Every console has had amazing RPGs. I’m still making my way through Persona 5 for the PS4, but it’s one of the best JRPGs I’ve ever played (Nier:Automata was no slouch either). The Last Story on the Wii was incredible, Lost Odyssey for XBox 360 is one of the best Final Fantasy games not named FF and Xenoblade Chronicles X on the Wii-U had me gawking at its breathtaking landscapes.
Want to go retro? Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy IV-VI, Breath of Fire, Secret of Evermore, Secret of Mana, Super Mario RPG, Terranigma, Earthbound, and so other games helped shape my childhood on the SNES. The Sega Genesis had Phantasy II and IV, Shining Force (I know technically a strategy JRPG), some guilty pleasures of mine like Sword of Vermilion and Super Hydlide. We could go back even further to the original Nintendo or Sega Master System.
The PS1 had one of my favourite trilogies in gaming, Final Fantasy VII through IX, as well as Chrono Cross, Dragon Quest VII, Vagrant Story, and Suikoden II. The Dreamcast had the wonderful Grandia II and Skies of Arcadia (I’ve since met director Rieko Kodama online and remain a huge fan).
Portable gaming systems also had some amazing RPGs, like Radiant Historia and The World Ends With You on the Nintendo DS.
I’d be remiss not to mention the Commodore 64 or PC RPGs in general like the original Fallout and Ultima series, as well as Planescape. Even though they’re not consoles per se, some of the greatest RPGs of all time were on those platforms.
There are many consoles I never played growing up so I’d be curious to hear about the RPGs, if any, of the Turbo Grafx 16, MSX, Neo Geo, and any others.
The question today: which console had the best RPGs?
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21 responses to “Which Console Has The Best RPGs?”
You already answered have the answer in the article, no other platform had the sheer quantity and quality of rpg titles as the PS1.
However you then have to consider the backwards compatibility of the platform. The original PS3 was capable of playing the highest number of quality RPGs for a console, even if they weren’t originally developed for that console.
Then the PC almost definitely takes that spot. With over four decades worth of RPG games, it’s kind of hard to beat that. Nintendo might if they made their virtual console a free for all games, but they can’t and won’t
The question posed by the article does specify console, so the PC is excluded from the range of answers. However yes, the pc wins without breaking a sweat if we look at the platform with the most good rpgs rather than the console with the most.
Hard to go past the SNES really.
For impact on the landscape of gaming in general you can’t really go past the SNES. Each console has their gems for sure (Persona 5 is in my top 3 games list next to Chronotrigger and The Last of Us) but so much of what we expect these days from RPGs, stories in games, sound design and character can be traced back to the SNES.
It’s just not fair comparing the others to the PS1. It had suikoden, final fantasy, xenogears, star Ocean and a dozen others.
A clear answer would be a matter of opinion, overall I would have to say PS personally but Nintendo’s contribution is awfully hard to pass up, and Sega gave it a red hot go with some of its own.
Tough question but I would say PS1 followed by Snes and then PS2.
Neo geo being an arcade system (the home console was it in a plastic box essentially with no exclusive games, I would say there’s none. And the MSX was a home computer like a Commodore or Amiga, so it’s not really a console.
Samurai Spirits is about the only RPG for the Neo Geo, though it was only on the CD system.
Then that’s the neogeoCD then, not the neogeo. Just to pedantic.
‘Has’ and ‘had’ are two different things.
Then PS1 HAD the best, but the PS4 HAS the best RPGs.
I still “have” copies of final fantasy and others for my PS1, so my PS1 still “has” the best RPG’s.
Has is current tense and had is past tense. Unless all the PS1 games have been destroyed, you can still have them. So the PS1 has the best tittles.
The PS1 had the higher number combined with quality, but the SNES had an even higher standard of quality in fewer games. Chrono Cross was awesome but it was not Chrono Triggger. FFVII-IX were great by VI is still the better one. Legend of Mana is super underrated but it cannot compare to Seiken Desetsu 3 (though I do like it better than Secret of Mana), and so on.
Historically the original PlayStation had the most good quality RPG’s. But currently I still go back to my PS3 for Oblivion, Skyrim and Diablo 3…
I think this is the answer. Simply because the range of the PC library is so large over so long that most of the best RPG’s came to it. Not just Fallout and Ultima, I can go grab the entire main series of Final Fantasy to play on Steam. Suikoden I and II? On GOG. The entire collection of Elder Scrolls? Even the bad ones? Yup.
Not all of the games are well made versions of the games. And the PC does have large holes in it’s library. Some of these games require fiddling to get to work these days, but they were released on the PC at some point.
As for whether or not PC’s can be considered consoles, I think the line has definitely blurred a bit lately. Between Steam Links, Steam OS, Steam Controller and other options it’s not too hard to get a console experience of the PC, where you plop on the couch and grab a controller. And like you pointed out, PC’s have been consoles in the past. I don’t see why we can’t consider them the same now
Xbox 360. It has Lost Odyssey and that’s all I need 😉
When talking about the best things from the past, don’t let nostalgia blind your rationality.
This is what makes it hard for me to answer the question. I grew up playing Bards Tale 1-3, Wizardry games, and Ultima 2-4 as a teenager, and loved them all. But comparing them to something like Witcher 3, with tens of thousands of man-days of development, and its not a fair comparison.
Get a teenager to play FFVII for the first time today, and while they might enjoy the game, probably wont see why it was so important when it came out in 1997. Its just impossible to be as immersed as we were at the time, when technology means worlds like Skyrim and Witcher 3 are now the default.
Your imagination played a massive part in making those early games so memorable, and to me it means comparing through rose colored glasses and holding them to an unfair advantage over something that doesn’t have the benefit of nostalgia.
Based on what the capabilities of the era were, I think the PS3 holds up as well as anything myself, though the early PC RPG days were amazing.
PS2 since it had an absolute sea of JRPGs (some 2D, some 3D). Then the SNES. PS1 had quite a few as well, but not as many as the SNES.