The List That Ends the Argument

Gregor Kartsios has been playing RPGs longer than most people have been paying attention to them. He runs RPG HeaveN on YouTube—nearly two decades of deep dives into enchanted kingdoms, sprawling systems, and yes, Japanese schoolgirls—and has by now logged more hours in this genre than seems medically advisable.

So when someone like that assembles a ranked list of the 101 best RPGs ever made, you listen. The playlist is built with care and considerably more visual flair than most people bother with when cataloguing obsessions. You start at the bottom—Secret of Evermore, Phantasy Star, Grandia, Undertale—and work your way up through decades of genre history until you arrive at Chrono Trigger at the apex, which is approximately where it belongs.

My one grievance: Terranigma isn’t on it. That game deserves to appear on every list of this kind, and its perpetual omission is one of the small persistent failures of gaming culture. No list covering 101 entries across the full history of the RPG will ever satisfy everyone, but this one is about as good as it gets. If you’ve got nothing planned for the next several decades, it’s a solid place to start.