Best rpg role playing games

That modern setting mixed with bizarre, offbeat humor makes it a unique experience and has helped it maintain its cult status as something special and very different from its contemporaries.

Most of all, EarthBound has a tremendous amount of heart. Underneath its goofy jokes and pop culture references is a genuinely great, sweet story about a group of kids who are risking a lot to make the world a better place, and the final battle is an extremely clever, moving way to incorporate the people our heroes meet along their journey.

With Final Fantasy Tactics, Yasumi Matsuno took everything we thought was sacred about the Final Fantasy series and turned it on its head. While Tactics maintained the familiar creatures and archetypes we all knew and loved, it introduced us to the world of Ivalice, and leaned heavily into the Job system introduced in Final Fantasy V.

While the core stable of characters provided a ton of memorable drama, being able to recruit generic characters and fashion them into roles ranging from simple Knight and Wizard to downright bizarre Mime and Calculator led to an infinite well of depth. While you had to put in some effort to wrap your head around the tactical battle system, the rewarding feeling of mastering the complex systems made it absolutely worth it.

It perfectly balances intimate character drama and friendship with end-of-the-world heroics. Luca Blight is an especially twisted and evil villain in a genre filled with great villains. A shockingly high number of them can be taken into battle with you, and all of them enrich your castle with interesting dialogue and improvements.

Your castle is your home, and filling it with artists, shopkeepers, alliance leaders, and so many more friends and comrades results in an incredibly satisfying mixture of gameplay, story, and friendship. Multiple paths to every objective reveal themselves through experimentation and clever, oftentimes hilarious manipulation of the AI.

The setting is diverse and dense, thanks to an even-larger slice of the post-apocalyptic West Coast inhabited by everything from primitive tribespeople battling giant insects to the Brotherhood of Steel standing against terrors brought by the power-armored Enclave and brutish supermutants.

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic was not only one of the first to let you truly explore the vast untapped universe of Star Wars before the events of the films, but let everyone play out the ultimate fantasy of becoming a Jedi Knight or a Sith Lord!

Knights of the Old Republic also offered up a great cast of side characters with intriguing and complex relationships not to mention the best snarky assassin droid this meatbag could ever ask for , and set up one of the greatest player character twists in an RPG. Its quaint Japanese setting is in stark contrast to the dark secrets its characters harbor, and that's what makes P4G so great.

By the end of its ish hour campaign, you geniunely care about this quirky cast of misfits, so much so that you'll meticulously curate your schedule to ensure that you have the time to spend with each of your in-game pals equally. Persona 4 Golden on Vita takes the foundation built by the PlayStation 2 classic and adds new social links, new personas, and of course, the ability to play this amazing adventure anywhere you want, making it the definitive edition of a seminal RPG.

With a focus on exploration, Dark Souls pushes players to experiment and take risks in ways few action RPGs have before, and in which few have truly captured since. It defies the hand-holding nature of its peers and forces us to make mistakes in order to grow — whether that means learning how to cautiously navigate its deadly world, take down one of its many imposing bosses, or just level our stats properly.

It creates massive challenges out of combat situations that would be minor in any other game, making every moment memorable and every small victory an exhilarating reward. By the time we've returned to Commander Shepard in this sequel, we have an idea of the threats and mysteries looming over the Milky Way.

Mass Effect 2 gives us the chance to get to know them on a personal level with revamped combat that greatly improves upon its predecessor. Mass Effect 2's creative take on RPG systems are more welcoming with its blend of third-person shooter mechanics, and its variety and focus on the new squad members make for a memorable and sometimes heartbreaking campaign.

You can spend hundreds of hours exploring The Witcher 3's expansive continent and surrounding isles and still not have seen even a fraction of what this world has to offer. What begins as a quest to find your lost love becomes an engrossing tale full of unforgettable characters, terrifying enemies, and genuine heart. Even the smallest side quests are thoughtful affairs and many of the main story arcs feature some of the most poignant narrative beats we've encountered in any game.

Couple its stellar storytelling with deep character customization and a challenging and rewarding combat system and it's easy to see why IGN gave The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt our Game of the Year award for For all intents and purposes, Vagrant Story should not have been a PlayStation game.

The sheer volume of systems interacting with each other and the top notch graphics should have crippled the Sony's little system. But somehow, we got to experience Yasumi Matsuno's dungeon crawling masterpiece mere months before the PS2's US launch. Heavy stuff for a PSX game, but it's handled masterfully through beautiful art direction and some extremely impressive localization.

You can also craft gear, chain abilities in combat, explore a massive dungeon called "The Iron Maiden," target specific body parts on enemies, employ super moves, solve puzzles in degree environments, and take on some of the toughest enemies Square Enix ever created. Vagrant Story is the definition of a cult classic, and is undisputedly worthy of the number nine spot on this list. Made both accessible and engaging by its unique classes and skills, the endless satisfaction of its kill and loot gameplay, and its near limitless equipment variety and character customization, Diablo II's cooperative play and item trading helped to successfully foster not only a communal spirit in each procedurally generated level of each dank dungeon, but one of the greatest roleplaying experiences of all time.

During the s, developer Squaresoft was the undisputed king of JRPGs, and Secret of Mana was one of the most dazzling jewels in its crown. Even now we still remember the action RPG fondly: its bright, candy-colored world was a joy to explore, the action-based combat was easy to learn and fun to do, and its inventory ringlets made navigating menus refreshingly simple. Then there was the breathtaking soundtrack, celebrated for its mix of cheerful tunes and haunting melodies.

But the most memorable feature was the multiplayer. Secret of Mana would let up to three players participate in combat, so long as they had an extra controller or two lying around and the correct peripheral accessory for the SNES. Even if WoW never evolved past this vanilla state, it would still be remembered fondly as an incredible RPG filled with epic dungeons, surprisingly compelling Player vs.

Player encounters, satisfying non-combat crafting and social gameplay, and more well-written, hand-crafted quests and adventures than it felt possible for a single RPG to contain. The game has never stood still. Completely new worlds, revamped old worlds, balanced and well-integrated new classes, risky storytelling, and an almost impossible-to-count volume of quality-of-life improvements have made an already amazing game experience even more amazing, more than a decade later.

Having the creature follow you on your journey helped further transform the monsters from simply being a team of fighters to a team of your best friends. But the real stars of the game were the characters and the story.

And remember, go for the eyes! Compared to its cheerfully optimistic brethren, Final Fantasy VI is a breath of fresh albeit bleak air. It eschews the myopic viewpoint of a single, designated protagonist in order to tell a larger, more emotionally-charged tale. Its unconventional gameplay is another reason: FFVI casts off the rigid class system of previous Final Fantasies and allows any one of the 14 heroes to use magic so long as they equip magical shards.

Nothing feels redundant or wasted in Final Fantasy VI. Did you know? The seamless transition between the world map full of visible, avoidable enemies and combat was a revelation in a time where most RPGs featured jarring random battles, and even today makes monster encounters a joy instead of a chore. The plucky courage and determination of its adolescent heroes combined with the memorable art style of Akira Toriyama makes for instantly memorable characters.

Start at Get Started! Developer Sony Online Entertainment. Release Wizardry 8. Developer Sir-Tech. Titan Quest. Developer Iron Lore Entertainment. Fable II. Developer Lionhead Studios. Torchlight II. Developer Runic Games. Pillars of Eternity. Developer Obsidian Entertainment. Front Mission 3. Developer Square. The Bard's Tale. Developer Interplay Productions. Betrayal at Krondor. Developer Dynamix. Freedom Force.

Developer Irrational Games. Divinity: Original Sin. Developer Larian Studios. Dragon Age: Inquisition. Developer BioWare. Darkest Dungeon.

Developer Red Hook Studios. Developer Nihon Falcom. Kingdom Hearts II. Developer Square Enix. Jonathon Dornbush Kingdom Hearts 2 considerably ups the combat possibilities of its predecessor, introducing new forms — and snazzy new suits — for Sora to wear. Chrono Cross. Dragon Warrior VII. Developer Heartbeat, ArtePiazza. Chris Reed Some people like short games: get in, have fun, and move on. Final Fantasy. Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss. Developer Blue Sky Productions. EVE Online.

Developer CCP Games. Developer AlphaDream. Star Ocean: The Second Story. Developer tri-Ace. Illusion of Gaia. Developer Quintet. Chris Reed When the spirit of the earth asks you to do something, you do it. Valkyria Chronicles. Developer Sega. Icewind Dale II. Developer Black Isle Studios. The Legend of Dragoon.

Disgaea: Hour of Darkness. Developer Nippon Ichi Software. The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings. Neverwinter Nights 2. Jade Empire. Fire Emblem Awakening. Odin Sphere Leifthrasir.

Developer Vanillaware. Developer Toby Fox. Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch. Your party of mercs and adventurers can explore and fight on foot in Horizon's Gate, but the game is at its best when you get back on your boat. This is a seafaring survival RPG about increasing your reputation and growing a fleet of ships. You hire party members in port, become friends over drinks, and set sail to find new lands or battle sea monsters.

When everyone is hungry and there's no port in sight, you eat the sea monsters. Horizon's Gate's approach to worldbuilding seems to throw everything at the wall. There are underwater Nessies, and mysterious cults, and Cleevers who make weapons and ships out of chitinous carcasses, and green people with snake tails instead of legs, and cricketine humanoids that go bzz-bzz when you talk to them.

The result is that you are rewarded with something you've never seen before each time you set sail and discover a new harbour, and there's great satisfaction in gaining wealth, growing your armada, and returning to a long-ago visited port to find everyone now knows of your accomplishments.

Kenshi begins as many other open world fantasy roamer might. You create an average schmuck in a tough post-something desert world. Maybe a slave, maybe a farmer.

But it soon turns out to be deeper than that. It snowballs into a management game about a small group of misfits mercenaries, settlers, explorers - your call. Stick with the weirdo interface and puzzling world of rice paddies and dive bars and you may eventually be building a whole town for your clan by plopping down huts.

Or, more likely, you will be lying in the dunes, playing dead among the corpses of your family. Death in Kenshi comes quick, whether by starvation or by the club of a bandit. If Spiderweb Software didn't exist, somebody would have to invent it. The studio, led and operated by founder Jeff Vogel, has been responsible for some of the finest RPGs of the last twenty years.

When Kickstarter kickstarted their "old-school" RPG revival, anyone clued in to Vogel's work would have been entitled to raise an eyebrow in wry amusement. Through several series and one standalone game, Spiderweb have never shifted from their recipe of wide-ranging plots, turn-based combat, isometric graphics and detailed worlds.

Avernum: Escape From The Pit, the latest revisit to Spiderweb's original Exile trilogy, is a great starting point into these wonderfully well-crafted non-linear behemoths. Who Geralt allies with at the end of part one sends him to either end of a battlefield for two distinct campaigns, packed with mad kings, blood rituals, dragons and, er, poker dice tournaments.

CD Projekt Red fully commit to what could have easily been achieved with an army reskin or an expository shrug: there are bespoke missions, exclusive maps and consequences that echo through to The Witcher 3.

Importantly, the brief campaign - a relatively swift 25 hours to encourage those multiple playthroughs - gives this a very different rhythm to Wild Hunt found elsewhere on this list. Six Ages will never conform to a genre. It is a game almost entirely unique, and stands out defiantly on any list, jutting its chin and daring you to categorise it. Yes, you manage your tribe. You strategise and jostle for success among your neighbours.

But most of all, this bronze-ish age fantasy village sim is about defining the ethos and personality of your people. Those people have their own culture, shared with some neighbouring clans, and conflicting with other local cultures due to your diverging histories and beliefs.

You must lead them not as a faction to efficiently game the numbers until you're unbeatable, but by earning respect, trust, and sometimes fear through your decisions.

People come to you with their problems and challenges, and your advisors will inform and opine to the best of their ability and personality , but the decisions are yours, as are any decisions about the rippling consequences of those decisions.

That culture draws on the extremely rich Glorantha setting, without asking familiarity with it. You'll come to understand how its societies work, but still get to define your clan's role within it, whether you're the hardy explorers, the vicious bullies, the gang who are always feasting, or some combination of all three.

But despite being the most impressive exploration of a fictional culture in any game, it never takes itself too seriously. It's about whatever brilliant, weird, tragic story your people live through. It's the mouse controls that do it.

Instead of stumbling around for which keyboard buttons will quaff a potion, you click to move, click to attack, click to wear that cursed ring, and hover over any character to read a description of what it is. Beyond its accessibility, it's a tightly designed game in its own right. You're descending through dungeons as normal, but the flora and fauna you encounter interact in more interesting ways than steadily increasing damage output.

Find a monkey, for example, and he might steal from your pockets and run off. Find a monkey being held prisoner by some kobolds however, and you can set it free and gain yourself a monkey ally.

When combined with a system of potions and scrolls that encourages a casual disregard for your own safety, Brogue feels like a polished iteration of the systems that make the roguelike genre so compelling. A lot of isometric RPGs from the golden age of the late nineties and early noughties are fondly remembered - for good reason. But very few still hold up to repeated plays 20 years later, and Arcanum is undoubtedly one of those that do. There's little to complain about in any of Arcanum - the writing is fabulous, the character creation deep even by today's standards, and the art a feast for the eyes even now.

But it's the setting that deserves some special attention. The world Troika created a traditional fantasy setting undergoing its own version of a late-Victorian industrial revolution feels totally original, despite elves and orcs running around threatening to make it a bit Tolkeinist.

Look, this orc is wearing a fancy jacket and shirt with a high starched collar. Didn't expect that, eh? Magic and technology are not only ideologically opposed, but literally, and this comes out in fabulous bits of world building as you play. If your character is a mage you have to ride in a special compartment on trains, 'lest the engine explode at your very presence!

Oh, there's some sort of epic quest, assassins are after you and someone is trying to end the world, but you can handwave that away and concentrate on crisscrossing the world map, visiting cities and towns positively stuffed full of different sidequests: murder mysteries involving demons, stolen paintings, strange fiefdoms clinging on to weird Medievalism, all with branching solutions to choose from, and very little handholding from the game itself.

It's a real feast for the imaginative roleplayer looking for fantasy larks that are a bit different than the norm. At a glance, the action RPG seems like it should be easy to get right. And yet so few ever do. Part of its success is its relative simplicity - whether in solo or co-op, it's the most pick-up-able of RPGs, letting you immediately get into bashing your way through a series of mythological settings, hoovering up loot, and constantly upgrading your equipment.

With Brian "Age Of Empires" Sullivan at the helm, and a team featuring at least one ex-Looking Glass developer, it certainly had an advantage starting out. But despite just how brilliant a game they made, and the continued brilliance of its expansion, Immortal Throne, it wasn't enough of a success for Iron Lore to keep going. Which remains one of gaming history's great injustices. If you're looking for a way into action roleplaying games, then this is the one.

Incredibly accessible and enormously fun, Titan Quest stands over the gaming landscape like a If you've ever looked at the evolution of JRPGs in dismay and declared, 'Why can't things just stay the same like the good old days?

Despite being the 11th entry in the series most of which have never been available on PC, sadly , Echoes Of An Elusive Age is as retro and traditional as they come. Sure, the graphics are prettier, the orchestral music more stirring, and the world itself more open and more expansive than practically every other Dragon Quest game put together, but peel away that shiny veneer and its epic tale of a world-consuming evil and simple turn-based combat will have you cooing about 'the good old days' in no time.

Indeed, the only big new improvements Square Enix added to Dragon Quest XI was a free-camera mode and some horse riding those mad mavericks , which should give you an idea of just how slow-moving this franchise has been over the years.

Still, there is something admirable about how closely Square Enix have stuck to their guns here. It's warm, it's cosy, it's familiar, and by god is it soothing. If you're after a classic JRPG with all the visual trappings you'd expect from a modern release, there really is nothing quite like it on PC right now.

This open world turn-based space captain RPG has influences from all over the place, both in structure and setting, and they're assembled fantastically well. Choose a starting career, ship, and snazzy outfit for your ship's boss, then head out into the void to do whatever you can find.

Where other RPGs will find you cubbyholed into being a trader or soldier, Frontiers's busy, dynamic world and endless opportunities for profit, influence, and political intrigue will inevitably tempt you in another direction, and with the right ship and crew you can have a go at anything.

Until they die, and suddenly you can no longer use that vital ship boarding attack you were counting on. But you can switch death off if you want a stress-free time of it. Your crew's skills contribute to the running of your ship, and gain special talents every few levels based on their job. Those talents range from mundane but vital re-rolls for background tests to powerful combat attacks or ship-saving escape manoeuvres.

They can emphasise your captain's playstyle, shore up weaknesses, or you can scout the galaxy recruiting and training up a crew of specialists that let you cover your weird hybrid pirate-diplomat-doctor playstyle. The same is true of ships, with their extensive upgrade systems. Want to refit your cargo barge to launch a wing of fighters? Go for it.

A barely-armed spy ship that can flit up close and let you board attackers so your quartet of saboteurs can kill off their crew and blow up the engine? You should be a pirate, though. Pirates in this just want your cargo, not to murder everyone for nothing. Star Traders: Frontiers gets it.

Clearly, the vast majority of RPGs on this or any other list are fantasy-themed, but the other great roleplaying setting is cyberpunk. The Deus Ex games have arguably claimed the crown there, but for solid, generous, fully-fledged cyberpunkery in the classic Gibsonesque vein, Dragonfall hits the spot despite throwing a whole lot of fantasy into the mix. Between its West-meets-East fusion-world, replete with cybernetic implants and Blade Runneresque neon noodlebars, are elves, dwarves, trolls and dragons.

It sounds faintly absurd on paper, but seems like the most natural thing in the world in practice. It's far more important to know that this is a game about roleplaying as a gumshoe in a case which only ever gets stranger. In this iteration, you're cast as Vaan, a scrappy orphan thief who dreams of making it big in the world. After a chance encounter with a rebel princess and a pair of sky pirates one a posh Han Solo, the other a tall rabbit lady with infinitely better quips than Chewie , he's off on his grand adventure, eluding the evil empire as they work to get Ashe back on the throne.

See where we're going with this? It's a bit of a slow starter although less so now thanks to The Zodiac Age's new fast-forward feature for PC , but once you get to the meat of its semi real-time, semi turn-based combat, it really comes into its own. Known as the Gambit system, XII effectively lets you program your fellow party members to do whatever the hell you want.

It's a bit like Dragon Age: Origins' tactics. The Gambit system also gives you a lot more freedom to create the types of characters you want, too. Unlike Final Fantasy X's Sphere Grid, there are no obvious paths for moulding your characters here, which, yes, can mean you can accidentally screw yourself over early on if you don't know what you're doing, but does let you create some interesting class combos later on if you pick your abilities carefully.

The Zodiac Age also brings some important quality of life improvements to this rather aged PS2 classic that smartens it up for a modern playthrough, including that aforementioned fast forward button that lets you battle and run around town in double quick time seriously, all JRPGs should have this as standard , a 60fps frame rate, ultrawide support and higher resolutions.

It's not the first Final Fantasy we'd recommend to newcomers of the series, but it is one of the more playable and interesting entries on PC today. Skyrim might get most of the memes, but for some people, Morrowind will always be the best Elder Scrolls game. Very few edges are filed off in the name of explicability or trope.

With mods, you can make it feel something close to new again, too. There are HD texture packs and quality-of-life tweaks aplenty to make it accessible. There are new characters, new battle elements, an entirely new dungeon and a fresh semester. Load times are also practically non-existent, too, with level transitions taking around three seconds at most. However, if you have the strength to persevere, the elation that awaits is frankly unsurpassed.

Just be prepared to die hundreds of times before you emerge victoriously. This game has more quality storytelling in some of its fetch side quests than some other games have in their main storylines. You are Geralt, gruff and grey-haired monster hunter chap, a sort of heroic land pirate type. This is a deep-dive adventure you'll want to set a few months aside for, a bit like Skyrim.

These two duke it out as favorite accessible beards and swords RPGs, but The Witcher 3 snags the writing and moody-faced adult themes awards. While comparing the two feels natural, Skyrim is a mostly first-person game where The Witcher 3 is third-person like the other Witcher titles. It's also not easy either. You've been warned. This is what you get if you take the DNA of Balder's Gate and Planescape: Torment, but start making the game almost 20 years after those titles appeared. Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire is a classic isometric party-based RPG, a style that went out of fashion just after the turn of the millennium, but one that's good to have back.

Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire is saturated with old-school role-playing flavor. It's the story of a blighted land, and playing it is no cakewalk. You'll need strategy, as hack 'n' slash tactics don't work here. Combat is fluid rather than turn-based, but you can pause the action at any point to issue your party orders. If you played and loved Baldur's Gate or Icewind Dale, you'll feel right at home. From character classes that play entirely differently to one another like the undead character that can only speak to others with a disguise to the ability to interact with NPCs in whichever way you choose, you can play through much of the game without getting your hands dirty with combat.

Thankfully if you do decide to swing your sword, combat is a turn-based treat. You can destroy an explosive barrel to deal huge damage to an enemy, or electrify a puddle to fry them. Undertale certainly sticks out among all these cRPGs, but looking past its bullet hell-style combat and disregard for things like leveling and skill trees, it's got what counts: great storytelling and respect for player decisions.

It isn't quite the accomplishment of its cousin, Pillars of Eternity, but Tyranny's premise sets it apart from other RPGs.

Playing as an agent of evil could've been expressed with pure, bland sadism, but instead Tyranny focuses on the coldness of bureaucracy and ideological positioning. As a 'Fatebinder' faithful to conqueror Kyros the Overlord—yep, sounds evil—you're tasked with mediating talks between her bickering armies and engaging with rebels who fight despite obvious doom, choosing when to sympathize with them and when to eradicate them, most of the time striking a nasty compromise that balances cruelty and political positioning.

The latter is achieved through a complex reputation system that, unlike many other morality meters, allows fear and loyalty to coexist with companions and factions. As with Pillars, Tyranny's pauseable realtime combat and isometric fantasy world are a throwback to classic cRPGs, but not as a vehicle for nostalgia—it feels more like the genre had simply been hibernating, waiting for the right time to reemerge with all the creativity it had before.

This excellent free-to-play action RPG is heaven for players that enjoy stewing over builds to construct the most effective killing machine possible. As you plough through enemies and level up, you travel across this huge board, tailoring your character a little with each upgrade.

Gear customization is equally detailed. Every piece of armor has an arrangement of slots that take magic gems. These gems confer stat bonuses and bonus adjacency effects when set in the right formations.

You might begin Darkest Dungeon as you would an XCOM campaign: assembling a team of warriors that you've thoughtfully named, decorated, and upgraded for battle. How naive! Inevitably, your favorite highwayman gets syphilis. Your healer turns masochistic, and actually begins damaging herself each turn.

Your plague doctor gets greedy, and begins siphoning loot during each dungeon run. A few hours into the campaign, your precious heroes become deeply flawed tools that you either need to learn how to work with, or use until they break, and replace like disposable batteries. With Lovecraft's hell as your workplace, Darkest Dungeon is about learning how to become a brutal and effective middle manager. Your heroes will be slaughtered by fishmen, cultists, demons, and foul pigmen as you push through decaying halls, but more will return to camp with tortured minds or other maladies.

Do you spend piles of gold to care for them, or put those resources toward your ultimate goal? Darkest Dungeon is a brilliant cohesion of art, sound, writing, and design. The colorful, hand-drawn horrors pop from the screen, showing their influence but never feeling derivative. It's a hard game, but once you understand that everyone is expendable—even the vestal with kleptomania you love so much—Darkest Dungeon's brutality becomes a fantastic story-generator more than a frustration.

Get those horses looking nice and crisp with the best gaming monitors available today. There are few games that get medieval combat right, and fewer still that add a strategic, army-building component.

The metagame of alliance-making, marriage, looting, and economics underpinning these battles makes Warband a satisfying game of gathering goods, enemies, and friendship. We loved BioWare's original Neverwinter Nights from and especially its expansions , but as a single-player experience, Neverwinter Nights 2 was in a class all of its own. Whereas the original had a fairly weak main campaign that mainly seemed aimed at showing what the DM kit was capable of, Obsidian Entertainment managed to equal and arguably outdo BioWare's storytelling prowess in the sequel when it took over the helm.

The whole affair brimmed with humor, and companions such as the raucous dwarf Khelgar Ironfist still have few rivals in personality nine years later. And the quality just kept coming. Shades of The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past reveal themselves in the masterful Shadow of the Betrayer expansion's focus on two halves of the same world, but Obsidian skillfully uses that familiar framework to deliver an unforgettable commentary on religion. Few games are as staunchly open-world—and unforgiving—as Gothic 2.

The first time we played it, we left town in the wrong direction and immediately met monsters many levels higher than us, and died horribly.

Lesson learned. It sounds like Gothic 2 is too punishing, but we love the way it forces us to learn our way through its world. Pick a direction and run. A random chat with an NPC will lead you to a far-off dungeon, searching for a legendary relic.

You could be picking berries on the side of a mountain and discover a dragon. Oops, accidental dragon fight. Some on the PC Gamer team keep a modded-up Skyrim install handy, just in case they feel like adventure. Release date: Developer: Obsidian Entertainment Steam.

The sequel to the marvellous Pillars of Eternity ventures to the archipelago of Deadfire. You, and your party of adventurers, need to pursue a rampaging god, but to reach it you first you need to learn to sail the high seas aboard The Defiant. On the ocean you can explore and can plunder enemy vessels for loot, which you can then use to upgrade your ship. When you dock at a port the game switches back to classic top-down cRPG view and you're treated to elaborate and beautifully rendered locations.

Designer Paul Neurath originally conceived of a dungeon simulator that would turn traditional role-playing conventions on their head. Called Underworld, he and his team, the future Looking Glass Studios, built a game that rewarded real-world thinking to solve puzzles and please NPCs. Ultima developer Origin Systems was so impressed by the three-dimensional engine you could look up and down!

Characters that are normally enemies are friends in Underworld, and we love that you may not be able to tell. Underworld was a technological marvel in , but while the graphics are dated, the feeling of exploring the Stygian Abyss is just as exciting today.

Divinity was a Kickstarter success story that still somehow took us by surprise. Larian designed encounters thinking that someone could always disagree, or ruin things for you, or even kill the NPC you need to talk to—meaning that quests have to be solvable in unorthodox ways.

The writing in Divinity is consistently top-notch. Alliances are made, then broken, then remade in the aftermath. Choices you think are good just turn out to betray other characters.

The end result is possibly the most nuanced take on The Force in the entire Star Wars Expanded Universe, and definitely its most complex villains.

A fan-made mod restores much of that content, including a droid planet, and fixes lots of outstanding bugs, showing yet again that PC gamers will work hard to maintain their favorite games. The endgame includes some particularly sloggy dungeons, but no other game truly drops you into a Vampire world.

This is truly a cult classic of an RPG, and the fanbase has been patching and improving the game ever since release. Vampire: The Masquerade—Bloodlines 2 is currently in development.

Read everything we know about it in preparation for what could be another addition to this list in