Community Picks: The 25 Best RPGs Of All Time

[Guest]

We asked the Tom’s Hardware community to rank the best RPGs of all time--these are the results.

Community Picks: The 25 Best RPGs Of All Time : Read more

 

[ehmkec]

Where's Lara?

 

[Amokay]

Oddly enough not in RPG's, though some 20% of the titles in this list are not RPG's themselves.

 

[ksmith0711]

No Wizardry OR Might & Magic? Come 'on, man!

 

[Karadjgne]

No Morrowind or Oblivion, Starseige or Mechwarrior? and mods can take a vanilla game and totally change its perspective. You can even play a totally StarWars version of Skyrim.

Some of these I've never heard of.

 

[jason.trow]

Where's Final Fantasy 6? Mode 7 graphics, a glorious soundtrack and a story line that includes the destruction of the planet?!?

 

[NinjaNerd56]

Interstate ‘76 single player.....

 

[tamalero]

Some of these choices seems more about "whats popular" than whats actually good.

 

[Cryio]

Wow. Two meh MMOs, a mod and 2 random games are on this list. But freakin' Gothic 2 as "BEST OF ALL TIME RPGs" isn't. Wow.

 

[clcocotelopez1]

Im mostly ok with this list, however for me ff6> ff7 and im happy a tales game made it but sad that neither tactics ogre luct nor fft twol didn't, they are such good srpgs.

 

[nitrium]

Played through most of these. However, since Mask of the Betrayer wasn't nominated (or NWN 2, for that matter), or Wasteland, KotOR 2, Ultima's IV, V and VII (silver Serpent), I decided the list was... lacking, and so didn't bother voting.

 

[ingtar33]

Nice to see some ultima online love. Ultima was literally the father of everquest, city of heroes, star wars galaxy, and yes, even WoW. If you played ultima you'd see major design features which were ported almost directly in part or whole into all those titles I just mentioned (It gets much harder to list MMOs which call back to Ultima after WoW released, as it could be argued most of the features that could have been found in Ultima that have been implemented likely came via WoW)

 

[cosoleto]

Gothic

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVYrALStucs&t=100s

 

[cybertori]

Bioware certainly deserves the prominence. Baldur's Gate changed everything. Planescape:Torment has never been equaled. Neverwinter Nights, Knights Of The Old Republic, Dragon Age:Origins...they just kept delivering the epic story-driven RPG's.

 

[napoleonericbailey]

Neverwinter Nights, ok but... Eye of the Beholder, Or any of the D&d Forgotten Realms games?...Hummm, and to quote KSmith0711- "No Wizardry OR Might & Magic? Come 'on, man!" I don't mean this as a knock on anyone, but this could be due to the age of the Person(s) asked to create the list. Old games that lack the visuals of today's triple A titles told a better story to pull the player into their worlds (playing devils advocate), or is that's all we had at the time so we had no choice to be engaged?

 

[bramahon]

Somewhat surprised not seeing Morrowind! Skyrim, Oblivion etc. are great installments of the TES no doubt; yet Morrowind was one of a kind - a gloomy, dark world like none other. It's grand ambition to break free of Tolkienesque paradigm along with a captivating story was somewhat ahead of its time and peers!

 

[Karadjgne]

And as noted earlier, it's all about whom actually threw in the names.

Wonder how many even thought of the Sims or any of its various spin-offs.

 

[darth_adversor]

Haven't read the article yet, but if Skyrim is number one on the list, I'm finding a new tech site.

 

[Lutfij]

I've played 65% of the games in this list. Might need to find the 35% and play them in the off hours Good read though!

 

[badaxe2]

Playing The Witcher 3 now, after waiting three years to build a new rig. My only problem is it's merely one of several games I've been trying to get through currently. I might just put it to the top of my list though, given how long I've waited to play it and finish this revered series.

 

[10tacle]

Keep in mind folks that 3D RPGs can be a hybrid of an FPS so there is a no-man's land gray line out there one what defines a pure RPG vs. pure shooter. I think we can all agree that most of these 3D RPGs selected by Tom's Community members are anything but a pure FPS.

Regarding Witcher 3, it is still a GPU killer to this day. I got it for free back in 2015 when I bought a second GTX 970 for SLI and a 1440p monitor. It still only averaged about 70FPS with that setup maxed out with effective 4xAA (about a single 1070 today).

 

[Allen_B]

Two things:

1. Wizardry. These games are still fun today, and worth digging up if you've never played them.
2. Nethack. If you're going to include any Rogue-like, this is the one. It's been around for decades and development is still active. Very text-screen, but very deep and addictive.

 

[sos_nz]

Preferred Angband (you fight Morgoth) to Moria (you fight the Balrog), but both are classic.

 

[thequn]

Zelda ? 2 of them are in the top 10 games of all time.

 

[thequn]

Yeah like zelda ocarina of time is the best game of all time on most people lists.