Posted in: Games, Video Games | Tagged: games, HRL

Bleeding Cool's Top 30 RPGs of All Time

Published Wed, 03 Jan 2018 08:45:32 -0600

The start of every new year always seems to get me nostalgic, so we're going to be doing some "top games of all time" (so far) posts over the next couple of days to remind us that, hey, gaming's been around for a long time and has seen some incredible achievements in complexity, story, character, and cinematics. But at the end of the day, we just want games to be FUN, and they've been able to do that since the first days when Pong entranced us with those sliding bars and bouncing squares.

We're starting off with one of my favorite genres, because that's what my fancy Head Games Writer title is for. It just so helps that it's also one of the largest genres of video and tabletop games. That's right, we're starting off with the RPG, because everyone loves to take a character and level them until they're an unstoppable badass.

The RPG genre has crossovers with platformers and action/adventure games, but the core RPG setup is simple. You play a fictional character that you control the actions of (that's the key difference between action/adventure and RPGs) either through character customization options, decision-making checkpoints, or literally acting out the character throughout the narrative journey. RPGs also have specific rules that govern the success of a player's choices in game, much like the pinnacle of RPGs, Dungeons & Dragons.

So between the entire BC staff, we came up with a list of the top RPGs… Ever, though in no particular order (it's alphabetical to make my life easier).