We’ve already mentioned that the PS2 was the best place for RPGs in its generation — and the PS3 only continued to solidify Sony’s position in the genre. Not only did Sony’s first HD machine play host to a variety of multi-platform masterpieces, it also featured far more exclusive RPGs that competing systems like the Wii never did. As with its predecessor, many beloved franchises got their start here, others experienced a boom in popularity, and yet more had a golden age. To commemorate the genre’s headliners in the seventh generation, here’s our list of the 10 best PS3 RPGs ever made.
10. Nier
Like Drakengard before it, Nier suffers from relatively decent but not spectacular action RPG combat. But just like Yoko Taro’s other works, the true highlight of Nier is its incredible story. Nier begins as a seemingly straightforward tale of a father trying to save his daughter from an incurable illness, before diving into typical JRPG themes — like justice and morality — and showing just how tragically wrong it can go. It’s a bleak affair, made more complex as each successive playthrough reveals extra details about the world that cast the heroes in a completely different light.
It’s quite telling just how good Yoko Taro’s dark and subversive writing is, when later games, including a remaster of this very game, went on to achieve instant critical acclaim simply by implementing a more exciting combat system and a more well-rounded package.
Even so, the original Nier is still worth a look for the curious. Two versions of this game were created, one starring a middle-aged man caring for his daughter, one starring a teenager caring for his younger sister. The latter version, though Japanese exclusive at first, went on to become the basis for Nier Replicant in all regions, making this PS3 (and Xbox 360) original the only way to experience the story with an older protagonist.
9. Tales of Xillia
After several more light-hearted games in the Tales series, Tales of Xillia moves the needle back in the other direction, dealing with darker themes like terrorism and the lengths people are willing to go in order to stop environmental destruction and decay. Unique to this entry in the series, players can choose either Jude Mathis or Milla Maxwell as their main protagonist. While both characters experience the same overall story, there are unique moments and events in each route.
While Xillia’s story treads down a similar path to past entries, like Symphonia and Vesperia, it still features a strong hook and faster pacing than Graces did. Complementing it is a combat system that combines the combo-heavy mechanics of Graces with the sideways perspective of old titles. Xillia’s combat system also does some much needed streamlining, making its combo mechanics much more accessible to players of all skill levels.
Tales of Xillia also featured Lilium Orbs, a customization reminiscent of Final Fantasy X’s Sphere Grid. While not quite as in-depth, it still featured a fair amount of room for player expression in developing their characters, and helped keep progression engaging.
Though Xillia suffers a bit from bland overworld design and a rushed finale, it’s otherwise a very solidly paced RPG that doesn’t overstay its welcome, unlike so many modern games in the years since its release.
8. Dragon Age: Origins
Dragon Age may currently number three entries, with a fourth releasing this year, but ask a longtime fan what the best game in the series is, and they’ll likely tell you it’s this one. BioWare’s 2009 fantasy epic was able to captivate audiences with its story and gameplay in ways that the sequels never quite managed.
Set in Ferelden, a country in the world of Thedas, the player takes control of the Warden, a protagonist whose race and class can be customized. As part of the Grey Wardens, your character is tasked with fighting back against an invasion from the monstrous Darkspawn.
Even by the standards of BioWare’s other games, the world of Dragon Age is incredibly rich in detail, with a setting that has a deep history to it. And of course, it wouldn’t be a BioWare RPG without a set of well-written and nuanced characters — some of which you can romance — that still linger in the memory.
Dragon Age: Origins also featured a real-time with pause combat system that allowed you to issue orders to your allies, and fans lament how later entries strayed away from this tactical combat in favor of more action-orientated battles.
Though the later entries have their fans, Dragon Age: Origins has arguably never been bettered for really leaning into the RP in RPG, and is still worth checking out today.
7. Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch
Following its initial announcement, Ni no Kuni garnered quite a bit of excitement, and for good reason: this tenth anniversary project saw developer Level-5 collaborating with none other than the legendary Studio Ghibli. The result is one of the PS3’s most vibrant and colorful JRPGs, with gorgeous landscapes, stunning animated cutscenes, a soundtrack composed by Joe Hisaishi himself, and a whimsical, emotional story that evokes that authentic Ghibli feel.
Ni no Kuni’s story starts in earnest when protagonist Oliver’s mother dies after rescuing him from drowning. In his lowest moment, his tears bring to life a doll his mother gave him, revealing its true identity as a fairy named Drippy. At Drippy’s behest, Oliver takes up the Wizard’s Companion and enters an alternate world, going on a journey to stop the Dark Djinn Shadar and find a way to save his mother in the process.
Along the way, Oliver will recruit many monsters as familiars, and this is where the bulk of the game’s combat system comes in — characters and familiars can be commanded in real-time battles, akin to something like Final Fantasy XII or Xenoblade Chronicles. Each party member can switch between three familiars in combat, and outside of battle, these charming creatures can be raised and nurtured with food, and eventually evolve into stronger forms.
Though a bit of a slow burn, Ni no Kuni proves to be a magical adventure that lives up to the pedigree of the people behind it.
6. The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel
After leaving the streets of Crossbell, Falcom turned its attention west to the Erebonian Empire for the third arc of the massive Trails series. While the Liberl and Crossbell arcs had its protagonists exploring the whole country, this first entry in the Cold Steel tetralogy places you in the role of military student Rean Schwarzer, resulting in an experience that can, to an extent, be described as “Persona with field trips”.
Though Cold Steel features a calendar system, school setting, relationship mechanic, and even a large dungeon that periodically updates throughout the story, it largely eschews the Persona series’ time management in favor of more traditional main story progression coupled with side quests.
Complimenting this is a solid turn-based combat system that introduces a linking mechanic; characters can pair up on the fly, allowing for things like follow-up attacks, ally protection, and enhanced magic. Character customization has also been simplified, with the ability to directly add specific arts (spells) quartz, rather than requiring specific elemental combinations to create arts lists.
Make no mistake — despite the dated graphics and slightly languid introduction, Trails of Cold Steel is an incredibly emotional rollercoaster that quickly and expertly endears the player to its cast. The fantastic localization, voice acting, and soundtrack all add so much more weight to what already felt like a more mature JRPG. Trails of Cold Steel’s position as the first game of a new arc also makes it a fantastic starting point for those looking to try out Trails.
5. Deus Ex: Human Revolution
The cyberpunk genre has produced some real classics over the decades, and among them is the Deus Ex series. Originating as a first person shooter RPG on PC, the series depicted a dystopian future draped in conspiracies. Following the closure of developer Ion Storm by Eidos Interactive, a third entry in the series would materialize under Eidos-Montréal.
A decade before Cyberpunk 2077 monopolized discussion of cyberpunk-themed video games, Deus Ex: Human Revolution wowed audiences with the beginnings of a transhumanist world, where cybernetic augmentations are becoming increasingly commonplace. Rather than deal with corporate dystopia, however, Human Revolution instead places its emphasis on the augmentations themselves, and the impact they have on society.
This features heavily in the main narrative, which has protagonist Adam Jensen investigating a terrorist group six months after an attack on his employer Sarif Industries. As with many other western RPGs, player choice is at the forefront of the experience. How the player approaches the game is mostly up to them, and the choices they do have feel fleshed out — take, for instance, the stealth system, which gradually gives players tools to monitor enemies, and allows them to play nearly the entire game by sneaking past enemies instead of engaging. It’s a far cry from other games in the genre, which tend to use much more rudimentary and unsatisfying stealth mechanics.
Though lackluster boss fights drag down the experience somewhat, it doesn’t stop Deus Ex: Human Revolution from being a fantastic action RPG and a worthy prequel to the original title.
4. Mass Effect 2
Mass Effect 2 took everything about its predecessor that was beloved and iterated upon it to create one of the best western RPGs of all time.
Gunplay was more precise, and streamlined equipment and upgrade mechanics put a bigger emphasis on action over sorting through loot. And because the entire story revolved around Shepard gathering a crew and earning their loyalty for an upcoming suicide mission, the narrative explores its characters much more deeply than the original Mass Effect did, ensuring that Shepard’s squad would secure their place as some of gaming’s most remembered characters.
As always, player choice shapes the outcome of the narrative, with Paragon and Renegade choices that influence Shepard’s personality. This time, your decisions have an even bigger impact on the proceedings. The oft-talked about suicide mission is a complex finale sequence where the choices you’ve made throughout the story — whether you’ve secured the loyalty of your squad and who you assign to which role — determine your level of success. It’s one of gaming’s most memorable setpieces, one you know that’s coming, but it can still absolutely hit you in the gut in unexpected ways.
What BioWare achieved here was nothing short of incredible, and Mass Effect 2 still stands the test of time well over a decade later. The series peaked here.
3. Persona 5
Atlus’s RPGs have always been fantastic, but Persona 5 was worth the agonizingly long wait. Despite continuing the trend of a high school setting, Persona 5’s inclusion and handling of sensitive topics helped the game resonate with audiences on a scale the studio had never seen before. Its story of social justice and vigilantism may be a slow burn with a 100+ hour runtime, but it’s one of the genre’s most thrilling, filled with twists and turns, while striking a good balance between Persona 3’s darker mood and Persona 4’s comedy and tight knit friendships.
It also blew open the floodgates for stylish and streamlined UI design. Persona 5’s combat and Confidants systems were all built on well-established foundations that we’ve seen before, yet the immaculate presentation oozes a level of personality that many other games won’t come close to, all while being an absolute blast to play.
While Atlus has gone on to rerelease the game as Persona 5 Royal on other systems with quality-of-life additions and over 20 hours of new content, those that have the time may find the original game to be still worth a look. Players looking for a bit more of a challenge (and a slightly different gameplay flavor to Palace and boss designs) may find the original Persona 5 to be just right, since Royal pushes things a tad too far in the player’s favor with its enhancements. It also helps that you’ll get to hear the (arguably superior) Last Surprise battle theme far more often.
2. Dark Souls
When Hidetaka Miyazaki was given the chance to take control of a floundering high-fantasy project at FromSoftware, he decided that if it was already considered a failure, he could do whatever he wanted with it, resulting in the highly punishing Demon’s Souls.
What no one could have anticipated, however, was a sleeper hit that would go on to birth an entirely new subgenre of action role-playing games. The bleak fantasy atmosphere and punishing combat that demanded patience and mastery proved to be a hit with western audiences, and FromSoft saw fit to begin working on a spiritual successor. Just two years later, the world was graced with the release of Dark Souls.
Soon after you leave the Undead Asylum and make the journey to Lordran, you’re greeted with a vastly different world than that of Demon’s Souls’s Boletaria. Rather than split its areas into discrete “levels” accessed by teleporting in from a hub world, Dark Souls features sprawling world design not unlike that of a Metroidvania. And in place of the more gimmicky bosses of Demon’s Souls, Dark Souls features far more punishing battles that reward perseverance and observation of enemy attacks.
It was also here that Souls lore and storytelling would start to become far more detailed, weaving a tale of a world stuck in perpetual decline, and shrouding the motivations of many characters in much more ambiguity. This has now become a FromSoft staple: if the kingdom isn’t about to collapse, it’s probably teetering. Also, the good person was probably evil the whole time, and might have been a squid.
Dark Souls go on to receive a DLC expansion, Artorias of the Abyss, and as a package, Dark Souls remains an all-time classic, one that ought to be played for those looking to understand the roots of FromSoft’s more modern releases. Dark Souls 2 is also certainly an experience.
1. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
With every new release, Bethesda’s Elder Scrolls games have spiked in popularity. Apart from that weird N-Gage thing, of course. Skyrim, however, remains on a whole different level even to this day.
Set 200 years after the events of Oblivion, you play as the Dragonborn, a mortal with the soul of a dragon, and the only one capable of permanently killing dragons. The Dragonborn is destined to be the one who stops Alduin, a godlike dragon who poses a threat to Skyrim and the world at large. In the middle of this is the rumblings of a civil war following the assassination of High King Torygg at the hands of Ulfric Stormcloak.
Bethesda, at this point, had mastered creating rich and detailed open worlds — Skyrim’s hand-crafted setting still retains a sense of wonder and discovery 13 years later, and Bethesda’s follow-up games, even those that let you venture into the vast reaches of space, haven’t quite captured that same magic of exploration.
It helps that Skyrim overhauled the progression systems seen in past entries. Gone were obtuse mechanics that disincentivized leveling up your character, and in their place was an intuitive and accessible system where your skills improved the more you used them.
Though there were some delays in the process, Skyrim on the PS3 eventually received all three expansions — each of which added new stories, choices, and gameplay mechanics to enrich the experience. Taken as a whole package, Skyrim easily has dozens — perhaps even hundreds — of hours’ worth of content, even with the lack of mod support.
Regardless of what platform you play it on, Skyrim has left an incredible legacy, and its influence can still be felt in the gaming industry to this day.
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