
So don’t come yelling at us if your favorite RPG from 1991 hasn’t made the list. This doesn’t mean that we’ll ignore factors such as innovation and cultural impact – they just won’t weigh as much. When it comes to deciding what ‘’best’’ means, we have identified the games that are fun to play now.


Contains spells and/or magical items and contraptions.Has mythical beings such as gods, dwarves, elves, etc.We’ve prioritized games with no references to real world locations, events and people, but it’s not mandatory. When it comes to defining whether a game can be considered ‘’fantasy’’, we took the following criteria into consideration:

As a result, our list contains some titles that you would not normally classify as ‘’fantasy’’ – Shadowrun: Hong Kong, for instance. The definition has broadened so much that it would be silly to stick to the basics. The same thing goes when it comes to defining fantasy.

The fact that they were focused on story, character progression and exploration made them easily distinguishable from the platformers and action titles that were dominating the industry.įlash forward to now, and role-playing games are getting increasingly harder to pinpoint, as virtually all modern video games have at least a couple of RPG mechanics, whether we’re talking about skill trees, dialog options or freedom of choice. Twenty, even ten years ago, identifying a role-playing game was easy. Our Criteria for choosing the best fantasy RPG What Makes an RPG?
