Game Informer's Top 100 RPGs (Oh, wow...)

@valgaav_219: FFVII has aged well, I actually played it for the first time in 2016 on tablet, I got hooked and put in nearly 40 hrs and then a game breaking bug prevented me from going further.

Mmhmm plus a list is inherently going to have consistency issues because it's not done by one person, but multiple people. One person can maintain a consistent standard, thus the logic behind the list can stay intact. Plus anything over 10 is wasting the readers time, after awhile you're just phoning in 92 and 94. Added bonus game critics are bad, and in this topics case, lets be real, a jrpg isn't a fucking rpg.

Most of these lists are just click-bait dragged out multiple pages when they're low on traffic. 3-4 games per a page, knowing full well how volatile gamers are.

@jg4xchamp: how tf is a JRPG not an RPG? That makes like 0 sense

Made me chuckle. That's fun to read.

@jg4xchamp: Well apparently The Legend of Zelda counts as an RPG now so I guess anything qualifies. :P

@uninspiredcup: my argument isn't that it's a great RPG. It's actually a shitty RPG which is why it shouldn't be on this list to begin with.

It is however one of the greatest adventure games of all time.

@jumpaction: to be pretty fair. They listed Breath of the Wild, which is more RPG then the other Zelda games. But still...

Looks good. Except FFVIII needs to get in there.

Wow. I can't even.

Game Informer is fake news

@LegatoSkyheart: Definitely agree with you on that.

"Skyrim is a very popular rpg. We have to put it at number 1 regardless whether we believe it or not. We need them them clicks son, even if the game is the most casualized Elder Scrolls"

Becasue rpgs by their very nature are a misnomer as far as video games are concerned. Dungeons n Dragons is the base for what a rpg is, not an opinion, it's just a fact of life. The tabletop game is actually about role playing, and weight the pros n cons of your build. A simple scenario is that of putting your stats into brute strength, intelligence, or lock picking. In a RPG that creates 3 distinct play styles, you each have your own different solutions. If you make a jack of all trades, you actually get punished by being a master of none. Which is sort of a mistake a lot of rpgs both old n new tend to make. They let you do everything almost to a fault, where as something like New Vegas actually is a rpg. There is role playing, there are checks n balances based on how you built your character (optimal strategies for your build, where as other paths just won't be suited for you, no matter how hard you try to brute force it), choices n faction decisions stop you from joining, other, rival factions or doing a string of quest lines that would go against another string of quests you did.

jrpgs, strictly the classic turn based variety. It's a fucking linear ass story with little to no role play on your part, hell you don't even get to actually build your characters. Even that stuff is super simple n stream lined. Either automatically done for you (they level up, and specific stats go up randomly), or the gear/spells are barely anything more than going to a quick shop, bam you got everything you need. With maybe a lame side quest or two to pick up some legendary weapon.

Dungeon crawlers/action rpgs ala Souls stuff and stuff Atlus does are a bit closer. Their hybrid nature is more specific, but the build actually matters more in those games. Dex builds, faith builds, mage builds, pyro builds, strength builds may all be a lot of go here, kill thing, but at least there is some interesting diversity in how you can spec things out.

too long; didn't read - the term RPG is used and abused, and actually doesn't fit most games it's put on, because games writing n categorization has often gone for quick, easy, and thoughtless description of things, without actually focusing on details and putting any thought into it. It's how an entire genre of games got named "Metroidvania" or how they are trying to make "CharacterAction" a thing. Both are stupid, the former less so, but still stupid.

Popular and well received.

@jg4xchamp: "Metroidvania" and "CharacterAction" are the stupidest genre names. The latter is especially dumb because they can just be called beatem ups which would make more sense.

You know your list is trash when Mass Effect 3 is higher than Demon Soul's, Zelda BoTW, Xenogears, DQ 8, Grandia 2

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Fable 2 should have been number 1.

Genre labels change with the times. In the mid-70s, the tabletop industry defined "RPG" as wargames with a fantasy adventure theme, i.e. D&D clones. Then in the '80s, the video game industry defined "RPG" as adventure games with level-up mechanics like D&D. This simple definition was effective up until the 2000s, when level-up mechanics became widespread in video games, forcing the video game industry to redefine what "RPG" means.

"Metroidvania" was the product of an era when genre labels like "Doom clone", "Street Fighter clone", "GTA clone", etc. were a thing. When the video game industry didn't yet have a consensus on what to name these genres, they initially just called them "(insert) clone". And then they gradually came to a consensus on more sensible genre labels like "platform-adventure" instead of "Metroidvania", "first-person shooter" instead of "Doom clone", "fighting game" instead of "Street Fighter clone", "open world" instead of "GTA clone", etc.

Not sure why they have mmos on there and games like Diablo. I dont' really consider those rpgs that would fit that list.

Also notice Xcom on there, again, this isnt not an rpg, its a turn based tactical combat game. I don't consider that an rpg. I really question this persons gaming knowledge since he puts such a list together where half the games shouldn't be on a list of rpgs, its like he hasn't even played 100 rpgs to put together a real list. May as well put Civilization or Simcity on there at this point cause many of these games aren't technically rpgs.

They put Ultima 7 on the list, but i bet this poser probably just googled rpgs and found out the game from that and decided to post it to his list. Doubt hes even played it or even tried to kill lord british like i have. I actually got lord british onto my magic carpet in Ultima 7, brought him to an island and shot him with a cannon and the son of a bitch still lived, he may be god.

Lovely, that doesn't mean they can't change for the worse or even stupidly. D&D's influence clearly spawned the term RPG, and there is a reason why so many rpg elements trace their lineage back to what D&D does, and for all intents and purposes jrpgs aren't even a spin on that. Most of them, even the classics, are like this super streamlined thing with little to no role playing on the player's part anyway. It's no different then recognizing that modern day Mass Effect sequels were the furthest thing from a RPG, or even what Bethesda making these days.

Platform/Adventure isn't exactly a label that stuck now did it lol?

But sure, yeah a lot of the other ones we got right with fighting game, fps, open world. General point still stands, that we took superficial understanding of things for ease of categorization. Kind of like how Dark Souls has become this catch-all-term for people when a game is "hard" or the mechanics are deliberate.

If we go even deeper, a lot of what D&D does can be traced back to wargames (like the level-up mechanic). When D&D first came out, it was seen as a type of fantasy wargame, but what set D&D apart was its focus on small parties going on fantasy adventures, rather than a large army going about a simulated military campaign. Because early PCs weren't powerful enough to handle the role-playing aspects of D&D, it was its wargaming mechanics (like leveling-up) that largely defined early electronic RPGs. As for JRPGs, they're kind of like their own thing. Japanese developers took a few basic concepts from D&D and created their own new subgenres, like ARPGs, SRPGs, and console "light RPGs" (what we often mis-categorize as "JRPG" today).

Yeah, platform-adventure hasn't stuck, unfortunately. But generally, whenever a new genre gains popularity, the industry and community has a hard time putting a label on it. When fighting games, FPS and open-world games started gaining popularity, we didn't have a clue what to call them. Street Fighter was called a "beat 'em up", Doom was called a "3D shoot 'em up", and GTA3 was called a "sandbox" game. Over time, we got better at coming up with more sensible genre labels. As for Souls, the term "Soulslike" is just another way of saying "hardcore ARPG".

I'm less sold on the idea that Souls-like needs to be its own genre. It can just be its own thing like when we get Zelda-Like games like Darksiders or Okami. They are still action/adventure games, even if Zelda's model is very specific. Dark Souls is an action rpg, it doesn't need to be any more complicated than that. Although I do think GTA3 was totally deserving of being called a sandbox game, because that game actually used its space like a sandbox. The franchises has evolved into this super rigid open world thing.

Hopefully since we're in the era of franchises returning to their roots all of a sudden, even Rockstar thinks about borrowing a page from Breath of the Wild's book and says **** it, let's be more sandboxy while we try to tell our Rockstar story.

@xdude85: You forgot #0 - D & D.

Anyway I never expect lists like these to match up to how mine would go. It's just fun to go back and reminisce over games.

Sorry to nitpick, but long before Street Fighter blew up the scene, fighting games were called fighting games lol.

There was never a "Street Fighter clone" designation for the genre as a whole. There were some fighting games that tried to rip off Street Fighter 2 wholesale, and yes, occasionally you'd hear people jokingly call those SF clones. Much in the say way some people called Mortal Kombat a Pit Fighter clone at first. Just as today people will call a game a Souls clone if it apes hard on the Souls brand of action rpg elements.

But at least as far back as Karate Champ they were called fighting games first and foremost. Sometimes martial arts games, occasionally some dork would say beat 'em up. But fighting games was the main genre name and has been since nearly the beginning. Even SF1 was called a fighting game when it first came out.

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As for the Doom Clone thing, yeah that's definitely true, though it blew over pretty quickly.

In the early '90s, "Street Fighter clone" was definitely a thing. Almost every fighter released from around '91 to '93 was either called an SF clone or compared to SF2. But as games like Mortal Kombat and Virtua Fighter set themselves apart, the "SF clone" thing was dropped. Not unlike how "Doom clone" was dropped when games like Quake and GoldenEye set themselves apart.

Maybe it's a regional thing, but in the UK, I remember "beat 'em up" being the most widely used label for the genre in the '90s. And at the same time, we referred to beat 'em up brawlers as "scrolling beat 'em ups".

So your criteria for how to define RPGs are choices & consequences? I remember BioWare saying something similar before in an interview. Not that there's anything wrong with holding such a view, but it would mean completely redefining the RPG genre as a whole. Because C&C is rooted in adventure games and visual novels, rather than RPGs.

In a military sense, and in a gaming sense, "tactics" refers to battles where you can maneuver around the battlefield. That's what distinguishes tactical RPGs (e.g. Ogre, FF Tactics, Fire Emblem, etc.) from non-tactical RPGs (e.g. classic FF and DQ games).

@Jag85:

Yeah, has to be a regional thing I suppose. Sucks that every time we have discussions like this about old school games, we can only depend on anecdotes lol.

But yeah, no matter where I lived in the states growing up (my family moved at least once or twice a year), fighting games were just called fighting games, long before SF2 took the world by storm. Even in the late 80's in Dallas TX, when all the neighborhood kids were talking about the new fighting game machine at the Skaggs up the road (Street Fighter 1), they referred to it as a fighting game.

Again, the only times I heard SF2 clone were when a game was indeed a straight up SF2 rip off. Was more about the particular game, not the genre in its entirety.

Did you guys not have stuff like Karate Champ over there? If so, then that might be why. Karate Champ was pretty damn popular over here. And there was also Way of the Fist (which I never played), but those games had already cemented "fighting games" as a genre name well before the 90s.

Skyrim GOTD

@ConanTheStoner: In Sweden we did the same. We called Street Fighter and the other fighting games beat'em ups over here.

Interesting. On this side of the pond, "beat 'em up" was the most popular genre label. And it seemed to be the case for other European countries.

Karate Champ was also popular here, as well as the likes of Yie Ar Kung-Fu, International Karate and SF1. And even those were called "beat 'em ups".

As for "Street Fighter clone", it was a common label to refer to SNK fighters, as well as lesser-known 2D fighters in the early '90s.

@xdude85: are you kidding me? do you have any idea how unbelievable bloodborne really is? if anything it should be higher. but i understand why its behind some of the others. clearly youve never played it. or youve tried and simply couldnt get passed the learning curve. its incredibly deep and genius, pushing high art. theres qualities in that game that will just simply never be matched. unless youve completed the game theres no way you have any idea what it actually brings to the table. its actually extremely ironic and laughable you dont believe it belongs on this list. cuz you sir, are very...very wrong.

@nathanbats:

terrible opinion.

@Zensword:

well since there are tons of rpg elements in destiny... like leveling, grinding, crafting, raiding, gear, classes and stats. ill just take a wild guess and say thats probably why its on the list. and rightfully so. but on the other hand, COD has literally NONE of those things in their games, so thats probably why it didnt make the list lol. Destiny is a great game and a half decent rpg and definitely deserves a spot on here.

Theres nothing wrong with this list. All you guys are just being little girls about it and I can almost guarantee its because youve never played the games you're debating or uour favorite isnt high enough. but your favorite doesnt always mean the best. the only issue i see is the always way overrated witcher 3 is of course way higher than it should be but i get it, and i accept it. (here come all the casuals "its the bezt rpg of all time!!! cuz i cant beat any of the souls games so theyre not good...the witchsr it is!"). Dont get me wrong i love the game and its a masterpiece, i just think its a tad overrated considering its gameplay, combat, and difficulty arent all that spectacular. but overall its a good list and all of you are just being little bitches about it. thats all. play the games before you bitch about it

Do u guys consider BOTW an RPG? I certainly didn't feel like it was.

@vfighter:

so if youre not an rpg fan how does your opiniom hold any weight whatsoever considering youve probably never played any of these games lol come on now

Star Ocean: The Second Story on 53 and Skyrim on 1?

Don't forget D&D made their list: #0. Shit is timeless. <3