RPGs are one of the oldest gaming genres out there, with a rich history that spans countless epic franchises going all the way back to the very start of the industry. Nowadays, video games look very different from the way they did all those years ago, both from a visual perspective and a mechanical one, and while some have managed to age gracefully, others have struggled to stand the test of time, looking more like historical artifacts than enjoyable experiences.
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With many impressive games under the RPG banner in 2025, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, The Outer Worlds 2, and more offer outstanding experiences.
This can be due to a number of reasons, the biggest of which is the gameplay, where older games often feel clunky and unresponsive compared to the more advanced modern control schemes. Also, the difficulty was significantly greater back then, with more punishing mechanics and fewer margins of error, which can make even well-polished titles nearly impossible to play, in some cases, quite literally, due to being unfair and borderline unwinnable.
7 Might and Magic Book One: The Secret of the Inner Sanctum
Brutal By Design
Details:
- Extremely dated interface
- Minimal feedback and guidance
Might and Magic I represents how early RPG ambitions often collided with severe mechanical limitations. Its open-ended structure was groundbreaking, but the interface and pacing are fairly poor by modern standards, often taking hours to even grasp the basics. The progression is pretty challenging, with little guidance on where to go or how systems truly function.
The combat relies heavily on trial-and-error rather than strategy, while dungeon navigation is slow and exhausting, turning even a short session into a challenging mental battle. What once felt forward-thinking now feels punishing and obtuse, and while it remains an important footnote in the genre's history, it is probably best left in the past.
6 Ultima: The First Age of Darkness
Foundational But Nearly Impossible To Get Into
Details:
- Unintuitive controls
- Limited onboarding
The original Ultima laid the groundwork for open-world RPGs, providing players with a vast area to explore in any way they chose. From a mechanical perspective, however, the game feels frozen in a different era, with unintuitive controls, unclear progression, and basic interactions that require memorization above all else. Even navigating the interfaces can be a chore, creating a constant sense of frustration that only exists due to the contrast with modern games.
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Also, there is a distinct lack of tactical depth in the fighting, and little satisfaction that comes from beating an enemy or exploring a new area, due to the lack of feedback that makes those moments rewarding. Modern players accustomed to clarity and responsiveness will struggle to find any kind of satisfaction from the game, and as important as it was for moving the genre in a new direction, the entertainment value has certainly dwindled.
5 Before Crisis: Final Fantasy 7
Lost To A Different Time
Details:
- Discontinued on the mobile platform
- Expanded the universe in meaningful ways
Before Crisis: Final Fantasy 7 is unplayable in the most literal sense. Originally released exclusively for Japanese mobile phones, it was never properly preserved or officially rereleased on another platform, leaving the game stuck on a select few devices that are now completely obsolete. The game expanded Final Fantasy 7’s universe in meaningful ways, focusing on the Turks and Midgar’s underworld, so it was certainly a worthwhile experience for fans of the series who could get their hands on it.
Mechanically, it was fairly simple but still functional for its platform, having a basic set of controls that felt as responsive as they could given the hardware the game was on. Today, however, access is nearly impossible outside incomplete fan reconstructions that are still far from the finished product. These kinds of platform limitations are among the biggest frustrations for players, as, regardless of how big a fan they may be, there is sometimes no way of playing through the more obscure and restrictive titles in the franchise.
4 Phantasy Star
Innovation Hidden Under Friction
Details:
- Mandatory grinding
- Disorienting dungeon design
Phantasy Star was technologically impressive for its time, featuring 3D dungeons and a science-fantasy setting that set it apart from many other games in the space. Unfortunately, those same innovations now feel cumbersome and exhausting to navigate, and rather than having a sense of charm that allows modern players to still enjoy it, the gameplay just feels tedious at best and borderline impossible at worst.
The dungeon crawling is slow and disorienting, the awkward combat is repetitive, and grinding is mandatory, which effectively means replaying the frustrating sections and areas over and over again. The game also demands constant input and management from the player in areas that are now completely automatic, like map mapping, which in turn makes exploration into a fatiguing activity that can sour the entire experience.
3 Xenogears
A Brilliant Story Trapped In A Flawed Shell
Details:
- Repetitive combat systems
- Severe pacing issues
Xenogears delivers one of the most ambitious narratives ever attempted in an RPG, blending psychology, philosophy, and theology into one cohesive story that still holds up today. But like many other iconic games from the era, a good story can only carry a playthrough so far, and now, the gameplay struggles to carry forward that ambition with the respect and care it deserves.
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The fighting just doesn't offer much outside of repetition, and the combat loop itself isn't engaging enough for players to enjoy it for more than a few encounters at best. The dungeon designs are also pretty bland, not having much variety and feeling like copied-and-pasted locations rather than fully fleshed-out explorable zones. Towards the second half, these woes only get worse, as the sections begin to feel unfinished, which destroys any sense of pace the game had up until that point. As powerful as the story is, it was no match for the unstoppable force of time and the innovation that came with it.
2 Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord
Punishment As Progression
Details:
- Severe penalties for failure
- Extremely resistive mechanics
Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord helped establish a lot of the foundational systems for dungeon-crawling RPGs, but its design philosophy is openly hostile to players in the modern era. For starters, the progression into the dungeons is painfully slow, yet the biggest issue comes from the frequent and sudden deaths that erase all the player's progress without warning. This means that at a moment's notice, an entire party can be wiped out by bad luck rather than poor decision-making, forcing players to sit through hours of repetitive gameplay with little variation.
On top of this, the game offers minimal explanation of its mechanics, expecting players to learn through failure and constant retries instead of simply giving them a head start. Even basic things like spell usage and navigation have to be learned and memorized, making the whole experience feel like an elaborate test with no end in sight. Because it relies so heavily on punishment, experimenting and trying new things is more of a setback than a viable option, forcing players to stick to one specific path that they would otherwise rather avoid. Without any modern quality-of-life features, the game is now joyless and a reminder of how far the industry has come over the past few decades.
1 The Elder Scrolls: Arena
A Masterpiece Ruined By Advancement
Details:
- Clunky controls
- Long, punishing dungeon setups
The Elder Scrolls: Arena is where one of the most important RPG franchises began, introducing a scale and freedom that was almost unimaginable at the time. Its procedurally generated world and level of ambition remain astonishing even decades later, and from a conceptual point of view, the game represents virtually every ideal that an RPG should strive for, both back then and today.
Going back now, though, and the game feels brutally inaccessible. It isn't a broken mess filled with bugs, aside from a few technical instability issues, but every aspect, from the controls to the combat, feels awkward and unintuitive, without the modern refinement that fixes a lot of these issues. In terms of exploration, navigating the world can be quite confusing, due to the minimal direction provided by quests and a clear absence of explanation that can make it tough to even know where to begin. It might not be anywhere near as playable or fun as the later games in the franchise, but without it, TES and many other great RPGs just simply wouldn't exist.
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