10 Best RPGs Of 2024
A salute to a wild, wonderful year of Reloads, Rebirths and Refantazios.
After Baldur's Gate 3 conquered the RPG genre in 2023 with its era-defining megabrilliance (to use the scientific term), you'd have been forgiven for thinking 2024 would have been something of a comedown for fans of games in which a role is played. After all, what could possibly top Larian's once in a generation masterpiece?
Yet while this year's crop of RPGs may not have usurped Baldur's Gate from its well-deserved throne, it's still been one hell of a year for fans of epic stories, memorable characters and the noble art of hitting things until they disgorge more numbers than a drunken calculator.
When compiling this list, the one thing that stood out was the sheer variety of great RPG experiences 2024 offered. Traditional JRPGs rubbed shoulders with wildly inventive spins on the genre, and straightforward remakes held court alongside brilliantly bizarre rebirths. 2024 offered a veritable smorgasbord of RPG excellence, meaning that XP-gatherers and stat-bumpers of all shapes and stripes were guaranteed to find something spectacular to satisfy their palate.
Which brings us to the first item on the menu...
10. Dragon Age: The Veilguard
If any game illustrates the importance of a good ending, it's Veilguard.
The latest entry in the Dragon Age series certainly wasn't perfect. From its maddening tendency to have characters repeat information the player was given mere seconds ago to the lack of inter-party conflict that defined previous Dragon Age casts (Morrigan roasting Alistair, Fenris butting heads with every mage he met), Veilguard's tale was like a lumpy family sofa - comfortable, but overstuffed and unsurprising
Unsurprising, that is, until Bioware's best finale since Mass Effect 2.
Veilguard's final act is a bombastic, pulse-pounding ending that pays off all the effort (or lack of it) players put into building relationships with the cast and various factions. Who lives and dies depends entirely on your choices (and people will die), resulting in arguably the best ending of 2024.
It's not that Veilguard wasn't enjoyable before its conclusion - dashing around the battlefield as a dual-wielding rogue was great fun, and some characters were great additions to Dragon Age's ever-expanding cast (Emmrich is a delightful gent of the old-school, and Taash's brusque sense of humour was a reliable delight) - but that glorious finale is what pushed Veilguard from an enjoyable game into a memorable one.