I remember when I first figured out I’d be writing listicles to pay my bills. I’d been handing in these half-assed fitness assignments for about three months. Just easy to remember stuff I picked up from Google, turned in over and over again with different worded explanations for the only thing. Hitting repeating words that could be picked up by search engines. It was a sinking feeling, like this all got even easier, I was just being put on a treadmill now. 

Winter is the feeling of cold paper of a magazine under dried out heating units: all of the holiday videogames that game players of all ages NEEDED to finish by the end of the year. A call to action if anything, and a growing endeavor to play every videogame worth setting eyes on. A must-buy guide, a SEARS catalogue but for videogame, the medium a generation of toy-obsessed writers grew up with. Our march to get titles released before an ever darkening Black Friday hits. 

Toys are an industry that got ate up and then went on sale. The first time I saw a copy of Resident Evil 2 in person was a small Toys ‘R’ us in the nineties, flanked on one side by action figures. That hallmark of survival horror we call definitive, interesting, eternal, reviewed, was at one point in time marketed in a toy store near you. We couldn’t, of course, buy it at the time. It’d later get it checked out via rental and returned a few times. 

Well, it’s the end of the year, right? So what’s a better time for DEEP-HELL to get together and, just like we said in the video, check our list twice? Celebrating a canon is one of those early thoughts I had, mentioned all the way back in some of our The Game Awards coverage in 2019 for marking exactly when. The Game Awards happen every year, and of course, we did not stop The Game Awards. We’ve come a whole four years, most of it hitting annually like a SEARS catalogue. We balance the industry by making criticism of it, and then for those of us employed in the trenches, turn around and are paid to put our feelings on a videogame into a number that does or does not sell a videogame, according to who asks and when. 

There’s a meaner foreword to this out there, somewhere, filled with all of the agonies and disappointments of the year. Where I bring up the magazines and websites that got shut down, the ever encroaching disease of it all, the way games hollow out from the inside while the numbers sell more every year. Not that the videogame industry is much better. The Game Developers convention looked at parts like an open maw that’d swallow anyone who applied or handed out contact information. Business cards traded, businesses sold. Even the booths representing their own product want to be bought, want to be bought and sponsored so bad they’re dressed up like mascots. Is it a bad thing to want to join the circus? It all looks so fun, a line queued up for free beer, t-shirts and cookies right at the bottom of the escalator 

We came together as a community on DEEP-HELL.com to gather a list of … 50 of the RPG’s. Our definitive list of the Fiftiest of the RPG’s*, a list quantified by exactly how many of the RPG’s were suggested by members of our community Discord and other network,. I want to give huge acknowledgements over to @Wing for organizing the submission process and making sure everybody who wanted to submit got a place to talk about it on the Discord. We’ve got our own little weird Eternal Convention going on who I also want to thank: 

Wasnotwhynot, Luke Beeman, ansibyl, Dustin Cooper, Bryn Gelbart, Archiloque, Nathalie, Goose, Will Hellwarth, shane yach, Caroline, nilson carroll, Matthew Arcilla, Don, Will, Archiloque, Yaffle, Vincent Kinian, Kaile Hultner, Necrodoom, HolographicDoll, Karin Malady, Luis Aguasvivas, Logan Broomhead, @tesnos6921, Dirigitive

I remember thinking when I started this that I never really intended to sign up for a community when I started DEEP-HELL. It was meant to be a place to capture feelings I was going through at the time, and now I realize it’s become that very thing for so many people I know who’ve written and want to write for DEEP-HELL.
 The video we made for this is included, for the first time on the website, at the bottom. Please enjoy fifty, at least,….of the RPG’s.

 

-1000. Final Sword Definitive Edition (2022, PS5/4)

It’s Definitive

This game is already an infamous kusoge, I think it’s well known for plagiarizing Zelda music? Back in my day, everyone plagiarized zelda music, so the kids got worked up over nothing.

Despite the game posturing like a hollow also-ran open world experience, it’s a product of the deranged… It’s the 7th Saga encounter system in real-time with Monster Hunter 1 combat and a bit of Ys progression style in the mix. Final Sword is the baroque apex of the asset flip game; it maximizes its verb interactions in increasingly esoteric ways, progressing into a whole alternate universe of game design.

You gotta be brain-touched enough to play it and try to dig out what they were doing. The curvature of Bad reflects a hidden core of some of the most unique and huge-brain minimalist type understanding of their own gameplay, it stands alone in a genre of maximalists.

And the storytelling rivals house of the dead 2, ‘nuff said – the one and only final sword fan

-2. Slimes (2020, PC, scitydreamer)

Slimes is a game based around a simple idea: what if an RPG party was just two guys who hated each other’s guts? I don’t just mean they bicker and get on each other’s nerves, I’m talking open contempt and festering resentment pushing a reluctant partnership to its breaking point, and then beyond. It’s a unique and compelling dynamic, and together with the unlockable side-stories that you get for full-clearing each floor of the dungeon, Slimes’ narrative is as dark as it is gripping. While admittedly rough, the game’s art is quite striking—harsh, jagged, hand-drawn imagery rendered entirely in red, black, and white—and perfectly complements that narrative, which touches on everything from guilt, depression, and suicide to racism and religious zealotry. Above all, it’s an exploration of anger, an emphatic middle finger to anyone who disapproves of punching fascists, and a raging polemic against corrupt and uncaring institutions and bigots of all stripes. -a sentient puddle of Nickelodeon Kids’ Choice Awards slime

0.007297352569. Citizen Sleeper (2022, Windows, Xbox One/X, PS4/5, Switch)

Roleplaying in the ruins of interplanetary capitalism.

Live the life of an escaped worker washed-up on a lawless station at the edge of an interstellar society. Inspired by the flexibility and freedom of TTRPGs, explore the station, choose your friends, escape your past and change your future. – um, i dunno, im trans gener, :333ᚹᚢᚾᛞᛟᚹᚢᚾᛃᛟ  ᛊᛏᚨᛁᚾᚨᛉᛖᚱᚦᛟᚲᚢᚾᛞᚨᛉ ᚱᚨᚢᛒᛁᛃᚨᛊᚨᛁᚱᚨᛞᚢᚱᚨᛉ ᛞᚨᚢᚦᚢᛒᚨᚾᛞᚨᛞᚱᚨᚢᛗᛁᛃᚨᚾᚨᚨᛒᛊᚨ ᚷᚨᛁᛊᛏᚨᛉᚷᚨᛚᛞᚱᛁᛚᚨᛉ ᛁᚾᛚᛁᚢᚺᛏᛁᛃᚨᚾᚨᛁᚾᛊᛏᚱᚨᛉ ᚠᚢᚱᚨᛁᚲᚹᛖᚦᚨᚾᚨᛊᚨᚾᚹᚨᚨᚠᚨᛚᛚᚨᚾᚨ

-e^(iπ). Caves of Qud (2015 Early Access, PC)

There’s a lot I could say about Caves of Qud. I could talk about its expansive character creator, the sometimes brutal difficulty, the huge wealth of procedural systems and the fun of seeing all of the wild emergent behavior that comes about from their intersection. To be honest though, I haven’t touched the game in years, so when I think of Caves of Qud, the first thing that comes to mind is the patch notes. See, Qud is an Early Access title, one that puts out new updates most Fridays, and in lieu of letting myself get sucked back in for another hundred hours, I religiously read the patch notes week after week and delight in all of the bizarre sentences contained within:

Your clones no longer pass on their inspirations for meal ideas to you. Corrupt bananas can no longer be laid as mines. Rebuked robots no longer become grazing hedonists. Goatfolk no longer always hate baboon faction leaders for disproving famous theorems. The Pauli exclusion principle now properly applies to NPCs. You no longer fall in love with every sign you read. Moving very, very quickly no longer causes you to move backwards in time.

I could go on and on (I’ve got a document on my computer where I record my favorites) but I’m running up against the word limit so I’ll leave you with one more for the road: There’s now a very small chance any given table is sentient. -a newly sentient RPG listicle

1. Corru.observer (2022 – present, Browser)

The video game known only by its URL “corru.observer” is a strange beast: a browser-based, episodically released mystery about jacking into an alien computer filled with both the fragmented memories of its absent owner and a menagerie of digital beings with varying degrees of sentience and sanity. At first, you’ll settle into a comfortable rhythm of clicking and scrolling around through different web pages of strange text and glitchy CMYK imagery, but keep exploring, and you’ll find places where the gameplay shifts in delightfully unexpected ways. What all those moments entail is best left as a surprise, although I suppose the game’s inclusion on this list is a bit of a giveaway for one such sequence—one that, at time of writing, is still being expanded with each new update (other than the most recent one, which added some completely separate threads to chase down instead). I’m incredibly excited to see where this game goes next, and I urge you to check it out for yourself. – bright cousin

1. Linkle Liver Story (1996, Sega Saturn)

Squirrel Girl Furry Action RPG

Are you willing to put up with some jank if a game is charming enough? Because despite the fact that it chugs when there’s any polygons on screen (and all uses of them well within what the Saturn should be able to handle), this game where you play as a squirrel girl with a weird little mascot guy that’s apparently supposed to be a spore or something is a joy. It’s a short game that doesn’t overstay its welcome that has an interesting weapon customization system and a delightful world and cast. It’s the kind of game that Working Designs would have localized and ruined, and if it got that release back in the day, you’d probably see it on a lot of “Hidden Gems on the Sega Saturn” lists, but rarely on anyone’s top 10 games for the console. -unknown

1. That RPG You’ve Always Dreamed of Making (TBA, Probably PC, but dream big)

Best Unmade Dream Project

Maybe you’ve been scribbling your 100 hour JRPG style Final Fantasy killer epic into a flimsy, worn down composition notebook since high school. Or maybe you’ve got a tight knit 6 hour proof of concept experimental game rattling around half-finished on a flash drive. This is an ode to you. – Your biggest fan

e^(iπ/4). Zork (1977, PDP-10)

Zork (originally DUNGEON) is a product of US military funding. Actually most really early video games were; Spacewar! and Zork were developed at MIT on computers paid for by the DoD, while Zork’s direct predecessor Colossal Cave Adventure (also known as ADVENT) was developed at BBN, a private defense contractor. Spacewar! wears its provenance more on its sleeve than the later text adventures, being a shoot ’em up instantly recognizable as the inspiration for Star Control, but the other two are drenched in blood too. Zork in particular is all about the descent into, as a sole adventurer and treasure hunter, the ruins of the Great Underground Empire. It’s a CRPG in its barest form: You go where you aren’t wanted, you kill the denizens and steal treasures. It’s okay, they would have killed you too. The text descriptions – it’s all text, input and output, you’ll have to imagine the gore for yourself – have more personality than its predecessor, ADVENT, and read like exactly the sort of thing an MIT student in 1977 would have written while trying to be witty. The blood never washes off. It’s fun, you should try it. XYZZY. – Decay

1.5 C. Beecarbonize (2023, PC)

Best Pre-Apocalypse RPG

In this RPG you have absolute control over humanity.

Unfortunately humanity wants to kill itself.

Can you save humanity? -unknown

2. Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn (2007, Wii)

Best “No motion, no IR, no Mii integration, and no online” Wii rpg

The oft overlooked sequel to Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance, Radiant Dawn sees Ike’s journey come to its epic conclusion. This is unlike any tactical RPG ever made. It flopped so hard it forced the series to completely give up on making games worth a damn.

Unafraid to buck the trend of linear progression, you jump from one group of characters to another, fighting a war on multiple fronts to create a narrative of Tolkien-esque proportion. This isn’t about grinding your little guys to make them unstoppable fighters, best friends, and even lovers. Sure, that’s in here, but Radiant Dawn puts character and narrative first and foremost and weaves each into the design of every encounter. The story is for children, but it’s definitely the only Nintendo game to be entirely about racism. Fantasy racism, mind you, but we’ll take it. -unknown

IV. Celes + Terra – Hack of Final Fantasy IV (Sometime before 2002, SFC)

I have never played this game for more than a few minutes.

As a child, I found it and was immediately scandalized and was like OMG GAY VIDEO GAME CHARACTERS!!!!

And then I promptly hid it and deleted it but it kind of lived as my earliest childhood memory of an actually queer character in games.

Years later someone uploaded it here:

https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/46/

I still haven’t played it but I still think about it every now and then. -unknown

4. Fallout (1997)

In retrospect it’s so much smaller than in my memories, especially compared to the current expectations, but at the time an open world with many quests and characters was awesome. -unknown

4.20 Ready Player Fuck (2017, PC)

Best T-pose

Based on Earnest Cline’s nerd catechism, Ready Player Fuck is as much a game as a provocation. Steal assets, leave systems hanging, break your engine. It’s a gamer’s world and we’re just t-posing NPCs waiting to go offline. As Zachary Knoxville Touchdown, you WILL explore the remnants of a dead MMO, find cryptic missives hidden in no clip mode, listen to the entirety of a bit crushed Welcome to the Jungle, and eventually receive your thanks from some sort of doctor. It is a game that welcomes frivolity and sincerity, debasing corporate IP idols even as it recognizes the chaotic joy of slamming your Godzilla and Transformers action figures together. See you in the0asis. -unknown

5. An Outcry (2022, RPG Maker)

Best Sunset of Democracy RPG featuring Birds

There are birds and apartment buildings.

Many things happen.

Eventually things go wrong.

A goodbye to RPG Maker and Human Rights. -unknown

5. Lasers & Feelings (2013, Tabletop)

Most tabletop RPGs are fucking complicated. Personally, I have a hard time running games when I have tosearch through various sourcebooks to find the rules that govern what my players want to attempt. Lasers & Feelings cuts right to the quick, giving me the easiest set of resolution mechanics I’ve ever read. The whole thing fits on a single page! And if the sci-fi setting isn’t to your taste, there are dozens of hacks for any genre you can imagine. It’s the only game I ever want to run for my group, and the games we’ve run already have been some of our most memorable. – Full of Laser Feelings

5. Magic: the Gathering (1993, Multiplatform)

Normal RPGs have a limited set of available builds – there’s only so many spells to cast, so many swords to equip. Magic exists beyond this paradigm. It has built upon itself for three decades, and from that has emerged a system so massive that no individual could ever hope to explore all its possibilities. Over a thousand Magic cards are released each year. If there’s a strategy you want to try, there’s a card that can make it happen. This would be beautiful if not for Magic’s progression system, which is an engine of human misery. The only way to level up in Magic is by spending money. Your endgame build is not Wizard or Rogue, it is Investor. Someday you will sit down to play with a new opponent and as they tear you to shreds you will realize that the cards they have played this game cost more than your rent for the month. -unknown

6. Mega Man Battle Network 6 (2006, GBA)

MMBN6 answers the question “What if they made a 20 hour card-based real-time turn-based RPG that secretly was also a bullet hell 1v1 fighting game once you beat it and got to the PvP?” And that answer is “It would fucking rock.” I do suggest playing the whole series so you can watch the combat system and balance evolve over time — or you can watch competitive matches on N1GP’s YouTube channel to see what the fuss is about. -unknown

6. POWDER (2002, GBA)

Most Unique Generic RPG

My fondest memories of this game is beating the game by mind controlling everyone stronger than me and convincing them to commit suicide.

The game throws a ton of game breaking spells together and then just shrugs as the mechanics fall apart to victory or instant unfair defeat.

If I were to go on a spaceship and never get to buy another game again, this is one of the games I would take. -unknown

6. Star Wars Galaxies: An Empire Divided (2003, PC)

The World’s Best Moisture Farmer Life Sim

The most ambitious game ever made, unfortunately the moment-to-moment combat and amount of grinding was 95% intolerable. But the community and activities in the endgame were incredibly dynamic and all player to player. Bounty hunters had a whole player hunting thing which was unique and amazing. -unknown

7. Jimmy and the Pulsating Mass (2018, PC)

Best Game that Needs More Love

In the dream world of a young boy named Jimmy, he finds himself attacked by an entity called the Pulsating Mass. Can he fight it? What is the Pulsating Mass and the nature of the dream world? Will Jimmy’s deadbeat uncle find love? Find the answers to these questions and more in a Steam RPG that really should be held on the same pedestal as LISA and OMORI. –Jimmy’s biggest shooter

8. Mushroom Musume (2022, PC)

Best Princess Maker Game

Somebody had to fill the void when the Princess Maker series finally died. This game is basically what happens when a bunch of queer people make Princess Maker. -unknown

9. Knights of the Crystallion (1990, Amiga EU exclusive)

A massive creature of legend, the Orodrid, died in Ancient Valley. As the flesh fell from its bones, people came and made their homes in the gigantic ribs and teeth and skull. Society formed, then culture, and then you. You are responsible for shepherding your fellow inhabitants of Orodrid into an uncertain future in this longform, large scale simulation of culture, religion, and economy. You will do this in your pursuit to hatch a Crystallion, a horse born from the crystalized brain of the Orodrid. In summoning one you will attain your society’s highest religious honor, as they only appear to those with great wisdom and purity of soul. This pursuit will take several years of in-game time, and possibly real world time too, as you plunge the depths of the Orodrid’s skull, a realm known as the Tsimit. This journey, alongside managing the livelihoods of the inhabitants of Orodrid, is abstracted into several minigames, such as a card game, Donkey Kong-esque action sequences, 3D first-person sequences, and others, with plenty of Sim City-esque number crunching.

Known for its absurd density and incredible scope, Knights of the Crystallion is notable more for what it attempts to do despite the then-limitations of the Amiga hardware. It is admirable and worthy of discussion purely on its own audacity. Also it’s really fuckin weird, even today when there are so many other great weird games. The creator, theologian Bill Williams, is a real one. He died in ’98 from cystic fibrosis. -unknown

9. Yume Nikki (2004, PC)

I don’t really like RPGs, so this is the closest I can get to the RPG Maker engine without losing interest. There are lots of other great atmospheric RPG Maker games, some possibly inspired by Yume Nikki. This game is wonderfully playful in its environments and how it strings them together with dream logic. It teases you to dare to explore every nook and cranny. Find all its secrets. If a game looks, feels, and plays like some esoteric RPG but without turn-based combat or stats, is it an RPG? If a game is made in an engine called RPG Maker, is it an RPG? The world may never know. – Sickbrain RPG-hater

1̶͇̚0̶̂͜. Whenever you can breathe (2022, PC)

Best RPG MAKER Glitch game

Sometimes people don’t have the ability to say what they need to say.

In this game you meander around a supermarket hanging out with your friends between their shifts.

They offer supportive words, care, and kindness as they struggle with their own challenges.

Beneath the Super Market is a world beyond your expectations, but can you ever get there? -unknown

11 (Football Players): Inazuma Eleven GO 2: Chrono Stones (2012, 3DS)

RPG with a really really big cast

Inazuma Eleven, the football RPG franchise by Level 5 released for the Nintendo DS line of consoles, has an absurd number of characters. The latest game in the franchise, more than ten years since the previous release, boasts an impressive 4500 playable characters. This impressive feat is surely worth a spot on any list of 50 RPGs.

Football is a sport with eleven players on each side, with five more on the bench. Nearly every team in the franchise has sixteen unique players. The first game alone has twelve teams of unique characters. Beyond that, each game features an increasingly large roster of scoutable characters not connected to any team. Whilst most characters don’t have lines within the story, they are all named, they have unique art, a sentence long biography, and a move list.

What else makes the series special is its gameplay, impossible to replicate without the unique technology of the Nintendo DS line of consoles. Players control every member of their team at once by dragging the stylus over them to give orders. Command duels occur when two characters have opposing ideas about what should happen with the ball. This is where characters get to use their special moves. There’s a lot of over the top, anime shenanigans from summoning a dragon that blasts the ball with laser beam breath, to freezing time whilst you stroll past your opponents defense. -unknown

13. Final Fantasy V Four Job Fiesta (2013)

The annual fundraiser Four Job Fiesta challenges players to complete a run of Final Fantasy V with just four of the game’s 20+ jobs. For some, that means trying to beat the game’s first tough monster with four white mages, or trying to survive late game without a healer at all. This format stretches and punches the SNES RPG formula so far out of shape that it becomes new again, and it encourages community and collaboration against sometimes terrible odds. –charity masochism liker

13. Heart Is Muscle (2020, PC)

Heiden is a gifted developer who helps behind the scenes with many people’s work. Heart Is Muscle is an all killer, no filler 30-minute fetch quest RPG where you build your skills in order to outflex the local government gym bro. The real prize is the gay friends we made along the way. It’s the best. –protein shake sipper

13. Ironcast (2015)

Ironcast is a magical steampunk mech fighter RPG where you robot stomp your way from England’s shores to the heart of London. You match resources for weapons and defenses. Each run levels up your stats, and you upgrade your mech with weapons and boosts that are dropped by your enemies. Very good sound design on the booms, zaps, and robot feet. –aspiring train destroyer

13. Sunless Sea (2015, All platforms)

I’ve never played another game that’s even a little bit like Sunless Sea. The game lets you choose who you are and how you win before letting you loose into an entire underworld where your only immediate concern is where to buy food and gas. You’ll meet devils, martial nuns, generous cannibals, soul-spinning spiders, helpful golems, the gods themselves, the sanity-destroying highest truths, a jeweled game of chess for your soul, a box you can fill with sunlight or dream snakes… Mystical civilizations have fallen in layers, like The Forgotten City on acid. –nightmare trader on the come up

14. Opoona (2007, Wii)

RPGs with exceptionally young leads have a reputation for leaning into certain horrors of the world. Earthbound has a creeping psychic space-horror, OMORI and a lot of RPG Maker classics does the same with abuse and suicidal ideation. Opoona is about a young boy with a floaty ball over his head who gets separated from his parents after an incident on their spaceship. Alone on foreign but highly developed planets, he must confront the horror of finding legal employment as a non-resident, over and over again. With no map, you navigate from the work license office to hourly gigs and back, occasionally broken up with Wii Motion ATB-like combat. Survive the horrors of Space Capitalism and reunite the middle class family! – fight for $15 washup

Fifteen (15). Absolutely: A True Crime Story (2017, Browser)

From Davey Wreden (The Stanley Parable, The Beginner’s Guide) and Ryan Roth (Void Bastards, Starseed Pilgrim), I present to you Absolutely: A True Crime Story, a short RPG Maker fable about the real-life misadventures of notorious hero/criminal Keanu Reeves. Truly the pinnacle of the art form. Ok, but for real, Davey and Ryan have by now made several small RPGs together (mostly live on stage at MAGFest panels), and Absolutely is easily my favorite: five perfect minutes of stupid jokes that still make me laugh every time I revisit it. – deputy mayor of NoCrimesVille

16. Last Armageddon (1988, PC98)

Last Armageddon is a Japanese-exclusive cult classic RPG from the bizarro mind of Takiya Iijima, famous for Scary School Stories and Apathy ~ Midnight Collection, released on PC88, PC Engine CD, Famicom, and others. Last Armageddon is like if Gary Panter directed Final Fantasy II, or if SaGa took place in the same universe as Topps Dinosaurs Attack, violent, demonic RPG pop art.

The game opens in a toxic wasteland where a minotaur and a skeleton are chilling until a robot terrorist comes from the sky and blows the skeleton’s head off and then it’s just fucking on. Under a time and date system, you control three groups of demons – a diurnal party, a nocturnal party, and one party that only can exist one day a month. The battle system is borderline kusoge – uneven, poisoned, impossible. Demons make their own items and weapons, and in some versions, the party can only use the “inn,” a demonic ritual, once a day. The first half of the game is a quest where the demons need to read vaguely threatening poetry on 108 gravestones scattered around the world map. And the second half of the game… “really goes there.”

There’s an English fan translation of the Famicom version, which also has my favorite main battle track (8bit surf rock), but the PC Engine CD is preferable to play. The PC98 version has the best color palette, though. – (i love this question – i feel like i have no idea what you’re asking lol)

17. Freedom Force vs. The Third Reich (2005, PC)

Nominated as best Silver Age melodrama simulator

The sequel to 2002’s Freedom Force sees a team of developers inhale about 40 years worth of American superhero comics and then spits them out in to a point and click combat adventure where you play the role of an entire team of Not-Avengers and how their bullheaded confrontations with super villainy leads to a catastrophic meddling with matters of time and space.

Much of its cleverness has little to do with matters of thematic depth or literary self-awareness, though it’s worth noting that every costumed hero or villain was created and written with skill, echoing familiar tropes without evoking world famous IP. This applies to its predecessor, but FFv3R also ropes in underpowered heroes from the Golden Age of comics, and more far out cosmic shit typical of the late Silver Age.

Where FFv3R excels most is its depiction of the chaos of superpowered good. Which isn’t to suggest the game has any moralizing worth writing about. I’m just saying it feels great to break a city apart while you’re saving it from high-strung Nazi telepaths and invulnerable gangsters. There are no heroes, no gods, no monsters, and no villains; just you and your limitless imagination for chaos. -unknown

18. Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga (2003, GBA)

RPG mechanics are fun and all, but sometimes you need a little something to go along with the actions that you choose. You want a way to avoid attacks. You want to do something more than just click a button and watch your character do something. You want to engage. This game lets you do that. You get to time an additional button press with your action to deal more damage. You get to jump and use a hammer to avoid enemy attack damage. Also, it’s got great exploration with lots of interconnecting and dense areas with lots of goobily guys to battle. And it can fit in your pocket! What?! – A Goblin passing by

21. Kirby Super Star (1996, SNES)

AKA Kirby’s Fun Pack, 星のカービィスーパーデラックス

Kirby Super Star has a bunch of smaller Kirby games packed in. Within one of those is the second boss battle in The Great Cave Offensive. It presents a brief vision of Kirby fighting within a turn-based RPG, complete with little GUI frames and text that describe what occurs in terms of actions and HP. You even gain a bunch of stat points in categories that are never referred to before or after the fight once you win! -unknown

24. Long Live the Queen (2012, PC)

Best Girlboss

We all love a girlboss princess on her grind to survive coronation. Long Live the Queen is a game of many deaths, excessive statistics, schedule logistics, and the divine power of dress up. As a princess on her way to becoming queen, it is up to you to navigate the many, many, many threats against your life and power. LLtQ takes stat checks to the extreme, molding a game around constant passes and failures to encourage expressive play and problem solving. You will never be the min-maxed mega princess, so the fun comes from gradually improving dozens of skills to navigate the petty grievances of the court as you crawl from death to death, slowly learning how the pieces fit. Is that enough to be queen? Probably not, but at least you’ll look cute when the archers come. -unknown

Number 28, Baby! Meremanoid (1999, PS1)

How many layers of furry are you on?

Honestly, it’s been years since I last touched the game, and I’m mainly including it for the sake of including something prohibitively obscure, but the combination of sparse underwater environments to float around in and flowery prose still leave some kind of mark on me. Or maybe it’s the game positioning the protagonist’s male gender as a harbinger of the apocalypse despite there being a clearly male NPC you meet in every town whom the story never once remarks upon. -unknown

28. Dark Souls II: Scholar of the First Sin (2015, PC, Xbox 360, Xbox One, PS3, PS4 )

This game has the best of both worlds. Action mixed with, get this, RPG mechanics! These games are the most that I ever engage with RPG systems. Soulsbornekiro Ring-like games are able to trick me into enjoying staring at large stat sheets while chilling in the cozy hub area, trying to maximize damage output, damage mitigation, etc. Why highlight Dark Souls II? Because Dark Souls II never makes it on fancy lists compared to the other games in the developer’s repertoire. Today is the day we recognize Dark Souls II! –someone talking way too loud

28.3: The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past (1991, SNES/SFC)

When I was 9, my friend Nicholas from taekwondo told me this was an RPG because it’s a Game where you Play the Role of Link. -bunny link ponderer

30. Ephinea Phantasy Star Online (2015, PC)

Best Private Server that isn’t Yume Nikki Online.

A Phantasy Star server that’s been running longer than the original server ever ran.

It’s filled with irredeemable MMO addicts and people who stumbled onto an MMO that’s been running longer than the cycles of most MMOs. I go back to it occasionally because it’s kind of amazing to just visit an online space that has lasted so long.

As a game itself, it feels like the closest thing to Sonic Adventure with that sense of wonder that a lot of games lack. Marvel at the weird unit of time that they thought would replace time zones (beats). -unknown

33. ACTION RPG | Stick Ranger 2 (2018, PC)

Best Stick Figure RPG

You can drag around stick people and they fight and get stronger.

I honestly don’t know how long this game goes, eventually your stick figure gets too weak and you end up just dragging them past all the monsters.

I feel like there is something deep and menacing at the bottom of this game but I will probably never see the end. -unknown

33. Shadow Hearts Covenant (2004, PS2)

It’s just a banger game, the vibe is all post-WW1 Gothic and it’s full of weird humour. The soundtrack from Hirota and Mitsuda is wild and proggy as fuck and the battle system is ridiculously good with an expansion of the Judgement Ring from the first game -unknown

33^1/3. The Pandora Directive (1996, PC)

Nice shootin’, Tex.

You play the role of Tex Murphy, a shitty bourbon-swilling gumshoe in future San Fran. This FMV game packed so much campy acting across six CDs, it felt so massive. Its early 3D engine is shit by today’s standards, but back in the day it left me feeling immersed and terrified. It wasn’t a horror game, but I recall investigating an isolated cabin in the woods and finding an inhuman corpse under the floorboards, suddenly aware that I might not be alone, and just dreading what I might discover next. It’s funny, it’s tense, it’s cheesy as hell, and it’s got its own built-in hint system that you can save scum if you care about your score. -unknown

34. Secret of Mana (1993, SNES/SFC)

All RPGs should allow you to ride a dragon and make you fight Santa Claus turned evil. An awesome music track and a story with too many beats to be understood by a child is a big plus. -unknown

37. Tactical Nexus (2019, PC)

a perfect RPG puzzle rabbit hole

A turn-based RPG puzzle game: you need to find the right paths by choosing which enemies to kill and with keys to use to reach the best score. No long introduction or cutscenes where you need 50 hours to reach the interesting part. Everything is available from the start. The only thing you can do is play the game. -unknown

39. Albert Odyssey: Legend of Eldean (1997, Sega Saturn)

Side-story to a franchise that never left Japan. Lovingly butchered by Working Designs, so you know it’s full of poorly aged 90’s humor and pop culture. The battle theme is a goddamned bop though, which is good because the encounter rate is going to pad your playtime. –4Kids rendition of The Star-Spangled Banner given flesh

44. Avalon Code (20078, NDS)

In Avalon Code, the world is about to end and there’s nothing you can do about it; all you can do is try to make things better for people you’ll never meet. You are the bearer of the Book of Prophecy, the primordial tool whose contents determine the creation of the next world. By manipulating its words on the DS’s touch screen, you can affect items, enemies, and NPCs alike by rewriting their fundamental existence.

The game isn’t very good. You should read the Let’s Play instead.

https://lparchive.org/Avalon-Code/ -unknown

45. Wizardry 8 (2001, PC)

The Most Hardcore Walking Simulator

The world of Wizardry 8 is so mysterious, vast, and filled with secrets, that even 20+ years later I’m still having dreams about it. The brutal nature of the game’s RPG systems only amplifies the mystery behind every corner, the 6-to-8 members party with no main protagonist makes your journey more meaningful and less lonely, and the series moving to full low poly 3D with full first-person controls gives you that sweet freedom of exploration and cheesing your way out of battles—the ideal combination. I still can’t believe the input line dialogue system got kinda lost in time… -unknown

46. Last Rebellion (2010, PS3)

Two souls, one body.

A game renowned as so bad that its publisher apologized for localizing it, and maligned among the press as such… OK, I won’t deny that there’s a sort of flat atmosphere to the game, but it’s for that reason the game deserves more credit than it got. The large, empty worlds and somewhat by-the-numbers combat do an amazingly good job of conveying a world that refuses to die. -unknown

47. Heroes of Might and Magic III (1999, Windows, Macintosh, Linux, iOS, Android)

Come for the gameplay, stay for the epic music and all the mods. A mix of RPG and turn-based wargame with resource management. The game had 8 different factions each with 7 creature types and 18 hero classes. Surprisingly everything more or less works together without being a mess. -unknown

47. Pokemon Reborn (2022, PC)

A Pokemon fangame made for veterans of the series which is, as a result, a LOT harder and more expansive than the usual Pokemon games. It features a lot of exploration and harsh battle challenges. Its writing is also a lot more serious and adult than the usual Pokemon games, though I felt it was a bit overdone at times. My favourite parts within the game were the music (half of which was made by a famous Pokemon music remixer, half in-house), and the exploration puzzles hiding many secrets within. -unknown

49. Marvel’s Spider-Man (2018, PS4)

What truly best represents an RPG? Well, it’s right in the name. A strong role that you can play. In this game, you really FEEL like Spider-Man. You play the role of the famous webslinger. You make very little impact on the actual story, so that does lessen its RPG-ness, but you do control how he beats up strangers. And there’s leveling up and lots of moves to unlock. In addition, you get to play the role of Mary-Jane and Miles Morales, which is 3 roles total if you’re counting. That’s pretty good value.– Movie Villain

49.99 Dink Smallwood (1988, PC)

It’s a freeware PC game that plays like a top-down Zelda adventure, with inconsistent graphics, crass wordplay, an occasionally punishing grind, an outdated save system, and wonky combat. In other words, it’s perfect. A real game for sickos. Punch the heads off some ducks, I dare ya.– Get it? Small wood? Dink?

50. The Legend of Sword and Fairy (1995, MS-DOS)

Softstar’s breakout RPG tragically available in English only via a rough fan-translation. I love what I’ve played of this franchise for the ways it assembles a cast who each has unique and enduring stakes in the plot until credits roll. The inaugural entry looks at the linearity and drama of something like Final Fantasy IV and leaps forward a decade and a half to be organized a lot more like Final Fantasy 13 with a comparable dramatic force. There is also a constant tumbling to the fantasy elements, where it seems to be getting worse or never quite coming under control of the playable cast, leaving  the only forecast for the end of the game in the emotional trajectory. This first entry is very maze and grind heavy, but I think it serves the dramatic conditions of tragedy really well. – doomed woman

52. Final Fantasy: Mixed in Balamb (2004, Newgrounds)

(Or whatever embarrassing Flash animation you’d rather forget.)

Can you feel it? The specter of your misspent youth hovering over you? Your spirit crushed under the weight of an adolescent awkwardness you will never shake off? Heavy and weightless, present and not: such is the nature of life in the rotting carcass that is the end of history.

Perhaps it will comfort you to know that Final Fantasy – indeed, popular culture as a whole – has shaken off childish vestiges such as these, and matured into a stern self-seriousness that precludes the confused overabundance of expression that Mixed in Balamb ultimately represents.

Perhaps not. -unknown

69. Kingdom Hearts II (2005, 2007, 2014, 2017, 2020, 2021, PlayStations 2, 3, 4, Xbox Series S)

Kingdom Hearts II shouldn’t work as well as it does. It’s not the fact that it mashes latter-day Final Fantasy characters together with cherished Disney properties like Mulan and The Lion King – that’s old news. It’s the fact that, for example, at one point *they fucking kill Goofy, beloved Disney Cartoon Character since 1934, by bashing his head in with a rock.* This kind of brazen and flippant disregard for the sanctity of its source materials allows for director Tetsuya Nomura and writer Kazushige Nojima to swing for the fences on their wildest and most convoluted ideas, concepts which wouldn’t work in mere Final Fantasy titles alone. It doesn’t always make sense, and it’s not always good, but you *will* remember it. -unknown

74. Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance 2 (2004, PS2, Xbox)

NOTE: If playing on PC, play on controller (2 controllers required for 2 players). Game is barely adapted to support keyboard + mouse and is clunky.

Ever wanted to play a Dungeons and Dragons game on your computer, but the regular Baldur’s Gate series and spinoffs are too big-brained for you? Well then this game is perfect for you! Never before has a complex and arcane game series been distilled down to the barebones action hack-and-slash games Dark Alliance spin offs are, allowing you to play as a team of (1-2) murderhobos running their way through countless dungeons and killing everything in them and saving the day! To their credit, Dark Alliance and its sequel are pretty decent Hack-and-Slash games, featuring a nice set of spells and abilities as well as a weapon enchantment system, and the combat is fairly smooth. -unknown

77. Grave Spirit (2005, PC)

Grave Spirit was covered by large gaming press sites for the atmosphere a solo developer, and first time release, had. A macabre Shadow of the Colossus and Silent Hill inspired crafty RPG Maker game, where pure vibes push the player forward on a journey to discover The Truth. The Land of the Dead…. -skeleton

224. TaskMaker (1993, Macintosh)

Looks like ass in the inimitably early-Macintosh-shareware way, which of course only makes me love it more. TaskMaker sets you a series of tasks and then sits back and waits for you to break the game wide open. Secret passages in the form of barely-perceptible discolorations in the map are sometimes required to progress. You can phase your way into the endgame treasure rooms almost immediately if you know how. Cursing in the text parser immediately kills you. And when you die, there’s no Game Over; instead the game sends you to Hell and defies you to find your way through the maze back to the world of the living. TaskMaker knows that RPGs are a joke, and revels not in having shitty Borderlands writing about it, but in amping up the absurdity and laughing at itself alongside its frustrated player. – HolographicDoll

333. Wooden Ocean (2020, PC)

Best Murda

A little dosage of gnosis. What seems mundane and banal at first emerges into a complicated machinery – combat that requires careful planning, a story that does not give you clear indications of how to progress, a world full of invisible structures that control your life. You can find almost anything in here. But first you have to take the leap and look. -Lost in the Infinite Hotel

666. Lost Kingdoms II (2003, GameCube)

Lost Kingdoms II is a card-battle RPG by FromSoftware. FromSoftware is a little goth. Lost Kingdoms II appeals to the teenager that steals from Hot Topic and listens to Anna von Hausswolff and My Chemical Romance. The game was fated to the pits of obscurity due to it being released on the GameCube. What a shame.

You play as Tara Grimface, a sad girl that has fun conjuring monsters. My evangelical mother saw me play this once, called her pastor, and threw my GameCube away. “No Satan worship in this house!” she screamed. This made me like the game even more. To put it simply, Lost Kingdoms II is early 2000s sophisticated jank. The game has a neat aesthetic, cool monster design and fun gameplay. Its story sucks in the best way. – Degenerate Card Slinger

1138. Yoda Stories (1997, Win ‘95)

To me, an RPG is when you get a thing to give to a person to get a thing to give to a person to get a thing to give to a person, etc ad nauseam or until you get the final thing. Lucasarts’ attempt to replace Solitaire as the go-to casual game on PC just does it for me. Chibi Yoda gives Chibi Luke Skywalker a thing, sends him off to another planet (which has a procedurally-generated layout so things are slightly different each time), and off you go exchanging one item for the next. The combat ain’t great and there are only so many stories, but it does give you a sense of progression by unlocking new permanent items after a number of successful runs. My goal in life is to make something comparable. – Justice for Jizz (Music)

2000. Ynoproject (Browser)

Best Massively Multiplayer Social Alienation Game

Yume Nikki is one of the loneliest RPG Maker games of all time.

This takes that and turns it into a Massively Multiplayer Online RPG.

Go experience social alienation with friends today! -unknown

3000. Escape Velocity Nova (2002, Mac)

Eeriest Space Trader Vibes

Elite But It’s Asteroids. Escape Velocity grew out of a college student’s hobby project into a defining entry in space trader canon which is so big that its two sequels started as plugin projects. Nova also features things like “there are a subspecies of humans who can simply create spaceships out of psychic energy”, and “the entire north half of the galaxy is unfinished, inhabited by silent aliens, and replete with low visibility”. If you’ve played Elite you know how it goes, but EV’s top-down dynamic allows for a variety of *feeling* in each system, and its low-stakes graphical modding requirements opened up a world of TCs (total conversions), from Star Wars to Babylon 5 to the all-original Polycon, where someone quite literally ported their tabletop campaign in. – HolographicDoll

Dark. Slay the Princess (2023, Windows, MacOS)

What distinguishes a CRPG from a visual novel? Convention, mostly. What distinguishes cosmic horror from romance? Convention, mostly.

The complex and “meta” visual novel isn’t new, nor is the visual novel with RPG-like elements. They’re well-enough known in English-speaking countries now that there’s no great shock around Slay The Princess in the same way there was around Doki Doki Literature Club, for instance, and so it can be judged on its own merits.

Slay The Princess is a cosmic horror story. It’s a straightforward heroic fantasy. It’s a post-post-modern meta story. It’s a commentary on storytelling. It’s ten gigs and built in Ren’Py. It makes people say the word “unoptimized” as if they know what that means. It’s a solid number/a slightly larger number game.

It’s a game that will be off-putting to all the right people. It’s a commentary on Lovecraft without invoking the racist old bastard’s name. It’s “meta” (whatever that means) without being “trite” (whatever that means).

The real question, of course, because it’s the only question people who have deprived of meaning and alienated from their labor in daily life ever ask about games like this, is whether your choices *matter* or not, and as with everything in Slay The Princess, there’s many answers to that. Yes, they matter. No, they don’t matter. Yes, they matter, they matter in how they affect you. Just like in real life.

After all, what distinguishes reality from fiction? Convention, mostly. – Decay

200. Dragon Quest IV: Chapters of the Chosen but only the part where Torneko has to be a shop NPC (1990, Famicom)

RPG segment most likely to be hacked for a group show in Brooklyn

A sampling of the world from the perspective of the most stable and most contentious figures of RPGs. Grab your lunch from your wife and get ready to stand still for a shift at the only weapon store out in the boonies. Torneko stands still, agreeing or turning down various purchases and sales as non-hero adventurers try to barter (you cannot actually barter). You only need to do this until you have enough gear and items to solo the first dungeon, but a Child of Modern RPGs playing this today could easily get filtered by one of the greatest evils of society: wage labor. – local PSI rep

Bottom. Pokemon Ranger: Guardian Signs (2010, NDS)

The final game in a spin-off series that made maximal use of the DS’s unique hardware. As a “Pokemon Ranger”, utilize the power of ukelele music, half-baked capture mechanics, and furious touchscreen-destroying circles. Team up with some millennials, an academic, and some children to defeat the boomers who are trying to destroy everything. -unknown