Top 20 Best RPG Series of All Time

#11. – Tales of

# of Good Games in the Franchise: 11

Active: Yes

Namco’s Tales of series is one of the most prolific in the world or RPGs. It began on the Super Famicom with Tales of Phantasia, then saw a few unrelated sequels released on the Sony PlayStation. Sequels continued on the PlayStation 2 and GameCube, and after that the games were released on every major console. The latest release, Tales of Arise, made big waves when it came out for Xbox and PlayStation 4/5 consoles just last year. For a while the Tales games were almost an annual affair. Because so many were released so close to each other the popularity of the franchise has waned a bit in recent years.

In my opinion the PS2/GameCube generation was the golden age of Tales of games. Symphonia was the breakout title the franchise needed in the west, and follow ups such as Abyss and Vesperia built upon the 3D formula established in the aforementioned games. Tales of Graces was the next one released and it has hands down the best battle system of them all. Unfortunately it disappoints big time in terms of story. Tales of Xillia, Xillia II, and all of the modern games fall a little short. They’re more linear than in the past iterations, and the battle systems feel all too familiar in my opinion. That doesn’t mean I don’t still like them, because I do, but I like many others am getting a bit worn out on the series.

The Best Way to Play:

Unfortunately it has been a few generations since any of the 2D titles have been re-made or even re-released. That means they’re unavailable on modern platforms. This includes most of the 3D titles as well. The farthest back you can go on modern consoles is Tales of Vesperia. Namco has a bad habit of locking these games behind older hardware. If you want these titles you’ll need the following consoles; a PS1, PSP, PS2, PS3, PS Vita and PS4. Each one has their own exclusive (sometimes more than one) which hasn’t been released elsewhere as of this article. Yeah, it’s an expensive franchise to dive into now.