What Are The Best PC RPG Games To Play?

Pc Rpg Games represent the pinnacle of interactive storytelling, offering immersive worlds, complex characters, and impactful choices. If you’re looking for guidance or support with Polar products, be sure to visit polarservicecenter.net for helpful resources. Navigating the vast landscape of computer RPGs can be daunting, but understanding key features and exploring different subgenres will enhance your gaming experience and make it more enjoyable.

1. Understanding PC RPG Games

PC RPG Games, or Role-Playing Games, are digital games played on personal computers where players assume the roles of characters in a fictional setting. In these games, players are responsible for making choices and developing their characters through a series of quests, battles, and interactions. They are popular because of their immersive storylines, detailed character development, and the element of choice, which can drastically change the game’s narrative.

1.1 What Defines a PC RPG Game?

The defining characteristics of a PC RPG game include:

Character Development: Players customize and improve their characters’ skills, abilities, and equipment.
Story-Driven Gameplay: The plot is central, with quests, dialogue, and decisions influencing the game’s outcome.
World Exploration: Open or semi-open worlds allow players to discover lore, treasures, and new adventures.
Combat Systems: Strategic combat is often a core mechanic, with turn-based or real-time systems.
Moral Choices: Decisions made by the player affect the story, character relationships, and game world.

1.2 Why Are PC RPGs So Popular?

According to research from the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts, in July 2025, role-playing games provide players with a sense of control and investment in the narrative. This contributes to their popularity, which is due to several factors:

Immersion: The detailed worlds and stories draw players into the game, creating a sense of being part of another reality.
Personalization: Customizing characters and making meaningful choices allows players to express themselves.
Community: Many RPGs have strong online communities where players share experiences, tips, and mods.
Replayability: The multiple paths and endings encourage players to experience the game multiple times.
Escapism: PC RPGs offer an escape from reality into worlds filled with adventure and excitement.

2. Key Features to Look for in PC RPG Games

When selecting a PC RPG game, several key features can enhance the overall experience.

2.1 Compelling Story and Writing

A compelling story with well-developed characters and meaningful dialogue is essential. The writing should draw you into the world and make you care about the fate of your character and the world around you.

2.2 Deep Character Customization

The ability to customize your character’s appearance, skills, and background is a crucial aspect of a good PC RPG. A deep character customization system allows players to create unique characters that reflect their playstyle and preferences.

2.3 Impactful Choices and Consequences

Your decisions should matter. The best PC RPGs offer choices that have a significant impact on the story, character relationships, and the game world.

2.4 Engaging Combat System

Whether it’s turn-based or real-time, the combat system should be engaging and strategic. It should require players to think tactically and use their character’s abilities effectively.

2.5 Rich World and Lore

A rich, detailed world with a deep history and lore can greatly enhance the immersion and enjoyment of the game.

2.6 Modding Support

Modding support allows players to customize and expand the game, adding new content, features, and improvements. This can greatly extend the replayability and enjoyment of a PC RPG.

3. Exploring Subgenres of PC RPG Games

PC RPG games come in a variety of subgenres, each offering a unique flavor and gameplay experience.

3.1 Classic RPGs

Classic RPGs typically feature a party-based system, turn-based combat, and a focus on storytelling and character development. They often have a top-down or isometric perspective.

Examples: Baldur’s Gate II: Shadows of Amn, Planescape: Torment, Fallout: A Post Nuclear Role Playing Game

3.2 Action RPGs (ARPGs)

Action RPGs combine the character development and storytelling elements of RPGs with fast-paced, real-time combat.

Examples: Diablo II, The Witcher III: Wild Hunt, Elden Ring

3.3 MMORPGs

MMORPGs (Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games) allow thousands of players to interact in a persistent online world. They typically feature ongoing content updates and a strong social component.

Note: This list focuses on single-player RPG experiences, and MMORPGs are generally not included.

3.4 Tactical RPGs

Tactical RPGs emphasize strategic combat and unit placement. They often have turn-based systems and require players to carefully plan their moves.

Examples: Jagged Alliance 2, Knights of the Chalice 2, Dungeon Rats

3.5 Open World RPGs

Open World RPGs allow players to freely explore a vast, interconnected world. They often feature a main storyline as well as numerous side quests and activities.

Examples: The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, Kingdom Come: Deliverance, Fallout: New Vegas

3.6 Indie RPGs

Indie RPGs are developed by independent studios, often with smaller budgets and more experimental gameplay mechanics.

Examples: Underrail, Disco Elysium, Caves of Lore

4. Top PC RPG Games of All Time

Here’s an overview of some of the top PC RPG games, each offering a unique experience.

4.1 Fallout: A Post Nuclear Role Playing Game (1997)

In Fallout, born and raised in Vault 13, you are unceremoniously dumped in the post-post-apocalyptic outside world to look for a replacement to a vital part of the facility’s water processing system. World War III lies decades in the past. The world was blasted to ruins by nuclear warheads and the survivors’ descendants have begun to slowly rebuild, but your isolation in the vault makes you a stranger in a strange land.

In Fallout, your choices have consequences and your character is what you make of him or her, not just a race/class combination. Couple that with a believable antagonist (in the context of the game), B-movie shlock monsters like super mutants, radscorpions and deathclaws, over the top death animations, the dark humorous contrast between the blind pre-war optimism and the current post-war state of affairs, a 50’s retro-futuristic aesthetic as well as a moody soundtrack by Mark Morgan, and you get one hell of a game. Combat is devoid of challenge but entertaining, in no small part thanks to the death animations.

Compared to its direct sequel, Fallout is shorter but has a more tightly focused plot and atmosphere. It also features fewer pop-culture references and easter eggs. Finally, I love the ending slides narrating the impact of your journey on the people you’ve met and places you’ve visited. Fallout is good stuff.

Key Features: Post-apocalyptic setting, impactful choices, retro-futuristic aesthetic.
Why It’s Great: It offers multiple solutions to every single quest, with choices based both on character skill and player decisions. It presents a world at once familiar and alien, opening it up to the player to explore as they like. It also makes exploring the world enjoyable.

4.2 Planescape: Torment (1999)

Ah, wretched Planescape: Torment, always Planescape: Torment. This game is so hard to sell. I’ve many times attempted to get people to play it, only for them to get bored before leaving the mortuary or the bar outside it. If they do keep playing despite that, they are met with terribly shallow encounter design and an RPG system that seems more like a strange cross between Choose Your Own Adventure books and an adventure game, based around puzzles and conversations. Even calling it an RPG is almost a matter of some debate. So why then does this game hold such a high place to so many of us?

The biggest reason is that this game has shown us that story-based games can work. Often likened to a playable novel, PS:T tells the engrossing tale of a man in search of his past – or pasts. Starting from the tired cliché of amnesia, PS:T quickly draws those who will accept it for what it is, warts and all, into an engrossing tale of redemption, love and treachery, covering succinctly many of man’s desires and shortcomings. While nobody is going to suggest this is the same level as classic literature, this is the game that showed us that video game writing can be above average, can indeed conjure up fantastic worlds and allow us to visit them. Not one NPC in PS:T does not have an interesting story, not one description of text or snippet of party banter an enticing tidbit that teaches us about the odd, foreign world that the tale occurs in.

Key Features: Rich narrative, unique setting, focus on philosophical themes.
Why It’s Great: Allowing the player to explore one of the most unique worlds in the history of computer RPGs and interact with some of the most interesting characters ever created, PS:T is also a very solid game underneath it all. Everything you do in this game matters: how you create your character and develop it, how you approach people and what you say to them, what you do and what you decide not to do.

4.3 Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura (2001)

Arcanum is a vast, sprawling, buggy mess, with wonky combat, questionable mechanics and a sense of game balance that would make the Dark Souls developers commit seppuku. It’s also incredibly sad. This game attempts much and fails in more categories than I care to explain. And yet it has flashes of brilliance that make it more memorable to me than even Fallout.

For one, the character creation is delightfully complicated. Arcanum can be played in a stunning variety of builds. You might find yourself drifting towards Speech-tagged gunslinger in Fallout on repeated playthroughs, but the staggering amount of skills, abilities, backgrounds, races, recipes, and so on and so on, which more often than not have an effect on dialogue, truly allow for diverse and varied approaches. You want to be an assassin? By all means. A thief? Sure. Have others fight your battles? Unlike Fallout, this is a lot more possible in this game. Add to all that the possibility to branch into magic or technology — or neither, or both — and you are met with a veritable playground of choices from the moment you create your character. It helps that the world you then explore is lovingly detailed, steeped in deep melancholy, and realized wonderfully through newspapers, rumors, and vibrant, varied towns, each with their unique flavor.

Key Features: Unique steampunk setting, deep character creation, reactivity.
Why It’s Great: The game is terrifyingly ambitious in every aspect of its design: an open and incredibly diverse character system, an insanely large world to explore, a complicated story and reactivity the likes of which few games since have been able to match.

4.4 Deus Ex (2000)

Modern stealth games and Deus Ex-likes – oft-times called “0451 games” – make one core mistake in their design. This mistake is the most apparent in Arkane Studio’s Dishonored, but it can, in one way or another, be found in almost every 0451-game released since 2004. They ask you to focus on either stealth, combat or some other aspect of their “toolbox” design, and the character development and reward structures push you down “corridors” of character customization, offering you the “choice” of how to play the game from beginning to end, rather than asking you to utilize the full extend of the varied skills at your disposal.

What made Deus Ex so mind-blowingly awesome, such a hallmark of game design, is that it asks you to decide, for each single obstacle you face, which approach you want to use. You’re not asked to stealth through the whole game even when combat seems a better approach, or to shoot and kill everyone even when creeping through the shadows would be smarter. It doesn’t reward you for sticking to a single course of action during the entire game. It lets you decide what fits any given situation. Deus Ex, in other words, makes you feel like a superhuman spy with a massive toolkit fitted for any obstacle – your success depends on your ability to identify which part of your kit is best suited for the challenge you face.

Key Features: Cyberpunk setting, multiple solutions to problems, immersive gameplay.
Why It’s Great: It offers many different paths and options to the player, setting a standard for all FPS/RPG hybrids. The game’s pace is handled wonderfully, alternating between action, infiltration, and social interactions.

4.5 Fallout 2 (1998)

“Bigger, better, badder” might as well have been the tagline for Fallout 2. Bigger: the game world is huge compared to Fallout 1. There is a lot more stuff to do, and it has probably 3 or 4 times the content as the first game. Better: they cleaned up the character system a bit. The useless skills are now a little less useless. The faction mechanics were significantly upgraded and made more important. The game was made by people who clearly understood what was fun about Fallout 1. Badder: the large world lost the coherency of the first game’s smaller one, and often feels like a theme park. They also jam packed the game with pop culture references frequently breaking Tim Cain’s “it has to make sense even if you don’t get the reference” rule. Overall a very good RPG, just not the revelation that the first game was.

Key Features: Expanded world, improved mechanics, pop-culture references.
Why It’s Great: The choices and consequences the game presents are – at times – some of the best offered in recent years in the RPG genre, and it also allows for a delightful amount of satisfying role-playing options.

4.6 Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines (2004)

Bloodlines has the best ambiance of any RPG I’ve ever played. From the dark alleys of downtown L.A., to the glittering streets of Hollywood by night, to the horrors found in vampire dens, Bloodlines manages to capture the soul of Vampire: the Masquerade. While it does have some flaws – the action-based combat, the rushed final act, and Troika’s hallmark lengthy unskippable dungeons full of enemies – what elements it does well, it does very well. The clever writing, memorable characters, and the atmosphere that is second to none easily make this game worth a playthrough.

Key Features: Atmospheric setting, memorable characters, branching storylines.
Why It’s Great: It plays awkwardly, it’s outdated, and it shows its tumultuous development cycle in each crack and crevice. What binds it all together and makes it hold up is the atmosphere.

4.7 Baldur’s Gate II: Shadows of Amn (2000)

When I first played Baldur’s Gate 2, it immediately managed to grab me. Everything about it was just good – the graphics, the interface (to this day I believe that the Infinity Engine games had one of the best interfaces ever), the story (even though the writing was, at times, quite amateurish), and even the combat. It’s a game chock full of content, with solid writing and combat that is actually good despite being real-time with pause. Baldur’s Gate 2 is epic fantasy done right, and it’s definitely the best game BioWare has ever made.

Key Features: Epic fantasy setting, engaging combat, deep party interactions.
Why It’s Great: The diversity of encounters, spells, quests and, well, just about everything, is staggering, and most of it has a satisfying conclusion with a great piece of loot and a cool fight at the end.

4.8 The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind (2002)

Morrowind is, hands down, one of my top five RPGs. Vvardenfell is barely a 10 mile island, but it’s designed in such a way, with natural barriers and excellent use of fog, that it feels massive. The game oozes atmosphere from every pore, its story and lore are almost unrivaled, and despite playing it for hundreds of hours I still feel like there is more to be discovered.

Key Features: Open world exploration, rich lore, atmospheric setting.
Why It’s Great: The game oozes atmosphere from every pore, its story and lore are almost unrivaled, and despite playing it for hundreds of hours I still feel like there is more to be discovered.

4.9 Baldur’s Gate (1998)

Generally considered inferior to its much-acclaimed sequel, Baldur’s Gate has you embark on a journey through the Forgotten Realms’ Sword Coast to experience a story that is both personal and world-changing. And by Sword Coast I mean every square foot of it because, while not being truly open world, the game has a huge number of wilderness locations.

Key Features: Classic Infinity Engine gameplay, vast world, strategic combat.
Why It’s Great: It features a plethora of spells and classes based on the 2nd edition AD&D ruleset. Encounters can be adequately challenging and it’s always fun to burn someone with a fireball.

4.10 Fallout: New Vegas (2010)

The Codex seems split on this game; either you love it to death and praise it as a true successor to the original Fallout games, or you declare it a mediocre but well-intentioned attempt at resurrecting the franchise in a shoddy game engine. I am firmly in the former camp. For all its flaws, the amount of replay value New Vegas offers compared to other RPGs is nearly unparalleled.

Key Features: Strong narrative, choice-driven gameplay, post-apocalyptic setting.
Why It’s Great: The choices and consequences the game presents are – at times – some of the best offered in recent years in the RPG genre, and it also allows for a delightful amount of satisfying role-playing options.

4.11 Gothic II (2002)

Gothic 2 is to Gothic somewhat like what Fallout 2 is to Fallout, just with less Monty Python. That is, it provides more of everything, effectively doubling or even tripling in size as well as improving on the UI and some mechanics, yet also loses some of the mood and atmosphere of its predecessor. There is no handholding, no level-scaling and almost no randomization; everything is hand-placed.

Key Features: Challenging gameplay, hand-placed world, non-linear exploration.
Why It’s Great: When the player gains his few first levels and joins a faction, he feels like a true citizen of the game world. Skillful design and authentic NPC behavior only add to that. Finally, the game’s action combat system is fun and the C&C and quest design are solid.

4.12 Underrail (2015)

Underrail is a “retro-revival” indie game. Those often get a bad rep for being nothing but ripoffs of classic games, which is both true and false here. Underrail has a lot of its own spice, but the the influence from classic RPGs can be seen everywhere.

Key Features: Retro-revival style, tactical combat, underground world.
Why It’s Great: Underrail isn’t just “retro-revival done right”, it’s the ideal retro-revival game. One that has the soul and imagination that makes it worth playing even in a sea of classic RPGs that inspired it.

4.13 Gothic (2001)

The first game in the Gothic series is smaller, clunkier, and more difficult to get into than its classic sequel, but once you do break the initial barrier of a somewhat bizarre control scheme and dying every five minutes (some might consider this a plus) you’ll discover a uniquely atmospheric and surprisingly well-designed open-world action RPG.

Key Features: Atmospheric world, challenging gameplay, unique NPCs.
Why It’s Great: The prisoner camps follow the rule of force, and the nameless hero is pathetically weak at the beginning of the game. Piss off the wrong people and they will mop the floor with you, laugh in your face, and take all your money.

4.14 Jagged Alliance 2 (1999)

The king of turn-based squad level tactics games, which no competitor has been able to dethrone in fifteen years. Command a group of elite (or comically incompetent) mercenaries and orchestrate a guerrilla warfare campaign across the Arulcian countryside.

Key Features: Strategic combat, detailed mercenaries, open-ended gameplay.
Why It’s Great: All fights are turn-based and offer some of the best tactical combat I’ve seen in a video game. You can crouch, sneak, cover, snipe, burst, bomb, etc., your way through.

4.15 The Age of Decadence (2015)

If you are looking for choices and consequences, this game is for you. You play a single character in a post-apocalyptic society. It is possible to align with different factions and backstab any or all of them, if you so choose. Combat is hard and unforgiving, which is why some love it and others hate it. The game is built for replayability, since it is impossible to see all the content in one playthrough.

Key Features: Branching storylines, challenging combat, post-apocalyptic setting.
Why It’s Great: The game combines great writing and storytelling with branching storylines more complex than anything you’ve seen in a computer game.

4.16 Kingdom Come: Deliverance (2018)

All in all Kingdom Come is a flawed but still immensely enjoyable open world RPG, which should have taken more inspiration from Daggerfall than Witcher 3. As of now it is one of only a handful of purely non fantasy RPGs, which I am always going to prefer to the nth standard fantasy game.

Key Features: Realistic medieval setting, challenging combat, historical accuracy.
Why It’s Great: This fact alone makes Deliverance worth playing. If good games instill the feeling of being transported, Deliverance achieves this by being a compelling portrait of medieval life in Bohemia.

4.17 Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss (1992)

One of the first, if not the first, first person 3D RPGs and arguably the best dungeon crawler there is. Banished by a Britannian baron to the Great Stygian Abyss in order to rescue his daughter captured by a rogue wizard, you, as the Avatar, will have to carefully explore the darkest depths of the underworld and make friends and foes among the local inhabitants.

Key Features: First-person perspective, immersive world, innovative gameplay.
Why It’s Great: The atmosphere is extremely impressive and exploring the levels can be quite anguishing.

4.18 Wizardry 8 (2001)

Wizardry 8 is the game that made me realize that, for me, fun and challenging combat, character development and party management are far more important in a computer RPG than a masterful story or a solid grip on choice and consequence.

Key Features: Deep party management, challenging combat, fantasy setting.
Why It’s Great: Wiz 8 also has some of the best voice acting and party banter out of any RPG out there, a great soundtrack, and fantastic art direction.

4.19 Disco Elysium (2019)

A lot of people in the Codex hate Disco Elysium. They will tell you it’s not even an RPG. It has no combat, you just read the text. You read A LOT of text. And it isn’t about epic adventures or world-altering moral choices… it’s just a total loser, in an abandoned part of an unimportant place, solving small-scale issues while talking to voices inside his head, being depressed about his ex-wife, Communism, a karaoke song or whatever.

Key Features: Unique skill system, rich narrative, innovative gameplay.
Why It’s Great: It takes RPGs somewhere new, less Tolkien and D&D, more China Miéville and modern tabletop systems. Less escapism, more daily life issues.

4.20 Icewind Dale (2000)

If you ever played Baldur’s Gate 1 and found yourself thinking “This is great, but I wish it had full party creation, a less confusing area and quest structure, and had a lot more combat and dungeons in it”, then Icewind Dale is for you.

Key Features: Full party creation, strategic combat, classic D&D setting.
Why It’s Great: Icewind Dale’s music and graphics are better than BG’s, and Black Isle’s writing is more mature and subdued compared to BioWare’s. As a dungeon crawler, the combat in IWD takes front and center, and the combat encounters are appropriately better designed.

4.21 Dark Souls (2011)

Dark Souls is a rare gem in that it manages to be good at everything. Most RPGs merely excel in some distinct areas, such as character building, writing or other discrete aspects. Rarely does a game come along that executes everything it attempts, and does so with remarkable grace.

Key Features: Challenging combat, interconnected world, dark atmosphere.
Why It’s Great: I understand you might have reservations about trying an RPG (the genre status which is subject to much debate) that was first released on a console. However, if you’ve ever thought I’ve shown any semi-reliable taste at all you will simply have to take my word for it: Dark Souls ranks among the finest games ever created and is a much-needed reminder that not all modern games compromise integrity for the sake of broadening market appeal.

4.22 The Temple of Elemental Evil (2003)

Temple of Elemental Evil shows what RPG combat can be. Its faithful implementation of D&D 3.5e is undoubtedly its greatest strength, but it also has a lot more to offer. There are skill checks everywhere, the visuals are wonderful, and the choices & consequences inside the Temple are criminally underrated.

Key Features: Faithful D&D adaptation, tactical combat, classic dungeon crawl.
Why It’s Great: It offers a great turn-based isometric tactical combat experience with attacks of opportunity, various types of in-combat movement, multiple attack ranges on melee weapons, a couple of cool combat feats, and a crapload of bugbears to bash.

4.23 The Witcher (2007)

Released during the deepest decline, The Witcher really stands out amongst the “classics” of that period (such as Oblivion and Fallout 3). The game depicts the adventures of Geralt, a genetically altered monster hunter, who – in accordance with genre traditions – has lost his memory. The setting of the game, based on the works of Andrzej Sapkowski, is fairly grim and mature, with a lot of violence, profanity and nudity.

Key Features: Morally grey choices, mature setting, unique alchemy system.
Why It’s Great: It’s a refreshingly bottom up look at high fantasy. Society is made up of poor, scared people, and they act appropriately, blaming anyone who looks or acts differently.

4.24 Pathfinder: Kingmaker (2018)

Plagued on release by ridiculously long loading screens and a plethora of game breaking bugs, Pathfinder: Kingmaker hasn’t been warmly received by the mainstream. Once you get past the technical issues, though, you will find an extremely ambitious spiritual successor to the Baldur’s Gate series.

Key Features: Kingdom management, deep character building, exploration.
Why It’s Great: The Pathfinder ruleset allows for a wide variety of builds, making character development more involved than the game’s major source of inspiration.

4.25 The Witcher III: Wild Hunt (2015)

A masterpiece or a scourge on the RPG genre? Depends on who you ask. Our hero Geralt is barely allowed to walk across a room without a literal step by step guide, revealing the game’s serious doubts about the average player’s intelligence. Fortunately what The Witcher 3 does well, it does REALLY well, and if you can accept some patronizing design choices you’ll be rewarded with storytelling and presentation that’s second to none.

Key Features: Open-world setting, quality storytelling, monster hunting.
Why It’s Great: Most of the time, it feels like a quality fantasy TV show – there is the overarching search for Ciri going on in the background, but the focus is on whatever is going on right now.

4.26 Neverwinter Nights 2 (2006)

How about making a game with some of the best writing since Planescape: Torment. Mask of the Betrayer weaves several story threads together beautifully to form a grand tragedy that focuses around your character.

Key Features: Strong narrative, interesting characters, D&D ruleset.
Why It’s Great: The main strengths of the game are the plot, C&C, dialogue, characters, the curse mechanic, the interesting art style, and the music.

4.27 Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II – The Sith Lords (2004)

KOTOR 2 is to KOTOR 1 what Obsidian games are to BioWare games. More ambitious and much better written, but also more infuriating in many ways. KOTOR 2’s main strength lies its ability to deconstruct the Star Wars mythology and its usual Manichean characters, even though it does seem a bit forced sometimes and there’s no avoiding Chris Avellone’s usual bloated ten minute monologues.

Key Features: Star Wars setting, deep story, complex characters.
Why It’s Great: The tale unfolds as a tragedy, where even the most monstrous of the villains are revealed to be fatally flawed mortal men and women whose decisions lead to their undoing, while your own chosen path decides who among them will live or die.

4.28 Wizardry VII: Crusaders of the Dark Savant (1992)

So you want to play Wizardry VII? First of all, take a month’s vacation. It might be enough – but it’s cutting it close. Wizardry VII improves on VI in almost every way. Everything is bigger. There are more items, more puzzles, more enemies, more NPCs, more text, more story, more challenges, more squares, more areas, more twisted mapping tricks, more skills. And that’s only touching on some things.

Key Features: Complex character system, open world,