Best RPGS

Fallout 3

As expansive as the game might be, there is a limit, a point where that quest list is bare and everything has been discovered, rescued, or killed, and your only remaining options are to quit or start over. This is where downloadable content comes in. If there was ever a company that did it better than Bethesda, I haven’t seen them. -Jake Davis

Fallout 3 has its issues and is oftentimes buggy or otherwise unwieldy, but it always gives you the ultimate power to play the game as you see fit. It offers a flexible and believable world, one that is overly harsh but ultimately fair. And it tasks you with saving it. It will continually challenge you, and oftentimes overwhelm you, but it will never disappoint you. -Gary Lucero

I bought Fallout 3, and what I experienced for the next six months was mind-blowing. All of the wasted hours I had previously spent studying were properly shifted over to more important things, like exploding the heads off of feral ghouls. I literally spent hours walking from location to location just to see what building I could enter next, and to find helpless wastelanders so I could attach exploding collars to their necks. The radiation was obviously getting to me, and I was wishing that I could somehow work my way behind the glass screen on my TV and enter post-apocalyptia myself. -Michael Johnson

Mass Effect 2

Mass Effect 2 takes what I like to call the "Watchmen approach": The main plot still drives the story along, but most of the juicy bits involve the characters, their back stories, and making a bleak world come to life. And it works. Players want to explore every dialogue option with their crewmates. The game's NPCs are so good that you're usually too busy delving into their pasts and psyches to miss the first game's roster, and that's quite a feat. -Siri Karri

Sniping dudes with an old friend, landing on space ships in trouble, descending onto a Twilight Zone-esque brainwashed planet, guns a-blazing. The game encourages it and the player obliges; it’s like high-fiving blindfolded and being met with a perfect slap! -Rob Martinez

On the second try, Bioware has outdone itself by taking what the community said into consideration when refining the sequel. In doing so, Bioware created, in my opinion, the most accessible RPG of our generation. -Sean Hintz

The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion

Oblivion is the best Xbox 360 RPG because it truly lets you choose what role you will play. Hundreds of paths exist, and it is up to you to find your way through a world filled with countless adventures. Everyone who plays Oblivion is able to craft a story that is uniquely their own. In the end we only have one shared experience: the starting point. We all walk out of the dim, dark sewers, greeted on the other side by an open, expansive, vibrant world. Where the game goes from there...that is your decision. Me? I just started to walk. To the east. -Ben Cook

Everywhere you turn there is something new to find, whether it’s a dungeon, a quest, or even just a plant you haven’t seen before. I remember bringing Oblivion along for a weekend trip to a friend’s house, a guy who had never once shown an interest in RPGs. As soon as he got the chance to explore the countryside, the controller never left his hand for the rest of my stay. The fact that game developers could now pack this much content into a game amazed both of us. -Robert M.F. Stoneback

Oblivion felt like something new; something fresh. It's not perfect, but the massive scale and level of polish it brought to the genre completely excuses its minor quirks and idiosyncrasies. Not only does this game still look and play great (it came out over four years ago), but will it also probably be remembered as the first true RPG this generation of consoles had to offer. -Guy Ulme

Lost Odyssey

Lost Odyssey is a glorious revival of what used to make a JRPG a JRPG: turned-based battles, random encounters, towns, a world map, tons of NPCs to talk to, a story that truly feels epic, and so forth. Most are now under-appreciated qualities that tend to earn scorn from U.S. gamers...which kind of makes Lost Odyssey an ironic revolution. It not only captures the feel of a classic JRPG, but also expands on the genre by taking advantage of today’s processing power with lush graphics and a sprawling, pacifist parable of a story. Then again, one would expect no less from Hironobu Sakaguchi, who created the best Final Fantasy installments, and Nobuo Uematsu, whose memorable scores have always been favorites of mine. In Lost Odyssey, developer Mistwalker has achieved the first true JRPG of this generation. -Oliver Hansen