Important takeaways
- RPGs excel when they combine story and world-building through engaging text.
- Roadwarden, Wildermyth, Citizen Sleeper, Suzerain and Disco Elysium stand out for their immersive text-based experiences.
- These titles offer deep emotional connections, rich character creation, intense moral dilemmas, and compelling political narratives.
RPGs are rooted in a world of text and text-based titles. Who knows where the genre would be today if it weren't for the monolithic world of tabletop RPGs that came before it? If there's one thing the best RPGs have in common, it's an excellent combination of story and world-building to create a highly engaging, highly immersive title.
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5 JRPGs with Morale Systems
These JRPGs lead players down multiple moral paths, allowing them to make their decisions with morality as a guiding tool.
However, some games in particular know how to use the written word to improve their world. A significant area of overlap between books and video games is the power of prose to capture the imagination and make the player that much more connected to their game. For gamers who don't mind a little reading, here are some titles to watch out for.
5 Road wardens
A boring journey through untamed hinterland
Road wardens is a title that, despite being full of life, makes the player feel lonely, in the best possible way. There's a solid emphasis on the main character here, which is built from the ground up based on early player choices. This almost introspective tone is particularly interesting given that the story itself is adapted to a tale of grand adventure – the Roadward must brave the wilderness of the peninsula to help promote settlements and cities and protect the innocent from the monsters that roam the land.
It's similar to many great RPGs that have a fluid, dynamic world that's constantly changing. IN Road wardenstext is used alongside stunning graphics with a mesmerizing amber tone. The descriptions of events, NPC dialogue, and combat interactions are all great textual parts of this title, and the attention to player choice puts it up there with some of the great branching games available today.
4 Wild myth
A storybook epic of mythic proportions
Wild myth is one of those games that will stick with players for a long, long time. Not only is it an incredibly engaging strategic RPG, but it has such a new system of character creation that it does the impossible, combining the kind of grit and depth found with pre-written characters along with the freedom of creation and narrative choices that come with custom characters . There are many intricate ways that character personalities and events work, but the best way to play this one is to simply dive in.
There's a powerful but understated sense of wonder to the writing in this game, with every event, and its hundreds of variations based on character personalities written so strangely that it's not uncommon to forget about the world outside of the game. Each campaign is framed as a mythic retelling, an epic that chronicles the band of adventurers battling some long-forgotten threat.
3 Citizen Sleeper
A dystopian spacefaring RPG
This unique text-based RPG is a masterpiece of cyberpunk aesthetics and themes, perfect for fans of… well, Cyberpunk. There's a huge amount of passion at work here, put into everything from the table-based stats to the unique mix of colors and illustrations that make up the style of the game, with a heavy emphasis on shadows, deep blacks and bright reds. The text itself is of novel quality and reads like a mix of an enthusiastic DM's world-building with lots of sci-fi classics from the 70s and 80s.
This is a game of hard choices, capitalist dystopias and compelling characters. A perfect title for anyone looking to immerse themselves in a space-focused environment with no corners.
2 Suzerain
A political RPG that pulls no punches
Suzerain uses text and narrative to get the player invested in the deep political intrigue of a single nation and its fledgling democracy trying to find a place for itself in the world. The fictional nation of Sordland is in theory under the player's control, but those looking for a power fantasy will have to look elsewhere. An old, crypto-fascist ex-president continues to manipulate parliament, the political right and left are trying to run the country in two different directions, and through it all, the president must try to get a coalition of allies large enough to make his political ambition – a refined constitution – may pass into Parliament.
There's no other way to say it – this game is brutal. Fantastic, utterly compelling, a near-perfect articulation of what a good text-based RPG should be, yes. But also brutal. There are no promises that things will work out, no promises that what a person tells you is the truth, but if the player does nothing but compromise and hedge bets, they will find a land with little to imagine at the end of this amazing 900,000 word title.
1 Disco Elysium
One of the best RPG games of all time
The BAFTA-winning Disco Elysium has a level of quality that basically speaks for itself. It's one of the greatest CRPGs of the 21st century, and with it comes a lot of wonderfully written prose. Deciding how the main character navigates the world, what his leanings are politically and philosophically, and how this shapes the city around him, is one of the most engaging experiences available in a video game today.
Gamers would be doing themselves a disservice not to get into this gritty, surreal, highly compelling RPG with text written like a dream and world-building that will blow people away. Like other titles on this list, the text isn't the only barrier to entry, as it's quite a difficult title at times and requires solid attention to detail, but gamers who like deep RPGs won't want to miss this one.
