
"In third grade, I broke both my wrists at the same time. This did not stop me from playing Super Mario RPG. Within an hour of breaking them."
Kyle Charizanis has been playing RPGs for pretty much his whole life, and these, in his professional and biased opinion, are the very best.
Featuring tons of music and opening videos from these amazing games. (Also, this isn't a slideshow, so you can see the entire list by clicking once.)

Final Fantasy VII 1997 exceeds 15.5 million units sold worldwide as of February 2026, reinforcing its legacy as the series best selling title.
Modern day publisher be like: "Failed to meet sales expectations. Pivoting to live service."
It's an absolute legend of a game. And I honestly really love how the remake trilogy is shaping up so far.

Final Fantasy 7 is one of the most iconic video games of all time, with it helping to changed the RPG landscape when it was released in 1997.
If you already own it... There, I saved you the click on a deliberately misleading article.
I bought the game yesterday on steam for $4 because Square Enix is trying to replace it with a version that has no mod support.
Prior to yesterday, I had no idea the game had so many great mods until people started making a fuss out of it.
u get the switch 1 version of the og ff7 for free if you own 7 remake for the switch 2.
lol.
But BG2 didn't emerge in a vacuum, and in a recent chat with Slandered Gaming it emerged that—while we can thank BG2 for a lot of our favourite RPGs since—we have a whole other game to thank for BG2. That'd be Final Fantasy 7, which lit a fire under BG2 director James Ohlen to go all out with the game's structure and companions, per Trent Oster—who worked on the original Baldur's Gate and has since become CEO of Beamdog, the studio behind the BG1 and BG2 Enhanced Editions.
Baldurs Gate 1&2 were my games back in the day on PC. Icewindale and Neverwinter Nights as well
Glad to see Final Fantasy IX so high up on the list, the first RPG I ever played, and to this day one of my favorite games of all time.
not a great list IMO, but I do agree with number 1, though FFVI would be a very close second.
http://www.newgrounds.com/p...
Actually, this needs to be sent to square. Printed out frame by frame and knocked over Yoichi Wada's head.