The 5 Greatest Fantasy RPGs of All Time

We complete the trifecta by looking at the best fantasy role-play games of all time.

There are three great loves in my life: books, films, and games. Having made a list of the five greatest books and the five greatest films in the fantasy genre, I realised it would a snub to exclude games, which have earned their place in my life and writing time and time again.

I’ve written many times over the last decade about the importance of games as a storytelling medium. Games, in general, tend to have their narratives overlooked—even by developers in the industry—because they are viewed as a “nice to have” rather than the soul of the matter. But as with films, you can have all the special effects, beautiful shots, and beautiful actors you want—but without narrative, the whole experience feels hollow. Games have stories. Some of them even have great stories. And a rare handful go one step further still and create a totally unparalleled and unique narrative experience: a lived myth. To quote the Fighting Fantasy gamebooks, “A story in which YOU are the hero.”

So, without further ado, here are—in my view—the five greatest RPGs of all time, games that set my imagination on fire, that taught me lessons, that made me a better artist, and in which I got to be a hero—if only for a while!

5 — Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance

One Christmas, when I was ten or eleven years old, my entire family saved up to get me a very special and in many ways life-changing present, one I still have to this day: a PlayStation 2.

There were so many games I loved from that era, absolute classics that are still incredible to play to this day, but there is one title that is particularly special to me because it proved one of my first ever entry points to RPGs, and forever cemented a love of them.

This was Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance.

There may be some readers who would question why I have not chosen the original PC Baldur’s Gate titles. These were arguably “purer” RPGs than the Dark Alliance spin-offs, which pitched themselves as character-action games with significant RPG elements. I think I can give three answers. Firstly, a complete biased one: Dark Alliance was my first encounter with the series, and thus will always have that primacy. Sometimes, you just can’t shake the nostalgia, connection, and magic of that first dip into a series. The first Final Fantasy you played (6 for me). The first edition of Dungeons & Dragons or Warhammer (1st and 3rd editions respectively). These first forays have a kind of power that is very difficult—if not impossible—to break.

Secondly, there is a deeper point to be made here that the accessibility of the Dark Alliance series matters. And I mean accessibility in multiple ways. For me and many of my friends, a gaming PC would have been impossible to obtain, but a PS2 was affordable and, more importantly, not as complex to maintain or set-up. In addition, Dark Alliance’s streamlining of the RPG formula meant people who had never played an RPG before could throw themselves in and still have a great time (often with a mate on the second controller!) If you knew how to customise your character’s build, and optimise their weapon loadout, you could break the game. But you didn’t need that kind of knowledge to get stuck in.

In many ways, Dark Alliance is the precursor to something like Elden Ring: Nightreign, although I would argue it was even more successful in its distillation of the RPG experience. The developers of Dark Alliance took the essence of D&D and enshrined it in a dark, action-packed adventure crammed with memorable dungeons, characters, and a surprisingly moving story that links its dungeon-crawling segments together.

My third reason is perhaps the most simple: Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance—particularly the first one—gets its mood and setting so, so right. The feelings of epic fantastical adventure it evokes are, frankly, sublime. One can never forget first walking into The Elfsong Tavern and hearing the ghostly song of the elven maiden, singing for her lost love; or the first sight of the Beholder, Xanathar; or the final epic ascent into the Onyx Tower… These are moments of mythological weight miraculously captured upon an ancient technological wonder. Glorious and—without a doubt—life-changing.

4 — Final Fantasy X

If we are going to talk about RPGs on the PS2, then we cannot omit what many regard as the magnum opus of the turn-based RPG genre: Final Fantasy X. Considered by many one of the greatest games ever made, it will likely not be a surprise I have included it on this list. Indeed, I have already written about Final Fantasy X before, particularly with a view to how it deals with mythic themes like Original Sin.

But here, I want to talk about it in a different way. I want to talk about what FFX means to me on a more personal level.

As a kid, I never owned a copy of FFX. My dear friend Rob did. Whenever I went around his house we would play Soul Calibre. We had countless hours of fun bashing each other into oblivion with match after match, until we knew not only the move sets but the dialogue off by heart.

Then one day he showed me a new game he’d acquired. Final Fantasy X. Having played 6… and been completely blown away, I was curious to play this newer iteration with 3D graphics.

What began that day was a spiritual odyssey. The screen on which we played would be considered tiny by today's standards and yet the world we saw there felt as colossal as Jupiter.

We played. And played. And played. Then we went back to school. The waits in between play-sessions were agonising. But they made the journey all the more epic and rewarding. We lived Tidus’ quest with him. We sailed great oceans. Battled mighty monsters. And found friendship. We were part of the party, members of the fellowship, feeling with every one of them.

This kind of epic voyage is one of most unique gifts an RPG can give us. For that reason alone, FFX must be regarded as one of the all time greats.

3 — Dark Souls

A work of art’s title becomes the short-hand for an entire genre, you know it has left a legacy. And having played Demon’s Souls, Dark Souls I — III, and Elden Ring, I can say with confidence that while all the games are spectacular and beautiful in their own right, it is the first Dark Souls that is the absolute masterpiece.

There are many reasons why Dark Souls is so unique, even among its prequels and sequels, but perhaps the most glaring difference is in the design of the world. Where so many epic fantasy RPGs design their worlds across a flat plane, Dark Souls opted instead to build vertically.

Orson Wells famously remarked, “The enemy of art is the absence of limitations.” And he is exactly right. Limitations often engender creative solutions that elevate a work to even greater heights, and that give it a unique stamp. Dark Souls’ verticality was one such creative solution designed to overcome the limits of storage inherent in disc-space. This meant that rather than having a vast, linear map that the player travelled through, they instead would travel a more looping route, continually circling back to the central hub of Firelink Shrine, but unlocking short-cuts and secret passages that linked disparate segments of the map. Picture a descending, Dantean spiral, and you might have some idea of the epic voyage that Dark Souls entails.

This, combined with the decision to withhold the ability to map-travel (aka, teleport to any discovered location) meant that rather than the map being a triviality to be sidestepped at the first opportunity, it became a lived entity the player must continually interact with and overcome. I love Dark Souls II and III, but I forget huge swathes of them. The different locales of their worlds feel disconnected. More, in fact, like “game levels” in the traditional sense, rather than part of a huge, interconnected world.

Dark Souls, on the other hand, is indelibly ingrained in my brain. Every brick of the Undead Burg, every lava-slagged stairwell of the Demon Ruins, every hairpin turn of the Tomb of Giants. I can still remember the horrifically perilous route down through Firelink Shrine, through the secret gateway into the Valley of Drakes, then cutting through into the lower part of Blighttown. It is muscle memory. A real, lived experience.

Each piece of Dark Souls’ puzzle is fitted together so adroitly, it is seamless. Fifteen years later, I still stumble upon secret paths, roads not taken, and wonder at the labyrinthine majesty of the thing. And this is speaking only of the level-design. If we take into account the mysterious mechanics, such as Humanity, then that is another level of mystery and depth. Time and time again I am drawn back to the original Dark Souls. No matter how competent I become at playing the game, it still holds some kind of secret magic that I cannot fully penetrate, so there remains always the mystery, the sense of discovery, the feeling of dark truths just beyond understanding.

Dark Souls II and III attempt to add quality of life improvements to Dark Souls, which is something all players can and should appreciate. But it is precisely the enigmatic difficulty of the first game, juxtaposed with a world so real it is a marble statue beneath your fingertips, that makes it more than merely entertainment, but art and legend.

2 — Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion

There aren’t really words to describe the effect Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion had on me. Once again, my dear friend Rob is responsible for initiating me into this magical world. This time, I bought my own copy. We would play in our spare hours, and then come together at school and discuss our wild adventures, comparing notes, awed by the sheer range of outcomes and possibilities. The closest I can come to explaining the effect Oblivion had on me is that it detonated an atom bomb in the part of my brain responsible for creativity. I at last understood what artists meant when they talked about having the appropriate “canvas”. Oblivion, perhaps more than any other game before or since, was a canvas that contained just enough structure to set the imaginative wheels rolling, but more than enough freedom to let one’s creativity run wild. The power of that beautiful combination of structure and freedom is still being felt, still inspiring work, as is evidenced by Tyranid Lord’s exceptional fan-fiction set during the Oblivion crisis (see link below for more information).

Bloodtide Rising

In many ways, Oblivion is the exact opposite of Dark Souls. Whereas the world of Lordran is lonely, habited only by dangerous madmen and ruinous gods, the world of Cyrodiil is bustling with everyday people, with commerce, and with humour. Whereas Dark Souls contains mysterious mechanics that are never explained to the player, and some of which continue to baffle analysts even to this day, Oblivion is at pains to tutorialise every element of its gameplay. Dark Souls is minimalist; Oblivion is maximalist.

And yet, they share two things in common: both games give you as close to absolute freedom as is possible, and both games force you to learn their worlds. And with learning comes understanding. With understanding comes appreciation. With appreciation comes love, a sense of connection. Both games understand—whether through developer intention or intuition—that emotions trump intellect every time. They want to make you feel. Having played Morrowind, Daggerfall, and Skyrim, I can say that while they are all fine, fine games, none of them come close to evoking the feeling that Oblivion does.

It is hard to pinpoint exactly where the feeling arises from, and likely, it is a combination of factors: music, aesthetic, the charm of the dialogue, the twists and turns of the quests. In Japanese philosophy, great emphasis is placed on the ineffable, the role of the Void in creation, and it is with games like Oblivion that such thinking rises to the forefront of my mind. I cannot point at one element of Oblivion and say, “It is this that makes it great”. Rather, it is the space between all the lovingly wrought aspects that somehow has become luminous. Living, almost. When I step back into Cyrodiil, it is like being welcomed into a tavern by a long lost friend.

And for all the years and hardships and wars, he hasn’t aged a day.

1 — Dragon Age: Origins

And so we arrive at my number one spot. To me, this is the RPG to which all other RPGs must be compared, the bar that has never quite been equalled, though some have come close.

Dragon Age: Origins is, quite simply, one of the greatest games ever made, and there is a reason it has become a living legend. The developers of the highly acclaimed Baldur’s Gate 3 stated almost unequivocally that Dragon Age: Origins was the benchmark to which they aspired. But great though their game is, it could not reach the lofty heights of Origins. One of the reasons BG3 cannot equal Origins is the pure poetry of it. The game opens with an epigraph written in flame upon a black screen:

“And so is the Golden City blackened
With each step you take in my Hall.
Marvel at perfection, for it is fleeting.
You have brought Sin to Heaven
And doom upon all the world.”

—Canticle of Threnodies 8:13

It is from this point onward you know that you are not merely playing a game, but living a myth.

There are so many interlocking factors that make Dragon Age: Origins special, from its absurdly deep and idiosyncratic combat system, to the incredible player choice it offers. But it is the characters ultimately that make the game. Whereas in Dark Souls and Oblivion, one feels like a lonely god, always separated and above the lesser mortals that surround us. In Final Fantasy X and Dragon Age: Origins, you are gifted with memorable companions for the road. However, Origins goes infinitely further than Final Fantasy X. We are not merely spectators to the lives of our allies in DA:O, but an active shaper and participant. Their fate is in our hands along with the fate of Ferelden. And that is why the stakes feel so real.

Has there ever been a more rich, varied, delightfully entertaining, and interesting cast of fantasy protagonists in a video-game? Possibly not. And I think this is because David Gaider, the chief writer and shaper of Dragon Age’s world, understood myth. He and his team married biblical narrative, church history, pagan mythology, and Shakespearean plotting so seamlessly, it is dazzling. The characters that inhabit this world, therefore, likewise feel born from myth, realer than real.

When the heroic Duncan, leader of the Grey Wardens, is betrayed by the military general Loghain, it is not merely plot device, but a Macbethian treachery you feel in your bones. When we encounter the king of Redcliffe, and must seek out the Ashes of Andraste—sealed in a sacred urn hidden deep in the mountains—to heal his magical wound, we are transported to the realms of King Arthur and the Grail Quest.

These are but two examples, yet they serve to illustrate my point: everywhere you turn in Origins, you are treading upon mythic fabric. And yet, the game does not feel like a simple derivative hodgepodge. Gaider and his team managed to synthesise all these mythological components into a fresh warp and weave, a coherent dark fantasy world that touches the mythic chords within the human psyche. As Flemeth, a dark goddess of the forest, remarks, “Men’s hearts hold shadows darker than any tainted creature.” This is the poetic sentiment that underpins the whole narrative.

DA: O constantly presents us with the tropes and traditions of fantasy, but then subverts them. The companion, Alistair, for example, seems the epitome of the “unwilling heir to the throne” trope, the Aragorn-type figure who lives in a kind of exile, but must inevitably come to terms with power and responsibility. But the twist? He is gay. This isn’t shoved down our throats as a political sentiment. It’s simply a compelling aspect of his character. It is part of why he is an outcast, of why his ascension to the throne is controversial and problematic in an essentially feudal society. Despite his sense of justice and his bravery and willingness to put his life on the line, Alistair will never “fit” the throne, nor provide an heir.

Similarly, there is Morrigan. Her name is derived from the Irish goddess of war, wisdom, and Fate, a kind of Gaelic Athena—itself a mythological reference. But what is more, she seems—at first—the very image of the femme fatale, the dark, wild, beautiful sorceress who will seduce us with a glamour (I use the word in the old sense, here). But the reverse is quite the case. Having lived a life in the wilds, she has little interest in matters of the heart. She has no interest in seducing us. We—the player—must work very hard indeed to seduce her. And if we don’t win her favour, she will merely use us for her own ends.

I have played through Dragon Age: Origins four times fully, and many times started new characters just to play around in the world. I am constantly astonished by how much there is still that I have not seen. New ways of dealing with problems. New moments between characters. New moral quandaries and battles to fight and even places to explore.

But despite how incredibly open Dragon Age: Origins’ world is, it once again puts a twist on the RPG trope and subverts our expectations by imposing one hard limit: time.

The Darkspawn are coming. They are advancing always across the map. Areas are slowly removed as they are either outright destroyed or become too infested. This puts pressure on you. You can’t do it all. You have to make hard decisions. Spend time waiting for peace to be worked out between two warring factions, and you risk the Darkspawn claiming another city. On the other hand, the more factions are available to fight at the end, the greater one’s chance of success will be at finally defeating the Darkspawn.

In most open world games, you meander, aware that at any time you can backtrack, pick up all that’s missing, complete every side-quest. This is not so with Origins. The story is always advancing. You are part of the weave. And your every decision—including your omissions—have consequences. Leave a village about to come under attack to go run another errand? When you next arrive, it will be burned to the ground—all its people dead. Dragon Age: Origins fundamentally understands the role play aspect of Role-Play Games. Decisions only matter where there are loss and stakes. And despite how objective you may try to remain, the game has a way of forcing you into becoming invested.

I could go on and on about all the things Dragon Age: Origins gets right, but ultimately, similarly to Oblivion, there is an element of the ineffable about it. A team of people came together, a sense of spirit formed, and from this communion was forged something unique and special bearing its own kind of soul. This special quality is like lightning trapped in a bottle. All artists strive for it, but few ever attain it. Whatever the fate of Dragon Age’s sequels, or the state of BioWare or EA, we will always have this first magnificent opus that I sincerely believe will be remembered not merely as a game, but as one of the great works of fantasy for all time.

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Thank you for reading this epic article; I hope you enjoyed it. I would love to hear your thoughts on which games / RPGs rank as your best!

And, if this article has whetted your appetite for deep RPG systems, sprawling fantasy worlds, and the players who must navigate them, then you might enjoy reading my GameLit series LEVI’S GAME, currently available on Amazon. The series follows Levi, a down-on-his-luck school dropout whose only hope of saving his family is the million-pound cash prize awarded to the winner of a dark and dangerous online game, Fate of Ellaria.

Don’t take my word for it, see what these reviewers had to say about the books:

“Save Game is heavily fantasy but absolutely has horror elements. It gave me the feeling of Elden Ring with a mix of Skyrim and a touch of Cyberpunk. If you are a gamer and you enjoy a good dark fantasy story I think you will also devour this one.”
-Kylie Trombley, Goodreads review

“An estus flask for the soul.”
-Samuel Parr, author and winner of the Ron L. Hubbard Writers of the Future Award

“Save Game is triumph, one of the most richly written pieces of fantasy that I've ever read. Sale's mastery of the genre in Save Game is startling, his characters are fresh and unique, his plot sharply woven, intuitive and beguiling, all of these things make Save Game an earth-shattering experience.”
-Ross Jeffery, Bram Stoker Award Nominated author of Juniper and Tome