From 20 to 1.  Before starting, it’s important to state that any such list is subjective to the writer.  The odds of a majority of people agreeing are slim.  Still, the general idea should be good and everything 1-10 should be worth playing a few times over.

EverQuest (20) – My 2nd MMORPG and the one I sunk a ridiculous amount of time into.  Still going on but the magic has left this one.  A good example of a time capsule game.  Most modern RPGs owe their foundation to this game.

Earthbound (17).  A decent RPG with a rather unique story and game mechanics.  Ness has become a Nintendo mascot now.  I wouldn’t have put it this high but I can understand the nostalgia factor.

Diablo (16).  This game plays the same today as it did over 15 years ago – minus the small graphics.  A near perfect storm of elements, I remember passing hours after school at the local network shop playing this with friends.  I died a LOT.

Secret of Mana (15).  I guess you could call this Square’s first take on a western RPG since it was all live combat.  The story was amazing, the magic system pretty deep and you could play co-op.  I played it again recently and it is still amazingly fun.

Final Fantasy Tactics (14).  An update to the Ogre Battle system with FF characters.  Since this style of game best fits the Square model, it came to be something quite interesting.  The Job system combined with the bounty board was a rather unique twist on the grinding.

Planescape: Torment (13).  One of the best non-fantasy RPGs to ever come out.   Built on the same engine as the Baldur’s Gate series, P:T was too far ahead of it’s time when it launched.  You can only really appreciate what it did today, which is a shame.

KOTOR (12).  The mother of Star Wars RPGs, KOTOR simply raised the bar for western RPGs (and perhaps all that ventured here).  A complex story, detailed character development and a somewhat robust combat system.  Like all BioWare games, the whole is so much greater than the sum of its parts.  Well worth playing today.  Really makes the movies (1-3) look like garbage.

FF7 (11).  I expected this higher due to the fans but it’s appropriate here too.  This game launched the 3d RPG, movies-in-game and the 12 minute boss fight.  I think people attach so many good memories to this game not so much because of the quality (which is still pretty high) but of the simple timing of the launch.  I mean, Sony has admitted that it’s the primary reason they sold the PS2 in the US.

Fallout 3 (10).  When this game launched, I was hesitant.  I loved my old Fallout games.  This one took that idea, broke it down to basics and blew it up to a million wild pieces.  There is just so much to do in this game, and all of it is related.  Win a mayorship up north, find the old mayor down south with some ants.  Superheroes, giant robots, deadly children, vampires, nukes…everything.  Simply amazing.  Just don’t go into melee.

Mass Effect 1 (9).  This above the sequel is both odd and somewhat appropriate.  The first game was a unique take on a unique IP.  While the individual systems were weak (Mako anyone?) the whole of it was a fun story with a great pace and amazing music.  Think about it, this game is why EA bought BioWare.

WoW (8).  I would have put this higher if only because 1/3 of PC game players seem to have played this at one time.  No game, any time, has had more social impact than WoW.  It is not the game that launched (EQ-lite) or the carebear game that it is today that puts it this high.  It’s simply that this one game blew up a market that had yet to break a million per game in the west.  That it still holds sway over 10 million players and has TV ads in the middle of a football game is a testament to its power.

Skyrim (7).  Take Fallout 3’s systems, refine them a bit into the Oblivion model and you get Skyrim.  This is a sandbox dream game, just at the cusp of true AI.  Shooting dragons out of the air with giant fireballs does not get old.  Killing 3 at one doesn’t either!  You can do what you want, when you want, how you want.  Refreshing.

Diablo 2 (6).  Interesting that both Diablo games are so close to the top.  D2 took the first model, refined it to a double diamond and set it out on the masses.  People are still playing this game today online, the balance is just so spot on.  D3 has a near impossible measure to reach to even come close to being compared with D2.  The team that built this game understood gaming and we are lucky for it.

FF4 (5).  You know, most people don’t remember this game.  This was the first FF game with the ATB gauge.  It had great characters, a decent story, challenging combat and just a solid overall gameplay.  I would not have put it this high in the list personally, but it’s still a game that every RPG player must try at least once.  This is the true birth of the Square RPG as we know them today.

Pokemon Red/Blue (4).  I figured they would be higher on the list!  Who hasn’t played these games or a variant?  For a rock-paper-scissors game, this game spawned a multi billion dollar franchise  An extremely basic but complex game that took hundreds of hours to complete to perfection.  You really wanted to catch them all!

Baldur’s Gate 2 (3).  I figured 1-3 are a toss-up in rank.  BG2 is a seminal RPG that changed the entire landscape from that point forward.  Conversation trees that mattered, complex and satisfying combat, a solid leveling curve of power, great music and dragons.  There simply has never been another RPG that comes close to giving you the experience this game does.  It is practically perfect.

Chrono Trigger (2).  Oddly I was playing this the other day, the game just calls to me from time to time.  Kooky characters, interesting combat, great time travelling storytelling, CT is a masterpiece of gaming.  You could play this a hundred times and still find something new or something to smile about.  Add to that the fact that there are dozens of endings, some quite hard to find makes it well worth replaying, again and again.

FF6 (1).  When this game came out, I bought it for 100$.  So like 175$ today.  It was worth every penny.  From the start in the winter steppes, to flying around as an esper, to using a chainsaw or suplex on an enemy, I can’t remember a better time playing an RPG.  Unique playstyles for every character (draw an enemy?) made the team of 12 (14 really) players a pile of fun every time.  And really, Kefka is the best villain I have ever seen.

So that’s the list.  Do I agree with them all?  No, but in batches I do.  Pretty much every game from 1-20 is worth playing at least once.  1-10 should be in your gaming library.  IGN did a pretty decent job here and that’s comparing to other lists they’ve built in the past. Hats off!

The list!

Ogre Battle (40).  This was the first game I in this genre that I played.  I got my butt handed to me quite easily.  This was more of a spreadsheet kind of game before they existed.

Guild Wars (37).  I guess you could call it the first F2P PvP MMO with wide appeal.  A lot of the good in the F2P market came out from this game and paved the way for many other games.  In terms of RPG, there was a whole lot of customization without worrying about numbers.

Pokemon Black/White (35).  Not sure if they’ll go with the earlier versions or not but the entire series is based on a complex rock/paper/scissors combat.  As typical with JRPGs, there’s a whole lot of grinding and random chance until you get the perfect set.  Then it’s a cake walk.  Still, we’re nearly 20 years gone and still playing it.

Fallout (34).  This is the proto-typical western RPG.  A solid amount of tactical combat, varied social options, multiple endings and just plain wide open space.  It’s quite surprising how well this game holds up 15 years later.   I mean, what other game can you talk the final boss to death?

Ultima Online (33).  My first MMORPG.  I made a few thousand dollars on ebay selling various characters and houses.  The game is nowhere close to what it was in terms of mechanics but it’s probably still the only game with so many options from the start.  Want to find treasure chests?  Sail the seas?  Kill demons?  It has it all.  And people are still playing and paying.

Jade Empire (30).  This does not belong anywhere close below the 50 mark.  Combat was weak, the story pretty horrible (BioWare can’t write very well) and the game doesn’t hold a candle today.  Of note, it’s the only BioWare game from an original IP.

Fallout 2 (28). Other than a punishing tutorial, this is essentially an expansion pack to the original game with a bunch of bug fixes.  There is about double the content and well worth exploring.  Think Mass Effect in an isometric view – in terms of mechanics.

Dragon Quest VIII (27).  I played it, found it boring and oddly grindy.  I think it’s popular because of the name, in spite of how the game actually plays.

Ultima 4 (26).  Well, this is where the series really took off.  You embodied the actual virtues to complete the game, so each action had a consequence.  The birth of the western RPG.

Baldur’s Gate (24).  A really solid game, where level progression really wasn’t all that important (max level of 7 if I recall).  It was the story and the setting that made this game stand out.  I will assume that the sequel is higher on the list, as it’s clearly the better game.

ES: Oblivion (22).  Oh the hours put into this game!  A true sandbox experience with dozens of hours of content, Oblivion really changed the way that genre played.  There have been quite a few imitators (Amalaur for one) but few can match what this did when it launched with the 360.

Super Mario RPG (21).  Bar none, the best RPG on the SNES.  A combination of smart combat mechanics, great writing, minigames a plenty and amazing setting, SMRPG simply shot everything out of the water.  Too bad it came out after the N64 launched. It’s also the birth of the Paper Mario and Baby Mario/Luigi games.  Play it.

Quite a few more games here that I played.  I disagree with a few placements – especially Jade Empire.  I am curious as to IGN’s definition of RPG though.  Is Zelda an RPG?  If GW and UO are there, shouldn’t SWG – the best Role game I’ve ever seen – be on the list?  Hot dogs to hamburgers, I’m guessing I will have played 18 of the 20 games on the top of the list.

And again with the list.

EvE Online (60).  This could be a 3 month conversation about what defines RPG in the MMO space.  One of the few games where your in-game role is incredibly linked to your out-of game role.  Of very important note, nearly 80% of the playerbase only does PvE while that 20% is what the game is truly selling to the masses.

Freedom Force (58).  Now this is an RPG!  Tactical RPG combat, with a 3d isometric view, thrown in some comedy elements.  This is the Marvel Superheroes ARPG games 10 years before they came out.  Nearly every game since then has followed this formula.  The graphics don’t stand up to well, but everything else does.

Mass Effect 2 (57).  I kind of expected IGN to put this in their top 10.  It dumbed down the original and went for a more action vibe.  If you look at the parts, they are average or below while the whole somehow comes together well.  Except for the last 15 minutes.  Oh, and that stupid planet harvesting.

JRPGS (55-46).  I don’t have a particular comment on the games themselves, only that as a whole, the JRPG field is definitely middle-of-the-pack.

Disgaea (45).  A grind-fest if there ever was one.  You could complete the basic game with minimal grinding, though a fair amount of tactical challenge.  If you wanted to kill the hardest boss (level 100 in i-world), expect a solid 100 hours of grinding.  This game changed the way I viewed RPGs so that it was purely math by the end.

So there weren’t a whole lot of games in here that I played, namely because of the JRPG vibe and not having access to most of them where I lived.  As stated above, most are average and a few brought some cool innovation to the genre.  That being said, many of them you could simply swap the characters from one game to the next without any impact.

Continuing on IGN’s list.  My take on those that I have had the chance to play.

Dungeon Master (80).  The foundation for all real-time dungeon crawlers.  I found this tough but fun.

Icewind Dale 2 (79).  The 3rd best game on the Infinity engine and one that adapted quite decently to the 3.5 ruleset.  The story was pretty hokum but the gameplay was astounding.  Awesome fun.  Get it on GoG.

Illusion of Gaia (76).  A different take on the Zelda format with some RPG elements.  One of the better RPGs of the SNES era.  Stands up well to time.

Final Fantasy (73).  The one that started it all.  I have played the remastered one recently and with the added dungeons and controls, it’s much better than the original release.  This is one of those games where even just 1 level of experience can make or break you.

Kingdom Hearts 2 (68).  Everything in this sequel was expanded.  Combat, story, control, worlds.  The 2nd best RPG for the PS2 in my books.  It also changed the way that we now play action RPGs.

Final Fantasy Tactics Advanced (67).  Grid based combat with FF roles.  It brought a western feeling to the genre but is certainly the weaker of the popular series.

Final Fantasy X (64).  The first game with voice acting and the first on the PS2.  I’ve played this through and through dozens of times.  Extremely well balanced for the main portion, with some quality challenges at the end.  The weakness is in the plot.  And Bliztball.

The World Ends With You (62).  Dual screen RPG action.  I rather enjoyed it for the control aspect.  I didn’t like the story but the setting was cool.  One of the more innovative RPGs in a time when innovation wasn’t cool.

Chrono Cross (61).  You could amass nearly 50 playable character through multiple playthroughs.  Each decision point had an impact on the rest of the game.  It closed out the Chrono Trigger rather well too.  Combat was wonky though and took a solid 20 levels before being appreciable.

A few less games here that I played but most of them are in the 90s timeframe.   The actual order of the games is less important than simply their inclusion, other than perhaps in blocks of 25 games.  I could argue that Kingdom Hearts is a worse game than Icewind Dale 2, but both should be played nonetheless.

IGN is starting their list of the top 100 RPGs.  Given that this is my favorite gaming genre, I am going to guess I’ve played most of them.  Let’s take a look at the ones I’ve tried in the 100-81 listing.

Shadow Hearts – Covenant (98).  I think this was better than 98 if only for the coo game innovations it brought.  The judgment wheel brought an “action” feel to the RPG.  The story was kooky yet quality.  Once of the best PS2 RPGs.

Final Fantasy VIII (97).  The story was pretty cool, futuristic and all.  The combat was atrocious.  The worst of the FF games, by far.  Perhaps this was linked to 7’s extremely high bar and 9’s return to RPG roots.  Still, most people remember Squall, even if they didn’t play the game.  Sword guns are cool.

Phantasy Star (96).  Lots of groundbreaking done in this game, especially for the console.  It has aged poorly but then again, most groundbreaking things do.

Legend of the Dragoon (95).  I played the crap out of this game.  This was more action than RPG and was well ahead of it’s time.  The story and setting were really amazing too.

Diablo 3 (92).  A new-age RPG, with next to no “R” to speak of.  I don’t think I would have put it in the list at all.  Especially not ahead of the rest of the games in this list so far.

Fable 2 (91).  The anti-thesis to Diablo 3, Fable changed the way we looked at RPGs on consoles.  Nearly a sandbox RPG, I put a hundred hours in this game just to see the various outcomes.  Wife and kids, an amazing dog companion, a compelling (but short) story, decent combat.  And the crucible.  Oh the crucible.  My favorite of the series.

Fallout: New Vegas (89).  A more open concept Fallout than the 3.   It started out more like an expansion pack but the deeper you got into it, the more details you found.  Each town had character and story and challenge.  The idea of redemption/revenge is also pretty cool.  The game’s weakness (so much to do), was also its strength.

Final Fantasy 9 (88).  A back-to-roots FF game after the risk of 8.  The game was very simple, probably closer to 6 than any other.  While it took no risks on the gameplay front, it provided an amazing story, until the last 5 minutes.

Lufia 2 (87).  A weird game that was at times easy and hardcore.  The internal systems (IP leveling) was a continuous tradeoff.  Not a big fan.

Breath of Fire 3 (85).  A simple RPG.  I think it’s more popular because it was the first on the PS.  No real weakness to speak of but nothing stands out.

Kingdom Hearts (84).  I had original worries with this game but in typical Japanese RPG fashion the story was lovingly complex.  The mechanics were solid and built a good foundation for one of the best RPG series of all-time.

I did play a few of the other games but none really stand out as worth mention.  That some games are in the 90s and have sold millions while some in the 80s are clearly niche is odd but that’s the nature of these lists.  I was kind of hoping to have more PC rpgs in the list but I guess that’s for later.  After all, that’s where the CRPG started.

This fall is shaping up to have some nice releases.  I have some ideas as to how the big ones, for me at least, will perform.

Borderlands 2 comes out the 18th.  Two sides to this one.  This first was a huge fresh breath on the FPS genre, adding some RPG elements.  The classes were simple enough, the story was pretty good (and the writing), with a huge lottery machine for gear.  The sequel doesn’t seem to be expanding on any particular field, simply refining the various elements. It will certainly sell better than the original, which sold enough, and I plan to play it for quite some time.

Torchlight 2 hits September 20th.  I loved the first one, even though it was short.  I guess you could say it played like a tech demo for some neat ideas – nearly all of which were taken by Blizzard in D3 (yet poorly in most cases).  This version has new classes, a stronger leveling system and a much larger world.  I think the pro-reviewers will give it a lower score yet the player meta-score will be much higher.  This is the game that D2 players have been waiting for.

WoW – Mists of Pandaria hits on the 25th.  There are plenty of new features for the casual player here.  Next to none for the original player.  It’s also one of two subscription themeparks left for NA players.  Rift launches content 5x faster for the same fee.  Still, I see MoP selling a lot out of the gate and then a massive player crash before Christmas – say 2 million.

XCOM Enemy Unknown comes out October 9th.  A remake of the classic game with a few modern features.  Everything I’ve read about the game says the dev’s understand the original game and the videos looks promising.  I will end up playing it like mad, as I always tend to do with these types of games.  Still, I don’t see massive game sales unless there’s a better media push.

Assassin’s Creed 3 hits October 30th.   Will sell  like mad, will be a decent game.  Personally, I have not liked the progression the game has gone through.  AC2 was to me, one of the biggest disappointments in a long time.  AC3 seems very much like it’s following that trend.  The thing about it is that I’m interested in the overall story of it all, sort of like Mass Effect.  I still haven’t played ME3 so there are solid odds I will be missing AC3 baring some magic sale.

Rift – Storm Legion comes out November 13th.  An expansion for the best subscription themepark currently available is a solid bet.  I would normally call this the kitchen sink patch, but this is an expansion.  Housing, new levels, new play modes, new souls and 3x the playing zones.  This is one of those “safe bet” games where the sales will meet expectations.  Whether that is enough to keep the game at a fee, rather than F2P is up for debate.  Personally, I don’t see why.  You get way more value for your subscription than you do any F2P game on the market.

If you’re read this far you’ve noticed a pattern.  Every game is a PC game. Some are on multiple platforms but all of them are on the PC in some form.  Take a look at console releases for the fall and try and find something else.  You’d be surprised at how poor the selection is.

X-Com was and always will be one of my all-time favorite games.  I played it at launch and put in nearly as many hours as I did with Civilization.  At the time, the game was the pinnacle of strategy-rpgs and had some rather amazing replayability built in.

I played the expansions.  Terror from the Deep was basically an expansion pack. Apocalypse was a 3d take but lacked depth.  Everything past that was garbage.  Since then, other games have tried to emulate the feeling.  I would guess the Rainbow6 game series has come the closest.

A few remakes have come and gone but they’ve all missed the feel of the original.  Nostalgia always does this since it was the first game of its kind.  I can forgive the original’s poor-ish graphics as a sign of the time.  I can’t really do that now.  This new take however, seems to be the closest in spirit to the original in a while.

There’s just something special about having an attachment to your in-game players and seeing that a bad decision cost you.  Every situation can be beaten, every situation can end in massive failure.  The determining factor isn’t skill, it’s thought. And boy, is that ever more rewarding for me.

Fingers crossed!

Watching the above video made me think of Time to Kill and it’s relationship with fun.  Is it more fun to kill a dragon in 5 minutes or kill 100 rats in the same period of time?  What if the kills gave you the same rewards?  What if the dragon or rats gave better rewards?

Time to Kill is an old measure used in games to figure out how long it takes for someone to clear an encounter (or simply an enemy). In D&D, TTK could be measured in hours.  In the arcade games of yore, TTK was fractions of a second.  The faster the TTK, the higher the adrenaline rush and sense of power.  The longer the TTK, the more skill is required (typically) and the larger the sense of accomplishment at the end.

In the MMO sphere, WoW has exceedingly low TTK numbers for everything but raid bosses.  Leveling, the TTK should be under 5 seconds for most classes.  Dungeons are about 20s for a pack, 1-3 minutes for a boss.  This is part of Blizzard’s arcade-feel and quite evident in the Diablo series, though much more so in Diablo 3.  TSW has a 1minute TTK for most encounters.  EQ1 was similar.  Rift has a slightly higher TTK than WoW but it’s still pretty close.  EvE’s TTK is measured more like D&D as the strategic elements often outstrip the value of power.

The actual value of TTK is important in the overall feel of the game.  Too short and it the rush feeling of power simply goes away after a while.  It feels like you’re passing a broom.  Those games need meta goals, where the TTK is simply tool used to stretch out time to reach the goals.  Too long and the player doesn’t feel powerful enough, sort of like an eternal mountain climb.  In these games, the rewards between TTK have to be elevated to reward the risk.

The important factor, above all else, is consistent TTK.  If the primary game mode has a consistent TTK with sporadic jumps, that makes those jumps feel special and the rewards should be appropriate.  If for some reason that sporadic jump becomes a plateau and the rewards are based on the lower one, then you have a problem.  D3 is a good example, where the TTK from 1-60 is rewarding.  Level 60’s TTK actually inverts what you had before, extremely long TTKs with short bursts.  However, the reward system is for the former.  When this happens, people complain that they are losing power when compared to before and the game loses it’s fun appeal.  From the Dev Notes for D3, it’s clear they want to address this problem.

In this regard, I think that as a fun metric, we can use TTK consistency.  If the bar is stable with spikes spread out, then you have a nice combination of challenge and power.  If the bar is 100% stable, then it gets repetitive quickly.  If the bar is stable but has drops from time to time, those feel like amazing times.  In all cases, the rewards for a given event should be directly related to the TTK of the event – otherwise people won’t bother.

RPS has a good interview with Ubisoft, who has finally abandoned their ridiculous DRM tool for PC games.  The core of the interview revolves around the fact that there are zero numbers being shared as to how piracy actually affects users.  That number, no matter the value, would provide at least some context to the “war”.

What number did come out is that Ubisoft’s sales on the PC (arguably the 2nd hardest to pirate after XBOX) account for about 10% of all sales.  Let’s be a bit more frank about it, if you pirate on an XBOX you will get caught if you go online at some point, due to the middleware from MS.  This is not always the case with PC games, who often have a direct input into an online game.  Steam, Origin and various other platforms combat this.

I understand pirating.  I used to do it because a) there was no online store sales and b) the game simply wasn’t available locally.  I did it a bit on the 360 when a) my games broke or b) the game simply wasn’t worth 60$.  For me, the main driver was service.  I got a better service from pirating a game than I did buying a game.  Today’s quite a bit different.  An EB is around the corner and all my games on the PC have to be on Steam.  Steam by the way, is amazing on the service front.

Back to DRM.  As an idea, DRM is good.  As a practice, it’s usually quite a failure.  Often times it’s incredibly restrictive.  Some games have an always-on DRM (which is what makes D3 an MMO) which is stupid in a world of laptops.  Again, Steam lets you play off-line.  Some DRM will limit the number of times you can install a game.  This is again retarded as only these games are limited.  Don’t have that on the XBOX, PS3, iPhone, CDs, movies or anything.  If the amount of times you can use something is limited, it’s called a rental.  Some DRM reduces that count when you chance hardware components.  Again, rental.

Ubisoft did all of this and more.  When their authentication servers went down (and that happens once a month for a few days), no one can play a game.  If the servers are wonky, no one can save a game.  Ubisoft had 10% PC sales?  I am guessing that will jump up to 25-30% without DRM.

If you need to stop pirates, have them authenticate the game once online with the local PC. And again with every other install.  If the game is registered multiple times in a short period from varying IPs, block it.  Give them the option to play locally – offline.  If the game is online, then have them re-authenticate when logging in.  It’s really quite simple.  Thankfully Ubisoft got the message,