The PS2 library was enormous, and a big part of what I love about it is how many different kinds of RPGs it managed to house. You had your obvious classics, especially in the JRPG realm, but you also had all sorts of games that were doing something a little different – dungeon crawlers, tactical RPGs, action RPGs, games that blended genres in ways that felt genuinely fresh at the time.
10 Best Forgotten PS3 RPGs You Need To Play
The PS3 RPG back-catalog is pretty damn good
The ten I handpicked below all have one thing in common: they don’t make you wait. You’re in the middle of action within the first hour, and for a genre that tends to focus on longevity first and foremost, that’s pretty rare.
10 Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance
The Dungeon Crawler that Just Works
Now, I might be biased because I absolutely adored Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance, but it truly is one of those games that just manages to get the fundamentals absolutely spot on. You pick a character, you start hitting things, loot drops, and you keep going. It sounds simple because it is, but the combat is responsive, the progression feels good, and the co-op makes the whole thing even better. Two players working through it together is genuinely one of the better couch co-op experiences the PS2 had.
The three classes play differently enough that going back with a different character feels worthwhile, and the pacing never really drags. My personal favorite is the Elven Sorceress, but all of them have their benefits. It’s not trying to be more than it is, and that confidence is a big part of why it holds up. If you want a dungeon crawler that pulls you in immediately and doesn’t let go, this is the one.
9 Champions of Norrath
Everything Dark Alliance Did, Bigger
Champions of Norrath takes the Dark Alliance formula and expands it in almost every direction. Deeper character customization, more varied environments, four-player co-op, and a loot system with more to dig into. It’s the kind of sequel that knows exactly what it’s building on and doesn’t mess with what worked.
If you played Dark Alliance and immediately wanted more of it, this is the answer. The two games back to back are a very good time, and Champions earns its place as the stronger of the two without throwing away anything that made the original worth playing. Oddly enough, I have not met a lot of people that have heard of this game, so if you have an old PS2 about, I strongly advise you to hunt down a physical copy and get going!
8 X-Men Legends
The X-Men Game that Finally Got it Right
Whenever I write about a licensed game, it’s almost like I can already hear the collective sighs from all of you. Look, I get it, licensed games have a habit of being disappointing, particularly in this era, but X-Men Legends is a genuinely great action RPG. You build a team of four from a solid roster, level them up, develop their powers, and take them through a campaign that truly engages with the X-Men in a meaningful way instead of just using the license as wallpaper.
The combat is fun from the start because each character feels distinct, and working out which combinations fit best will be something you find yourself thinking about even when you step away from the controller. The four-player co-op is great as well. It proved a proper X-Men RPG could work and did it well enough to earn a sequel, which is about the best endorsement a game can get.
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7 The Lord of the Rings: The Third Age
Middle-Earth From a Different Angle
Yes, it’s essentially Final Fantasy X set in Middle-earth. That description sounds dismissive, but it really isn’t meant to be – the turn-based combat is well-tuned, the character progression gives you enough to think about, and following a parallel group of heroes through the events of the films is a genuinely fun way to revisit that world. Moving through Helm’s Deep or Pelennor Fields in a format that lets you take your time with every fight has its own appeal.
The story isn’t going to blow anyone away, but the game is immediately comfortable to play, and the production values are high. Sometimes that’s exactly what you want, and if you are a fan of Tolkien, you won’t want to miss out on this one.
6 Beyond Good & Evil
One of the Great Injustices of the PS2 Era
Beyond Good & Evil sold poorly at launch and has spent every year since building the cult following it should have had immediately. You play as Jade, an investigative reporter uncovering a sinister alien conspiracy on a planet that looks like rustic European architecture crossed with science fiction, populated by anthropomorphic animals and people living side by side. Michel Ancel, the creator of Rayman, built something rather original here.
The gameplay moves between combat, stealth, puzzle-solving, hovercraft sections, and photography – Jade documents wildlife and gathers evidence with her camera, which gives the whole thing an unusual texture that was super exciting to me when it first came out. The tone is warm and funny and occasionally tense, and the soundtrack is excellent. The 20th Anniversary Edition in 2024 makes it more accessible than ever. If you missed it the first time, there’s no excuse now.
5 The Bard’s Tale
An RPG that Knows Exactly What It Is
The Bard’s Tale remake has a very specific… energy. You play as a self-serving mercenary who is motivated almost entirely by money and is deeply uninterested in being a hero, and the game spends most of its runtime cheerfully making fun of RPG conventions through a running argument between the Bard and the narrator. It is genuinely funny, and humor is something often underutilized in video games, especially during this era.
Underneath the comedy is a solid action RPG with a summoning system that lets you build up a small army to fight alongside you. The combat is straightforward, the writing stays sharp, and the whole thing moves at a pace that doesn’t overstay its welcome. It knows its strengths and leans into them, which is all I really want from an RPG.
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4 Summoner
All You Wanted was to Plant Turnips
Joseph just wanted to be a farmer. That’s genuinely the whole backstory – a young man with the power to summon creatures who would have been perfectly happy to never use it, forced into an adventure by the kind of tragedy that leaves you with no other options. Everyone he has ever known is dead within the opening hours. The game sets a tone immediately and never once lets up on it.
Summoner is one long meditation on how much it must suck to live in this world, and somehow that’s a compliment. Between the dark color palette, the amazing but haunting soundtrack, and the dark lore hiding in every ancient temple adds up to a world that feels oppressive, but in a good way. World building at its finest. The summoning system has weight to it, the combat is intuitive, and the Western RPG sensibility it brought to a console landscape that was firmly in the grip of JRPGs at the time felt quite refreshing. It helped prove that console players liked being depressed too.
Also, the sequel is excellent. Play both.
3 Drakan: The Ancients’ Gates
Dragons Done Right
| Developer | Surreal Software |
|---|---|
| Publisher | Psygnosis |
| Release Date | 20. August 1999 |
The original Drakan: Order of the Flame was a PC game. The PS2 entry is The Ancients’ Gates, a sequel where you play as Rynn, a warrior bonded with an ancient dragon named Arokh. The two-tier gameplay is what makes it stand out – on foot, you’re exploring dungeons and working through quests with a solid variety of weapons and magic, and on Arokh’s back, you’re doing something closer to Panzer Dragoon over an open world that was quite ambitious for an early PS2 game.
The loading times between areas are the one thing that really hasn’t aged well. Everything around them still holds up now, though. It’s one of the more overlooked games on the platform, and it deserved a lot more attention than it got.
2 Gladius
Tactical Combat with a Swing Meter
Gladius is a LucasArts tactical RPG built around running a gladiatorial school, and it’s smarter than it initially looks. You recruit fighters from a massive roster across 16 classes, make real decisions about who gets your limited slots, and compete through increasingly prestigious games while a plot about a resurrected Dark God slowly builds in the background. The school management side of it adds a super fun and rewarding layer to the game.
What actually distinguishes the combat, though, is the swing meter. Instead of leaving outcomes to invisible dice rolls, you hit buttons at the right moment to land normal hits, glancing blows, or criticals. It keeps every fight active and engaged. It’s a little slow and the story is thin, but as a tactical RPG experience, it’s one of the best the PS2 produced.
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Here are some incredible games that, on paper, seemed like they were destined for failure.
1 Deus Ex
Still One of the Most Ambitious Games Ever Made
Deus Ex on PS2 is not the definitive version – that’s the PC original – and it has the compromises you’d expect from a port. The game underneath those compromises is still extraordinary. You play as JC Denton, a nano-augmented agent in a near-future world of conspiracy and collapsing social order, and almost every mission can be approached through stealth, hacking, direct combat, dialogue, or some combination of all of them.
It trusts you completely. It hands you a situation and lets you figure out your own approach, and the world reacts to your choices in ways that still feel consequential. Very few games from this era – or any era – have managed that level of systemic depth. If you haven’t played it in any form, the PS2 version is still a more than valid place to start.
10 Hardest PS2 Games Of All Time
The embodiment of ‘old school difficulty.’
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Author: 360 Technology Group
