard of their PS3-exclusive predecessor Demon's Souls.
But the skeleton of what would come to define Hidetaka Miyazaki's later creations were already in place there, whether it's the minimal story, the high likelihood of death at every turn, or the ability to see how other players died from their blood pools. You'll have to read a lot in Xenogears, but it's worth it. Throughout its many hours, the plot weaves through religious references and philosophical ideas by the likes of Friedrich Nietzsche, all while also prompting deep thoughts about the relationship between humankind and machines.
Naturally, it also lets you stomp around in a giant, spiky mech. It's an ambitious package of near constant wonder, crafted with stellar graphics for the period and complemented with a memorable soundtrack. The basic thrust of Tales of Symphonia's plot sometimes veered toward cliche, but the little chats between the colorful characters did much to make up for that. Often they had little to do with the plot at hand, and that detachment made them feel more human.
Its real-time combat delivers a similar sense of satisfaction, as it's based on a uncommon system that's both 2D and 3D at once. Success demands an entertaining juggle of blocking and dishing out special abilities and normal attacks.
Even so, Tales of Symphonia never loses sight of the fact that characterization should always come first, and the two elements together make for a rewarding package. You have to dig under a pile of glitches and bugs in an unpatched version of Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines, but if you persist, you'd quickly find one of the most rewarding RPGs ever made. Set in White Wolf's vampire universe and more specifically in Los Angeles, Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines isn't only about sucking blood wherever you can safely find it, but also about shaping your tale according to your actions, beliefs, and your choices.
Few RPGs do this better. It's especially successful because few works in any media have ever captured a vampiric setting so well, and Bloodlines uses every drop of this atmosphere to add meaning to everything from fascinating rivalries between vampire clans to hungry hunts for rats in dirty alleys. Skies of Arcadia was one of the bright points in the tragic history of the SEGA Dreamcast, and at release it easily turned heads with its colorful art style and rewarding turn-based gameplay.
But it's the airships everyone rightly remembers — beautiful, billowing things that engaged in battles with other ships thousands of feet up in a 3D world with floating islands. Docking the ships allowed you to strut about towns or venture deep into menacing dungeons, where you'd partake in a unique combat system that made your party share one pool of spirit points for spells and thus added a fun dose of risk to each action.
Watch out for those pesky random encounters, though — they tend to get out of hand. The Final Fantasy series had gradually started to look less and less like actual knights-and-dragons fantasy in the years leading up to the turn of the century, but Final Fantasy IX returned the series to its roots. The world — at least in spirit if not in pixels — unfolded with much the same art style that had graced the NES in while still managing to feel fresh.
Intentionally more cartoony than predecessors, it's an endearingly optimistic game that nevertheless handles weighty themes such as guilt and identity with surprising dexterity. But that never really matters so much as the gameplay, which featured the then-unique approach of using tarot cards to influence troops in its automatic battles and taking advantage of the resulting victories to gobble up more territory on a strategic map.
Reputation points gained from interactions with NPC factions are important as well, to the point that your choices could lead you to one of 13 different endings.
Post-apocalyptic imagery is somewhat in vogue these days, and thus it's hard to imagine how startlingly original Fallout seemed back during its initial release. It's serious stuff, in a way, but the whole adventure thrives on a sense of humor and pop-culture references that grant it an uncommon vitality even today. When Fire Emblem first appeared on the Game Boy Advance in the United States, the series had already enjoyed more than a decade of success in its native Japan. Even so, players in the west took to it immediately.
It was hard to mistake the similarities with Advance Wars, one of developer Intelligence System's other games, but Fire Emblem forged a superior personality of its own with the rich interactions between its lively characters.
Nor were its strengths limited to characterization — with dozens of classes to choose from, a rich leveling system, and permanent death for characters, it was just as fantastic in action. But it's the dungeon tools for level creation that make Neverwinter Nights so influential and memorable, as they almost flawlessly allowed players to create their own dungeons and campaigns according to the pen-and-paper rules of Advanced Dungeons and Dragons. That was impressive in itself, but the inclusion of an excellent multiplayer system helped make Neverwinter Nights a smash hit.
Baldur's Gate stunned players with an isometric version of the Forgotten Realms universe awash in vibrant colors and a landscape populated with memorable characters like hamster-loving Minsc, who'd beat you up if you put off helping him track down his partner for too long. A triumph of storytelling that presaged its superior successor, Baldur's Gate kicked off a renaissance of story-rich RPGs that we're arguably still living today.
Mario might not sound so tough in Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door when you consider that he's literally a piece of paper jaunting around the screen, but that turns out to have some advantages. He can slip in through cracks by slipping through them sideways, roll himself up, or should the need arise, fly off into the blue yonder as a paper airline.
It's the kind of design that complements the whimsical and novel-like plot, which still features poor Princess Peach getting kidnapped, but also a few fun rarities, like a scholarly goomba companion. It's also fun in action, particularly in the twitchy battle system that requires good timing or by hearing cheers or jeers from the audiences that watch Mario in battle. Other games emphasize choice, but few showed the effects of those choices over the long game quite like Dragon Quest V did when it launched for the Super Famiconm.
The tale here spans an entire three decades, with the hero changing in alignment with the paths taken. It's also remarkable for having a playable pregnancy, a concept that would later influence games like Fable II and The Sims. Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar is the video game as morality play. For perhaps the first time in computer RPG history, here was a game that wasn't about defeating a bad guy or unshackling the world from the yoke of evil, but rather about learning to embody eight virtues that made you a better person and thus an inspiration to the surrounding world.
Kindheartedness, not battle prowess, is the true star here. This was revolutionary stuff at the time, and over three decades later, it remains so. Alas, it's a little rough to get into these days owing to its complexity and sluggish gameplay, but it remains a profound counterpoint to arguments that RPGs corrupt rather than correct.
The Active Dimension Battle system ditched random battles and replaced them with an unprecedented level of strategy and tactical planning. The License Board allowed players to master any skill set with whichever character they desired. Most importantly, Final Fantasy XII gave us an even better understanding of Matsuno's Ivalice, a world with a rich and believable history, and one that's beloved by RPG fans to this day.
That all changed in Pokemon Sun and Moon, and for the better. It's a game that's focused on the outdoors, specifically a lovely region named "Alola" modeled on Hawaii, and the hours that follow deliver a satisfying balance of roleplaying and Pokemon battles. There's little subtlety in the Monster Hunter universe — you largely end up doing exactly what the title says. But Monster Hunter 4 ensured all that monster hunting was monstrously fun. Verticality stole the show here, with players being able to scramble up walls or vault up surfaces and then leap down to briefly ride the monsters themselves.
More impressively, it managed to accomplish these advanced feats while emerging as the most approachable game in the series. These elements alone were enough to make it good, but an extended variety of weapon and a satisfying local and online multiplayer mode push it to greatness. Fallout 3 was entertaining enough, but Fallout: New Vegas is unforgettable.
This is the story of the Courier, who almost dies after the all-important package he was transporting gets stolen outside of post-apocalyptic Sin City. Yet the main tale isn't as fascinating as everything that surrounds it, whether it's the many factions the Courier builds reputations with, the many choices regarding how to handle volatile situations, or even the sense of humor sprinkled into its several staggering hours of content. It was even fun in action, as it allowed for special attacks through the series' V.
To the untrained eye, Bloodborne may seem like Dark Souls in different clothes. But oh, what clothes they are. Bloodborne's gothic, vaguely Lovecraftian setting of Yharnam is just as sad as it is unsettling, and the haunting violins of the score rub that sadness ever deeper into your soul. But it also plays well, opting for a far more aggressive style than what you get in director Hidetaka Miyazaki's other creations, forcing players to take increasingly larger risks for the sweet, sweet rewards.
There are minimal options for long-ranged and magic and the only shield you do find is little more than a sick joke — all you have to stay alive is the intensity of a blade against the hostile Victorian darkness.
What would Star Trek look like if humans still carried big guns and all of Gene Roddenberry's '60s goofiness was thrown out the airlock? Bioware showed us a decade ago, and that vision captivates us even today. The first entry isn't as strong as the two games that followed, thanks in part to the weak AI in combat and those tedious rides in the Mako across dull alien terrain. But few if any games before had nailed voice acting, facial animations, and character models with such perfection, to the point that it feels like an interactive movie in the best sense of the term.
RPGs would never be the same again. There's so much to love about Bethesda's open-world masterpiece The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim that it's difficult to pinpoint exactly what makes it so special. Could it be its breathtaking world full of snowcapped mountains and shady woodlands? The thrill of battling fire-breathing dragons so you can suck out their souls and use their power? Could it be the endless exploration available on its titanic map? Perhaps it's the thousands of Skyrim mods that allow players to do everything from improve textures to change a dragon into a flying Macho Man Randy Savage oooooh, yeah!
Or maybe it comes down to the game's impressive malleability: you can craft any type of hero you want, go where you want, do what you want, and do it when you want. Yes, there are myriad reasons to love one of the best-selling video game of all time, but one thing is for sure: you really don't play Skyrim. You live it. It shed the famously clunky UI of previous games to allow more of its refreshingly detailed world to shine through.
Instead, checking your inventory or looting happened in pop-up menus, which not only carried into future Ultima titles, but games outside the RPG genre too.
Ultima VII also dropped the strict, grid-based approach to movement, introduced dialogue trees, and went real-time. Its innovations to the format are matched only by its impressive interactivity and the non-linearity of its main plot. Ultima VII managed to root itself comfortably in the conventions it created, but still have the sophistication to move forward in awesome new ways.
Smartly combining themes of action, role playing, survival horror, and first-person shooters, System Shock 2 expertly defies simply being a great RPG, showing how innovative mechanics that play off each other can make a game more than the sum of its parts.
It also pioneered several methods of storytelling through gameplay that we take for granted — like finding doomed audio logs or reliving echoes of the past that urge you to piece together the larger puzzle of what's really going on. The unsettling and moody atmosphere of the derelict starship go hand in hand with bioengineered horrors that roam free to create the perfect horror environment, and leave you feeling terrified no matter which of the many skills you choose to give your character.
There's always multiple ways to solve a problem, letting you get truly creative in ways that never feel out of place with the character you've built. Long ago, before Noctis went on his epic road trip and Lightning bounced between timelines, the Dark Knight Cecil fought his inner demons and a few space monsters in Final Fantasy IV.
A pivotal entry in the Final Fantasy series, IV eschewed simple storytelling mechanics and set out to create a deliciously frothy soap opera, complete with love triangles, increasingly exotic locals the moon, y'all , and a classic "brothers-separated-at-birth" reveal. The only thing that matched its ambitious storytelling was its equally ambitious combat mechanics. Final Fantasy IV ushered the Active Time Battle system into the series, fundamentally changing the way Final Fantasy games were played for nearly a decade.
These features, combined with charming 2D sprites, sweeping music, and timeless themes of love, betrayal, and redemption, are why Final Fantasy IV is still fondly remembered long after its heroes saved the Blue Planet from impending doom. A smart, action-dependent approach to leveling lets players build out their character naturally, rather than adjusting numbers in a stat menu. An abundance of quests and the freedom to carve out your own path in its world is almost overwhelming. Its visuals were technically impressive for the time and imaginatively stylish enough to hold up even today, making the island of Vvardenfell one of the most memorable settings in the series.
It stands out with its dark, riveting storyline inspired by real-life events like the Yugoslav Wars and Bosnian Genocide.
The focus on more serious themes means players are often forced to make difficult decisions with sometimes devastating moral implications.
With a non-linear plot modeled after visual novels and full of branching paths, turning points, and multiple endings, Tactics Ogre became more than a mere strategy RPG. EarthBound is a weird, wonderful game about four kids who save the world. Early proof that not all RPGs need fantasy settings, EarthBound is one of the best turn-based RPGs of the bit era and takes place in a town that feels like it could be anywhere in middle America.
That modern setting mixed with bizarre, offbeat humor makes it a unique experience and has helped it maintain its cult status as something special and very different from its contemporaries. Most of all, EarthBound has a tremendous amount of heart. Underneath its goofy jokes and pop culture references is a genuinely great, sweet story about a group of kids who are risking a lot to make the world a better place, and the final battle is an extremely clever, moving way to incorporate the people our heroes meet along their journey.
With Final Fantasy Tactics, Yasumi Matsuno took everything we thought was sacred about the Final Fantasy series and turned it on its head.
While Tactics maintained the familiar creatures and archetypes we all knew and loved, it introduced us to the world of Ivalice, and leaned heavily into the Job system introduced in Final Fantasy V. While the core stable of characters provided a ton of memorable drama, being able to recruit generic characters and fashion them into roles ranging from simple Knight and Wizard to downright bizarre Mime and Calculator led to an infinite well of depth.
While you had to put in some effort to wrap your head around the tactical battle system, the rewarding feeling of mastering the complex systems made it absolutely worth it. It perfectly balances intimate character drama and friendship with end-of-the-world heroics. Luca Blight is an especially twisted and evil villain in a genre filled with great villains. RPGs are all about choice, and the amount of choice in Cyberpunk makes our dang head spin. Its dialogue options are filled with decisions to make, some just for flavor and others that can fundamentally affect how the story around you and its characters can play out.
Its levels are open maps full of paths to explore and secrets to find, enhancing the different aspects of your character as you naturally use them. If melee, then blunt weapons or swords? What hacks will help you best? Not a fan of hack? The systems here are so expansive they are almost hard to keep track of, and giving each player a distinct flavor of their own V in both gameplay and story.
For more, check out our full Cyberpunk PC review here! Persona 5 Royal makes meaningful changes to the already amazing base that is Persona 5, not just in new content added but improvements to some of the original game's weakest aspects. The definitive way to play P5, Royal makes Morgana's less of an annoying curfew keeper, makes the Mementos portion of the world more interesting to explore, makes some needed tweaks to aspects of combat, and generally smoothes out the experience in a host of little ways, on top of the substantive new addition to the campaign.
Persona 5 was already working with some of the best turn-based JRPG combat around, but if you held off on playing, Royal is the best way to experience the style, memorable cast, and still memorable story of the original. For more, check out our full Persona 5 Royal review here! Its roleplaying mechanics allow for an immersive experience where every choice can play out in unexpected consequences, forming new unexpected alliances or dire retaliations when least expected.
Wasteland 3 is a game where each member of your party can have a story to tell, and your direct actions will have you remembered as a benevolent savior of Colorado, or the bloody hand of frontier justice. For more, check out our full Wasteland 3 review here! An epic boss fight that would be against a gigantic monster anywhere else is against… a regular dude trying to kill you with a backhoe.
Each area is its own unique challenge, encouraging you to mix and match jobs while richly rewarding experimentation. After the credits roll, there's still plenty of impetus to explore Bravely Default 2's large world as you develop your job classes even further. It's a wonderful celebration of turn-based combat, buoyed by a smattering of quality-of-life improvements that help to make it more accessible than its predecessors.
Humble as it may seem, Bravely Default 2 is among the deepest and most enjoyable RPGs released in , and it certainly deserves to be counted among the best games released on Nintendo Switch. The second chapter expands upon the themes and mechanics of its previous offering in almost every way, providing new opportunities for its delightful cast of party members to not just win battles in humorous and inventive ways, but express themselves in ways both big and small.
This turn-based RPG puts a spotlight on the stars of the beloved Monster Hunter series - the monsters themselves. Hatch, ride, and battle alongside a team of "Monsties" of your choice as you uncover the dramatic mystery of the titular Wings of Ruin.
The built-in gacha-like monster collecting system and wild customization features are almost too easy to get lost in for hours, and the stimulating battle mechanics make it worthwhile, especially in the sprawling post-game and free!
DLC event quests. Ultimately, Monster Hunter Stories 2 is an incredibly fun ride that provides a beautiful and unique take on the monster-taming genre. The latest entry in the long-running SMT series, it matches an apocalyptic style with its standard array of quirky and memorable demons. Taking a cue from Zelda: Breath of the Wild, it largely shuns dungeons for a more open-world approach, giving it a refreshing and modern feel without sacrificing its depth.
The crux of its gameplay involves capturing and raising demons, then combining them with other demons to create still more powerful monsters.
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