Whether they’re about towns or about guys, whether they serve as a way to tell the stories of our times, or are merely a chance to hang out with friends either virtual or real, the role-playing game has an obvious allure. They have been with the videogame industry for nearly the entirety of its commercial era, ever-evolving in many aspects, but still retaining the elements that drew people to RPGs in the first place decades ago. They’ve flourished not just in one country, no, but worldwide, on consoles designed for enormous televisions, on handhelds, and everything in between.
The very best RPGs tend to be the ones that stay with you, either because of their characters, their narrative, the mechanics, the way they make you feel as their story unfolds, as you swing a sword, or strategize for what’s next—something drew you in, and has yet to let go all this time later. It’s as possible for this to occur with a tightly told classic pixelated title as it is with a brand new behemoth designed with previously impossible resolutions in mind. An RPG might, given their size and scope, ask more of you than games from plenty of other genres, but the very best of them pay you back far more than you can invest in them, again and again.—Marc Normandin
This list wasn’t easy. First off we had to decide how we would define “RPG” and also settle on our goals with this project (beyond the most obvious one: getting people to read our website). Ultimately we fell on a fairly liberal concept of the role-playing game. It doesn’t matter what the combat is like, what storytelling techniques are used, or how closely it hews to traditional notions of RPGs; if a game lets you embody a character and has an obvious progression system where you level up and boost stats, we’d consider it. That means action RPGs, tactical RPGs, traditional turn-based numbers, and even small-scale minimalist deconstructions were all eligible for votes. Our panel of five voters—myself, Paste assistant games editor Moises Taveras, and regular contributors Dia Lacina, Marc Normandin, and Cameron Kunzelman—ranked their personal top 50 RPGs from 1 to 50, with a set number of points allocated to each slot. Dia totalled it all up, averaged it out, and voila: we had a really boring and predictable list where the most aggressively “okay” games came out on top. That always happens with lists like this, but we didn’t want it to this time, so we tossed the whole damn thing out.
At that point we came up with a new methodology. We stuck with the top 10 from that initial vote, because they were all true classics that defined the genre and deserved to be represented. For the rest of the top 50 we all picked eight additional games apiece that we thought should make the list. We made sure nobody doubled up picks and then had an email back-and-forth where anybody who felt strongly about it could veto another voter’s picks. After a period of wrangling and dusting it up in the ol’ inbox we landed on a final list of 50—at which point I used my editorial discretion to sort through a final, definitive ranking. If you’re wondering who lobbied for which games, just look at who wrote the blurb. This guaranteed a slightly more personal feel than you typically get from big lists like this, and hopefully you’ll appreciate that.
After about three and a half of weeks of this back-and-forth, the final order landed as you’ll find it below. And that’s how we picked the best RPGs of all time. If you have any problems or disagreements with it, go complain about it on the internet somewhere.—Garrett Martin
50. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
Original Release: 2015
Damn I like riding around on a horse with Geralt grunting and telling me about the wind. Despite being a story about massive political intrigue and the fate of nations, the pleasures of The Witcher 3 are mostly those small ones, with Geralt’s beleaguered everymutant providing a gateway into a big fantasy world. Notably, The Witcher 3 sticks the landing, with the universe-spanning finale coming home to being a story about parents, children, and the world we leave to others after us.—Cameron Kunzelman
49. Destiny 2
Original Release: 2017
I’m fully expecting contention on this one, and you’re all wrong. Few games I’ve played support a deeper sense of buildcrafting than Destiny 2. I would argue you haven’t really played Destiny 2 till you’ve been in the weeds of your mods, tweaking aspects of your character and abilities you didn’t even know you had in preparation for a raid and then had it come together harmoniously as you triumph over the final encounter. It isn’t always sexy, but damn does it feel good at the end of the day. I don’t know a more quintessentially RPG experience than optimizing a build to take on a challenging dungeon and emerging with new weapons and garbs to don.—Moises Taveras
48. Transistor
Original Release: 2014
There’s a lot to love about Transistor, Supergiant’s sophomore effort about a glossy cyberpunk setting eating itself alive. One of its underrated aspects is the game’s abilities known as functions, and how they simultaneously encouraged making diverse builds in the game and deepened players’ understanding of the world. Each of these functions could be equipped as an active ability, a passive buff, or a modifier to an already equipped active skill, and the possibilities set my brain alight. At the same time, the functions, which were tied to the characters you defeated to earn them, would reveal information about the enigmatic Camerata, your foes in Transistor, and the beautiful world of Cloudbank. This kind of mechanical expressiveness and storytelling is what I look for in most of my favorite RPGs and Transistor is guilty of being the blueprint.—Moises Taveras
47. Crystalis
Original Release: 1990
When Nintendo zagged with the unusual sequel Zelda II, SNK snuck in with a game that would’ve been a better follow-up to Link’s debut. Crystalis has no formal connection to Zelda, of course, but it heavily borrows its look and control scheme. Crystalis is more about fighting than puzzle-solving, though, and its elegant take on swordplay makes it one of the most enjoyable games to fight through on the NES. It’s its RPG depth that makes it truly sing, though, making Crystalis an adventure to remember.—Garrett Martin
46. Fable
Original Release: 2004
Are you a sword person or a magic person? Good or evil? These are the fundamental questions at the heart of the RPG, and Fable pared them down to their sharpest form, providing a comic framework against a backdrop of world-ending fantasy stakes. Do action, make choices, and live a life of plenty. However, I am begging you not to play the Anniversary edition, unless you like seeing characters that look like burnt potatoes.—Cameron Kunzelman
45. Assassin’s Creed Odyssey
Original Release: 2018
RPGs are just as much about the deep systems as they are the adventures. Countless modern RPGs are sprawls and Assassin’s Creed Odyssey is no different in this regard. However, and call me a sucker for thematic resonance, but it is also the rare RPG that feels appropriately epic in scale, since it pulls from the most well-worn mythology—that of the Greeks, of course—to weave a journey like little else in its series. Sailing across the Aegean Sea and taking on enemies ranging from cults to Medusa herself is genuinely the stuff of my childhood dreams. Getting to define my take on Kassandra throughout Greek history and affect the outcomes of some remarkably dense storylines in wondrous spots like Mykonos—not to mention spartan-kicking everyone in sight— makes for an adventure worth losing time to.—Moises Taveras
44. Baten Kaitos: Eternal Wings and the Lost Ocean
Original Release: 2003
Monolith Soft would go on to ever greater heights with the Xenoblade Chronicles series, but its oddball GameCube RPG still deserves some recognition. The early ‘00s were a bit of a heyday for games playing with conventions and expectations of the form—no doubt inspired by 1998’s Metal Gear Solid. The first of two Baten Kaitos games seems like a fairly typical RPG of the era, but it reveals itself to be far weirder and more unpredictable than the genre usually got at the time. It surprisingly breaks into brief bursts of other genres that were already outdated by the early ‘00s—a side-scroller here for a few moments, a shmup there for one crucial section—and has a few genuinely psychedelic passages that are startling today as they were 20 years ago. You don’t expect a game that initially fits fairly snugly into the Square-Enix mold to have an entire town that looks like it’s made of construction paper, but Baten Kaitos: Eternal Wings and the Lost Ocean does exactly that. And on top of the formal experimentation, it’s also totally cool with having its ostensible lead be a total asshole at almost every possible point, which also sets this one apart.—Garrett Martin
43. Baroque
Original Release: 1998
The best version of Sting Entertainment’s Baroque remains a Japan-exclusive, while the inferior (but still good!) remake is what was released in North America on the Playstation 2 and Wii. The original is a first-person horror roguelike, where you’ve been tasked to ascend a tower and kill God. Only upon your own death—well, deaths—is the narrative of the game and its world unveiled, and the truth of what you’re doing revealed. You could avoid combat and rush through Baroque in a few hours and come away unimpressed, but you also wouldn’t be playing the game, which is a genuinely creepy and unsettling experience awash in tension.—Marc Normandin
42. Chrono Cross
Original Release: 1999
Chrono Cross isn’t as agile as its 16-bit sibling. It is overstuffed with guys to collect or ignore. Its plot frequently spins out of Kato’s control. Even the inventive combat system is painfully slow at times. But none of this matters. Chrono Cross is vibes-based gaming. Jovial, haunting, taciturn, plaintive. It flits between moods adopting and discarding feelings as needed, but always the driving tone of being caught between spaces, of the need to outgrow adolescence, and how you’ll never find the answers to life in a videogame.—Dia Lacina
41. Bloodborne
Original Release: 2015
Years before I’d pick up Dark Souls, Bloodborne enraptured me. Its particular brand of nightmares has always appealed to some fucked up morbid curiosity of mine that I’ll never successfully diagnose. I love Yharnam’s winding, often devious paths, and reading up and making sense of its factions and history is always a fascinating plunge. But I think it’s Bloodborne‘s choice of trick weaponry that defines it as an all-time RPG for me. Its armory always leaves me plenty of options to retool my character, allowing me to approach scenarios I’m grossly familiar with in novel, and sometimes even hilarious, ways. Tools, as well as any set of skills or dialogue options, are a way to tell a story about a character, and I think no game has a greater series of tools than this one. I’ll probably play with them till I drop.—Moises Taveras
40. Golden Sun
Original Release: 2001
Golden Sun is my OG. Though I’d played the likes of Final Fantasy VII and VIII, as well as the early Pokemon games, they never stuck with me the same way that Golden Sun did. Like I noted in my Sea of Stars review, Golden Sun made its magic feel like a real and tangible extension of myself, one that I could see reflected in the world. Moreover, Golden Sun felt like the first RPG I played that I could call all mine. It’s party was the first I imprinted upon, Weyard was one of the first worlds to ever call to me, and exploring the depths of its Djinn and class systems felt like graduating from random compositions of monsters in Pokemon. I’m not sure my curiosity and interest in the magic of RPGs exists without this game.—Moises Taveras
39. The World Ends With You
Original Release: 2007
If you didn’t play the original Nintendo DS version of The World Ends With You, then you missed out on its definitive and most ambitious form, one successfully married to the technology it was developed for in a way few other games for the platform managed to this degree. Between the emphasis on fashion and music and a battle system that forces you to buy into the game’s narrative to succeed, it’s an RPG that oozes style and thoughtfulness, and Neku’s personal journey from genuinely aggravating and misanthropic protagonist to someone you could actually rely on is among Square Enix’s finest achievements.—Marc Normandin
38. Pathologic 2
Original Release: 2019
I love Pathologic 2. But I love it in spite of the majority of its mechanics. I love it because it’s just so damn weird, confident, and taps into literary traditions like Epic Theater transparently and with tremendous bravado. Where the lockpicking minigame and survival mechanics alternate between frustrating and boring, every other aspect of this game is shot through with tension, menace, and wonder.
People look weird. They talk even weirder.
Buildings grow pustules. Everyone is hiding secrets.
There’s a Cow-God who might have created the world. I poured blood on a tree because a tity-out Steppe woman told me to.
Pathologic 2 is a deeply weird game, with a Mayakovskian cast of characters, plopped into an apocalyptic Bertolt Brecht play set deep in the Russian Steppe. And while the actual gameplay may be disappointing or frustrating to some (it was to me), I can’t help but be compelled by a game so enthusiastically bizarre.—Dia Lacina
37. The Immortal
Original Release: 1990
From earliest game days I knew there was a difference between computer games and videogames. Videogames were fun, fast and immediate, even when they were as secretive as Metroid or Zelda. Computer games were complex puzzles that took math degrees to crack, and that rarely worked on the archaic technology my dad would score free from work. But as a fan of bearded men in cloaks I was still drawn to The Immortal when it was ported to the NES in 1991. I could tell immediately it was more computer game than videogame—it’s a confusing, esoteric collection of almost instantly fatal happenstances within an awkwardly constructed labyrinth. It made no sense to me at the time and today it’s a barely remembered bad dream. It’s a defiant reminder of the brutality and absolute indifference with which early RPGs approached the player, and I absolutely love it to this day.—Garrett Martin
36. The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind
Original Release: 2002
Go to nightmare colonizer island. Learn how to do magic that no one should mess with. Get killed by lizard birds. These are the promises and prospects of playing Morrowind, a game so good that no one is brave enough to make anything like it ever again. Everything good about The Elder Scrolls franchise lives here.—Cameron Kunzelman
35. Moon: Remix RPG Adventure
Original Release: 1997
Role-playing games so often focus on a hero or heroes moving from town to town, assuming they’re making the best and most righteously just decisions everywhere they go. What if, instead of playing the hero, you were just some regular person following in their wake? And that wake covered a lot of murdered monsters and unheard villagers and looted homes? That’s the premise behind Moon, a classic developed by Love-de-Lic after it was founded by ex-Square employees in the mid-90s. There’s still nothing else quite like it, and as with so many of the titles in Love-de-Lic’s developer tree, it was well ahead of its time.—Marc Normandin
34. Loop Hero
Original Release: 2021
I’ve never been someone who plays idle games, often preferring games that feel much more hands-on, but Loop Hero altered my brain chemistry enough that I wonder if they can’t be for me after all. Loop Hero is a game I still come back to on occasion because it’s an obviously engrossing experience but also because it just gets what makes RPGs fun and lays it out real simply for players to pick up and appreciate. Most of its action is automated, forcing players to contend with what makes the genre tick, like carefully picking out armor and weapons that compliment your class, and it is easier than ever to make these elements sing, making it a wonderful on-ramp for the RPG-curious.—Moises Taveras
33. Jeanne D’Arc
Original Release: 2006
Level-5’s tactical RPG was the best reason to own a PSP. Its three-phase strength-and-weakness system is clearly indebted to Fire Emblem’s Weapon Triangle, but Jeanne D’Arc one-ups Nintendo’s more popular series with its unusual combination of spirituality, historical context, and, um, typically ridiculous videogame nonsense. I’m pretty sure the real Joan of Arc didn’t fight alongside a human-size Boston terrier, but I think our world would be a much better place if she did. When it comes to the nuts and bolts of the tactics sub-genre, Jeanne D’Arc compares favorably with the best of the bunch—your Fire Emblems, your Tactics Ogres, your Front Missions—but reaches for something a little deeper than your typical swords-and-sorcery fantasy pastiche.—Garrett Martin
32. Shiren the Wanderer: The Tower of Fortune and the Dice of Fate
Original Release: 2010
The Mystery Dungeon series might be best known outside of Japan for its high-profile affiliations with Nintendo or Square Enix, but it’s (Spike) Chunsoft’s own original character who starts in the best of these games. Shiren the Wanderer: The Tower of Fortune and the Dice of Fate is the rarest of Shirens, in the sense that it not only received a worldwide release, but a multiplatform one, too. Good thing, as it’s the pinnacle of a series that spans 30 years and as many games, a refinement on a formula that’s worked since its inception, and inspired plenty of others to follow suit in the world of dungeon crawlers and roguelikes.—Marc Normandin
31. Wildermyth
Original Release: 2021
Some of the best reasons to play RPGs are because of the worlds they evoke. Magical technology and deep beasts beneath our feet are evocative. Wildermyth, equal parts story-centered RPG and tactics game, takes all these big ideas from RPGs and puts them into a procedural blender that spits out unique stories with characters who you shape and, if time and fate are willing, chase into eternity.—Cameron Kunzelman
30. Nier: Automata
Original Release: 2017
Remember what I said about the weirdness of Baten Kaitos? Nier: Automata embraces that same kind of unpredictability, often popping into other genres for a brief spell before returning to the action RPG format that is its forte. Its tale of Earthly androids battling alien robots millennia after the collapse of mankind scratches on some compelling questions about free will and destiny and the nature of creation and all that jive, but the thrill here isn’t how Automata answers those questions but their sheer volume and how idiosyncratically the game asks them. It may not have the clearest idea of what it’s trying to say or how to say it, but it damn well screams it from the mountaintops, which makes Automata far more fascinating than most videogames, and one of the best RPGs of the last decade.—Garrett Martin
29. Odin Sphere: Leifthrasir
Original Release: 2016 (remake of 2007’s Odin Sphere)
Originally released for the PlayStation 2, Odin Sphere was a gorgeous action RPG with five playable characters and a real sense of the theatrical to it. A side-scroller based on the ideas of the Sega Saturn’s lesser known (and Japan-exclusive) Princess Crown, which in turn was an updated look at the kind of side-scrolling action RPGs that originated in the 80s, Odin Sphere felt like a decades-spanning culmination of that subgenre of role-playing games. And its definitive edition, Leifthrasir, not only brought Vanillaware’s tremendous artistic designs into HD for the first time, but made a few quality of life tweaks to create the best and most playable version of the game, too.—Marc Normandin
28. Sorcerian
Original Release: 1987
Sorcerian looks like a simple party-based, side-scrolling Action RPG. But this Nihon Falcom classic, first published in 1987 on the PC-88 platform, didn’t come to fuck around. Just flip through the 109 page manual that nearly doubles as its own tabletop roleplaying handbook (complete with pages of lore, character options, spellbooks and equipment lists) and you’ll see the depths offered by the fifth entry in the massive, sprawling Dragon Slayer macro-franchise. And if you’re still not convinced, Yuzo Koshiro (and the rest of the Falcom Sound Team) brings it with the soundtrack.—Dia Lacina
27. Dragon Quest
Original Release: 1986
A guy, a sword, some castles, a dark lord, and some slimes. This is the time-worn formula that Dragon Quest inaugurates. I probably put more time into this than anything else I have ever played in my life, and the Darks Souls fans of today don’t know anything about a poison swamp if they haven’t braved the ones in here.—Cameron Kunzelman
26. King’s Field: The Ancient City
Original Release: 2001
King’s Field: The Ancient City is a brooding, elegiac game. Rather than the game that sets the tone for what’s next, it is the end point. The eight year run of King’s Field games culminates here in the fourth, standalone entry. Ponderously slow, haunting and cryptic, eerily beautiful, and thoroughly brutal. The lessons of the series are perfected here and will be reapplied as the foundation in From’s next evolution — the Souls Era.—Dia Lacina
25. Might and Magic II: Gates to Another World*
*: but only while listening to the Jesus and Mary Chain’s Honey’s Dead
Original Release: 1988
Let’s get real subjective. I mean, we’ve been there all along, but let’s talk about a game that I love as much for the context in which I played it as for anything in the game itself. In the summer of 1992 I spent two weeks in and around Oxford, North Carolina, largely cooped up in a small room in my grandmother’s house playing the Genesis version of New World Computing’s Might and Magic II: Gates to Another World. Originally released for computers in 1988, it was, as the name indicates, the second game in one of the major computer RPG franchises of the ‘80s and early ‘90s. It wasn’t as historic as Wizardry or as popular or groundbreaking as Ultima, but Might and Magic was still a major player on the scene, and as a kid who never owned an even halfway decent computer I wasn’t able to dig into it until I picked up this Genesis port in ‘92. It had the first-person perspective of a dungeon crawler, only throughout its entire world and not just underground, with big, beautiful sprites representing its many creeps and monsters. Between that then-novel POV, its large world, and a confusing, thinly sketched story full of weird mysteries, Might and Magic II captured a kind of unknowable alien atmosphere that always works well in RPGs but is incredibly difficult to create. On top of that, the whole time I was playing Might and Magic II, during those hundred or so hours I poured into it in Oxford, I was listening on repeat to a tape of the Jesus and Mary Chain’s Honey’s Dead album that I bought in Rocky Mount during that same trip. I have no idea what it’s like to play this game without “Far Gone and Out” and “Good for My Soul” as a soundtrack, so let’s put an asterisk on this entry: it’s not Might and Magic II: Gates to Another World that makes our list of the best RPGs, but Might and Magic II: Gates to Another World on the Genesis while listening to the Jesus and Mary Chain’s Honey’s Dead. Some true gaming excellence right there.—Garrett Martin
24. Dungeon Encounters
Original Release: 2021
Dungeon Encounters should have been a Final Fantasy game. If it had, we could all be spending the next decade talking about a truly worthy dungeon crawler. This is a DRPG stripped down to the studs, exposing the mathematical purity girding an entire beloved genre on a graph-paper maze. But this deceptively rich game isn’t content with simple reductive deconstruction. It takes those exposed parts, blends in clever and fun NPCs, a solid narrative, and marries the mechanical elegance that we expect from Hiroyuki Ito systems design with a charmingly absurd soundtrack of classical music orchestrated by legend Nobuo Uematsu and ambient sound effects like bird song and the drip-drops of cave water. Dungeon Encounters is a warm and invigorating ode to an entire gaming mindset, an instant cult classic, and yet another staggering failure of judgment by Square Enix.—Dia Lacina
23. Dragon Age Origins
Original Release: 2009
Dragon Age: Origins is the game that resuscitated my dormant love of RPGs and unwittingly set me down the path of appreciating CRPGs later in life. Having played precious few RPGs after transitioning to consoles from Nintendo handhelds, it became something like a standard bearer for the generation of RPGs to come. I loved the dark fantasy of it all, the oodles of blood after every skirmish, the dramatic politics, the romances, and the possibilities based solely on who I was and where I came from. At the time, my Grey Warden felt like the most well considered and fully realized RPG avatar ever. I’d never played something as deep as Dragon Age before, and the Landsmeet is still a blowout sequence and marriage of everything that makes that game a triumph to this day. Sure, it’s a lot rustier than subsequent games in the series, but my love for the series, as well as this brand of RPG, begins right here.—Moises Taveras
22. Tecmo’s Deception
Original Release: 1996
When you’re sick of throwing yourself against the subterranean in King’s Field, Tecmo’s Deception is there for you. This is a game about revenge, about losing your kingdom, losing your girl, and absolutely losing your soul. But it’s also about getting revenge on shitty adventurers like you were. It’s about real ultimate power. Screw the kingdom of Zemekia, your usurpers, and the fickle populace. Embrace your big-titty-low-poly demonic steward and build your own Sen’s Fortress. Engage in devilish commerce, buy and construct more elaborate traps, capture petitioners and turn them into monsters and set them on your betrayers. Work out your relationship issues and maybe decide that one of the many endings you choose is summoning Satan to obliterate the world.—Dia Lacina
21. Citizen Sleeper
Original Release: 2022
I’ve never been a tabletop person, but Citizen Sleeper has stirred something in me that makes me want to become one. It’s the rare roleplaying world I’ve inhabited that asked me to be more of a person than a weapon. I relished every second of it. There’s something about that and its dice-driven gameplay (which boils down to the closest thing to luck that a programmed system can render) that makes playing Citizen Sleeper a deeply humanizing and profound experience, let alone a stellar RPG. If the adaptation of a tabletop system can lead to something like this in a still-linear game, I wonder what a true tabletop exploration of those mechanics and my own character will yield.—Moises Taveras
20. Caves of Qud
Original Release: 2015
Enter a roguelike universe and science fantasy creatures and the fallen world they inhabit. Equal parts Book of the New Sun and Gamma World, Caves of Qud takes a rock-solid classic RPG mechanical framework and combines it with some of the most creative writing and worldbuilding that has ever been put in a videogame. It’s a must-play, especially if you think you’re allergic to the roguelike sensibility. There’s a lot here for the serious RPGer.—Cameron Kunzelman
19. The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky
Original Release: 2004
Is Trails in the Sky the best of The Legend of Heroes subseries? That’s going to depend on which Trails fan you ask, but it’s also the wrong question. “Is Trails, the series, one of the best RPGs ever?” Yes. And to understand why, you have to start at the beginning of one of the most ambitious projects the genre has birthed: that’s Trails in the Sky. A story that is both deeply personal and encompasses the known world, that zooms in on every single party member and so many of their opponents over a number of years, all while teaching you something about global politics, the perils of unchecked technological advances, and what that NPC you recognize likes to eat for breakfast.—Marc Normandin
18. Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door
Original Release: 2004
The best Paper Mario accomplishes what you want from a role-playing game. It has a lengthy, well-written story, a simple but satisfying combat system with a unique hook (it’s all timing based, y’see), and characters you’ll enjoy hanging out with. Those are all kind of the basic requirements for a good RPG, though. What makes The Thousand-Year Door a great one—and, honestly, one of the best RPGs of all time—is the shockingly high quality of its writing and the way it presents a new angle on so many long-in-the-tooth Mario concepts. Like, who knew Goombas had individual personalities? Or that a Koopa could be as endearing of a character as its adorable design? Thousand-Year Door doesn’t just rest on Mario business to prop up its RPG ambitions, but really tries to understand what makes Mario’s world work, and then twists expectations accordingly.—Garrett Martin
17. Baldur’s Gate II: Shadows of Amn
Original Release: 2000
The apex of the isometric RPG era, Baldur’s Gate II stands alone as a massive, story-driven experience that tackles vampires, fallen wizards, dragons, and dead gods. Hundreds of thousands of lines of text set the stage for a massive battle between you and the combined forces of nihilistic death-drive. Saemon Havarian is also there as one of the most dastardly pseudo-villains in game history.—Cameron Kunzelman
16. Shadowrun
Original Release: 1994
Shadowrun isn’t a pretty game. It’s actually incredibly spartan. There’s no proliferation of Havok physics objects that burst forth. No steam rising from vents on the street. There are no crowds, no street vendors hawking noodles, dumplings, or illegal drugs. Neon kanji signage is not in abundance at all. Generally speaking, the dour and dreary graphics of Shadowrun might fit into three or four sprite sheets, and at least one of them is just a recolor. And yet, from ghoul-infested warehouses to the corporate arcologies, Shadowrun remains suggestive. Providing only the necessities of setting to induce in players the need to bring their imaginative capacities to bear, it’s an incredibly seductive use of limited resources in an era with overstuffed, overbearing assets which insist on only one correct way to interpret space. Even the remarkable soundtrack is more suggestive of atmosphere and place than it is emotion or narrative. Shadowrun signals and suggests, but rarely dictates. —Dia Lacina
15. Valkyria Chronicles
Original Release: 2008
Valkyria Chronicles never stood a chance in America—it’s a soapy tactical RPG about anime teens fighting in a thinly veiled analogue of World War II. It’s its own entire niche, buried within about three other niches. Challenging battle scenarios feel more immediate and action-packed than usual for the genre, due to a camera that switches from an overhead battle map into the third-person when you command a unit. It’s the story that makes Valkyria truly memorable, though. Beneath its broad strokes and RPG conventions lies a surprisingly tender and mature look at lives ravaged by war.—Garrett Martin
14. Exile 2: The Crystal Souls
Original Release: 1996
Following from the first Exile, 1996’s The Crystal Souls put players back in the realm of Exile, deep beneath the ground in a massive prison cavern. Teleported here by an authoritarian regime, players have to learn the lay of the land and discover the strange creatures that make their home fan beneath the surface. Caught in a land broiled in rebellion, players are left to find a mysterious new species and negotiate with them to return to the surface.—Cameron Kunzelman
13. Xenoblade Chronicles
Original Release: 2010
Each of the four Xenoblade games is special and notable in its own way, but the first one, which was originally released for the Wii in Japan back in 2010, remains the series’ shining hour. Or, shining 80 hours. Oh, plus a 15-hourish epilogue in the Nintendo Switch’s Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition, which updates the graphics and art style to fit the direction the series would go in while adding quality of life features. All that game is more than worth it, though, courtesy of an incredible story told across a fascinating world, with Tetsuya Takahashi and Monolith Soft’s grand philosophies and imagination on display throughout.—Marc Normandin
12. Live A Live
Original Release: 1994
While North America was robbed of experiencing Live A Live for decades thanks to its Japanese exclusivity, this wrong was righted nearly 30 years later, allowing the rest of the world to experience one of Square’s hidden treasures. The debates about which 16-bit SNES RPG was best were already fierce enough in the west, but had Live A Live, with its multi-scenario campaigns, with its cavemen and its ninjas and its brief Street Fighter-esque trappings and its nod to Akira and oh yeah, Megalomania, released there back in 1994 or thereabouts? Chrono Trigger and whatever Final Fantasy game your classmates claimed to be the best might not have won so many of those schoolyard debates.—Marc Normandin
11. Dragon’s Dogma
Original Release: 2012
I made a pawn named Lady Omelet and I dressed her well and I taught her how to run and climb and do archery. I sat her down at the end of long days and told her to be outspoken and not neglect her studies. I let her go on overnight trips to experience the world, to make friends, and learn about the creatures of the world. Dragon’s Dogma isn’t just an exceptional semi-open world action RPG with some of the greatest trees, skeletons, and lizardmen in all of videogames, and a Devil May Cry pedigree, it’s a game about being a parent first and an adventurer second. About work-life balance while also fabricating evidence to convict a landlord of crimes just because he sucks shit through a straw. It’s about taking your kid to see your lesbian bandit girlfriend and getting into a fight with a half-lion-half-goat-half-snake in the middle of the night while also being possessed by poltergeists with your soulless murderdoll child screaming “Goblins ill like fire!” over and over again. Dragon’s Dogma is perfection.—Dia Lacina
10. Pokémon Red & Blue
Original Release: 1996
Pokémon Red & Blue isn’t the best Pokémon. In terms of battling and training it’s broken and unbalanced at the best of times. But as a game about the joy of exploring the world around you as a child, the vastness and strangeness of it all, the weirdos and friends you make? Pokémon, with its simple and charming cast, breathtaking area maps, and undeniable use of sound effects and music all on the rudimentary-but-irrepressible Game Boy made Red & Blue an absolute RPG paradigm changer.—Dia Lacina
9. Dark Souls
Original Release: 2011
It’s not the significant difficulty or repetitive structure that earns Dark Souls a spot on this list. Those are just symptoms of what makes the game great: its insistent coyness. Dark Souls gives the player almost no direction, forcing us to explore and figure out things on our own, with only cryptic and potentially untrustworthy messages from other real-life players to guide us. Instead of ponderous text or cut-scenes Dark Souls tells its story of degradation by showing instead of telling. Some say Dark Souls treats players with indifference or outright contempt, but in truth it respects us, our abilities and our intelligence more than most other games. That’s why it’s become one of the most influential games of the last 15 years, and remains one of the best RPGs ever made.—Garrett Martin
8. Ys I & II
Original Release: 1989
Games have been getting remade and enhanced for as long as the medium has existed. Nihon Falcom released the first two games in its action RPG series Ys in 1987 and 1988; in 1989 they were repackaged with improved sound, voice acting, and fully animated cut-scenes on a single CD-ROM for the PC Engine. Retitled Ys Book I & II, that disc was a revelation when it came out in the States for the TurboGrafx-CD a year later. Here was a game that looked and sounded like a real animated movie—at least during the parts when you weren’t actually playing it. As impressive as that all is, Ys I & II wouldn’t make this list if the games weren’t actually great. Its skeletal story has the ancient, unknowable quality of myth, while its unique combat system—you literally just walk into enemies to attack them—makes both games accessible for newcomers and streamlined for veterans who don’t want to get too bogged down in typically arcane RPG systems.—Garrett Martin
7. Dragon Quest V: Hand of the Heavenly Bride
Original Release: 1992
The original Super Famicom edition of Chunsoft’s crowning Dragon Quest achievement never came out in North America, which means that, even with an eventual worldwide Nintendo DS release, Dragon Quest V never got the acclaim it deserved. This is one of the most influential and just damn fun to play RPGs going, though, the true next-level release that showed the series could keep up with Square’s rapidly evolving Final Fantasy games, featuring multi-generational play and a story told over decades. And its monster-catching mechanic made it the basis of the Dragon Quest Monsters games, as well! Now if only it wasn’t locked away where no one could play it.—Marc Normandin
6. Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar
Original Release: 1985
When it comes to RPGs, Ultima’s basically the grandaddy of ’em all. (Okay, you could say that about Dungeons & Dragons, too, and Tolkien, as well—the latter begat the former which influenced pretty much all the early computer role-playing games that created the genre.) Like Final Fantasy, your pick for the best Ultima might vary, but it’s hard to argue that 1985’s Quest of the Avatar isn’t the most ambitious and widely acclaimed game in the series. Instead of a stock adventure story where you have to find and kill some ultimate evil, Quest of the Avatar has a more esoteric focus: it’s about elevating your character through moral and ethical behavior, and learning how to embody eight different virtues en route to earning the title of Avatar. It introduced a new level of complexity to the computer RPG, both in terms of the size of its open world and the dynamic conversations you could have with non-playable characters, as well as the lofty goal of self-improvement that drives the story. Ultima IV is also one of the first RPGs where its world is a palpable presence that impacts how you play and what you can do, with certain quests and characters only appearing at specific times. Ultima had already defined the CRPG before Quest of the Avatar came out, but this fourth game in the series showed that the genre could be so much more than it had been before.—Garrett Martin
5. Final Fantasy VII
Original Release: 1997
Everyone knows Final Fantasy VII. Even if you missed it the first time around, the fact that I can write “the first time around” means it’s still with us in ways that even Mario 64 and Ocarina of Time aren’t. Square has never let us forget Cloud’s coming of age as a child soldier with ecoterrorism, crossdressing, globetrotting, bishonen-hunting, chocobo-raising, major-character-death-warning adventures. It’s been remade, remastered, and meme’d to death, it has the least likely Velvet Underground reference in all of media, it’s Final Fantasy VII, see it in your Sunday circular. It got a mediocre movie, it got spin-off games, it established an entire generation and then some. FFVII blew the lid off JRPGs for all audiences. And you know what? It honestly fucking slaps. I didn’t even want to include in on this list but now I have chills just thinking and writing about it. What a game!—Dia Lacina
4. Disco Elysium
Original Release: 2019
Disco Elysium is a gloriously complex isometric RPG, starring a drug-addicted detective with memory issues in a town that has seen better days, that takes its cues from classics like Fallout or Wasteland. Stressing out about every last detail distracts from the tremendous depth built into the world of Disco Elysium, and I’m ready to stop over-preparing and otherwise manifesting my anxiety in videogames. If anything, it will make additional playthroughs, customized by the game’s peculiar set of character skills, an appealing possibility.—Holly Green
3. Phantasy Star II
Original Release: 1989
When Phantasy Star II released for the Mega Drive in 1989, it was on the largest cartridge ever made. Even with that space, its battle background was a simple lit grid, narrative dialogue was kept to a minimum, and dungeons became less memory-consuming overhead affairs rather than first-person ones. It’s an impossibly ambitious game, a sci-fi epic that had you travel to multiple planets, included (static) cutscenes, huge sprites that made Square’s and Enix’s look microscopic, and actual battle animations. It’s aged some over the decades, sure, but it’s still playable for the curious and patient, and its ambition shines through every bit of memory shoved into that 6 mega-bit cart.—Marc Normandin
2. Earthbound
Original Release: 1994
The history of Earthbound and the Mother series has been notoriously thorny here in America, but we now live in a time where anybody with a Switch and an online subscription can play it whenever they like. That’s truly some progress. Shigesato Itoi’s brilliant role-playing game showed that the genre could be about so much more than the fantasy and sci-fi elements that had largely defined it up to that point; it’s not just a fun, sprawling adventure, but a parody of American culture whose clever commentary and observations remain incisive today. The Switch might be the best possible home for it, as now you can take Earthbound on the road, while still marveling at its colorful, beautiful imagery on your TV set when you’re at home. If you’ve never played this one before, you should take the time and see why it’s one of the best RPGs ever made.—Garrett Martin
1. Final Fantasy Tactics
Original Release: 1997
The best Final Fantasy game—the best RPG, even—is a blood-drenched story of political intrigue about a religious institution going to any lengths to shore up its own worldly power amid a brutal civil war that has consumed the world of Ivalice. Totally fictional but inspired by medieval history, Final Fantasy Tactics adopts a political veneer as so many other RPGs have done, but commits to it throughout its generous running time, showing how war disrupts not just governments and institutions but can fray the most basic fabric of society. The conflict at the heart of Tactics isn’t just one army against another, or the church versus the state, but the rich against the poor, with war breaking out between nobles and commoners during Ivalice’s widescale collapse. Instead of the turn-based battles Final Fantasy was then known for, Tactics introduces a strategic element familiar to Fire Emblem players, but thoroughly surpasses what Nintendo’s series had accomplished at that point from a narrative sense. Final Fantasy Tactics is a long, brutal, largely believable tale told through blood, betrayal, and an intricately balanced combat system that isn’t afraid to punish you when you least expect it. Pretty much every element snaps perfectly into place, making it our pick for the best RPG ever made.—Garrett Martin