The best RPGs on PC
Grab your dice and character sheet for the best RPGs on PC
Whether you prefer wizards, sword-and-board warriors, the irradiated wasteland, vampires, or isometric text-heavy stories, the RPG is the genre that will never let you down. Accross the dizzing number of games available where you can play a role, there's something for everyone - and we've tried to reflect that in our list of the best RPGs on PC. The past couple of years have been great for RPGs, so there are some absolute classics as well as brand spanking new games on this list. And there's more to look forwards to, with rumblings of Dragon Age: Dread Wolf finally on the horizon, and space epic Starfield in our rear view mirror. Whatever else may happen, though, this list will provide you with the 50 best RPGs that you can download and play on PC right now.
Best RPGS on PC
Our main rule when putting together these lists is that a game should still be fun to play today, rather than just making a big impact when it came out. We don't like to gatekeep what defines a genre too much; RPGs can include chill farming games, slow story-telling reminiscent of visual novels (or actual novels), or the unique style and action of Japanese RPGs.
You can find the full list of the best RPGs on PC below. If your favourite isn't among them, it was probably at number 51. If you think it should be on the list, then why not write your own impassioned entry for it in the comments? We always consider suggested games for inclusion in future lists.
Ni no Kuni 2: Revenant Kingdom
More often than not, the best JRPGs on PC first enjoyed life on other platforms. Ni No Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom, however, feels like it was born for it. On the surface, it looks like your standard anime JRPG, with its cute Studio Ghibli-inspired characters, cat-eared protagonist, world-ending plot and bright, colourful art style. But underneath all that is a game that taps straight into the veins of all the classic PC staples, from town-building to real-time strategy battles.
Naturally, it doesn't go so deep into these elements that it's going to trouble the very best games from those genres, but building up your titular kingdom, recruiting villagers from other towns to come and man special buildings and occasionally setting off to defend your lands from unwelcome intruders are all welcome additions and diversions to this otherwise fairly traditional JRPG. They're also way more engrossing than the Pokémon-style monster battling / collecting of its predecessor, Wrath Of The White Witch. In Steven's Ni no Kuni 2: Revenant Kingdom review he fully encourages genre fans to take the plunge, as there’s a beautiful story to experience.
Neverwinter Nights 2: Mask Of The Betrayer
It's odd that Neverwinter Nights 2 tends to get forgotten when listing Obsidian's RPGs. Although it's likely for the finest of reasons - it's so close to the glorious work of BioWare and Black Isle that you'd think it was theirs. With Chris Avellone behind the pen, it took BioWare's much more DM-focused original and developed it into an elaborate, enormous single-player RPG. Seeking silver shards, and an ancient baddie called the King Of Shadows, it closely followed D&D's 3.5 edition, and indeed came with the tools for people to play their own campaigns. But where it shined the brightest was its companions. The star is Khelgar Ironfist, a furious dwarf who is probably the best RPG companion to have been written. But tiefling Neeshka and sorcerer Qara also stand out. It is a stunningly funny game.
Then along came expansion Mask Of The Betrayer - more of a sequel than anything - and was perhaps better than the main game. Split into two mirrored worlds, it borrows rather heavily from Zelda as it lets you explore two versions of the same areas. Spirits are devoured, gargoyles kidnap, and the soul of the Founder is up to naughty business. The companions aren't nearly as fun, but the story is epic and compelling, exploring themes of religion in a deep and intelligent way.
Hand Of Fate 2
Hand Of Fate's Dealer is the best attempt games have made at a virtual dungeon master: a goading, hooded figure who lays down cards from a deck of narrative events, building short-form RPGs across a table top. Maybe the next draw will be a brawl, played out in simple third-person hack-and-slashery, or perhaps a mystic glade, full of replenishing balms. Knowing the bastard in the hood, it'll likely be whatever you don't want to happen. But at least there's less chance of repetition in Hand of Fate 2 - the Dealer can screw you in many more colourful ways.
Alec's Hand of Fate 2 review concludes that what elevates the sequel, beyond more polished combat and greater event variety (including companion cards granting you sidekicks with their own side stories to explore), is a twist to each miniature campaign. In one you might be sniffing out the culprit of a murder, hoping to find evidence hidden in the cards laid on the table. In another you're protecting a lovestruck fool, his injuries eating into the resources needed to carry you through the adventure. These wrinkles lay extra layers of strategy on an already diverse deck of encounters, giving the game a much needed hook missing in the first.
Dwarf Fortress
Bay 12's old-enough-to-buy-a-beer labour of love released on Steam and Itch - now featuring graphics! Where before you had to play this like Joe Pantoliano spotting blondes and reheads out of the green binary of the Matrix, staring down a screen of moving typeface that represented dwarfs and kobolds and trees and rock and rain, now you can play Dwarf Fortress and see your little dwarfs moving around. The trees are trees! the floor is floor (and also sometimes lava).
Dwarf Fortress is a fantasy simulator which doesn't just do a lot, it does a lot well. It's not simply that it generates a vast fantasy world with history, culture and enormous landscapes; it's that choosing your starting location within that world works like a kind of granular difficulty setting, letting you pick the level and type of challenge you want to face. It's not simply that its physics simulation allows for the creation of complicated machinery; it's that the game incentivises those creations as dynamic goals in a way that suits the in-game fiction, sending nobles with increasingly grand demands to stay in your colony. There's so much that's weird and intimidating about Dwarf Fortress, but there's also a lot of game design behind the stories of mourning pets and the simulation of growing finger nails.
And if fortress mode doesn't appeal, there's always adventure mode, which lets you explore those same generated worlds - and your own failed fortresses - as a single explorer in a traditional roguelike experience. Dwarf Fortress may have twenty years left in its development, but it's very much worth playing today.
Horizon's Gate
Your party of mercs and adventurers can explore and fight on foot in Horizon's Gate, but the game is at its best when you get back on your boat. This is a seafaring survival RPG about increasing your reputation and growing a fleet of ships. You hire party members in port, become friends over drinks, and set sail to find new lands or battle sea monsters. When everyone is hungry and there's no port in sight, you eat the sea monsters. It’s so good, Cian awarded it Bestest Best back in 2020 as part of his Horizon’s Gate review.
Horizon's Gate's approach to worldbuilding seems to throw everything at the wall. There are underwater Nessies, and mysterious cults, and Cleevers who make weapons and ships out of chitinous carcasses, and green people with snake tails instead of legs, and cricketine humanoids that go bzz-bzz when you talk to them. The result is that you are rewarded with something you've never seen before each time you set sail and discover a new harbour, and there's great satisfaction in gaining wealth, growing your armada, and returning to a long-ago visited port to find everyone now knows of your accomplishments.
Kenshi
As described in Alec's Kenshi review: “Kenshi is everything. Kenshi is nothing. Kenshi just is.” A "free-roaming squad-based RPG" says the Steam page, somewhat underselling this laughably complex supergame. Kenshi begins as many other open world fantasy roamer might. You create an average schmuck in a tough post-something desert world. Maybe a slave, maybe a farmer. But it soon turns out to be deeper than that. It's about stealing food to survive, or getting fatally mugged on the road to the next town. It snowballs into a management game about a small group of misfits (mercenaries, settlers, explorers – your call).
Stick with the weirdo interface and puzzling world of rice paddies and dive bars and you may eventually be building a whole town for your clan by plopping down huts. Or, more likely, you will be lying in the dunes, playing dead among the corpses of your family. Death in Kenshi comes quick, whether by starvation or by the club of a bandit. This is a harsh RPG that often doesn’t stop to explain itself, but to those who fight through the repeatedly fatal learning curve, it will give you stories far unlike the usual quest to become a common world-saver.
Six Ages: Ride Like The Wind
Six Ages will never conform to a genre. It is a game almost entirely unique, and stands out defiantly on any list, jutting its chin and daring you to categorise it. Yes, you manage your tribe. You strategise and jostle for success among your neighbours. But most of all, this bronze-ish age fantasy village sim is about defining the ethos and personality of your people.
Those people have their own culture, shared with some neighbouring clans, and conflicting with other local cultures due to their diverging histories and beliefs. You must lead them not as a faction to efficiently game the numbers until you're unbeatable, but by earning respect, trust, and sometimes fear through your decisions. People come to you with their problems and challenges, and your advisors will inform and opine to the best of their ability (and personality), but the decisions are yours, as are any decisions about the rippling consequences of those decisions.
That culture draws on the extremely rich Glorantha setting, without asking familiarity with it. You'll come to understand how its societies work, but still get to define your clan's role within it, whether you're the hardy explorers, the vicious bullies, the gang who are always feasting, or some combination of all three. But despite being the most impressive exploration of a fictional culture in any game, it never takes itself too seriously. It's about whatever brilliant, weird, tragic story your people live through. Read Sin's full Six Ages review for more on what makes this RPG one of the very best to ever do it.
Caves Of Qud
In terms of roguelikes, Caves of Qud is very much designed to be in line with the classics of the genre. As such, it can look intimidating at first, but really it’s just a game about walking around and creating stories. In Brendan's Caves of Qud review, he urges even newer players to the genre to give the game a go: “I want people who've never played something like this to also reconsider their doubts. It's got a lot going on, yes. But nothing moves unless you do”.
Once you get settled, there’s very little else like Caves of Qud. It’s at once a sweeping fantasy epic, and a grounded comedy. There’s variety and potential baked into every step your character takes. You can be busy exploring a canyon, and before you know it you’re sheltering from bombs dropped by your parallel universe twin. You can come across an enemy, go to attack, and decide that, actually, you’d rather talk it out instead. There’s endless freedom to be found in Caves of Qud, so give it a go if you’re even the least bit curious.
Metaphor: ReFantazio
Metaphor: ReFantazio is an epic evolution of Atlus’ brand of stylish turn-based RPG design. It has a surprisingly grounded plot, despite its fantasy appearance, and regularly dips into political intrigue. Simply put, this one’s a modern classic already, and it’s easy to recommend to just about anyone. In his Metaphor: ReFantazio review, Ed praised the game’s Archetype system, which blends elements from the Persona and Shin Megami Tensei franchises.
If you’ve played an Atlus game before, you’ll know that the turn-based combat is thrilling and impeccably stylish. Metaphor: ReFantazio is no different, and it tosses in new systems that harken back to classic RPG classes in smart ways. There’s huge variety in how you customise your Party members, and very few restrictions on who can do what. In terms of dark fantasy RPGs, this one is perfect for those wanting to try out the genre. It’s forgiving, engaging, and features a narrative that’ll grip you from the very outset.
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
Nic's Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 review praises the epic debut from Sandfall Interactive. Things start off strong, with a group of adventurers heading out on a doomed-to-fail towards a distant horizon, and from there the game absolutely never falters. There’s huge story reveals, best-in-class performances from some of the finest actors in video games and beyond, and a heartwrenching soundtrack tying it all together.
Sandfall upset the tired combat of turn-based RPGs by throwing in quick-time parry combat, a change that gives every battle new urgent life. In some RPGs, the combat can become little more than the friction that slows your charge through the story, but in Clair Obscur it's a highlight of your journey through a stunning and wholly unique world that only gets more compelling as it unfurls.
Shadowrun: Dragonfall - Director's Cut
Clearly, the vast majority of RPGs on this or any other list are fantasy-themed, but the other great roleplaying setting is cyberpunk. The Deus Ex games have arguably claimed the crown there, but for solid, generous, fully-fledged cyberpunkery in the classic Gibsonesque vein, Dragonfall hits the spot despite throwing a whole lot of fantasy into the mix.
Between its West-meets-East fusion-world, replete with cybernetic implants and Blade Runneresque neon noodlebars, are elves, dwarves, trolls and dragons. It sounds faintly absurd on paper, but seems like the most natural thing in the world in practice. To see these fantasy races adopting the world-weary, hard-bitten cynicism that is the de facto cyberpunk tone is to redeem them from the often cloying earnestness with which they're usually depicted. It took this 21st century revisit to the 80s pen 'n' paper RPG three rolls to get it right, but the Director's Cut of Dragonfall finally adds the relative freedom of action and depth of conversation that the hitherto restrictive series sorely needed. Read Alec's Shadowrun: Dragonfall review for the full skinny.
Ultima VII: The Complete Edition
Ultima VII is a game engineered to convince the player that they are part of a world that doesn't revolve around their character. You are not the centre of the system, the sun around which all things orbit. More than twenty years later, it's still one of the best examples of its type. It's an RPG that starts with a murder investigation rather than a dungeon crawl, set in a place where NPCs work, eat and sleep. It is an RPG about life rather than death and the experience that death bestows.
Interacting with the world is as unusual and gratifying as observing it. There is no crafting skill in Ultima VII, you simply learn to make things. You can bake, you can make clothes, you can rearrange the books on a shelf, position your bedroll in a clearing under the stars, shift the furniture around in an NPC's house when their back is turned. It's still rare, that sense of visiting a living world, one that seems capable of continuing when the lights are switched off and where every tree that falls makes a sound whether you're there to hear it or not.
Legend Of Grimrock 2
After the delightful Dungeon Master tribute that was first-person RPG Legend Of Grimrock, Almost Human could likely have rested on those laurels and created another series of descending dungeons packed with monsters and puzzles. But they decided to go bigger, and indeed better. Grimrock II takes things upstairs and outdoors, with an enormous, sprawling map of multiple regions, to explore one tile at a time.
It’s a much more difficult game, not just with tougher puzzles and enemies, but by being open enough that you can wander into areas far too tricky to cope with early on. Then it’s packed with multi-floor dungeons all over the place, each a trove of challenges and treasures. Superbly put together, and surprisingly tricky, it’s perhaps the Chaos Strikes Back tribute no one was expecting. Ooh, and that fireball spell - what a treat. Read John's full Legend of Grimrock 2 review to hear why this sequel is worth checking out.
Mount & Blade 2: Bannerlord
Bannerlord expands on the Mount & Blade template in almost every way. You create a character, and then wander a huge world looking for an army to recruit. To begin with, you're crap at everything, but through play your mental and physical stats improve. You win fights, use your winnings to pay and grow your army, and win bigger fights. When not hitting things with swords or poking them with spears, you deal with a dynamic economy of traders and caravans, do jobs for the criminal underworld, or try to woo the nobles.
Where previous games in the series painted every part of your adventures with a broad brush, Bannerlord dives down into the details. There are more weapons and different kinds of soldiers to hire, and more complexity to combat. There's more variety in jobs to perform and far less repeated dialogue. Each system is now more interesting to tinker with, and you need a lot less imagination - or fewer mods - to string those systems into a fun story than before. It launched out of early access back in 2022, and you can read Sin's Mount & Blade 2: Bannerlord review to see what she thought of it.
Chrono Trigger
They really don't make 'em like they used to. Indeed, when Chrono Trigger's long-awaited PC port finally teleported onto Steam in 2018, there was absolute anarchy. What should have been a celebration of one of the best JRPGs of all time turned into an uproar over font choices, audio bugs, and other assorted technical hitches. We're almost surprised Chrono Trigger didn't just disappear entirely and go back to the rosy SNES-filled heyday where it came from. Something had clearly gone wrong in an earlier timeline.
Thankfully, a couple of repeat trips to the past (or, err... patches) have corrected the course of this time-travelling epic, and have left it in a much better shape than when it first launched. And what an incredible journey it is, too. Born from some of the best JRPG minds in the business, Chrono Trigger was truly ahead of the curve compared to the Final Fantasies and Dragon Quests of its day (which is ironic considering the creators of both those series were spearheading this one), telling a story that spanned thousands of years, from prehistoric times right up to the flying cities of the future, with multiple different endings. Then there was its exquisite active time battle system. Part turn-based, part real-time, Chrono Trigger lets you combine certain party member's attacks for even greater damage, adding a welcome layer of strategy to the mix as you chopped and changed characters. Other games have tried to ape it since, most notably Tokyo RPG Factory's I Am Setsuna, but there's no topping Square's original and best.
Darkest Dungeon
Darkest Dungeon would be an inventive and challenging roguelike even without its two major innovations: ongoing, reactive narration and an extended investigation into the psychological effects of repeatedly chucking adventurers into dungeons full of unspeakable horrors. The more you make them fight, down there in the dark, the more vices and phobias they develop, steadily becoming greater liabilities even as their skills improve.
This is presuming you can keep them alive in the first place, of course. The Dungeon has a high turnover. Where the Bioware model of RPGs has you chat to team members at length to keep them happy, Darkest Dungeon is a thoughtful - and stressful - management game. There are no magic bullets to cure insanity - it's ongoing and expensive work, and if things get too out of hand you simply need to let your heroes go. Joe's Darkest Dungeon review praises the papercraft visual style, and goes on to note that the turn-based combat is massively strategic and full of deadly variety. While its sequel is excellent also, the original's story just draws us in more tightly.
Cyberpunk 2077
Cyberpunk 2077 may not have launched in the best state back in 2020, but with years of updates, patches, significant overhauls to its systems and even a fantastic expansion, CDPR's latest RPG isn't just finally worth playing; it's one of the most memorable and flashiest RPGs of recent years.
Even if you don't fancy buying the 20-hour Phantom Liberty expansion, Cyberpunk 2077 is still a stonkingly lush and thrilling RPG adventure. Night City is one of the richest environments you can explore in an RPG today, and it makes for a fantastic backdrop for your mercenary protagonist V to bomb around in. Well, I should say V and Johnny "Keanu Reeves" Silverhand, who accompanies you on your journey after you're forced to stick an old biochip known as "The Relic" inside your head when a job goes awry. It still won't scratch that 'approach-as-you-please' Deus Ex style of RPG playing, but if you're after an exciting open world adventure where you can run, gun, and occasionally stealth your way through its numerous capers, Cyberpunk 2077 has all of that in spades. Once you’re done with the base game, check out Graham's Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty review to see if it’s worth playing (spoilers, it absolutely is).
Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines
This adaptation of the modern-day vampires pen 'n' paper RPG is steeped in sex, grime, horror and manipulation, and despite some pulp sensibilities it still goes to places other mainstream games dare not. To places other vampire fiction dare not, too. Though it boasts a particularly excellent haunted house sequence and the option to play as someone capital K “Ker-azy”, it's the game's dark exploration of sex, control and dependency which prove most memorable. It's this, rather than the outright horror elements, which makes Bloodlines' Santa Monica such a sinister and destabilising place - and one in which you get to experiment with your own dark side.
But yeah, bugs: Bloodlines comes from that grand tradition of uncommonly ambitious RPGs which shipped before they were finished. The worst ones are fixed now, but expect a bit of a rough ride unless you install the robust fan patch, which polishes a lot and completes some unfinished and cut content.
Fallout: New Vegas
New Vegas crafts a more believable world than any other Fallout game to date. Where the other games in the post-nuclear series have been crammed with colour and flavour but somewhat lacking in theme, Obsidian's take on the Wasteland borrows inspiration from the water wars of Chinatown and the great Western land grab. We even reviewed it all the way back in 2010, and you should absolutely read what was, at the time, quite a polarising Fallout New Vegas review.
It asks how and why people will struggle to survive in a place that is at best inhospitable and at worst outright hostile to human survival, and it plants the player character in the burned-out remains of a region that was already parched before the bombs fell. There's an attempt to make sense of the weird clash of cultures and styles that had become a hallmark of Fallout's world and it's all wrapped in a story, engine and reputation system flexible enough to allow for free-form roleplaying within the boundaries of its blighted territories.
Sunless Skies
Who among us has not looked at the stars and thought: “I would like to fly through those in a steam train”? A common dream, and one which is indulged by the Victorian astro-wanderers of Sunless Skies. Like its predecessor, this is often a game about turning your ship slowly around to fire steampunk cannons at unimaginable horrors.
But it is also about adventuring across terrifying voids, about meeting ancient interdimensional beings in the cosmos, eating the cooked flesh of your first mate because he died yesterday and, let’s face it, we’re out of food. There is horror here, yes, but there is also wonder. And most of this wonder is delivered not with sprawling vistas or anime bombast, but in ticking prose that lets your own imagination fill in the gaps of your space train’s story, ill-fated or otherwise. We were enraptured by Sunless Skies at launch. Read more in Alec's Sunless Skies review.
Monster Hunter: World
Monster Hunter: World is about being the most fashionably efficient beast killer in the jungle (or desert, or swamp). It has a story campaign about catching a gargantuan beast, along with some questionable ecological practices. But really this is a solid turn-your-brain-off tramp through a detailed landscape, full of slow, careful brawls with giant beasts after which you collect their skulls to wear as bone helmets.
There is so much gear to craft. Scaley kneepads, massive hammers, pooey slingshots - you will make use of all these and more to track and tranquilise a big fire-breathing T-Rex. There are 14 different main weapons and they all handle in different ways, often changing how you'll conduct your whole hunt. All this gear-chasing does mean there is the endless levelling-up feel of an MMO at times, but when you stumble across a new species, part Jesus lizard, part Jaguar, all that dissipates like a puff of tranquiliser gas, and another long fight begins. Read Nic's Monster Hunter World review for more on why it was such a leap forward for the long-running series.
NEO Scavenger
NEO Scavenger initially seems like a roguelike. You wake up in a cryogenic facility with no idea as to who or where you are, and then stumble across a countryside wasteland populated by mutated animals, radioactive sludge, and most terrifyingly, other NPC humans trying to survive in the wilderness. You get in a fight and you die. You try again, get in a fight and win, but your wounds become infected and so you still die. You try and try again, eventually learning to tear old t-shirts into bandages, to boil water to avoid illness, to select the botany trait at the start so you can tell the difference between edible and poisonous mushrooms and berries.
Then, as survival begins to seem possible, you unearth a whole different genre of game. Beneath NEO Scavenger's survival mechanics lies a proper, Fallout-style RPG world, with scripted characters to talk to, cities and towns in fixed locations to explore, and factions vying for control of the wasteland to work for, to fight, to be killed by. The best part however is undoubtedly the combat. Most games that let you kill other people are power fantasies, ultimately depicting you as stronger than your opponents whether or not you're good or evil. NEO Scavenger depicts fights that play out like two shoeless drunks fighting in a parking lot. There's lots of scratching, scrabbling, tripping over, desperate attempts to crawl away, and even if you win, the high likelihood that your night will be ruined by the experience.
Final Fantasy X / X-2 HD Remaster
Final Fantasy X is one of the most beloved Final Fantasy games of all time. Its direct sequel, Final Fantasy X-2, is err... slightly less well beloved, but you might as well bop along to its pop-infused story of doppelganger ghosts and girl-band power ballads when it comes part and parcel of Square Enix's recent HD remaster. Despite being nowhere near as deep or emotionally gut-wrenching as its lauded predecessor, X-2's class-swapping battle system remains one of the most interesting combat puzzles of recent Final Fantasy games, evolving the groundwork laid down all the way back in Final Fantasy V and paving the way for what came later in Final Fantasy XIII.
Really, though, it's Final Fantasy X we're stomping our feet for here, as this epic tale of boy meets girl / girl meets scary lizard priest / girl almost gets eaten by scary world-ending whale metaphor is a true classic for our times. Sure, its plot sounds bonkers when you try and explain it, but trust us on this. It's really very good. Once again, part of its brilliance lies in its excellent battle system. While each character has a class they're naturally kitted out for, Final Fantasy X's Sphere Grid gives you the freedom to mould your party how you like, letting you turn mages into fighters and warriors into support characters. Plus, it has some of the best music of all the Final Fantasy games, with To Zanarkand never failing to get the heartstrings going.
Weird West
This one got a Bestest Best in Jeremy's Weird West review, and you can't say fairer than that. This is a complex cowboy world, with a delicious art style viewed from an isometric angle, just like the classic CRPGs you grew up with. It's a game where killing people will add fresh plots to the town's graveyard, which may tell you everything you need to know.
It's very much about the world in Weird West, as every so often you'll just ditch your old character and be dropped into the shoes of a new one. It doesn't pay to get attached. But around you, you can see player agency in action. You'll get ambushed by outlaws you didn't kill in a prior gunfight. You can see ghost towns get repopulated over time, and Sheriffs replaced after the old incumbent dies. It's a reactive place in general, as you'll be engaging in fast combat that is more akin to twinstick shooters than the turn-based RPG you're expecting. All together, Weird West is a great blend of the old and the new, and it deserves the plaudits it has. Just be ready with that quicksave button, cos a weird west isn't a friendly one.
Pillars Of Eternity
Pillars of Eternity is both a love letter to the cRPGs of the past, and a sort of “what-if?” continuance of what might have been if publishers hadn't lost faith in that model for the best part of a decade. Obsidian's crowdfunded fantasy roleplayer is vast in scope and rich in words, as well as offering its own take on the fiddly, highly-strategic, D&D-inspired combat seen in Infinity Engine games such as Baldur's Gate 1 and 2.
A paradigm of both quantity and quality, and with a party system which evokes pen and paper roleplaying, this is basically your 1990s RPG comeback wish-dream made flesh. It is a bit rough around the edges when it comes to fights, but the extensive mythology, bags of choice and surfeit of side-quests more than makes up for this. Read John's Pillars of Eternity review to see what he thought of the game back in 2015.
Path Of Exile
At launch, Path Of Exile seemed like a decent and traditional action-RPG with a stronger focus on character builds than some of its immediate peers. Since then however, its developers have regularly added new content to the game, including nine expansions. It has consequently bloomed into the most engrossing hack-and-slasher around.
It's still the builds that do it. Path Of Exile lets you create delightful machines of destruction, and then walk them through hundreds of dungeons as you turn every enemy into mush. It does this via vast and flexible skill trees, and the regular addition of new leagues, new enemies, and new items have only made the options available more rewarding to experiment with.
While Path of Exile 2 is now out in Early Access and earning a lot of accolades, we'll hold off n giving it the full recommendation until it's hit 1.0
Planescape: Torment
Still a touchstone and a still a high watermark of writing in games, the introspective Torment is entirely determined to go its own way - a stark and rare difference from the vast majority of RPGs, which are primarily concerned with indulging their player's yearning for adventure. Everything here serves the story, and while you make momentous decisions within it, it's only going in one direction - because that's its intention, not its limitation.
Torment is the tale of a man and his regrets, and whether he can ever be a better man. Yet despite this, and despite containing a large novel's worth of reading, its visual strangeness, its dark secrets and its determination to invent new places and fascinatingly twisted people rather than recycle tropes saves it from navel-gazing bleakness. Too singular to change the nature of RPGs’ direction, but more of an inspiration to latter-day games’ morality themes than it’s often given credit for.
The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky 1st Chapter
Nihon Falcom's JRPG series dates all the way back to the 80s and while it held up as one of the finest JRPG series, it rarely receives the same airtime as Final Fantasy or even Dragon Quest. A series with many, many entries, Trails in the Sky 1st Chapter is a great entry point as a remake of the first game in the Trails of Sky arc.
Trails in the Sky has you step into the shoes of Estelle Bright and her adopted brother Joshua as they take their first steps as Bracers, a UN-like peacekeeping force. As the series continues, the politics and frictions of the different nations on the world of Legend of Heroes will form the backdrop of the plots, but this first game keeps the focus mercifully small-scale (comparatively). Give this one a go if you love fantasy novels with rich lore and meticulous worldbuilding. The remake is a great way to experience it, with updated combat and visuals more suited for new players.
Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth
Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth is a follow-up to Yakuza: Like A Dragon, which we've actually replaced on this list (I'd still recommend you play Like A Dragon first, though). We've made the swap because it's not only a direct follow-up, it improves on its predecessor in nearly every way. It adds freedom of movement and variety to its turn-based combat, and plenty of reward tweaks to make its many RPG systems better feed into each other.
And it also takes Ichiban and the gang to the sunny shores of Hawaii, Yakuza's largest, most vibrant location yet. Like it says in Ed's Infinite Wealth review, it's a place that perfectly compliments Ichiban's positive personality and is rammed with quirky side activities to get stuck into. Co-protagonist Kiryu also returns, balancing out the chaos with fatherly advice and a devastating revelation around his personal health. Expect a rich story filled with melodrama, surprise, and a dose of the devastatingly emotional.
If you're after an RPG that doesn't take itself too seriously, Infinite Wealth caters too. You can beat thugs around the head with tennis rackets, or clatter them with surfboards. You'll battle against slimy perverts who'll flash you with debuffs and enormous sumo wrestlers who'll crush you with their bellies. Not to mention there's a Pokémon parody (Sujimon) and Animal Crossing parody (Dondoko Island) in the game, both of which are excellent. Especially Dondoko Island, which will threaten to take up almost all your time with equal parts building and sprucing. Please don't miss out on Infinite Wealth, it's the happiest RPG around.
Nier: Automata
Is this even an RPG? Only the amorphous and inscrutable machines of the future could tell you. But the tags on Steam say it is, so let's go with that, even if it also leaps between bullet hell shmup and spectacle fighter with all the acrobatic glee of its nimble robot characters. Read what Adam had to say about Platinum’s masterpiece in his Nier: Automata review.
The truth is, Nier: Automata is hard to boil down to a single paragraph. At first glance, this is an action-heavy sci-fi story about reclaiming earth from destructive robots. On second glance, it is something else entirely. On third glance, you will find a tin man with the name of a 17th century mathematician, and you will start to wonder how many more glances it will take to truly know what this game is doing.
Undertale
This homebrew RPG is laced with more jokes than a giant novelty Christmas cracker. Even its form and structure qualifies as one big laugh at the JRPGs too many of us think of as profound and timeless, while also somehow being a love letter to the same genre. In Jack's Undertale review, they called it “utterly bizarre and entirely brilliant”, and that’s only gotten more and more true over the years. You walk around and get in random battles, complete with a menu featuring the options to fight, use items, or flee.
But sprinkled into that menu are verbs not used in Final Fantasy or Chrono Trigger: “Flirt”, “Compliment”, “Talk”, “Pet”. This is a tale about vanquishing terrors with comical kindness, not violence. It’s true, you could attack. At any moment in this surreal land of frog monsters and treacherous flowers you could lose patience, snap and click on the “fight” option. It's always there, the ability to kill these silly baddies. Baddies like the TV creature who seems terrible, but really only wants to become fabulous and famous. Or the annoying skeleton friend who won’t back down, the lovable idiot. But in hitting these wonderful foes you’d only be giving in to all those JRPG clichés that came before. And Undertale would rather you cast “encourage” than “lightning”.
Citizen Sleeper
In Brendan's Citizen Sleeper Review, he called it "a swish sci-fi RPG full of decent folk and just the right amount of scum", and who among us doesn't like a bit of scum in their RPGs? In Citizen Sleeper you're a robot worker who has escaped from their employer, and is taking refuge on a space station. The game borrows from both the RPG template and a little from the visual novel, as you navigate a 3D map of a dilapidated space station, but enter dialogue encounters with lovely static 2D characters.
Each day you do jobs (which you have to do to buy the robo-medicine you must regularly take to stave off your planned obsolescence), with your actions governed by meters that slowly tick down and dice you roll to succeed. The worse shape you're in, the fewer dice you get, so it's a balance, and the world is continuing around you. Scrap ships dock or leave, a bounty hunter demands blackmail from you, and you gradually open up the map to new areas, where you can find new jobs and meet new people. It's these characters who'll stick with you. They're sympathetic, complex, and very human, struggling to stay sympathetic in a future that is often unkind. To say more would be to spoil your own experience making friends with them.
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
The two things Elder Scrolls games do well are landscape and what we'll call choiceyness. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim has both in spades. Where Oblivion was criticised for being trad-fantasy to the point of blandness, Skyrim is a far more interesting world to explore. Huge mountains with snow-covered peaks roll into forests, marshes, bogs, ice caves, and each town and city has something unique about it. It's a game in which you want to go on an adventure, and where you can feel like you're on a grand journey simply by endeavouring to walk from one end of the world to the other.
The choiceyness comes from Bethesda's continued commitment to covering their world with a dozen equally-engaging activities. Yes, you're the Dragonborn, the one and only, and the world depends on you to save it, but also there's a mage's guild to lead, a fighter's arena to conquer, the murderous Dark Brotherhood to join, and so on. None of these activities is as fleshed-out as they might be in a more focused game, but the variety and number of possible experiences is the whole point. Skyrim is a game to lose yourself in.
And then, of course, there's the mods. It's not commonplace for Elder Scrolls games to receive tens of thousands of updates from its players, but keep in mind how remarkable it is that Skyrim's audience have written whole new questlines, re-balanced combat, introduced new genres, and prettified the entire world far beyond what Bethesda could hope to accomplish on their own. Buy Skyrim today and you could be playing it for the next decade.
Alec's Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim review turns fifteen this year, as does the game. Read it to get a glimpse into how one of the most iconic games of all time landed.
Disco Elysium
If you're looking for a beautifully written RPG which offers something different in its setting, which grapples meaningfully with what it means to be human, you are no longer limited to Black Isle's 21-year-old classic Planescape: Torment. Disco Elysium marries a novel set of mechanics with a funny, human, well-written script and an original setting to explore not tied to any existing media property. The best mechanic is that your skills are the internal voices of your protagonist that you can engage in conversation, and that you can internalise ideas you encounter in exploring the world in ways that can help or hurt your character. The game’s setting is Revachol, a city on an island still marked by a failed communist revolution.
These two things work together to create a game all about what kind of person you are, who you want to be, and what it means to really change. Disco Elysium strays close to being a game about how cool it is to be a fucked-up, renegade cop, but does an admirable job of holding a mirror up to the real harm that person can cause, and giving you the tools to make amends. It's also, finally, the rarest of all things: a meaty, narrative RPG that contains no combat whatsoever. If you wished your explorations of Rapture or Skellige weren't constantly interrupted by the need to shoot a Splicer or stab a Drowner, then Disco Elysium's for you. Read Alice's Disco Elysium review for more on why the game is an all-timer best RPG.
Deus Ex
JC Denton is a lovely man to be. He's enough of a blank slate that it seems reasonable to approach each of his missions and escapades in a manner of your own choosing, and his body is a cyber-canvas that allows you to plug-and-play with all kinds of devices. He's an outlet in which to plant peripherals and, as all the best RPGs do, Deus Ex understands that the player is the most important peripheral of all.
Ion Storm never tells you how to play or admonishes you for taking the path less-trodden. There are constraints and boundaries built into the world, of course, but each area is constructed with an eye toward those constraints. Deus Ex wants you to discover the edges of its possibilities and to push up against them, because its designers are interested in your solutions and recognise that the most interesting ones are the ones that they didn't necessarily predict.
Next to its brooding classmate Thief, Deus Ex is a remarkably bright and airy, literally well-ventilated game. Where Garrett is defined by his own limitations, Denton is defined by the limitations of his world. Each area is a box of problems and the player has a Swiss Army Knife of a character with which to probe at those problems, and to craft solutions. It's the essence of roleplaying - inhabiting a character and setting, and making them your own.
Dragon Age: Inquisition
Dragon Age: Origins used to be in this spot. While it is still a good game (and many people prefer its combat in particular), I recently did a replay of the Dragon Age games, and in the light of 2022 it's clear that Origins has enough faults to be replaced - though it should still get plaudits for being at the vanguard of the return of the epic fantasy RPG.
Dragon Age Inquisition's combat is toned down on the CRPG front when compared to its predecessors, but it's still fun, and even the rangers have goofy powers, able to backflip while firing a volley of explosive arrows the length of a valley. In fact, the whole game is fun. The interpersonal love-interest drama is turned up to 11, the story (a kind of standard 'go to X number of places to gather your forces and defeat evil' sort of hero's journey) has a threat that crosses dimensions, and the world is distractingly beautiful.
It's a sort of blend of discrete levels that are each an open world. A lot of people stumble when they start playing Inquisition because the first area is the Hinterlands, an uncommonly huge area. You're actually given the option to move on and explore other levels very quickly, but a lot of people feel the need to stay and clear the area, which can take a very, very long time. The Hinterlands is a beautiful level in its own right, but it's by no means as lovely as the layered forest at the Emerald Graves, or the midnight desert sands of The Hissing Wastes.
And while it's less successful than, perhaps, something like Weird West or Divinity: Original Sin, Dragon Age: Inquisition does let you leave a mark on the world. Your actions can make people's lives better, or worse. You build a stronghold and watch it slowly become fixed, and can choose if you want to allow a field hospital on the grounds. But perhaps the banner feature is your companions. It's a hallmark of BioWare games that it gives you a gang of weirdos with different tastes and then tries to make you fall in love with them, and this bunch of weirdos is one of the most interesting. Revisit Adam's Dragon Age: Inquisition review to read what he thought all the way back in 2014.
Mass Effect 2
Yes, much of what purists consider an RPG to be has been excised from Mass Effect 2 in favour of direct action and on-the-spot decision-making, but in terms of spirit, playing a roving space captain trying to restore peace to the galaxy one planet at a time and in her own sweet time has never been bettered.
Mass Effect 1 didn't quite know what to be and Mass Effect 3 was a victim of the need to resolve dozens of dangling story threads, but 2 has focus, a meaningful sense of behavioural choice and, most of all, momentum. It all culminates in one of the most thrilling and potentially tragic third acts in recent memory. Mass Effect 2 also boasts what might just be roleplaying's finest musical moment. I am the very model of a scientist salarian indeed. Read John's Mass Effect 2 review for a look at what he thought of the sequel back in 2010.
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
What astounds most about The Witcher 3 is how human it can be. Where other RPG epics often lose their character's humanity among the fantasy heroics, Geralt and his friends continually draw the focus back down to earth. In the quiet (non-sexy) moments when they're alone between quests, and the playful banter as old friends reunite, you slowly realise how much you enjoy spending time with these people. That's still too rare, even among other well-written RPGs.
Not all the time, but there is a great deal of humanity scattered across The Witcher's vast and beautiful dark fantasy land, too. People's stories, their sadness, their requests that are not brazenly shouted from the rooftops, their moving gratitude for your help, and the small dilemmas and consequences you'll face as you go. In terms of being a roleplaying game, The Witcher 3 absolutely masters the wandering adventurer fantasy. The creators of the mechanical populations in Elder Scrolls and Fallout should regard it with some anxiety.
A lot of parts of The Witcher 3 could be described as best-in-class, in fact. It's also one of the most beautiful worlds of any game on this list. Ride your horse out towards some swamps at any time of day and just enjoy the wind, the sky, the sounds. Rich's The Witcher 3 review does highlight combat as a potential downer, however. It’s better than previous iterations but still a bit clunky and frustrating as it gets in the way of your ability to just be. Thankfully there's always another person to play Gwent with at your next destination.
Elden Ring
FromSoftware took aim at the open world RPG and put everyone else to shame with their first shot. In Elden Ring, your ruined world is called The Lands Between, and you're a tarnished - a once-exiled citizen of the Lands Between, called back to restore order to the place by united fragments of the titular ring. True to form, each of these is being looked after by a big weird monster, with many other weirdo monsters to fight, scattered all over the incredibly big map. It's a bit daunting, even, the first time you fire the game up. There are no quest markers, merely a suggestion of which direction to explore. But as you adapt to this slight unexpected or disconcerting way of doing things, you see the advantages.
You can die, obviously, and the upgrade system is similar to other FromSoft games (in that you accrue an upgrade currency by killing enemies, but lose it if you die and have to find your corpse again to get it back). Combat is unforgiving, but you can approach it with speed, or tank through, and master the art of jump attacks and dodging. But either way, it's sort of impossible to fail in the Lands Between. Having trouble beating that wolf-monster? No problem! Head in another direction and have a crack at some crabs. If that king that is a heap of other people's limbs is giving you trouble, you could make your way around to the evil wizard school and see what's going on there.
In Elden Ring, not only do you have a cool ghost horse, but you also have freedom. You can just see an interesting bit on the map and investigate it. Odds are that there's going to be something horrible there, but there might also be a village of pots. And the whole place is so bleak and beautiful, and has so many unexpected levels above and below. There's a whole subterranean layer. A swamp. Big golden trees. So many weird castles that the Lands Between needs its own version of the National Trust. There's a strange story woven around it all, and, as with Dark Souls, only grasping part of it, or putting together a few pieces at a time, only makes the world seem bigger and more real.In his Elden Ring review, Ed called it “an unmissable journey through the most impressive open world to date”. Frankly, that latter point is still true.
Baldur's Gate III
There's an old proverb that goes: "The best time to start playing Baldur's Gate 3 was yesterday. The second best time is today." Larian's latest fantasy RPG epic has exploded out of early access like so many tentacles bursting out of a mind flayer's face, and its 170-ish hours are a complex, layered jaunt through a beautiful world that is as relentlessly horny as it is bloody and gruesome. It's old school Wizards Of The Coast style antics, where you can customise the look and abilities of your character and choose from classic classes (druids! Barbarians! Rangers!). This is a game that puts some of its critical skill checks on screen, rolling an actual D20 in front of you. It is, and I cannot stress this enough, Dungeons & Dragons: the video game to an extent no other officially licensed D&D game has been a D&D game.
The story is, basically, that you escape capture from the invading mind flayers (perambulatory squid monsters) and, along with a group of misfits that you run into, discover that you have a little worm in your brain that will eventually turn you into a mind flayer too. The goal is to escape this fate, but really the goal is to play the game. It's a time you can really sincerely say that it's more about the journey, because there are so many ways to engage in and complete said journey. The starting area alone is huge and lush, drilled through with dungeons and hidden things, and there are entire characters you can miss. There are also entire areas and subplots you won't see if you don't go off the beaten track, and getting to the end of the final act alone will see you playing north of 30 hours.
At the same time things are drastically affected by the abilities you and your squad of weirdo friends have. The ability to talk to animals can really shake things up. There's a spell that allows you to talk to the dead, and sometimes you can waste it on someone who genuinely has rack all useful to say. At one point you might find yourself kneeling before an important goblin and you can attempt to suck a ring off their toe. All this combined with the combat system, which is very similar to that of Divinity: Original Sin. You can smash barrells of oil and set the whole field on fire. You can sneak up behind people and kick them off ledges. You can throw your shoes. Your time playing shakes out to about 70:30 in favour of combat, and it's detailed oriented turn-based stuff that might be daunting if you're new to the style, but it's a hoot and a half. Read more in Alice's Baldur's Gate 3 review.
Read this next
- Baldur's Gate 3's second act should get a playable new region this year, assuming this custom campaign mod doesn't hit any more roadblocks
- Pillars of Eternity's turn-based mode is finally out in full, and Obsidian have also kindly turned off the invisible treadmills
- The Witcher 3 multiplayer mod's latest major update adds the only mount you'll ever need - your fellow players