Best Western RPGs – the top 10 role-playing games ever made, ranked (2024)

Best Western RPGs – the top 10 role-playing games ever made, ranked (1)

Kirk McKeand

November 28, 2021 9:00 am ET

What are the best RPGs: games that defined generations, changed the rules and stuck around in the memory long after we finished them? Role-playing games are some of the biggest, deepest video games around, there are a lot of them, and many of them are extremely good. That makes choosing the best 10 ever made a monumental task, but by god, we’re going to give it a go.

The only rule we’ve set is that we can’t choose multiple games from the same series. If your favorite RPG isn’t here, just assume the other game in the same series is a stand-in for it. We’re also not just judging these games based on our own personal preferences – there’s a bit of that, but we’re looking at their wider cultural impact and general consensus as well. So strap in and come with us as we take a look at the 10 best RPGs of all time.

10

Fable

Best Western RPGs – the top 10 role-playing games ever made, ranked (2)

There isn’t another RPG where you can, by your own choice, have other characters refer to you as “Arseface”, and that’s beautiful. In fact, that alone should be reason enough to be included on this list, but there’s more to Fable than just silly names. Even now, it’s completely unlike any other RPG. Sure, you can choose to be a hero or you can be comically evil, but outside of the binary moral choices, it’s as much a life simulator as it is an RPG, allowing you to buy up properties and get married between all your adventures. Your character even grows old and bears the scars of all your battles on their body. People say scars build character, and in Fable, they actually do. Original developer Lionhead Studios might be gone, but we can’t wait to see what Forza Horizon developer Playground Games does with the series in the future.

9

Divinity: Original Sin 2

Best Western RPGs – the top 10 role-playing games ever made, ranked (3)

Where most top-down RPGs are grimdark and serious, Divinity: Original Sin 2 is laugh-out-loud funny at times. You never know what oddity is waiting for you because it’s so unpredictable. The same goes for the moment-to-moment play. It’s a game that rewards experimentation. Featuring a turn-based combat system, you’re free to use the environment to your advantage. For example, you might conjure up some rain before bringing in a storm to shock anyone daft enough to be standing in a puddle – allies included. Add in online co-op for up to four players and you’ve got an RPG that’s endlessly replayable, and not only because of conversation options. Party make-up really matters here and you can go as wild as you want with it. It’s deep and wide – as close as you can get to Dungeons & Dragons in video game form – to the point where you can even play the game while competing against your own allies.

8

Baldur’s Gate 2

Best Western RPGs – the top 10 role-playing games ever made, ranked (4)

Not everybody wants to look at an isometric RPG, where you make up most of the graphics in your head, for 120 hours. You might not be in the mood to read thousands of words of descriptive copy and dialogue between pretend-people. Enhanced Edition or not, there’s an element of heavy lifting to Baldur’s Gate II: Shadows of Amn that will keep some people at arm’s length. And yet, here it is, 20 years after release, still a fixture of every best RPG list. Because although isometric CPRGs enjoyed a renaissance in the wake of Kickstarted franchise reboots and spiritual sequels, they never got better at invention, emotion or exposition than this. Jon Irenicus is an arrogant demi-god for the ages, Minsk and Boo sidekicks whose barks you can still call to mind two decades on. Its quests take you from illusory circuses to prisons to hunts for sentient swords. All it asks in return is that you do a bit of reading.

7

Fallout 3

Best Western RPGs – the top 10 role-playing games ever made, ranked (5)

There’s a place in our hearts for Fallout: New Vegas, which is better in some ways than Fallout 3, but this game walked so New Vegas could run. Without Fallout 3, which reimagined a classic RPG series as an immersive sim hybrid, we would never have even taken a bullet outside that saloon. Sure, the main story is a bit rubbish – “yes, dad, we’ll help you put the water back on when we’re done farming deathclaws” – but its world is so rich, sprawling and full of surprises that you never really finish playing. You just stop. Fallout 3 nuked the RPG rulebook, allowing you to explore its world at eye level and smell the irradiated toilet water.

6

Deus Ex

Best Western RPGs – the top 10 role-playing games ever made, ranked (6)

Since we’re already talking about the games that tore up the rulebook, let’s move on to the daddy of them all. Deus Ex is a genre-blended masterpiece that mixes together stealth, action and RPG elements. Standing on their own, none of these parts are exceptional, but together they create something special. Deus Ex is clumsy and obtuse by modern standards, but it trusts the player to be smart. Whether you’re discovering that your pilot is an imposter because you find a hidden body on the helipad or you’re circumventing an alarm system by stacking boxes before hopping over a fence, Deus Ex gives you problems and every chance to fix them in your own way – the only real limit is your own imagination.

5

Dragon Age: Origins

Best Western RPGs – the top 10 role-playing games ever made, ranked (7)

Objectively the best Dragon Age game, Origins introduced us to a fantasy world with dragons, dwarves, elves and orcs by another name, but somehow, it didn’t feel derivative. If you think the other games in the series are better, that’s fine, but Origins laid the groundwork while giving us some of the best characters and moral decisions in the entire series. It also branches more than the other Dragon Age games and it feels like every decision you make has an impact on the finale. From who you recruit into your army to the origin story you choose at the start, this is an RPG that does choice and consequence right.

4

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic

Best Western RPGs – the top 10 role-playing games ever made, ranked (8)

The best Star Wars game is also one of the best RPGs of all time. Combat might be clunky today, but the cast of characters, the places you visit and the twists and turns in the story make this a classic that lives up to the Star Wars name. Knights of the Old Republic does an amazing job of building upon George Lucas’ universe in surprising and refreshing ways, and it’s also the only Star Wars game that properly portrays the lure of the dark side. It’s one of those rare RPGs that you have to finish twice to fully experience it. No wonder we’re getting a remake.

3

Skyrim

Best Western RPGs – the top 10 role-playing games ever made, ranked (9)

Speaking of remakes, here’s a game that’s been repackaged and resold so much that it’s become a meme. But there’s a reason behind Skyrim’s endurance – this is a game that people have played for ten years and yet they still haven’t seen everything it has to offer. It’s like playing many different types of RPG rolled into each other, from the stealth shenanigans of the Thieves Guild to the arcane adventures of the Mages. Whenever you get bored of playing one way, you’re free to switch it up and experience the game as a different kind of hero or villain. Skyrim offers near-boundless freedom in a world stuffed with seemingly endless secrets.

2

Mass Effect 2

Best Western RPGs – the top 10 role-playing games ever made, ranked (10)

We could sit and debate all day about which Mass Effect game is best (it’s Mass Effect 2), but that would be beside the point. If it didn’t feel like cheating, we’d put Mass Effect: Legendary Edition on here since that contains all three games. Mass Effect is an incredible series and you have to play them all, but the first sequel did everything right. Not only did it improve the overall quality – especially combat and production values – to standards way higher than the original game, it also introduced us to the best characters in the series. Once we grew to love them, it asked us to risk their lives in a daring mission. It’s a game about building bonds in a story with real stakes. Mass Effect 2 somehow made a galaxy-spanning adventure feel personal and intimate.

1

The Witcher 3

Best Western RPGs – the top 10 role-playing games ever made, ranked (11)

The Witcher 2 was a fine RPG – good, even – but nobody could have guessed that this is what CD Projekt Red would do next. The Witcher 3’s open-world feels lived-in, as weathered as the craggy, pockmarked faces of its world-weary NPCs. The main story is centered on the world-ending threat of the Wild Hunt – an extradimensional group of ghostly riders – but The Witcher 3’s magic can be found in its more human moments, from the grounded and gritty story of the Bloody Baron to a moment of familial bonding in the witcher keep of Kaer Morhen. Geralt might be one of the only people in this world who realize it’s humans who are the real monsters, but it’s a message the game constantly reinforces, only to flip the script again with its two brilliant expansions – expansions that are arguably better than the main game itself.

Written by Kirk McKeand on behalf of GLHF.

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